Overnight capital cost is a term typically used in the power generation industry to describe the cost of building a power plant overnight. The term is useful to compare the economic feasibility of building various plants. The overnight capital cost does not take into account financing costs or escalation, and hence is not an actual estimate of construction cost.
Investors in the energy industry typically look to the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for comparing generation technologies (e.g. solar power, natural gas) in the long term, as it includes ongoing fuel, maintenance, and operation costs. The U.S. Department of Energy tracks and makes publicly available levelized cost of energy figures for competing technologies. These figures will vary substantially in other countries due to different energy policies and domestic energy sources.