ARTICLE IN PRESS

Energy Policy 38 (2010) 667–672

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Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Communication

Supply-cost curves for geographically distributed renewable-energy

resources
Salvador Izquierdo, César Dopazo, Norberto Fueyo 
Fluid Mechanics Group (University of Zaragoza) and LITEC (CSIC), Marı́a de Luna 3, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain

a r t i c l e in fo abstract

Article history: The supply-cost curves of renewable-energy sources are an essential tool to synthesize and analyze
Received 24 July 2008 large-scale energy-policy scenarios, both in the short and long terms. Here, we suggest and test a
Accepted 20 September 2009 parametrization of such curves that allows their representation for modeling purposes with a minimal
set of information. In essence, an economic potential is defined based on the mode of the marginal
Keywords: supply-cost curves; and, using this definition, a normalized log-normal distribution function is used to
Renewable energy model these curves. The feasibility of this proposal is assessed with data from a GIS-based analysis of
Cost-supply curve solar, wind and biomass technologies in Spain. The best agreement is achieved for solar energy.
Geographic information system & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction resource can be seen in Fig. 1, and a schematic of the marginal

Energy planning is paramount for government agencies and
supranational bodies due to its relevance for the economy and for
the environment. Among the portfolio of technologies to produce
electricity, those based on renewable resources arise as one of the
key ingredients in the prevention or mitigation of climate change
and their deleterious effect on the biosphere (WMO and UNEP,
2007; NPG, 2007). Prospective studies on renewable energy
potentials should focus on two different, but related, aspects:
the analysis of the spatial and temporal distribution of these
resources, leading to their aggregate technical potential supply
(as, for example, in Hoogwijk, 2004); and the evaluation of the
environmental and economic impact of renewable-energy tech-
nologies. In this paper, we analyze the curves of cost vs potential
supply (called, for simplicity, supply-cost curves), and also the
curves of land occupancy vs potential supply (supply-land curves)
that can assist in the evaluation of these impacts, e.g. by using
them in short- or long-term energy-environment-economy mod-
els for the analysis of the actual potentials of renewable-energy
technologies. Supply-cost and supply-land curves will be jointly
referred to below as, simply, supply curves.
Supply curves, especially the supply-cost one, are often used in
global (de Vries et al., 2007; Hoogwijk, 2004) and regional or
country analyses (Schneider et al., 2007; Dornburg et al., 2007;
Daniëls and Uyterlinde, 2005) of energy-policy scenarios for both
short- and long-term horizons. The basic structure of the
logarithmic aggregate supply curves for a renewable-energy
 Corresponding author. Tel.: + 34 976762153; fax: + 34 976761882.
E-mail addresses: Salvador.Izquierdo@gmail.com (S. Izquierdo),
Norberto.Fueyo@unizar.es (N. Fueyo).
supply curves is plotted in Fig. 2. Aggregated variables are denoted
by capital letters and marginal ones by lower-case ones.
Considering the aggregated supply-cost curve (Fig. 1), we
observe that in the limit of zero energy production it can be
modeled with sloping straight line (horizontal in a limiting case),
which is called the short-term aggregate potential supply (STAS),
and defines the minimal cost. At the opposite end, in the limit of
the technical potential supply (i.e. the maximum energy pro-
duced) the curve tends to be vertical; this is the long-term
aggregate potential supply (LTAS). In the supply-cost curve, there
is a especially significant point, the ordinate of which we will term
the characteristic (representative) cost of the technology, and the
abscissa the economic potential. This point will be further defined
below.
The dashed line depicted in Fig. 1 (to be read on the secondary
ordinate axis to the right) is often approximately the same for land
occupancy and for power installed, as the later is usually linearly
related to the occupied land in large-scale studies like the present
one. This is more so the more homogeneously distributed the
resource is. Land-cost and power-cost curves have often a similar
shape to the supply-cost one.
These curves allow for the assessment of economic potentials,
and thus they can aid in the definition of criteria for the
implementation of deployment-fostering policies, such as feed-
in tariffs or tax benefits. A parametrization of these curves can
therefore help in the research of future energy scenarios for the
development of new energy policies. These scenarios are often
obtained through modeling for its use in energy-environmental-
economic models (Jebaraj and Iniyan, 2006).
This paper researches the structure and parametrization of
such curves; it has the following structure: first the hierarchical
methodology applied to building the supply-cost curves for four

