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Multi-Lab Energy Planning Support for Puerto Rico

NREL has partnered with four other national laboratories and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to provide Puerto Rico stakeholders with useful tools and skills to enable them to plan and operate the electric power grid with more resilience against future disruptions.

Key Activities

Key activities include:

  • Delivering high-resolution solar resource data for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands through the National Solar Radiation Database
  • Delivering models of Puerto Rico using grid modeling tools—Flexible Energy Scheduling Tool for Integrating Variable Generation and Multi-Area Frequency Response Integration Tool—and training models on real data
  • Developing and executing an educational module that provides analytical support to stakeholders on best practices for interconnection of distributed energy resources and IEEE 1547 standard
  • Delivering Puerto Rico-specific System Advisor Model improvements to provide foundational solar profiles for production cost modeling and to enable stakeholders to perform detailed cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy systems, accounting for resiliency and ancillary service functionality
  • Developing accessible end-user, cost-benefit tools with training sessions aimed at ensuring robust, data-driven investment decisions across Puerto Rico.

Other national laboratories contributing to this effort include:

Argonne National Laboratory

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Sandia National Laboratories.

Stakeholder Engagement

DOE and NREL are engaging with stakeholders in Puerto Rico to understand local energy planning needs and deliver relevant tools, training, and modeling results. 

Workshops on Energy Planning Resources

Workshops held in San Juan on March 19, 2019, and Mayaguez on March 22, 2019, were an opportunity for stakeholders to share their energy planning needs and learn about tools from NREL and other national labs to support energy planning in Puerto Rico.

Workshop Presentations

DOE/national laboratories presentation slides

Additional Resources

Workshop agenda

Resource list

Workshop report

Webinars

During Fall 2019, NREL is hosting a Puerto Rico Energy Planning Support Webinar Series for participating national laboratories to provide stakeholders access to tools, resources, and modeling results. These webinars are presented as virtual conferences, and attendees are welcome to join and leave throughout each event. View resources from past webinars and register for upcoming webinars:

NREL Tools

These tools don't require technical modeling skills.

Building Energy Optimization Tool  – Used to evaluate residential building designs and identify cost-optimal efficiency packages at various levels of whole-house energy savings along the path to zero net energy.

Community Solar Scenario Tool  – Provides a "first cut" analysis of different community or shared solar program options.

Jobs and Economic Development Impact  Models – User-friendly tools that estimate economic impacts of constructing and operating power generation and biofuel plants at local and state levels.

National Solar Radiation Database  – A collection of meteorological and solar irradiance data sets for the U.S. and a growing list of international locations.

PVWatts Calculator – A calculator that estimates the energy production and cost of energy of grid-connected photovoltaic energy systems throughout the world

REopt Lite – A decision-support tool used to optimize energy systems for buildings, campuses, communities, and microgrids

ResStock – Performs large-scale residential energy analysis by combining public and private data sources, statistical sampling, detailed sub-hourly building simulations, and high-performance computing to help users identify which home improvements save the most energy and money 

System Advisor Model  – A free computer program that calculates a renewable energy system's hourly energy output over a single year, and the cost of energy for a renewable energy project over the life of the project

These tools require some technical modeling skills.

Flexible Energy Scheduling Tool for Integrating Variable Generation – A multiple-timescale, interconnected simulation tool that includes security-constrained unit commitment, security-constrained economic dispatch, and automatic generation control sub-models.

Hawaii Energy Visualization Initiative tool – A custom capacity and dispatch modeling system that can quickly provide insights on cross-sectoral questions

Multi-Area Frequency Response Integration Tool –  Simulates the power system dynamic response in full time spectrum with variable time steps from millisecond to days under both normal and event conditions.

 

Other Resources

Contact

For more information on our efforts in Puerto Rico, contact us.

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