News

Implementing Instructions for Presidential Executive Order 13834 encourage all federal agencies to use Berkeley Lab’s eProject Builder (ePB) system.Projects awarded using DOE’s indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) ESPC contract provide automated data collection and verification through e-Project Builder, a cyber-secure, web-based data management system maintained by the Lawrence... Read more

A select audience recently gathered for the 2019 Art Rosenfeld Symposium on Energy Efficient and Grid Interactive Buildings. The day was dedicated to the ongoing scientific discoveries and research inspired by Rosenfeld, a Berkeley Lab Senior Scientist, UC Berkeley Professor and former Commissioner of the California Energy Commission.Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell greeted the audience with a... Read more

A grid communications model that began as a research project at Berkeley Lab has now become an international standard, paving the way toward smart grid improvements around the world.The standard, OpenADR, aids in demand response, the practice of managing energy demand from customers with signals based on price or reliability. OpenADR offers a common language energy customers and grid operators can... Read more

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed an interactive tool to provide better access to data from a recent major study, The Future of U.S. Electricity Efficiency Programs Funded by Utility Customers: Program Spending and Savings Projections to 2030. The study provides a bottom-up assessment of the potential impact of existing and likely state policies and market... Read more

We are pleased to announce the release of a new study led by DNV GL "R&D Pathways for Supersized Wind Turbine Blades.” The report evaluates key design, manufacturing, and transportation options to advance long, “supersized” blades for cost-competitive land-based wind energy. The move toward progressively longer wind turbine blades has been a lasting trend in the industry. Even-longer... Read more

Lisa Schwartz, Deputy Leader and Energy Efficiency Team Leader in the Electricity Markets and Policy Group, received the 2018 Mary Kilmarx Award from the Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).The award is given to "individuals who have gone above and beyond in the name of good government, clean energy, and the... Read more

The costs to electric utility customers from short-term, limited geographic scale power disruptions have been studied for many years. However, there is increasing interest among regulators, policy-makers, and utilities in the economic consequences of interruptions that are of longer duration (days, weeks or longer) and of larger geographic scope (entire metropolitan areas or regions). The U.S.... Read more

Electric utility customers spent about $5.8 billion on energy efficiency programs in 2016 to cost-effectively offset a portion of growth in U.S. power needs. That, in turn, affects the need for investment in new electricity infrastructure, across generation, transmission and distribution systems. A new study by Berkeley Lab provides a bottom-up assessment of the potential impact of existing and... Read more

An online data management tool for water/energy retrofits, and a device that recycles carbon dioxide into renewable fuels have both been recognized in the 2018 R&D 100 Awards given to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).eProject Builder won the 2018 R&D 100 Award, and Opus 12 is a co-recipient of a Special Recognition Award. The... Read more

The Energy Analysis & Environmental Impacts Division's Electricity Markets & Policy Group won the 2018 R&D 100 Award for eProject Builder, a secure, web-based data management tool developed by Berkeley Lab with funding from the Department of Energy. It is the only nationwide system that standardizes the collection and tracking of information for energy/water retrofit projects... Read more

According to a recent industry report, a little over 55% of U.S. households now have smart meters. This presents utilities with an opportunity to leverage the rich data these systems provide to better understand their customers and make data-driven decisions concerning optimal rate or program portfolio planning and implementation. Being able to update assessments at an ever more rapid pace will... Read more

We are pleased to release a summary of the key findings from seven different papers completed by teams of University of Texas (UT) at Austin students, each of which explored a different aspect of the solar market. Each paper was completed as part of UT Austin’s ‘Policy Research Project’, a nine-month capstone within UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. Twenty graduate students participated... Read more

Interest in electricity reliability and resilience in the United States has increased dramatically since Berkeley Lab first estimated the national cost of sustained power interruptions in 2006. “Yet, we’re not aware of any peer-reviewed literature on the economic impacts of these power interruptions since our prior work” says author Kristina LaCommare. This report presents an update of our... Read more

Today, electric vehicles (EVs) make up just a small part of the U.S. road fleet, but they are gaining ground in some regions. While EVs hold promise for lowering costs and air pollutant emissions from auto travel, among other benefits, their growth raises questions about the changes needed to support this transition. How much charging infrastructure will be needed, and what role should utilities... Read more

eProject Builder (ePB), an energy project data management tool developed by Berkeley Lab, recently reached a milestone of 600 projects initiated and over 1,000 users trained. ePB is also a finalist in the 2018 R&D 100 awards—the “Oscars” of innovation. ePB standardizes the way energy project performance data is collected, tracked and reported, better enabling energy project customers to... Read more

We are pleased to announce the release of the latest edition of Berkeley Lab’s annual Tracking the Sun report. The report describes installed prices and other trends among distributed photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States, based on an underlying dataset of more than 1.3 million PV systems (with transaction prices for 770,000 systems). This latest edition focuses primarily on trends... Read more

In conjunction with the release of the annual Wind Technologies Market Report, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy, Berkeley Lab has produced a series of interactive data visualizations that allow users to explore some of the data from the report. To prepare the report, Berkeley Lab researchers compile data on wind power market growth, as well as project-level technology trends,... Read more

A national online energy data management system is transforming how energy retrofit projects implemented by a wide variety of users – including local, state, and federal governments – develop projects and track performance.The eProject Builder energy project data management and benchmarking tool was developed by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to... Read more

A newly updated online tool and guidebook from Berkeley Lab and industry partner Nexant Inc. will help utilities measure the cost and impact of power outages — a key strategic consideration as the nation works to modernize the electricity system, and especially important now during hot summer months that can strain the power grid.Read more at the Berkeley Lab News Center web site:... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (“Berkeley Lab”) and Nexant, are pleased to announce the release of two research products: (1) Estimating Power System Interruption Costs: A Guidebook for Electric Utilities (“Guidebook”) and (2) the Interruption Cost Estimate Calculator 2.0 (“ICE Calculator”). The Guidebook is a timely and modern update to a 1995 Electric Power Research Institute... Read more

Energy savings programs offered by utilities—from residential lighting and appliance rebates to programs for small businesses—help ensure reliability on the grid at the most affordable cost, according to a comprehensive study just released by the Electricity Markets & Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."At an average cost of just 2.5 cents to save a kilowatt-hour, energy... Read more

Ryan Wiser of Berkeley Lab's Electricity Markets and Policy Group was named one of Wind Power Monthly's influential people of 2017.Wiser is the lead author of Berkeley Lab's annual Wind Technologies Market Report, which can be found at https://emp.lbl.gov/wind-technologies-market-report/Read the full article at www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1448419/influential-interesting-2017... Read more

We are pleased to announce a new Berkeley Lab report, Impacts of High Variable Renewable Energy Futures on Wholesale Electricity Prices, and on Electric-Sector Decision Making. Increasing penetrations of variable renewable energy (VRE) can affect wholesale electricity price patterns and make them meaningfully different from past price patterns. Many long-lasting decisions for supply- and... Read more

We are pleased to announce a new study conducted jointly by Berkeley Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), entitled Estimating the Value of Improved Distributed Photovoltaic Adoption Forecasts for Utility Resource Planning. A free webinar will also be held on May 24 at 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern. The report aims to assist utility resource planners in evaluating potential... Read more

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) are presenting a free webinar on May 14, 2018, to discuss a new report, Distribution System Planning - State Examples by Topic. Who: Alan Cooke, Senior Research Economist, PNNL Juliet Homer, Senior Energy Research Engineer, PNNL Lisa Schwartz, Deputy Leader, Electricity Markets and Policy Group, LBNL... Read more