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Models and Tools

NREL has developed a number of tools and models that energy project leaders can use to evaluate opportunities for deploying renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies on a global, regional, local, or project basis.

Deployment Tools and Models

Our deployment tools and models can support several project goals, including:

• Developing broad campus- or community-wide strategies for improving energy efficiency, optimizing renewable energy use, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• Developing strategies for improving the energy efficiency of buildings, either new construction or building modifications
• Developing strategies for using biomass or reducing petroleum use in vehicles
• Optimizing the design of energy systems.

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Tools That Inform Community and Campus-Wide Energy Strategies

NREL conducts energy assessments to help energy project leaders establish baseline energy use for communities and campuses and identify the optimal combination of technologies for achieving their clean energy goals. Our assessments incorporate the following tools and protocols:

• Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE)—provides information about state, local, utility, and selected federal incentives that promote renewable energy, as well as information about the programs, rules and regulations, and financial incentives.

• Climate Leaders Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidance Protocol—provides the basis for a greenhouse gas inventory NREL developed to inventory community or campus-wide energy use, including buildings, vehicles, air travel and commuting, in order to establish a greenhouse gas emissions baseline that can be used to benchmark progress toward clean energy goals.

• Renewable Energy Optimization (REO) tool—analyzes a variety of data to identify the optimal combination of renewable energy technologies needed to enable facilities to achieve "net-zero" status, or produce as much energy as they consume, while minimizing life-cycle cost.

• NREL's Solar Advisor Model (SAM)—helps evaluate several types of financing for energy projects that incorporate NREL's Solar Energy Technology Program (SETP) technologies.

Tools that Inform Building Energy Efficiency Strategies

NREL offers a suite of tools and protocols designed to develop energy-efficient design strategies for buildings and electric infrastructure. These tools analyze energy conservation measures, incorporating life-cycle costing equations to calculate simple payback, discounted payback, net present value, and savings-to-investment ratios for each. They include:

• Building Energy Optimization (BEopt)Tool (PDF 672 KB)
• Design charrettes for LEED certification (PDF 4.2 MB)
• eQUEST available from DOE2.com.

Tools That Inform Biomass and Transportation Strategies

NREL has developed the following tools designed to assist with the development and implementation of clean transportation initiatives:

• Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center (AFDC) tools—facilitate assessments of alternative fuels and other petroleum reduction options, including advanced vehicles, fuel blends, idle reduction, and fuel economy.

  • Petroleum Reduction Planning Tool—allows users to calculate the petroleum reduction potential of various strategies and combined strategies, including using alternative fuels and hybrid electric vehicles, increasing fuel economy, and reducing vehicle miles traveled.

  • TransAtlas—is a geographic tool that helps project planners identify hot spots for alternative fuel and advanced vehicle projects based on vehicle, station, and fuel production concentrations.

  • State Assessment for Biomass Resources (SABRE)—takes a state-level view of available biomass resources, biofuels stations, and biofuels-capable vehicles to help identify likely locations for biofuels infrastructure.

• NREL's BioPower—is a geographic tool that overlays biomass feedstocks, power plant locations, electricity rates, and other information to help inform decisions about where to locate a biopower facility.

Tools That Optimize Energy Systems Design

NREL has developed or helped develop a number of tools designed to optimize the design of energy systems, including:

• Distributed Engineering Workstation—leverages a steady-state simulation environment to develop large and complex electricity distribution system models and can be used to evaluate resource placement and electrical interconnection, analyze the impacts of distributed resources on base infrastructure, and identify and evaluate opportunities to improve load and renewable resource coincidence. This tool is now available from Electrical Distribution Design.

• HOMER hybrid optimization model—simulates hour-by-hour operation of renewable energy systems and load profiles to evaluate the economic and technical feasibility of various conventional and renewable energy technologies, ranking the feasibility of different configurations according to total net present cost. This tool is now available from HOMER Energy.

• In My Back Yard—Uses system size, location, and other variables to estimate solar photovoltaic array and wind turbine electricity production for a specific location.

• Renewable Energy Sensitivity Analysis Tool—provides worldwide prescreening of solar and wind, integrated with a modeling tool for assessing potential payback of renewable energy technologies by plugging in variables to identify conditions that will improve economic viability.

Analytic Tools and Models

Our analytic tools and models are designed to inform decisions and help develop energy strategies that promote the most effective and cost-efficient application of the various technologies. They can assist energy project leaders with:

• Impacts analysis
• Project and facility planning
• Market and economic development.

Our user-friendly, downloadable Job and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) models can be used to analyze the economic impacts of constructing and operating plants that generate power using biofuel, concentrating solar power, wind energy, coal, and natural gas at the local and state levels.

At the facility level, NREL has developed several software tools that can be used to screen for opportunities to maximize cost- and energy-saving opportunities. For more information about our analytic tools and models, visit the NREL Energy Analysis Web site.