NREL Conduit Blog

In this blog, meet Kevin McCabe, a clean energy researcher who serves as the lead for NREL’s tribal energy activities.

If NREL had to “show-and-tell” the human impacts of its work today, what would stand out? The State, Local, and Tribal Program (SLT) team’s fiscal year (FY) 2021 accomplishments would.

On Weatherization Day, October 30, NREL joined the U.S. Department of Energy in celebrating 45 years of Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) successes.

October 30 is National Weatherization Day, and NREL is excited to show their support for weatherization and home energy professionals.

In partnership with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, NREL has developed new online training modules for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

NREL researcher Juliana Williams recently published a report about stakeholder ideas for improving the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). These ideas were gathered at a series of Continuous Improvement Workshops.

What are the cash flow and performance predictions associated with a proposed solar project? What combination of energy technologies and storage options will help my community meet its energy goals? How many people might adopt distributed energy technologies in my jurisdiction under different policy scenarios? These are just some of the questions that state and local decision-makers are grappling with in evaluating solar energy development strategies.

States are continually innovating on the solar policy and program front, with one of the more popular recent topics being community solar applications for low- and moderate income (LMI) populations.  Over the past year, NREL’s Solar Technical Assistance Team (STAT) Network partnered with the Colorado Energy Office (CEO) and Lotus Engineering and Sustainability (Lotus) to analyze CEO’s Low-Income Community Solar Demonstration Project. The trio presented an overview of the analysis and lessons learned from the project at the annual meeting of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) in New Orleans, Louisiana (agenda) last week.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Solar Technical Assistance Team (STAT) Network is hosting a one-day training for state decision-makers on how to use NREL’s portfolio of solar tools to inform decisions. The meeting will focus primarily on the  System Advisor Model  (SAM);  Jobs and Economic Development Impact  (JEDI) models, the Distributed Generation Market Demand (dGen) model and the  Renewable Energy Planning and Optimization  (ReOpt) platform. This training session will provide state energy office staff an opportunity to learn about the solar policy questions these tools can help answer and how NREL’s solar tools can contribute to more robust energy policy analyses. In addition, participants will benefit from in-depth, hands-on training using their own state-specific data to address targeted policy questions.

Over the past decade, state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) have been one of the most effective ways to advance solar and other clean energy technologies at the state level. Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia have RPS policies, which require utilities and other electricity suppliers to procure a specified portion of their electricity supply from renewable energy. The Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) has worked with many of the RPS program managers as part of the RPS Collaborative.