The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) new REopt™ Lite web tool (beta version) helps building owners evaluate the economics of grid-connected solar photovoltaics (PV) and battery storage at commercial sites. It identifies the optimal PV and battery system sizes and dispatch strategy to minimize the life cycle cost of energy at a specific site. The web tool also estimates the amount of time a PV and battery system can sustain the site's critical load during a grid outage.

REopt Lite is a publicly available web version of NREL’s more comprehensive REopt model. The full REopt model is used by NREL analysts to conduct project feasibility analysis for federal agencies, military installations, businesses, campuses, and communities. Over the past 10 years, REopt has been used to evaluate renewable energy opportunities at more than 10,000 sites, and analyses have led to more than 260 MW of renewable energy development.

REopt Lite provides access to a subset of REopt capabilities and allows a broader audience to run their own site-specific, optimized, and integrated renewable energy decision analysis in order to accelerate renewable energy and storage project development and deployment. NREL plans to expand REopt Lite in 2018, adding additional capabilities for resiliency analysis and providing access to the model via an application programming interface.

The REopt Lite web tool was developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), the DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office, and The Kresge Foundation, through Clean Energy Group’s Resilient Power Project. NREL supports FEMP’s mission to accelerate development and facilitate deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and market-based solutions that strengthen U.S. energy security, environmental quality, and economic vitality.