Session 1 - Montefiore

Status of Natural Gas Combined Cycle (NGCC) technology
for electricity production
1 Context
Academic year 2012-13
A group of policy makers working for public authorities is looking for an update regarding
the different technologies for electricity production. Their scope is to obtain
synthetic information for electricity production cost, energy yield, potential CO2 emissions
reduction and technological status (under development, tested, mature,...) in order
to best allocate subsidies for clean power generation.
2 Problem
You have been contacted by this group to make a 15 minutes presentation on the status
of Natural Gas Combined Cycle power plant technology. Your intervention
must present the main aspects of the technology and mention the principal advantages
and drawbacks in terms of potential production for the European Union, intermittency,
security of supply and technological maturity.
Your presentation must contain an assessment of the electricity production cost together
with a prospective of the calculated cost (decreasing, stable, increasing). The
potential CO2 emissions reduction resulting from the development of the technology
must be presented as well. The reference case will be a natural gas combined cycle.
For your cost calculations you will assume an amortization time equal to the duration
of the installation (i.e., 20 years) and a weighted average cost of capital of 7%.
3 Practical information
The presentation must be done in English and must not last more than 15 minutes. Due
to the time restriction, the length of the presentation should not exceed 15 to 20 slides.
A document is available on the website (entitled Assessing the cost of electricity)
which explains in details the methodology to be used for the calculation of the electricity
production cost. This document is considered as a starting point and completing the
cost information supplied by additional information gathered from the literature of from
the internet is welcome.
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