Resources

To stimulate investment in renewable energy generation projects, the federal government developed a series of support structures that reduce taxes for eligible investors--the investment tax credit, the production tax credit, and accelerated depreciation.

Concentrating solar power (CSP) deployed with thermal energy storage (TES) provides a dispatchable source of renewable energy. The value of CSP with TES, as with other potential generation resources, needs to be established using traditional utility planning tools.

At high penetration of solar generation there are a number of challenges to economically integrating this variable and uncertain resource. These include the limited coincidence between the solar resource and normal demand patterns and limited flexibility of conventional generators to accommodate variable generation resources.

Establishing interconnection to the grid is a recognized barrier to the deployment of distributed energy generation. This report compares interconnection processes for photovoltaic projects in California and Germany.

The SunShot Vision Study explored the potential growth of solar markets if solar prices decreased by about 75% from 2010 to 2020. The SolarDS model was used to simulate rooftop PV demand for this study, based on several PV market assumptions--future electricity rates, customer access to financing, and others--in addition to the SunShot PV price projections.

The Renewable Electricity Futures Study (RE Futures) is an initial investigation of the extent to which renewable energy supply can meet the electricity demands of the contiguous United States over the next several decades. This study includes geographic and electric system operation resolution that is unprecedented for long-term studies of the U.S. electric sector.