An Empirical Approach to Estimating the Effective Levelized Cost of Electricity

Using a Bayesian computational paradigm, we es-timate the effective levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) using consumer data from the Energy Information Agency (EIA). We estimate the LCOE for each significant power source in the United States from 1990 to 2022. We compare our estimates with Lazard's LCOE. Furthermore, our analysis provides cost estimates of energy distribution. The results suggest that the cost of distribution is a consequential fraction of the cost of electricity.