Fuzzy assessment of electricity generation costs applied to distributed generation. comparison with retail electricity supply costs

The present paper describes a fuzzy approach to calculate electricity generation costs for decision-making on generation investments. The fuzzy numbers are helpful in modeling uncertain input data because they allow to consider quantifiable uncertainties altogether with the expert knowledge on input parameters. This approach is specifically applied to generation cost assessment of main fossil-fuel technologies of distributed generation in some countries of South America. It is intended for applications of base-load generation, cogeneration, peak and back-up power. In addition, these generation costs are compared with retail electricity supply costs.