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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Cost-Effectiveness of Local Distribution Tied Solar within KyMEA

KyMEA is a Kentucky joint action agency which provides electric transmission and energy services to eleven municipal utilities. One of KyMEA's member cities, Frankfort, has set a goal to reach 100% renewable generation for the city load by 2023 and 100% carbon free city operations and 100% renewable generation community-wide by 2030. The aim of this research was to determine if the Frankfort city government could reduce its power costs by implementing distribution tied solar while also avoiding any cross subsidization between other KyMEA member utilities or other Frankfort Plant Board customers. The project simulated the KyMEA generation portfolio and transmission system from KyMEA's cost perspective using the NREL Engage capacity expansion model. Running in operate mode, the authors used Engage to compare KyMEA's costs to operate the baseline system to its costs to operate the system with Frankfort meeting some of its load with distribution-tied PV. The cost perspective of Frankfort Plant Board, meanwhile, was simulated using Python. The simulations indicated that it would be cost-beneficial to KyMEA, i.e., that no additional costs would be borne by other members, and that it would be cost-neutral to Frankfort Plant Board for Frankfort city government to implement distribution tied utility-scale PV. The new load attributes resulting from the distribution-tied PV lowered KyMEA's cost to serve load by improving system load factor, reducing system transmission and energy costs, and increasing revenues from market energy sales.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Winter 2024 Solar Industry Update

Each quarter, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducts the Quarterly Solar Industry Update, a presentation of technical trends within the solar industry. Each presentation focuses on global and U.S. supply and demand, module and system price, investment trends and business models, and updates on U.S. government programs supporting the solar industry.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Solar Pathways in Federal Energy Assistance Programs: Expanding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and U.S. Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) are federal programs to help low-income households reduce their energy costs. LIHEAP provides direct assistance to help households cover energy costs and stay connected to utility services, as well as weatherization and minor energy-related repairs, and WAP provides no-cost energy efficiency measures to reduce energy use and energy bills while also improving home comfort for income-qualified households. Across the U.S., states are implementing or considering solar energy as an eligible measure for LIHEAP and/or WAP funding, but the successful implementation pathways remain largely undocumented. This report fills that gap by analyzing states' LIHEAP and WAP annual plans, surveying administrators from LIHEAP grant recipients and WAP grantees about their challenges implementing solar or barriers to doing so, and conducting interviews and workshops with program administrators.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

International Applications for Floating Solar PV (FPV) [Slides]

Floating solar is a comparatively new concept. Floating solar is about to form a third pillar in the market for solar energy next to ground mounted and rooftop solar. The Asia-Pacific region already dominates the fast-emerging market in floating solar PV (FPV), and it looks set to build on that position as more nations get on board and costs fall. Asia-Pacific is set to increase its market share from 74% in 2020 to 87% in 2026 in terms of global installed FPV capacity. However, since floating solar systems are still a new application, there is a lack of information on its performance, cost, technical complexity, and operations and maintenance (O&M). This seminar series seeks to partially remedy that through presenting case studies that highlight the benefits, challenges, and applications of FPV in South and Southeast Asia.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Collaborating with Utilities to Meet Underserved Community Needs: A Guide to Equitable Commercial Solar and Solar + Storage Deployment

Communities of color and low-income populations dedicate a disproportionate amount of their income to pay for energy. They also experience more frequent and prolonged service disruptions, impacting community health and safety. When designed correctly, commercial solar + storage installations have the potential to ameliorate these issues. However, utility programs created to support such installations are frequently underutilized because communities often lack the time and resources needed to access them. Further, historically, few utilities have had the motivation and incentives or experience to account for this barrier. RMI provided process support to Solar Energy Innovation Network teams, and described their experiences in accessing these clean energy resources to support historically underserved communities in our latest report. The report also outlines the roles of key stakeholders (e.g., utilities, building owners, and community organizations) in supporting program delivery and recommended practices to collaborate to meet community needs. The report focuses on commercial solar and solar + storage resources, including solar + storage microgrids. These technologies can offer benefits to communities who do not own their own properties. When designed to act as a "resilience hub," they can also support communities in times of electricity disruption. The report includes a step-by-step guide to collaborating with utilities to implement programs for historically underserved customers. Utilities can support these projects with financing assistance, modernized rate designs, and, in the deployment phase, technical assistance for system design and interconnection.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

REopt Techno-Economic Analyses for Energy Resilience Projects in Bakersfield, California [Slides]

This slide deck presents the REOpt analysis results for three community resilience centers in Bakersfield, California: East Bakersfield, Wasco, and Lamont. The results describes techno-economic considerations and resilience performance of various solar PV and solar plus storage microgrids that the three sites could consider installing. The results also clearly describe assumptions and limitations associated with this analysis and is intended to support the Bakersfield community's organizing efforts around developing community resilience centers that uplift disadvantaged and marginalized community voices.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

