News
October 10, 2012
NREL Studies of Voluntary Markets Draw Positive Feedback from Utilities 
NREL analysts Jenny Heeter and Lori Bird presented at the 2012 Renewable Energy Markets Conference, a premier national forum for promoting renewable energy.
October 10, 2012
OpenEI Spotlighted in White House Datapalooza Event
The Hydrogen Gateway on OpenEI launched in preparation for Energy Datapalooza, an event that highlights the use of open energy data sourced from the government and used by entrepreneurs to build new businesses.
October 10, 2012
NREL Analysis and Analysts in the News (September 2012)
In September, there were eight high-level items of media interest regarding NREL analysts and the analysis done at the lab.
October 10, 2012
Recent Publications (September 2012)
This article collects a list of energy analysis publications recently released. Originally published in the Energy Analysis Newsletter - October 2012.
September 12, 2012
NREL Proposes Framework to Support Exchange of Knowledge on Low Emission Development Strategies
In a recent report, NREL proposes a framework—or support infrastructure—to enable the efficient exchange of LEDS-related knowledge and technical assistance via coordinating forums, "knowledge platforms," and networks of experts and investors.
September 12, 2012
Estimating Renewable Energy Costs Using CREST
CREST, an economic cash-flow model, enables state policymakers, regulators, utilities, beginning developers or investors, and other stakeholders to assess the economics of renewable energy projects and evaluate the impact of tax incentives or other support structures.
September 12, 2012
NREL Analysis and Analysts in the News
In August, there were nine high-level items of media interest regarding NREL analysts and the analysis done at the lab.
September 12, 2012
Energy Analysis Publications (August 2012)
This article collects a list of energy analysis publications recently released. Originally published in the Energy Analysis Newsletter - September 2012.
August 7, 2012
Energy Analysis Publications (July 2012)
This article collects a list of energy analysis publications recently released. Originally published in the Energy Analysis Newsletter - August 2012.
August 7, 2012
NREL Analysis and Analysts in the News (July 2012)
In July, there were five high-level items of media interest regarding NREL analysts and the analysis done at the lab.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: Renewable Electricity Futures Study
This study explores the implications and challenges of very high renewable electricity generation levels—from 30% up to 90%, focusing on 80%, of all U.S. electricity generation from renewable technologies—in 2050.
July 30, 2012
LCA Harmonization Project
The Journal of Industrial Ecology published a special issue titled "Meta-Analysis of Life Cycle Assessments" showcasing seven NREL articles on life cycle assessment (LCA) harmonization.
July 30, 2012
Journal Article: Ethanol Distribution, Dispensing, and Use: Analysis of a Portion of the Biomass-to-Biofuels Supply Chain Using System Dynamics
This paper focuses on the downstream portion of the supply chain—represented in the distribution logistics, dispensing station, and fuel utilization—and vehicle modules of the Biomass Scenario Model.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: Strategies for International Cooperation in Support of Energy Development in Pacific Island Nations
NREL partners with island communities around the world to address the technical, policy, social, and economic hurdles to deploying energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies (RET) on small, islanded systems. The lessons learned from these partnerships are briefly summarized in this document.
July 30, 2012
Presentation: Recoverable Resource Estimate of Identified Onshore Geopressured Geothermal Energy in Texas and Louisiana
This study estimates the total recoverable onshore geopressured geothermal resource (defined as a brine reservoir with fluid temperature greater than 212°F and a pressure gradient greater than 0.7 psi/ft) for identified sites in Texas and Louisiana.
July 30, 2012
Presentation: Estimate of Geothermal Energy Resource in Major U.S. Sedimentary Basins
In this presentation, NREL provides an initial estimate of the geothermal resource in major U.S. sedimentary basins.
