Levelized Cost of Coating (LCOC) for selective absorber materials

A new metric has been developed to evaluate and compare selective absorber coatings for concentrating solar power applications. Previous metrics have typically considered the performance of the selective coating (i.e., solar absorptance and thermal emittance), but cost and durability were not considered. This report describes the development of the Levelized Cost of Coating (LCOC), which is similar to the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) commonly used to evaluate alternative energy technologies. The LCOC is defined as the ratio of the annualized cost of the coating (and associated costs such as labor) to the average annual thermal energy produced by the receiver. The baseline LCOC using Pyromark 2500 paint was found to be $0.055/MW h(t), and marginal costs were determined in a probabilistic analysis to range from -$0.09/MW h(t) to $1.01/MW h(t), accounting for the cost of additional (or fewer) heliostats required to yield the same baseline average annual thermal energy produced by the receiver. A stepwise multiple rank regression analysis showed that the initial solar absorptance was the most significant parameter impacting the LCOC, followed by thermal emittance, reapplication interval, degradation rate, reapplication cost, and downtime during reapplication. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.