As our nation’s energy landscape continues to transform, federal agencies need cost-saving and resilient solutions for their sites.
For more than 30 years, the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) has helped federal agencies implement distributed energy projects.
But with so many advanced energy opportunities, federal agencies need the ability to weigh the costs and benefits of each solution and compare options.
Enter REopt™ Lite.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) REopt Lite software is a free, online tool designed to help agency energy managers, building owners, developers, utilities, and researchers understand the optimal energy solution for a specific site.
REopt Lite features core capabilities from NREL’s comprehensive REopt model, which has been used to evaluate renewable energy opportunities at more than 10,000 sites.
To find the most cost-effective and resilient solution for a site, REopt Lite considers the integration of multiple distributed energy technologies.
Specifically, the tool works by evaluating the economic viability of solar PV, battery storage, and wind energy at a site, identifying system sizes and battery dispatch strategies to minimize energy costs, and by estimating how long a system can sustain a site’s critical load during a grid outage.
REopt Lite delivers powerful insights with as few as three site-specific inputs, allowing users to evaluate the tradeoffs between initial capital expenditures and reduced utility costs over the project lifetime.
By drawing on rich datasets and sophisticated algorithms, REopt Lite makes complex, powerful optimization capabilities uniquely accessible in an easy-to-use web tool.
In addition to the web interface, the tool’s API allows developers to integrate REopt Lite into other applications.
And in the future, an open source version of REopt Lite will let other researchers build on the software’s capability.
Achieving ambitious clean-energy goals depends on federal agencies making complicated decisions. With the REopt Lite tool, you don’t have to be an expert to unlock expert energy analysis.
In just five minutes, users can generate a no-cost scenario for a site, helping spur transformational renewable energy growth.