Empowering Communities with a Multi-Use Decision Support Dashboard to Participate in Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) Planning and Development
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29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
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Catalyzing RE Project Development
This poster details how screenings done with REopt - NREL's software modeling platform for energy systems integration and optimization - are helping to catalyze the development of hundreds of megawatts of renewable energy.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Submarine Cable Analysis for U.S. Marine Renewable Energy Development
This report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to evaluate potential overlap between U.S. marine renewable energy resources and existing footprints and spatial needs of the U.S. submarine telecommunications cable industry. Submarine cables are vital to the telecommunications industry, and marine renewable energy - including offshore wind, tidal, and wave energy - has the potential to diversify the U.S. renewable energy portfolio, create jobs, and power the emerging blue economy. Marine renewable energy can complement other renewables by offering consistent, reliable energy in high demand times (e.g., during morning and evening hours), and by siting in proximity to coastal areas with high population density. The first U.S. commercial marine renewable energy facility - the Block Island Wind Farm (Rhode Island) - went into production in December 2016. As implementation and other costs for these technologies continue to drop and increasingly ambitious targets for renewable energy are adopted, marine renewable energy planning and development will need to effectively evaluate the presence of co-occurring ocean uses and resources, like submarine cables.
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Identifying and Estimating Project Development Costs [Slides]
This presentation focuses on renewable energy project development and planning and highlights common project costs at each stage of a project's lifecycle. The presentation was produced as part of a series of trainings for awardees of the Energizing Rural Communities prize.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) Transmission Planning Process
A REZ is a geographical area that enables the development of profitable, cost-effective, grid-connected renewable energy (RE). The REZ Transmission Planning Process is a proactive approach to plan, approve, and build transmission infrastructure connecting REZs to the power system which helps to increase the share of solar, wind and other RE resources in the power system while maintaining reliability and economics, and focuses on large-scale wind and solar resources that can be developed in sufficient quantities to warrant transmission system expansion and upgrades.
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RE Data Explorer: Supporting Renewable Energy Zones to Enable Low Emission Development
This fact sheet overviews the benefits of using the RE Data Explorer tool to analyze and develop renewable energy zones. Renewable energy zones are developed through a transmission planning and approval process customized for renewable energy. RE Data Explorer analysis can feed into broader stakeholder discussions and allow stakeholders to easily visualize potential zones. Stakeholders can access pertinent data to inform transmission planning and enable investment.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Tunisia Renewable Energy Project systems description report
In 1979, the Agency for International Development (AID) initiated a renewable energy project with the Government of Tunisia to develop an institutional capability to plan and institute renewable energy technologies in a rural area. The specific objective of the district energy applications subproject was to demonstrate solar and wind energy systems in a rural village setting. The NASA Lewis Research Center was asked by the AID Near East Bureau to manage and implement this subproject. This report describes the project and gives detailed desciptions of the various systems.
Scudder, L. R.↗
Faster Than You Think: Renewable Energy and Developing Countries
Since 2007, large and unexpected declines in generation costs for renewable energy systems, particularly solar but also wind, combined with policy measures designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, have created a paradigm shift in energy systems. Variable renewable energy now dominates total investment in electricity power generation systems. This dominance of variable renewable energy in investment has thrust the systems integration task of matching electricity supply with demand to center stage, presenting new challenges for energy policy and planning as well as for the institutional organization of power systems. Despite these challenges, there is ample reason to believe that variable renewables will attain very high levels of penetration into energy systems, particularly in regions well endowed with solar and wind potential. Similar to their success with mobile phone telephony, many developing countries have a significant opportunity to leapfrog directly to more advanced energy technologies that are low cost, reliable, environmentally more benign, and well suited to serving dispersed rural populations.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Residential Electrification Roadmapping - Technical and Messaging Review (CRADA Final Report)
This work is to be conducted in support of the American Made Challenges EAS-E Prize. The intent is to connect competitor teams with national laboratories that can help accelerate the development of innovative solutions and products. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will help accelerate QuitCarbon’s automated home electrification planning model development.
