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About JEDI
Originally developed in 2002 for the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Powering America project, the Job and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) model was designed to be an easy-to-use model that analyzes the economic impacts of constructing and operating wind power plants. With its success in modeling wind development impacts at the state and local level, JEDI was expanded to analyze additional technologies and can now be used to evaluate the job and economic impacts of developing biofuel plants and concentrating solar power, coal and natural gas power plants.
Here you will find more information about how the JEDI models work and what data are needed for inputs.
How the Models Work
The JEDI models run in Excel. Users download the appropriate JEDI model and then enter basic information about a project, including the state, location, year of construction, and facility size. The model then estimates the project costs (i.e., specific expenditures), and the economic impacts from jobs, earnings (i.e., wages and salary), and output (i.e., value of production) resulting from the project. To the extent that a user has and can incorporate project-specific data and the share of spending expected to occur locally, the more tailored the impact analysis will be.
Project Data Inputs
The project-specific data include a bill of goods (costs associated with actual construction of the facility, roads, etc., as well as equipment costs, other services, and fees required), annual operating and maintenance costs, portion of expenditures to be spent locally, financing terms, and tax rates. While JEDI provides reasonable default values for each of the inputs and all of those necessary for the analysis, the user has the option to indicate project specific data for the following inputs:
- Construction Costs (materials and labor)
- Equipment Costs (turbines, rotors, towers, etc.)
- Other Costs (utility interconnection, engineering, land easements, permitting, etc.)
- Annual Operating and Maintenance Costs (personnel, materials, and services)
- Other Financial Parameters (debt and equity, taxes, and land lease)
In the event that project specific data is not available, the default values may be used to represent average costs and spending patterns derived from a number of sources (project-specific data contained in reports and studies) and ten years of analytical research regarding the integration of renewable resources.
Although JEDI contains default data for every input field, not every project will follow this exact "default" pattern for expenditures. Project size, location, financing arrangements, and numerous site-specific factors influence the construction and operating costs. Similarly, the availability of local resources, including labor and materials, and locally manufactured power plant components can have a significant effect on the costs and the economic benefits that accrue to the state or local region. To conduct a more project-specific analysis, users should have specific values to use in place of the default values.
Download the JEDI models
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