CSP Systems Analysis 2022-2024 (Final Technical Report)

The CSP Systems Analysis project estimates the current market cost of CSP subsystems and technologies for use by the DOE Program and within NREL analysis tools. The project addresses upgrades to NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM) related to CSP, as well as development of new modules within SAM to expand the types of CSP systems that can be simulated and new tools for evaluating CSP subsystem performance or optimizing CSP system layouts, for example, SolarPILOT and SolTrace. The project evaluates the potential cost and performance of new CSP-relevant technologies and generally includes assessment of CSP technologies in support of the DOE subprogram. A primary goal of the CSP System Analysis project is to provide timely and accurate cost data to the DOE to assess the current state of CSP technologies as well as predict performance and cost for pre-commercial and emerging technologies that may impact the industry. Prior work in this task has produced technology cost reports and roadmaps for DOE and highlighted promising research paths that could reduce overall CSP cost, such as the supercritical CO2 power cycle and molten-salt trough systems. CSP Systems Analysis produces modeling tools to evaluate the performance of CSP systems, subsystems, or components, and journal articles, conference papers, technical reports and databases to disseminate information to the CSP industry. CSP technology costs are estimated and tracked using these tools as well as analysis of literature and industry sources. The CSP modeling tools and NREL analysis results are used by researchers; government, financial, and industry analysts; and other CSP stakeholders. The purpose of this final technical report is to summarize the key accomplishments of the past three years of this project. The project was divided into seven separate tasks, and in what follows, we describe the background, objectives, key accomplishments, and path forward for each task within the project, with one section of this report summarizing each task.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Residential and Small Commercial Solar Photovoltaic and Storage Permitting, Inspection, and Interconnection Timelines: A Retrospective Review (2017-2023)

This report is part of the ongoing Solar Time-Based Residential Analytics and Cycle Time Estimator (SolarTRACE) project, led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The SolarTRACE project utilizes time-stamped project-level data provided by installer-partners to assess nationwide and AHJ- and utility-level PI&I and other solar PV adoption timelines since 2017. Our dataset now covers 22% of residential solar and 33% of residential storage installs in the U.S. since 2017. This report provides an update to our previous 2022 report (Cruce et al., 2022b) and includes: updated 2017 2023 project timelines for residential rooftop solar PV up to 20kW; updated tracking of permitting process changes at nearly 4,000 AHJs nationwide; and first-ever reporting of timelines for residential PV+storage projects up to 20kW.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Sharing the Sun: Community Solar Deployment and Subscriptions (As of January 2026)

The community solar market analysis presented here is based primarily on data collected through Sharing the Sun, an initiative of the National Community Solar Partnership+ (NCSP+). Sharing the Sun data collection and analysis are conducted by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) as part of its support for implementation of NCSP+. NLR first released a dataset of community solar projects in 2018 and updates it biannually. The January 2026 dataset, data collection methodology, and all the previous datasets are available from NLR's Data Catalog: https://data.nlr.gov/submissions/244. The dataset presents project-level information including location, capacity, operating utility, and year of interconnection. The dataset is created from multiple data sources such as utility data, public utility commissions, project developer websites, media releases, primary data collection by NLR, and data provided by developers under nondisclosure agreements. This presentation builds on a previous analysis of the community solar project dataset, Sharing the Sun: Community Solar Deployment and Subscriptions (as of June 2024). Dr. Gabriel Chan and his team at the University of Minnesota contribute to this effort. NCSP+ is led and funded by U.S. Department of Energy's Integrated Energy Systems Office (IESO).

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Distributed PV permitting survey responses

In 2019, NREL, in partnership with the Solar Energy Industries Association, developed a survey for PV installers on their experiences with delays and cancelations in the adoption process, including the impacts of permitting and interconnection. This dataset includes the anonymized responses from 147 representatives from 136 solar install companies.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Solar permitting, inspection, and interconnection cycletimes and requirements

Twenty three small-to-large residential, commercial, and industrial PV installers submitted project-level data for analysis, which included timestamps for major components of the permitting, inspection, and interconnection process as well as contract and installation dates. NREL calculated median timelines for these processes across the authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) and utilities represented in the data. Also included are relevant permitting requirements for AHJs and interconnection process requirements for utilities. This dataset represents the underlying results shown in the Solar Time-based Residential Analytics and Cycle time Estimator (SolarTRACE) viewer. This dataset has been reviewed but errors may exist, and it may not be comprehensive. Errors in the sources (e.g., AHJ permitting requirements lists from data partners) may be duplicated in the dataset.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

