Microgrid Project Cost Analysis

What is a microgrid cost model?

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy to complete a microgrid cost study and develop a microgrid cost model. The goal of this study is to elucidate the variables that have the highest impact on costs as well as potential areas for cost reduction. This study consists of two phases.

What is microgrid cost study?

The Microgrid Cost Study aims at identifying the average cost of a typical microgrid project. The project is limited to the vicinity of U.S. and hence takes into account of only existing microgrid projects in U.S. The project's objective is to find cost of microgrid and its individual components for next 5 years.

What is the DOE's microgrid cost study?

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) microgrid cost study is identifying the costs of components, integration, and installation of U.S. microgrids; project cost improvements; and technical accelerators during the next 5 years and beyond.

What does Phase 2 of a microgrid project involve?

In a microgrid project, Phase II uses the results of Phase I to gain an initial indication of the costs that might be driving the cost of development the most. Cost information for 80 microgrids was collected through a survey by directly contacting industry members and microgrid owners and from publicly available information.

Are microgrid complexity and component costs related?

In our database, we have limited information about both microgrid complexity level and component costs. Component costs, particularly for conventional generation, represent the largest share (88% for Level 2 and Level 5), leaving limited data for analysis by complexity level.

How does microgrid optimization work?

With this technique, the local demand is reduced from the microgrid, thereby reducing the total system cost. The optimization method also controls the market price based on the energy demand of baseload and peak load.