July 30, 2012
Journal Article: Estimating the Capacity Value of Concentrating Solar Power Plants: A Case Study of the Southwestern United States
This article estimates the capacity value of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants without thermal energy storage in the southwestern United States.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: IEA Wind Task 26: The Past and Future Cost of Wind Energy, Work Package 2
This report, developed as part of the International Energy Agency Wind Implementing Agreement Task 26, titled "The Cost of Wind Energy," reviews historical costs, evaluates near-term market trends, reviews the methods used to estimate long-term cost trajectories, and summarizes the range of costs projected for onshore wind energy across an array of forward-looking studies and scenarios.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: Using Utility Load Data to Estimate Demand for Space Cooling and Potential for Shiftable Loads
This paper describes a simple method to estimate hourly cooling demand from historical utility load data.
July 30, 2012
Fact Sheet: Clean Energy Solutions Center: Accelerating the Transition to Clean Energy Technologies
This fact sheet highlights key Solutions Center offerings, including the 'ask an expert' policy design assistance offered at no cost to governments and technical assistance programs around the world.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: Mobilizing Public Markets to Finance Renewable Energy Projects: Insights from Expert Stakeholders
This report summarizes the key messages of those discussions and is designed to provide insights to the U.S. market and inform the international conversation on renewable energy financing innovations.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: The Technical Qualifications for Treating Photovoltaic Assets as Real Property by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
This paper explains the fundamental physical characteristics of PV and compares them to the characteristics of 'real' property to help determine whether REITs can own PV systems.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: §1603 Treasury Grant Expiration: Industry Insight on Financing and Market Implications
This report offers insights by financial executives active in the renewable energy (RE) market during conference panel discussions and in presentations, direct interviews, and email correspondences, the authors address the potential project financing and market impacts from the expiration of the §1603 Program.
July 30, 2012
Journal Article: Enabling Technologies for High Penetration of Wind and Solar Energy
The study examines three classes of energy storage—electricity storage, including batteries and pumped hydro, hybrid storage (compressed-air energy storage), and thermal energy storage.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: Navajo Generating Station and Clean-Energy Alternatives: Options for Renewables
This analysis is a supplement to Navajo Generating Station and Air Visibility Regulations: Alternatives and Impacts and provides a high-level examination of several clean energy alternatives.
July 30, 2012
NREL Report: 2010 Cost of Wind Energy Review
This document provides a detailed description of NREL's levelized cost of wind energy equation, assumptions, and results in 2010.
July 26, 2012
NREL Study Shows Renewable Energy Potential in Every State
A new study of renewable energy’s technical potential finds that every state in the nation has the space and resource to generate clean energy.
July 16, 2012
New Database from NREL Makes Costs of Energy Technologies More Transparent
A new web application collects cost and performance estimates for electric generation, advanced vehicles, and renewable fuel technologies and makes them available for utilities, policy makers, consumers, and academics. The Transparent Cost Database (TCDB) app provides technology cost and performance estimates that can be used to benchmark company costs, model energy scenarios, and inform research and development decisions.
May 25, 2012
Analysis Tool Details Cost of Hydrogen Produced Via Wind Electrolysis
According to an analysis conducted by NREL, a range of wind class sites can provide green hydrogen at a cost close to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2015 target of $3.70/kg for distributed hydrogen plants.
May 10, 2012
NREL Narrows Energy Tech Emissions Estimates
Narrowing ranges of lifetime emissions estimates helps to clarify the environmental impacts of different generation technologies.
May 2, 2012
Greensburg, Kansas, Five Years Later—An International Inspiration for Green Disaster Recovery
May 4, 2012, marks the fifth anniversary of the day Greensburg, Kansas, was forever changed. On that day, an EF-5 tornado demolished the town, an agricultural community of about 1,400 in south-central Kansas.
May 1, 2012
NREL Looks at State of the U.S. Utility-Scale Solar Market in Two New Reports
This market overview report summarizes the current U.S. utility-scale solar state-of-the-market and development pipeline. The other report provides an overview of RPS policies, as well as the project financial structures they enable, based on industry literature, publicly available data, and questionnaires conducted by NREL.
May 1, 2012
NREL Report Measures Jobs and Economic Impacts of §1603
This analysis responds to a request from the U.S. DOE EERE Office for NREL to estimate the direct and indirect jobs and economic impacts of projects supported by the §1603 Treasury grant program.
