Variable Renewable Energy in Long-Term Planning Models: A Multi-Model Perspective is a culmination of a collaboration among the capacity expansion modeling teams from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The report shows that improvements made across a diverse group of modeling teams led to more robust representation of variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies. The report also documents differences in modeling methodologies.

Models of the U.S. electricity sector are relied upon by sector stakeholders and decision makers, but the recent surge in VRE, such as wind and solar, led a team of modeling experts to examine how these models would represent scenarios with high penetrations of VRE.