I think there is a misunderstanding in my calculation. If one pair of shoes last 3 times longer, then you investment is divided by 3. The same for load factor. If you use your shoes one every 2 days, you need to buy 2 times more shoes.
You are not comparing the load factor of shoe A against the load factor of shoe B. We are comparing the load factor of shoe A against the load factor of teaspoon B... which doesn't make much sense.
And even if you compared shoe A against shoe B, you'd still have to factor in load initial and maintenance cost (and a bunch of other things). Sure, shoe A might have have a 3x better load factor, but the manufacturer of shoe A also wants 10x the money compared to shoe B.
That's why I referred to the LCOE because it is a good estimation of what a MWh of actual (not nameplate) output will cost you. It already includes all the tricky bits like initial investment, operation and maintenance cost incl fuel where needed, load factors, disposal, life expectancy and even stuff like carbon taxes (where applicable).
So here is an amended (increasingly silly) shoe example, now with load factors:
If I buy a pair of shoes that I can wear every day (factor 1.0) that last me 10 years but costs 400 bucks, that's 40 bucks/year. If I buy a pair of shoes that costs me 10 bucks, but that I can only wear every other day (factor 0.5) and lasts one year, well, 20 bucks/year because I need two pairs to have something to wear every day. Recycling/trashing a pair of shoes adds another 5 EUR/pair, so the cheap pairs are 30/year and the expensive one is 40 EUR/year. The 10x higher life expectancy by itself does not mean shit to the annual cost, and the higher "load factor" I can get from the more expensive shoe model by itself doesn't mean shit either.