0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2009.09.016
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
668 S. Izquierdo et al. / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 667–672
Fig. 1. Proposed relationship for the aggregate supply curves. Left axis: cost (——):
right axis (——): occupied land and installed power.
Fig. 2. Proposed relationship for the marginal (——) and aggregate supply-cost
(——) curves.
different renewable technologies is briefly described in Section 1;
in Section 2 a definition of an economic potential is proposed; in
Section 3 a log-normal model for normalized supply curves is
suggested. Finally, some conclusions are drawn and some
proposals for future work are made.
In this study we consider four different renewable technolo-
gies, viz: (i) concentrated solar thermal (CST) with parabolic
trough, following the model by Broesamle et al. (2001); (ii)
centralized photovoltaic (PV) with fixed modules; (iii) on-shore
wind energy (wind), see Fueyo et al. (2009b); and (iv) energy
crops for electricity production via combustion (biomass); in
brackets, we have indicated the short name that will be often used
below to refer to each technology. The area of study is Spain,
including the Canary and Balearic islands; the overall surface area
2
of the country is 504; 030 km . The geographically distributed
information is handled with the aid of a geographical information
system (GIS). A spatial resolution of 200 m  200 m is used for
solar and wind, and 10 km  10 km for biomass. This results in
about 15 million pixels for meteorological data, and for solar and
wind technologies; and 5000 pixels for biomass.
We use a hierarchical methodology to pre-process data and
generate the supply curves; this methodology is partially based on
the work by Hoogwijk (2004). For each renewable-energy source
or technology, it comprises the determination, in five successive
steps, of (i) the physical potential; (ii) the geographical potential;
(iii) the technical potential; (iv) the economic potential (which is
the main focus of this work, and the step where the supply curves
are generated); and (v) the implementation potential. These two
last potentials, which are sometimes overlooked, are an essential
part of a complete assessment of the deployment prospects. The
present paper addresses the economic one; implementation
issues, which are so much policy dependent, are not, however,
considered.
The physical potential is indicative of the total amount of
energy contained in the renewable resource (e.g. solar irradiation,
wind or available biomass) in the area of study and during one
year. The results reported in this work are based on a detailed
calculation of the physical potential for each of the renewable
energies considered. For wind, it entails the simulation of the
weather in Spain for a whole year with a resolution of 10 km and
1 h. The data thus generated allow the compilation of an annual
wind-speed distribution at each 200 m  200 m pixel, which will
be later used to calculate the technical potential (Fueyo et al.,
2009b). For solar technologies, the physical potential is calculated
from the horizontal irradiation, which is estimated using well-
established procedures (Duffie and Beckman, 1991; Lorenzo, 1994;
Goswami et al., 1999): first, the monthly extraterrestrial radiation
is computed based on the geometry of the Sun–Earth system;
then, a monthly clearness index is computed for those locations
for which hourly meteorological data from meteo stations are
available; monthly irradiation maps are created by an ordinary
krigging interpolation on a 200 m  200 m grid of the clearness
indexes and the correction, with the interpolated clearness field,
of the values of the extraterrestrial radiation (see for example
Izquierdo et al., 2008); and, finally, the influence of hourly
shadows on monthly values are taken into account via geome-
trical calculations with a digital terrain model. For energy crops,
we consider five possible species at each location (viz, Brassica
Carinata, Cynara Cardunculus, Populus Nigra, Eucalyptus Globulus
and Miscanthus). For each species we assess their feasibility at
each location as a function of the local climate and soil (EEA,
2000); and a local productivity is calculated for each of the
species. The species with a larger energy yield at each location is
selected.
The geographical potential of each renewable resource restricts
the locations where the energy-conversion can be deployed to
exclude those zones reserved for other uses, typically human
settlements, roads, rivers, lakes, beaches and their influence areas,
and protected areas such as National Parks.
The technical potential further takes into account collection
and conversion efficiencies for transforming the resource into
electricity; these can be a function of geographical (e.g. orogra-
phy) or climatic (e.g. temperature, irradiance or humidity)
conditions. In the case of wind, for instance, a characteristic wind
turbine and wind farm is chosen and deployed in the geographi-
cally viable sites. The potential electrical energy generated (the
technical potential) is calculated using the local wind-speed
distribution calculated for the physical potential and wind farm
and wind turbine characteristics. Models with a similar degree of
detail are employed to estimate the electricity generation from
