by Brianna Crandall — August 15, 2012—As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Open Energy Information platform (Open EI) and its continued commitment to open and transparent energy data, the Department recently released a new public database featuring cost and performance estimates for electric generation, advanced vehicle, and renewable fuel technologies.
The Transparent Cost Database (TCDB) provides technology cost estimates for companies, utilities, policy makers, consumers, and academics, and can be used to benchmark company costs, model energy scenarios, and inform research and development decisions. The database makes it much easier to view the range of estimates for what energy technologies, such as a utility-scale wind farm, rooftop solar installation, biofuel production plant, or an electric vehicle, might cost today or in the future, notes DOE.
By providing an initial estimate of current and projected costs and performance characteristics for vehicles, biofuels, and renewable electricity generation, the new database will help companies and investors make informed decisions supporting the commercialization and deployment of clean energy. Facilities managers and owners could find the database particularly useful when determining the costs and benefits of a renewable energy project under consideration.
The Energy Department works closely with private companies to accurately estimate technology costs in order to plan its research and development projects. The TCDB provides access to published historical and projected cost targets and performance estimates developed by DOE, in a place that is easy to find and update. The cost data are sourced from published studies and DOE program-planning or budget documents that, while public, were previously difficult to find and collect, notes the Department.
The database currently contains thousands of estimates from more than 100 reports. The estimates and targets in the TCDB are a result of DOE’s detailed and ongoing road-mapping process for various technologies. The goal of these roadmaps is to guide research and development investments and to define success metrics for a given technology program. The roadmaps used in part to generate the TCDB provide detailed engineering-based estimates of steps to reduce cost and improve performance.
The new database will soon allow experts outside of DOE to contribute reliable new data to continually expand and validate the cost information available to the public. The project is still under development, and users are welcome to submit suggestions for additional functionality to tcdb@nrel.gov.
