Estimating Renewable Energy Economic Potential in the United States: Methodology and Initial Results

Technical Report · Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1334386· OSTI ID:1334386

Brown, Austin ^[1]; Beiter, Philipp ^[1]; Heimiller, Donna ^[1]; Davidson, Carolyn ^[1]; Denholm, Paul ^[1]; Melius, Jennifer ^[1]; Lopez, Anthony ^[1]; Hettinger, Dylan ^[1]; Mulcahy, David ^[1]; Porro, Gian ^[1]

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1. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

The report describes a geospatial analysis method to estimate the economic potential of several renewable resources available for electricity generation in the United States. Economic potential, one measure of renewable generation potential, is defined in this report as the subset of the available resource technical potential where the cost required to generate the electricity (which determines the minimum revenue requirements for development of the resource) is below the revenue available in terms of displaced energy and displaced capacity.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Energy Analysis (EI-30) (Energy Analysis Corporate)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1334386
• Report Number(s): NREL/TP-6A20-64503; 7541
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
fuel prices
capital cost
plant efficiency
resource potential
market potential