solar (PV and CST) technologies, and from the combustion of
biomass from energy crops. The result is in every case a local,
technical potential supply pi for the technology at pixel i, that,
when aggregated over the territory, yields the overall technical
potential supply.
The economic potential adds to the analysis the generation
costs, while the implementation potential considers manufactur-
ing, installation or social-acceptance constraints. Supply-cost
curves are usually employed as a basic tool in the analysis of
the economic and the implementation potentials. Such curves are
constructed by estimating the specific cost of the technical
potential supply pi, and then plotting the total production in the
order of increasing costs. In this work, the specific cost (i.e. per
unit energy) of the electricity potentially generated in a pixel is
calculated using an economic model that considers both annui-
tized investment costs and operating and maintenance ones. Thus
ci pi ¼ aIP Pi þ GE pi þ GP Pi ; ð1Þ
P
where I is the specific investment cost per unit of potentially
power installed; Pi is the potentially power installed in the pixel;
GP and GE are the annual O&M costs, respectively, per unit of
potentially installed power and per unit of potentially generated
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Izquierdo et al. / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 667–672
Fig. 3. Log-normal fitting of the normalized marginal supply-cost curve for four renewable energies in Spain.
energy; a is the investment annuitization coefficient. The ordered
supply-cost curve will be referred to below as the marginal
supply-cost function pðcÞ. Its integral, which will be denoted PðcÞ,
is the aggregate supply-cost function; PðcÞ is therefore the total
electricity that can be generated at a specific cost smaller than c.
All the input data in Eq. (1) are expressed in 2006 monetary units,
and have been taken from the following references: wind (MITYC,
2005a), solar PV (MITYC, 2005b; ASIF, 2006), concentrating solar
thermal (SolarPACES, 2007; MITYC, 2005c), biomass combustion
(Ragwitz et al., 2003). More information about the procedure for
building the supply-cost curves can be found in Gómez et al.
(2010). Additionally, examples about the evaluation of the
economic impact using these supply-cost curves are described
by Gómez et al. (2009) and by Fueyo et al. (2009a).
2. Economic potential: definition
When analyzing ab initio the potential supply and the cost of a
renewable energy, several difficulties arise. First and foremost, the
technical limit (see Fig. 1) alone is not indicative of economic
feasibility. Second, it is difficult to assign a typical or characteristic
cost of the technology: the minimum cost of the STAS (Fig. 1) may
not be representative of a large fraction of the technical potential.
Therefore, a proper comparison of several technologies with
different supply-cost curves requires the definition of a homo-
geneous characteristic cost.
Ideally, the definition of such characteristic costs should be
intrinsic to supply-cost curve; it should be applicable to all
technologies; should be clearly defined, leaving no room for
discretionary assignments; and it should be easy to compute.
Fig. 2 is a schematic of the shape of the marginal supply-cost
pðcÞ (continuous line) and the aggregate supply-cost PðcÞ (dashed
line) curves. On the basis of the former curve, a characteristic
marginal cost ce can be defined as the most frequent cost, or the
statistical mode:
ce ¼ mode½pðcÞ:
669
The aggregate potential Pe at this characteristic marginal cost can
be regarded as an intrinsic, characteristic economic potential of
the technology:
Z ce
Pe  Pðce Þ ¼ pðcÞ dc: ð3Þ
0
This characteristic economic potential Pe is therefore, as
expressed in Eq. (3), the total amount of electricity that can be
generated at a cost smaller than the characteristic one ce .
Analogously, a characteristic land occupancy Le and the char-
acteristic installed power Pe can be defined.
The marginal supply-cost curves for some of the renewable
technologies may not be as smooth as the ideal one; this is often
due to the interaction between geographical constraints and
technical issues. This is illustrated in Fig. 3 for the actual supply-
cost curves for four renewable energies in the whole of Spain. In
some cases, e.g. biomass in the figure, the lack of smoothness can
hinder the calculation of the mode. To circumvent this difficulty,
in this work the marginal supply-cost curve pðcÞ is first smoothed
to eliminate the noise, and then the mode is obtained by searching
for the maximum in the smoothed curve. For the smoothing we
use a five-point averaging of the pðcÞ data (i.e. a point in the curve
is averaged with the two adjacent ones on each side) because it is
easy to implement, effective and has a good computational
performance; but other methods such an FFT smoothing can be
used.
3. Models for supply curves
Models are presented in this section for the marginal supply-
cost curve pðcÞ and for its aggregate counterpart PðcÞ, and for the
aggregate supply-land LðPÞ and supply-power curves PðPÞ.
3.1. Supply-cost model
An assumed-shape distribution is adopted to model the
ð2Þ marginal supply-cost curve in terms of normalized (or dimension-
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670 S. Izquierdo et al. / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 667–672