DEPRECATED - Sharing the Sun Community Solar Project Data (Dec 2020, Revision)

This data set is no longer current – The most current data and all historical data sets can be found at https://data.nrel.gov/submissions/244 This database represents a list of community solar projects identified through various sources as of Dec 2020. The list has been reviewed but errors may exist and the list may not be comprehensive. Errors in the sources e.g. press releases may be duplicated in the list. Blank spaces represent missing information. NREL invites input to improve the database including to - correct erroneous information - add missing projects - fill in missing information - remove inactive projects. Updated information can be submitted to the contact(s) located on the current data set page linked at the top. The revision dataset included projects with a total installed capacity in 2020 under the state-level program but missing the project level details.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP+) Resource List

NLR compiles and makes quarterly updates to this dataset of publications related to expanding access to solar through its support for the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP+). The purpose of the list is to help NCSP+ partners and others to find relevant resources on community solar, low- and moderate-income residential rooftop solar + storage, community-serving commercial solar projects, microgrids, and distributed solar + storage aggregations such as virtual power plants serving low-income communities. Resource types include journal articles, reports, fact sheets, presentations, videos, datasets, modeling tools, webinars, and other formats. A web-based version of the database is available on the NCSP+ Data Hub at: https://openei.org/wiki/NCSP_Hub/Resources .

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Rethinking agrivoltaic incentive programs: A science-based approach to encourage practical design solutions

Agrivoltaic systems are promising solutions to address global food and energy challenges by combining agriculture and solar photovoltaics. However, the lack of appropriate regulations to define and guide their implementation constrains the growth of agrivoltaic systems in the U.S. This study uses a shading and radiation tool to evaluate an existing agrivoltaic incentive program that defines agrivoltaic designs based on shading reduction limits and panel height requirements. Our analysis indicates that structuring policy requirements around shading, and not light availability, may lead to an underestimation of crop suitability by neglecting diffuse radiation. Furthermore, we show that agrivoltaic systems can avoid increasing panel height if policy acknowledges use-case scenarios where farming only occurs between rows. In light of these insights, this study proposes two key policy recommendations: (1) benchmark crop suitability based on daily light integral (DLI) requirements for a shade-intolerant crop selected to represent a prevalent crop in the region, and (2) include an incentive scenario where agriculture is only required between rows. Furthermore, these two recommendations can potentially incentivize designs that are practical and closer in cost to conventional solar farms, thereby accelerating the adoption of cost-effective agrivoltaic systems.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Lessons Learned on Prize Design in the Perovskite Startup Prize

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory set out to develop a repeatable, predictable prize model with the American-Made Challenges. A new model launched by the Solar Energy Technologies Office in March 2021 was the American-Made Perovskite Startup Prize. This new prize aimed to accelerate the growth of the domestic perovskite industry and support the rapid development of solar cells and modules that use perovskite materials. By sharing the outputs of the prize, we hope that our lessons learned will help continue to build the clean tech entrepreneurship support ecosystem and influence how a successful prize design can be achieved.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Fall 2021 Solar Industry Update

Each quarter, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducts the Quarterly Solar Industry Update, a presentation of technical trends within the solar industry, to the solar office staff. Each presentation focuses on global and U.S. supply and demand, module and system price, investment trends and business models, and updates on U.S. government programs supporting the solar industry.

component↗
DOE OSTI2022

Manufacturing Cost Analysis of Advanced Parabolic Trough Collector

The research team performed a detailed bottom-up manufacturing cost estimate for an advanced parabolic trough design - the Solar Dynamics Sunbeam-MT (Sunbeam Mid-Term). This includes all components for manufacturing and assembly in a manufacturing facility (e.g. space frame and arms), and the purchased parts (e.g. mirrors and receiver tubes). Estimates of the construction and assembly activities have been made to then determine an estimated installed cost. Prior analysis has already undertaken detailed bottom-up manufacturing, assembly, and construction analysis for the Ultimate Trough from schlaich bergermann partner (sbp), and this work updates the solar field cost estimates based on a similar aperture area as the SunBeam-MT. For this analysis, the Ultimate Trough is considered the commercial parabolic trough and the Sunbeam-MT as the advanced parabolic trough. For similarity, both the Sunbeam-MT and the Ultimate Trough have been modelled with a solar field with approximately 800,000 square meters (m2) in aperture area - the equivalent of a large CSP plant. The analysis has found a potential installed cost estimate of the Sunbeam-MT could be $120/m2 but must be built at scale to confirm this estimate. Compared to prior analysis, the commercial Ultimate Trough using U.S. conditions, has reduced in installed cost from $178/m2 to $152/m2. Both designs could be even cheaper with Chinese steel.

cost analysis↗