They can be significant especially if distant resources have to be connected as can be the case for offshore wind, if load factors are low or if the technology has more stringent connection requirements than for nuclear power. Connection costs are sometimes integrated within the system costs (NEA, 2012), but more often are not considered as system costs and implicitly included in the LCOE as plant-level costs. The difficulty in this assessment is that connection costs are sometimes borne by the plant developer and sometimes paid for by the transmission grid operator.