less) variables; specifically, a log-normal function is used. Log- Table 1

normal functions are ubiquitous in nature and in social and Log-normal fitting parameters for the marginal supply-cost curves.
economic sciences (Limpert et al., 2001); other functions, such as
Three parameters One parameter
an inverse-gamma one, may be tested.
The normalized (dimensionless) variables (denoted by an CST
overbar) are the potential supply, that is normalized with the A 2:11204 7 0:01908 2
marginal economic limit pe : m lnð1:567897 0:01579Þ lnð1:5Þ
s 0:676917 0:0066 0:66058 7 0:0352
p w2 =DOF 0.00125 0.00132
p ðcÞ ¼ ; ð4Þ
pe R2 0.97519 0.97384

and the marginal cost c, normalized using the minimum cost cmin PV
and the characteristic marginal cost ce : A 1:95782 7 0:01084 2
m lnð1:50761 7 0:00895Þ lnð1:5Þ
c  cmin s 0:656377 0:00394 0:65475 7 0:0021
c¼ : ð5Þ
ce  cmin w2 =DOF 0.00029 0.00031
R2 0.99066 0.98989
In terms of these normalized variables, the three-parameter log-
normal function is Wind
A 2:26831 7 0:01813 2
A 2
=2s2 m lnð1:358267 0:0137Þ lnð1:5Þ
p ðc; A; m; sÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffi e½lnðc Þm ; ð6Þ
2psc s 0:85043 7 0:00769 0:83796 7 0:00746
w2 =DOF 0.00381 0.00687
where A is a parameter related to the amplitude, m is the R2 0.95415 0.91718
logarithm of the mean and s is the logarithm of the standard
Biomass
deviation. The cumulative distribution function derived from Eq.
A 1:76181 7 0:03649 2
(6) is m lnð1:478597 0:03409Þ ln(1.5)
   s 0:67647 0:01519 0:69513 7 0:00757
A lnðcÞ  m
P ðc; A; m; sÞ ¼ 1 þ erf pffiffiffi s ; ð7Þ w2 =DOF 0.00969 0.01086
2 2 0.86755 0.85094
R2
where erf is the error function.
Considering the normalization made, the mode of the marginal
distribution equation (6) is given by can be tested by confirming that fitted parameters fulfill Eqs. (8)
2
c e  mode½p ðc; A; m; sÞ ¼ ems ¼ 1; ð8Þ and (9). Furthermore, these parameters are approximately the
same for the four technologies considered.
and the corresponding maximum marginal potential is, substitut- To validate the use of a single fitting value for all technologies,
ing in Eq. (6): we have chosen to set A ¼ 2 for all of them. Considering the
A 2
=2s2 mathematical restrictions derived for the normalized log-normal,
p e  p ðc e ; A; m; sÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffi em ¼ 1: ð9Þ
Eqs. (8) and (9), the other two parameters should be m  lnð1:5Þ
2ps
and s  0:65. A new fitting is performed where fixed values A ¼ 2
These two definitions, Eqs. (8) and (9), represent two
and m ¼ lnð1:5Þ are taken and s is fitted and compared to evaluate
restrictions for the three parameters A, m and s. Therefore, the
the suitability of using a common value for the single remaining
generic log-normal distribution chosen to fit p ðcÞ has a single free
