Renewable Energy Models

NRL System Advisor Model (SAM)
The System Advisor Model from NRL is a free tool that predicts the performance and cost of renewable energy projects by combining system-level simulations with flexible financial modeling. It supports both customer and utility-scale applications and includes models for photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, wind, geothermal, biomass, solar water heating, and battery storage. Users can adjust technical design, operating assumptions, and economic structures to estimate metrics like LCOE, payback period, and long-term cash flow. SAM is widely used by developers, engineers, policymakers, and researchers to evaluate project feasibility and compare technology options.

Demand-Side Grid Toolkit
This toolkit from NRL is an open-source tool that creates detailed, high-resolution projections of future electricity demand across buildings, industry, and transportation sectors. It combines data on technology use, energy consumption patterns, and electrification trends to show how demand might change over time. This helps developers and researchers understand how shifting energy use in different sectors will affect the grid and what kinds of infrastructure may be needed.

CREST Cost of Energy Models
The Cost of Renewable Energy Spreadsheet Tool (CREST) is an economic cash flow model to assess projects, design cost-based incentives (e.g. feed-in tariffs), and evaluate the impact of tax incentives or other support structures. CREST is a suite of three analytical tools for solar (photovoltaic and solar thermal), wind and geothermal technologies. The model allows for streamlined input entry, search on state-specific capacity factors, and evaluation on the impact of Renewable Energy Credit revenue.

JOBS Fuel Cell Model
This Argonne National Laboratory spreadsheet model estimates economic impacts from the manufacture and use of select types of fuel cells based on input-output methodology. A variety of scenarios can be defined by inputting information on geography, fuel cell technology and annual fuel cell production number. A national analysis can calculate both gross and net impacts on job years.

NRL JEDI Model
The Job and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) models estimate the number of jobs and economic impact of constructing and operating power plants, fuel production facilities, and other projects at the local (usually state) level. This is an Excel based model available for Biofuel, Coal, Conventional Hydro, Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), Geothermal, Transmission Line, Natural gas, Photovoltaic, Wind and Marine & Hydrokinetic Power projects. Specific project data on construction, equipment, annual operating and maintenance costs and financing parameters are expected to be input by the users while default values are also provided by the model.