The latest work on the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE) has focused on identifying and facilitating discussions on the most significant potential cost saving measures available to the LiftWEC technology. This analysis will continue throughout the LiftWEC development pathway. To assess the economic performance of the different LiftWEC concepts – or any concept at low TRL level – is not trivial. A guide has been developed in order to approach this problem. Technology agnostic cost centre breakdowns for both CAPEX and OPEX have been derived from the cost database compiled within the project. This cost database has been made publicly available for use and can be found on the LiftWEC Project repository. By using common figures for the discount rate and capacity factor, cost ranges for different cost centres can be defined in order to reach a target LCoE. This approach is expected to assist decision-making during evaluating of different LiftWEC concepts.

The System Lifetime tool from the DTOceanPlus project has also been used to calculate the LCoE of the Atargis CycWEC device and results compared both with what has been stated in the literature and what was previously calculated using the Cost of Energy Calculation Tool developed within the LiftWEC project. The results were very similar, suggesting the tool developed within the LiftWEC project provides meaningful and accurate results.