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RE Data Explorer is Expanding Public Access to High-Quality Data and Analytics
The Renewable Energy (RE) Data Explorer is an innovative and intuitive web platform from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Partnership that enables users to easily access high-quality renewable energy resource data and applied analytics.
ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Technical Potential Assessment for the Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) Process: A GIS-Based Approach
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based energy resource and technical potential assessments identify areas capable of supporting high levels of renewable energy (RE) development as part of a Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) Transmission Planning process. This document expands on the REZ Process to aid practitioners in conducting GIS-based RE resource and technical potential assessments. The REZ process is an approach to plan, approve, and build transmission infrastructure that connects REZs - geographic areas that have high-quality RE resources, suitable topography and land-use designations, and demonstrated developer interest - to the power system. The REZ process helps to increase the share of solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, and other resources while also maintaining reliability and economics.
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Power Supply Options for the Marpi Landfill, Saipan: Comprehensive Feasibility Study
The Marpi Landfill (“Marpi” or “the landfill”), located on the northern end of the island of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is powered by a single on-site diesel generator that only operates when the landfill is open and staffed. The project team, composed of representatives of the Department of Public Works and the Office of Planning and Development (OPD), aspires to provide the Marpi Landfill with 24-hour power availability despite its remote location to increase the use of sustainable energy and to ensure environmentally compliant landfill operations. This is consistent with the sustainable development goals documented in the 2021–2030 Comprehensive Sustainable Development Plan (OPD 2021), including Goal #12 (ensure environmentally compliant waste management facilities) and Goal #7 (renewable energy deployment). Further, the CNMI has a 20% target for renewable energy consumption by 2030, as documented in the 2021–2030 Comprehensive Sustainable Development Plan (OPD 2021) and the renewable portfolio standard (Public Law 18-62). To accomplish these goals, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, through its Interagency Reimbursable Work Agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy, funded a feasibility study and follow-up study in 2023–2024 to assess and prioritize power supply options for the landfill. This report combines the results from both feasibility studies.
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Data for Renewable Energy Planning, Policy, and Investment
Reliable, robust, and validated data are critical for informed planning, policy development, and investment in the clean energy sector. The Renewable Energy (RE) Explorer was developed to support data-driven renewable energy analysis that can inform key renewable energy decisions globally. This document presents the types of geospatial and other data at the core of renewable energy analysis and decision making. Individual data sets used to inform decisions vary in relation to spatial and temporal resolution, quality, and overall usefulness. From Data to Decisions, a complementary geospatial data and analysis decision guide, provides an in-depth view of these and other considerations to enable data-driven planning, policymaking, and investment. Data support a wide variety of renewable energy analyses and decisions, including technical and economic potential assessment, renewable energy zone analysis, grid integration, risk and resiliency identification, electrification, and distributed solar photovoltaic potential. This fact sheet provides information on the types of data that are important for renewable energy decision making using the RE Data Explorer or similar types of geospatial analysis tools.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Power Supply Options for the Marpi Landfill, Saipan: Feasibility Study
The Marpi Landfill, located on the northern end of the island of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is powered by an on-site diesel generator that only operates when the landfill is open and staffed. The CNMI Office of Planning and Development (OPD) aspires to provide the Marpi Landfill with 24-hour power availability despite its remote location and to increase the use of sustainable energy within the CNMI. CNMI has a 20% target for renewable energy consumption, as documented in Sustainable Development Goal #7 in the Comprehensive Sustainable Development Plan (OPD 2021) and the renewable portfolio standard (GPO 2014). To accomplish these goals, the U.S. Department of Energy, through its Interagency Reimbursable Work Agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, funded this feasibility study to assess and prioritize power supply options for the landfill. The availability of solar and wind resources varies seasonally, as does the load. A BESS can help to balance mismatches between generation and load on short (hourly or daily) timescales, but not across seasons. The microgrid scenarios evaluated for Marpi consider options for technology combinations that will both meet the load and utilize available resources, despite the challenge presented by higher loads and lower solar and wind availability during the rainy season, depicted in Figure ES-2. The seven scenarios evaluated are summarized in Table ES-1. Each scenario’s configuration was optimized to include component capacities that reduce capital and operating costs, meet the load, and minimize carbon emissions, as feasible. The costs and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) shown do not assume the use of any grant funding or incentives, although these options were also evaluated. To assist with decision-making, a prioritization matrix (Table ES-3) was created to compare the microgrid scenarios evaluated in this feasibility study according to various stakeholder priorities. The prioritization metrics were chosen based on discussions with OPD and will be finalized through stakeholder feedback. The scenarios were given a score between 1 and 7 for each prioritization metric (the lower the score, the higher the priority), and total scores were calculated using assigned weights based on the relative priority of each metric. The total scores were then ranked to produce a prioritized list of microgrid scenarios based on the metrics most important to the project stakeholders. As shown, scenario 4 (100 kW of solar PV, a 75 kW/300 kWh BESS, and 160 kW of diesel generation) ranks highest.