May 1, 2012
Brochure Outlines Benefits of the Open PV Project
The brochure outlines the purpose and history of the Open PV Project as well as the main capabilities and benefits of the online Open PV tool.
May 1, 2012
Solar PV Reaching New Demographics through Third-Party Ownership
This report finds third-party business models in southern California residential PV markets have enticed a new demographic to adopt PV systems.
May 1, 2012
Two Papers Document Diverse Approaches to Effective Integration of Variable Renewable Energy
This study and summary for policymakers document the diverse approaches to effective integration of variable renewable energy among six countries--Australia (South Australia), Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the United States (western region-Colorado and Texas) -- and summarizes policy best practices that energy ministers and other stakeholders can pursue to ensure that electricity markets and power systems can effectively coevolve with increasing penetrations of variable renewable energy.
May 1, 2012
Transmission Issues of Geothermal Technologies
This report provides a baseline description of the transmission issues affecting geothermal technologies.
April 17, 2012
RE-Powering America: Wind Energy at Naval Station Newport
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the RE-Powering America's Land initiative to encourage development of renewable energy on potentially contaminated land and mine sites.
April 1, 2012
Energy Storage: Identifying and Mitigating Barriers to Use
This paper surveys some of these main barriers and proposes some potential research and policy steps that can help address them. While the discussion is focused on the United States, a number of the findings and observations may be more broadly applicable.
April 1, 2012
SAM Overview and Capabilities
This document describes the capabilities of NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM), Version 2011.12.2, released on December 2, 2011.
April 1, 2012
Co-Locating CSP and Wind with Thermal Energy Storage
In this work, we examine the benefits and limits of using the dispatachability of thermal storage to increase the capacity factor of new transmission developed to access high quality solar and wind resources in remote locations.
April 1, 2012
Analysts Present Innovative Work at JISEA Annual Meeting
Several NREL analysts showcased their work during the annual meeting of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA).
April 1, 2012
Coupling Renewable and Nuclear Energy to Thermal Energy Storage
This paper conceptually explores combinations of wind, solar, and nuclear that can provide a large fraction of a system's electricity, assuming the use of thermal energy storage that would allow nuclear power to provide load-following and cycling duty while operating at a constant reactor power output.
April 1, 2012
Production Cost Modeling in the SunShot Vision Study
This document describes the use of production cost modeling in the SunShot Vision study, including methods used to create the SunShot Vision scenarios, their implementation in the Gridview model, and assumptions regarding transmission system and operation of each generator type.
April 1, 2012
Tracing the Rise and Use of Labeling Products as "Made with Renewable Energy"
This report discusses the experience of companies that communicate to consumers that their products are "made with renewable energy." For this report, representatives from 20 companies were interviewed and asked to discuss their experiences marketing products produced using renewable energy.
April 1, 2012
Renewable Energy Financial Structures and the Impact on Solar Projects
This report describes four of the most prevalent financial structures used by the renewable sector and evaluates the impact of financial structure on energy costs for utility-scale solar projects that use photovoltaic and CSP technologies.
April 1, 2012
Green Button Initiative
The Apps for Energy Challenge was announced, which challenges developers to create apps that uses utility data to help consumers use less energy. In support of this, the Green Button Developer Page was created.
March 1, 2012
Renewable Energy Optimization at NAVSTA Newport
In 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the RE-Powering America's Land initiative to encourage the development of renewable energy (RE) on potentially contaminated land and mine sites. As part of this effort, EPA is collaborating with NREL to evaluate RE options at Naval Station (NAVSTA) Newport in Newport, Rhode Island.
March 1, 2012
Can U.S. PV Prices Go Lower?
This report's analysis of the overnight capital costs (cash purchase) paid for PV systems attempts to establish an objective methodology that most closely approximates the book value of PV system assets.
