CALC-070

What every value-based metric actually does to a technology's standing

Feeds CLM-0318. Answers QST-004. BOUNDING COMPARISON, not a derivation. Basis: dimensionless multipliers.

Why it was needed. The standard defence of a high-LCOE firm technology is that LCOE is the wrong metric and a value-based metric would treat it fairly. That defence is testable: every one of these metrics has been measured against real technologies, so the size of the correction they apply is a matter of record rather than of argument.

Inputs. Every one is a measured range for a real technology, and every one is STATED by its originating body.

Working. The arithmetic is a comparison of two ranges, and that is the whole of it.

Largest uplift, average capacity-value basis:       about 3.9 x  (ELCC, 20% solar)
Marginal basis, above about 15% solar penetration:  5 x and more, no ceiling stated
Typical uplift across the five metrics:             about 1.0 x to 2 x
One metric can move standing DOWN as well as up:    LACE, 0.85 x

Gap between SBSP baseline LCOE and 2050 terrestrial:  12 x to 80 x

         3.9 x   is smaller than   12 x    (average basis only)

Result: on an average capacity-value basis, at most about 3.9x, against a gap of 12-80x. On a marginal basis the ELCC correction passes 5x above about 15% solar penetration, and the source sets no ceiling (SRC-181 printed p.15: the marginal contribution decreases "towards 0%" above 20% in its approximation method), so the marginal basis does not bound the comparison.

Say plainly that this is a bound and not a calculation of SBSP's value. None of these five metrics has ever been applied to SBSP by anyone. What this record establishes is what these metrics do to real technologies, which bounds what they could plausibly do to any technology. It does not establish what any of them would give for SBSP specifically.

Conclusion. The task that produced this claim set out to test a stated hypothesis - that value-based metrics move standing by "a factor of order two, sometimes three". They move it by a factor of about 1.0 to about 3.9 on an average basis, and by more than 5x on a marginal basis at high solar shares, where no ceiling is stated. The hypothesis survives and the defence does not. Being credited for firmness is worth real money and is not worth 12x.

Where this fails. - Measured on wind, solar and storage at various grid penetrations, none of which is SBSP. CLM-0318's own limits field points at section 4 of the originating note for the strongest critique of this kind of cross-technology analogy, and that pointer should travel with the record. - verified: CLM-0318 is CONFIRMED (VER-1602, 2026-10-01). - The five metrics are not independent of one another - ELCC appears inside Lazard's firming-cost method as well as standing alone as CLM-0310 - so the five ranges are not five separate measurements of the same thing and should not be averaged.

One transcription note, offered as a reading and not as an error. The claim's headline says these metrics move standing "by roughly 1.1x to at most about 5x". The LACE range it cites is 0.85-1.25x, whose lower half is below 1.0: LACE can move a technology's standing down. "1.1x to 5x" therefore describes the upward movements only. That is the relevant direction for the argument being tested - the defence claims SBSP is under-credited, not over-credited - so the conclusion is unaffected. Corrected 2026-10-09 (QST-021 attack 2, RD-1 and RD-2): the upward floor is about 1.0x (EIA 1.01 and 1.02, CLM-0307; Lazard 1.08, our arithmetic from CLM-0312's 8.3%), and 5x was the marginal value at 20% of nameplate, not a ceiling. Recorded because a reader taking "1.1x" as a floor would be taking a floor the cited range does not have.

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