I'm not familiar with this metric but does it at least account for the cost that non-wind sources must incur to keep their facilities running? For example, if you have a wind farm you will prioritize using that energy when available, but the natural gas facility still needs to employ people for low wind situations right?

So the natural gas facility is not generating very much most of the year, but still needs quite a bit of people with the expertise to keep it operational despite that in addition to land lease costs, equipment maintenance etc. Does LCOE turn the cost of the natural gas facility cost into $0 during those situations to be fair?

-

Edit: Just glanced at the Wikipedia article and the variables involved in the LCOE equation. Seems to unfairly benefit wind and solar.

"One of the most important potential limitations of LCOE is that it may not control for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand."

"In particular, if the costs of matching grid energy storage are not included in projects for variable renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, they may produce electricity when it is not needed in the grid without storage. The value of this electricity may be lower than if it was produced at another time, or even negative."

Yes, but due to the nature of wind being fickle, we have to keep these other energy facilities running and people employed. This adds to the costs of these other energy solutions while they are doing very little while wind is blowing. This messes all these metrics up.