March 1, 2012
New Models Help Estimate Recoverable Resources from Geothermal Reservoirs
Geopressured geothermal reservoirs are characterized by high temperatures and high pressures with correspondingly large quantities of dissolved methane. Two methods utilizing reservoir simulation techniques have been used to estimate recoverability factors of geothermal brine and methane based on well log data from a specific reservoir in Texas.
March 1, 2012
United States Can Compete with China in PV Manufacturing
In this analysis we seek to quantify the decision points of two hypothetical solar PV manufacturers that are considering U.S. and non-U.S. production locations.
March 1, 2012
OpenEI Now Features Mobile, Web, and Desktop Apps
OpenEI recently launched its apps Web page, including mobile apps and desktop apps. There are currently over 100 apps in the database.
February 8, 2012
Linear Fresnel Technology added to System Advisor Model's Capabilities
A promising Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology that uses a stationary receiver tube and an array of mirrors mounted near the ground can now be accessed within the System Advisor Model (SAM), which predicts annual energy production, hourly performance and return on investment.
February 1, 2012
Renewable Energy in the WECC Region
This analysis focuses on the status of, and projections for, likely development of non-hydroelectric renewable electricity from solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal resources in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) region.
February 1, 2012
Variance of Renewable Generation
The analysis in this report, we analyze the risk and return trade-offs for wind and natural gas generation for deregulated markets based on hourly prices and load over a 10-year period using historical data in the PJM Interconnection from 1999 to 2008.
February 1, 2012
Making Solar Energy Available for High Peak Demand
At high penetration of solar generation, there are a number of challenges to economically integrating this variable and uncertain resource. These include the limited coincidence between the solar resource and normal demand patterns and limited flexibility of conventional generators to accommodate variable generation resources.
February 1, 2012
Hybrid Model for Financing Solar PV at Government Sites
This fact sheet describes how the hybrid model works, assesses the model's relative advantages and challenges as compared to self-ownership and the third-party PPA model, provides a quick guide to project implementation, and assesses whether the model is replicable in other jurisdictions across the United States.
February 1, 2012
Renewable Electricity Supply Procurement Options
This report evaluates four procurement strategies (competitive solicitations, bilateral contracting, FITs, and auctions) against four main criteria: (1) pricing; (2) complexity and efficiency of the procurement process; (3) impacts on developers' access to markets; and (4) ability to complement utility decision-making processes.
February 1, 2012
In-Depth Study Looks at Solar Installation Workforce
Through primary research, including more than 1,425 completed interviews with U.S. solar installation employers, this report offers labor market data and analysis covering current U.S. employment in the sector, expected industry growth, and employer skill preferences and challenges for solar installation-related occupations.
February 1, 2012
SREC Markets — How They Function and Trends
This paper examines experience in solar renewable energy certificate (SREC) markets in the United States.
February 1, 2012
ReEDS Model Analyzes Critical Energy Issues
The Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) is a deterministic optimization model of the deployment of electric power generation technologies and transmission infrastructure throughout the contiguous United States into the future.
February 1, 2012
SAM: New Version, New Site
NREL recently released SAM 2011.12.2 for Windows and Mac OS with several new technologies and capabilities, including linear Fresnel CSP, P50/P90 weather variance analysis, and biopower modeling, as well as general improvements, such as PV case study sample files and integrated hourly data plotting.
February 1, 2012
IMBY (V2) Now Available in Beta
The In My Backyard (IMBY) tool estimates the electricity you can produce with a solar PV array or wind turbine at your home or business.
February 1, 2012
DOE Pulse Features OpenEI
The Department of Energy's online newsletter DOE Pulse highlighted the addition of nationwide utility rates to the Open Energy Information platform, or OpenEI.org.
January 20, 2012
Lease Option Increases Rooftop Solar’s Appeal, Study Says
Rooftop solar panels are attracting a new demographic of customers who are choosing to lease rather than buy, and enjoying the low upfront costs and immediate savings.
January 9, 2012
Opportunities and Challenges in Residential Building-Integrated PV
This report examines the status of BIPV, with a focus on the cost drivers of residential rooftop systems, and explores key opportunities and challenges in the marketplace.
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