parameter. Results in Table 1 indicate that s can be approximated
parameter due to the normalization imposed; the discussion in
by 0.65 for all technologies.
Section 4 indicates how to select the most appropriate value for
The single p ðcÞ function for all four technologies is, thus
the free parameter.
2 2
=20:652
p ðcÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi e½lnðc =1:5Þ : ð11Þ
3.2. Land- and power-supply model 2p0:652 c
This leads to the following the aggregate supply-cost curve:
For the normalized land occupancy L ¼ L=Le vs P we propose 2   3
to use a second-order polynomial: c
6 ln 1:5 7
2 P ðcÞ ¼ 1þ erf 6 7
4pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi2ffi5: ð12Þ
L ¼ a þ bP þ gP : ð10Þ 2  0:65
However, if the analysis is restricted to the (normalized) range
P A ½0; 1 then the simpler linear expression L ¼ P is accurate This is a rather remarkable result: Eq. (11) is a general
enough, as will be shown in Section 4. approximation for the marginal supply-cost curve in Spain of
For the normalized aggregate power installed P ¼ P=Pe the any of the renewable-technologies examined (wind, solar thermo-
same approach can be applied. electric, solar photovoltaic and cultivated biomass). In Fig. 3 the
equation obtained is plotted with actual data for each technology
from the GIS economic analyses for Spain. The w2 values in Table 1
4. Fitting and discussion reveal that the log-normal hypothesis for the distributions can be
held as valid for all the technologies, the error in the fitting
In order to fit the expression proposed in the previous section increasing with decreasing values for R2. The worst fitting
to the normalized data obtained from GIS, we initially assume that corresponds to the cultivated biomass data set, due to the
restrictions on Eqs. (8) and (9) are not applied. Thus, we start by fluctuating nature of the data. It should be also noticed that the
finding the three parameters for the log-normal fitting of p ðcÞ wind cost is overpredicted in the lower range using the present
using a least-squares method. In Table 1, the resulting best-fitting parametrization; however, the fitting error is smaller than for
parameters and their values for a 95% confidence band are biomass (as confirmed by the resulting regression coefficient, see
presented; additionally, the w2 statistic and R2 regression Table 1). It should be noted that our model uses a geographically
coefficient are shown. The suitability of the log-normal model uniform spacing for the wind turbines; further work would be
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
S. Izquierdo et al. / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 667–672 671

Fig. 4. Erf fitting of the normalized aggregate supply-cost curve.

