Opportunity Cost (Cost of Lost Profits) as an Element of Decision-Making Analysis in Prosumer Energy

This work undertook research on the operating costs of energy devices in prosumer energy (simultaneous producer and consumer of energy), which was extended to include the identification of the opportunity cost as an element of decision-making analysis in prosumer energy. During the research in a model single-family building, energy in the prosumer system was produced by a coal-fired central heating (CH) boiler, a heat pump, a photovoltaic installation, and was collected from the power grid. For the technique mentioned, the operating costs were calculated in four variants. The analysis of the obtained results showed that the use of a heat pump supported by a photovoltaic installation was associated with the highest investment costs. However, these costs are much lower than when using a central heating boiler to produce thermal energy at coal price 2022 year. In this analysis be careful the costs of failure and downtime of the used technology were important in this respect, where not only the costs of repairs should be taken into account, but also the costs of lost profits during the downtime of the installation e.g. resulting from weather factors, cloud cover. Failure to take into account opportunity costs in decision-making calculations regarding the use of individual energy generation variants may be costly for the prosumer, because the omission of important elements when choosing an appropriate energy generation technique/system may lead to the selection of an action option that will generate losses.