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The Grid Value of Ocean Current Energy in Florida
Ocean current energy technology has been proposed as a potential contributor to Florida's energy portfolio. There has been limited investigation of how this energy would be valued when integrated into the Florida electrical grid. This study assesses three future grid scenarios to evaluate the impact of adding zero-cost ocean current energy to each. The Resource Planning Model, a tool developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is used to identify the least-cost generation mix through 2050, with and without ocean current energy. The first scenario is a base case and assumes existing policies in which the addition of ocean current energy does not retire fossil-based technologies but variable generation technologies. In the second scenario, solar and storage technologies are lower cost, and the addition of ocean current generation enables those technologies along with wind to retire existing natural gas units earlier. In the third scenario, which requires a 95% reduction in carbon emissions from 2020 levels by 2050, ocean current energy can play a role in decarbonization along with other variable generation technologies. This analysis is intended to inform stakeholders on the opportunity, potential challenges, and overall value to the grid of ocean current technology from a reliability and availability focused perspective.
capacity expansion model↗
Ready for Renewables: Grid Planning and Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) in the Philippines
The Department of Energy of the Philippines launched the competitive renewable energy zones (CREZ) process to help achieve the country's goals of scaling up renewable energy generation on the power system and to ensure sustainable, secure, reliable, accessible, and affordable energy. The CREZ process identifies the most economic renewable energy resource areas so transmission planning and expansion can accelerate their development. By proactively focusing transmission expansion to these resource areas, renewable energy generation development obstacles such as transmission access, energy curtailment, land permitting (such as protected or high-slope areas), and regulatory barriers are easier to overcome thus, reducing risk for private sector renewable energy investment. This report is will cover the outputs of the CREZ process, the development of the outputs through stakeholder-driven coordination, and how this process will help the Philippines achieve their renewable energy goals.
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Integrating Offshore Wind Into Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) for the Philippines
The Philippines is aiming to jumpstart a domestic offshore wind industry and has incorporated offshore wind into several planning efforts. In parallel, the Philippines has also been a leader in incorporating renewable energy zones (REZs) into their power sector development and transmission plans. The objective of this study, conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in partnership with the Philippines Department of Energy (PDOE), is to incorporate offshore wind resources into the Philippines' already established competitive renewable energy zones (CREZs) to support national transmission planning, thereby merging these two previously disparate workstreams and implementing a key recommendation from the World Bank's offshore wind roadmap for the Philippines.
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Integrating Offshore Wind Into Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) for the Philippines [Slides]
The Philippines is aiming to jumpstart a domestic offshore wind industry and has incorporated offshore wind into several planning efforts. In parallel, the Philippines has also been a leader in incorporating renewable energy zones (REZs) into their power sector development and transmission plans. The objective of this study, conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in partnership with the Philippines Department of Energy (PDOE), is to incorporate offshore wind resources into the Philippines' already established competitive renewable energy zones (CREZs) to support national transmission planning, thereby merging these two previously disparate workstreams and implementing a key recommendation from the World Bank's offshore wind roadmap for the Philippines.
17 WIND ENERGY↗