needed to investigate whether dispensing with this simplification

would have an effect on the shape of the cost–production curve.
The aggregate function, Eq. (12), is plotted in Fig. 4.
It is worth remarking that log-normal distributions are often
applied for the description, in the context of geostatistics, of the
spatial distribution of resources, see for example Wackernagel
(2003); although here a spatial econometric study is performed,
the geostatistic methodology is closely related. It is generally
considered that a log-normal distribution appears in the asymp-
totic limit as the result of the multiplication of a large number of
independent, identically distributed variables; see, for example
Anselin (1988), Vose (2008) or Limpert et al. (2001). (Analogously,
the normal distribution results from the sum of independent
variables.) This central limit theorem has been applied success-
fully in several fields of knowledge (Kiss et al., 1999; Melbourne
and Hastings, 2008; Šizling et al., 2009) in order to justify the first
principles that rule spatial log-normal behaviors. In the present
work, the cost-supply curve is computed as a hierarchy of
potentials restricted by several performance and loss factors
which multiply the primary physical potential. These factors are Fig. 5. Normalized aggregate supply-land curves.
either constant, or are strongly influenced by the topography and
meteorological conditions and therefore follow a probability Table 2
distribution function. The multiplication of these factors that Parameters for the second-order-polynomial fitting of the normalized aggregate
supply-land curves.
ultimately influence the supply-cost curve may be the reason
behind its log-normal shape. R2 a b g
The second fitting proposed is a simple linear one for LðP Þ
valid up to the economic potential, which is often sufficient since CST 0.99955 0.00764 0.77641 0.18106
it usually exceeds the implementable potential; within this range PV 0.99968 0.01022 0.81511 0.13710
Wind 0.99902 0.06004 0.33246 0.66375
the errors are in average less than 7% for CST, 4% for PV, 35% for
Biomass 0.99068 0.06987  0.01732 0.79840
wind, and 20% for biomass. In Fig. 5 LðP Þ curves are plotted for the
four technologies. It can be noticed that, beyond the characteristic
point ðL; P Þ ¼ ð1; 1Þ the curves diverge substantially from this density (i.e., the power installed per unit area) is approximately
linear behavior. This indicates that, from this point, more land is constant.
increasingly needed to increase the potential energy production For higher accuracy, a second order fitting can be used, albeit
by one unit. This is because the new locations added have a the parameters are technology-dependent. In Table 2 results for
decreasing resource quality. Potentially installed power and land- the best fitting parameters are indicated, as are also the regression
use are directly related, as the model used assumes that the power values, which are all better than 0.99.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
672 S. Izquierdo et al. / Energy Policy 38 (2010) 667–672
5. Conclusions
An analysis of the supply curves of renewable energy
technologies is performed. First, we designate a characteristic
point in the supply-cost curve that allows the definition of a
characteristic cost and an economic potential; this can help in
the comparison of the potential supply among different
technologies in a pre-feasibility step where neither taxes nor
government incentives, such as feed-in-tariffs, are considered.
Using this definition to normalize the data, an approach based
on the use of a log-normal distribution with a single free
parameter is used to model the marginal supply-cost curves. For
a particular set of data (i.e. from a specific region, such as Spain
in this case) this approach can be further developed into a log-
normal expression with no free parameters. Additionally, a
linear fitting for land occupancy vs supply is presented, that can
be used with great accuracy within the economic-potential
limit, and that can be generalized to model the installed power
vs the energy supply.
The distribution proposed can be used to replace raw GIS
data when an analytical function is required, e.g. for use in
models and studies of the potential and economics of renew-
able-energy sources. For building these curves one needs first
to compute, for the specific region to be studied, a supply-
cost curve from GIS for one technology (e.g. PV). Using this
supply-cost curve the fitting parameter for the log-normal
distribution, can be obtained. For the remaining rene-
wable technologies an analytical log-normal supply-cost curve
can be expressed using the normalized variables introduced
above.
The study has also unveiled a number of areas where further
research would be appropriate. The log-normal form of the curve
may be confirmed for other renewable-energy resources, for other
geographical regions, and perhaps justified theoretically rigor-
ously by recourse to the central limit theorem, and by studying
similar outcomes in the field of geostatistics. Finding out, and
improving on, the sources fitting errors are one of the outstanding
tasks. In this respect, at least two aspects are worth mentioning.
The first one is the departure from the postulated (normalized)
distribution of the wind cost-supply curve at the low-cost end.
Albeit the number of data points is small in that region (and the
impact of the departure on the regression coefficient is corre-
spondingly small), further work can determine whether this
departure is accidental or on the contrary there is a theoretical
basis for it. The second aspect is the structure of the data set
arising out of longer periods of time; while the work presented
here gathers results from full calendar year, it is worth studying
whether longer periods result in the same normalized distribu-
tion.
Acknowledgments
The pre-processing of biomass and wind data by Antonio
Gómez and Yosune Sanz is gratefully acknowledged, as is the
expertise of Carlos Montañés in coding the GIS scripts needed for
this pre-processing. This work was partly funded by the Spanish
Government under Project ENE2007-67217/ALT.
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