Cost of Auxiliary Commodity

[giulia realmonte]

Thanks for the clarification.

I did not realize that you were referring to the levelized cost reporting.  The levelized cost reporting is done by post-processing from the model results. You can see the calculation formulation described in the documentation:

http://iea-etsap.org/docs/TIMES-Levelized-Cost.pdf

As described there, the levelized cost is indeed calculated for the main product. And, when you use the first option (RPT_OPT=–1), any emission prices or by-product revenues are excluded from the calculation. This means that the main product does indeed "carry" also the costs of any auxiliary products.

However, if using the second option (RPT_OPT=1), both emission prices and by-product revenues are included in the calculation, meaning that if "waste heat" is a by-product and it has a value, the levelized cost for the main product becomes lower than in the first option. The value is obtained from the marginal price of the waste heat commodity.

Finally, if using the third option (RPT_OPT=2), both emission prices and all product revenues are included in the calculation, including the revenue from the main product.  This means that the reported value represents a "net unit cost".

Does that answer your question?

Thank you for the explanation, but my doubt is not only about the cost reporting, but more about the cost "felt" by the model itself. I mean, the choice of technologies within TIMES is mainly based on their cost, and I was wondering if there is a flow cost linked to the auxiliary commodity "waste heat" for a second process that takes it as an input. (as there is a flow cost for the main output commodity electricity, that is considered as a variable cost for a successive process taking electricity as input)

Giulia