Puerto Rico Webinar Series: Energy Planning Tools
This webinar from Sept. 26, 2019, focused on no-cost energy planning tools for Puerto Rico.
It was one in a series of four extended webinars for Puerto Rico energy system planners offered in the fall of 2019 as part of NREL’s contribution to Multi-Lab Energy Planning Support for Puerto Rico.
View all webinars in the series.
Webinar Sessions
This 6-hour webinar featured the following sessions.
National Solar Radiation Database, Manajit Sengupta, NREL
Downscaled for Puerto Rico, the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) is a serially complete collection of meteorological and solar irradiance data sets for the United States and a growing list of international locations. The data are publicly available at no cost to the user.
Additional resources:
The National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB), Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2018)
System Advisor Model and PVWatts, Nate Blair, NREL
This session provided an overview of the System Advisor Model (SAM), a free computer program that calculates a renewable energy system’s hourly energy output in a year, and the PVWatts Calculator, which included a section on photovoltaics (PV) and battery modeling.
Additional resources:
REopt and REopt Lite, Emma Elgqvist, NREL
These tools answer the question, “What combination of solar PV, wind, and energy storage will help my site minimize energy costs or sustain a grid outage?” For Puerto Rico, only solar plus storage is supported for now, not wind.
Additional resources:
Identifying Critical Factors in the Cost-effectiveness of Solar and Battery Storage in Commercial Buildings, NREL Presentation (2018)
Technology Solutions to Mitigate Electricity Cost for Electric Vehicle DC Fast Charging, Applied Energy (2019)
Engage Tool, Tom Harris and Rob Spencer, NREL
This session was an introduction to NREL's web-based capacity expansion and production cost modeling application Engage™, also known as Hawaii Energy Visualization Initiative or HEVI, a platform for collaborative energy system modeling in Puerto Rico.
Additional resource:
FAST Tools, Steve Folga, and Edgar Portante, Argonne National Laboratory
This session was about LNGfast, Telcofast, and future applications, as well as EPfast and the Palo Seco expansion analysis.
Environment for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information , Aaron Myers, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Environmental for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information (EAGLE-I) is an interactive geographic information system that provides energy sector situational awareness to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability's Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration (ISER) division. EAGLE-I is directed at supporting the ISER responsibilities associated with Emergency Support Function for Energy as it relates to the energy sector for the nation.
Also, see DOE’s EAGLE-I.
Sponsors
DOE and its national laboratories: NREL, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories
Contact
If you have any questions about the webinar, please contact prprojects@nrel.gov.