
The 2022 Electricity Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) is available and includes distributed wind and pumped storage hydropower supply curve data for the first time.
The ATB integrates current and projected cost and performance data for electricity generation and storage technologies. It is a collaborative project led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
The ATB was first developed in 2015 to ensure consistent and timely assumptions across energy analysis studies, as clean energy costs were declining. Every year, the ATB is updated and released to include new data on additional electricity generation and storage technologies.
ATB data is widely used, including in NREL’s annual Standard Scenarios that explore possible pathways for U.S. electric sector evolution over time and in the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study, NREL’s partnership with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to explore the costs of reaching 100% renewable electricity.
Pumped storage hydropower data is from the first comprehensive resource assessment of U.S. closed-loop pumped storage hydropower — a three-year effort conducted by NREL with funding from DOE. Pumped storage hydropower accounts for nearly 95% of U.S. energy storage capacity, but it has been difficult to model how many new systems are feasible or where they could be built because they are generally located far from electricity demand. NREL’s national pumped storage hydropower resource potential data set applies land use and cost filters, showing tens of thousands of potential U.S. pumped storage hydropower systems with several terawatts of generation capacity.
Every year, the Electricity ATB includes a suite of products to support energy modeling and analysis. An Excel spreadsheet documents detailed current and projected cost and performance data for generation technologies. API and ATB Summary CSV files capture technology cost and performance. The website provides in-depth documentation of the key products, including:
- Details on historical trends, current estimates and future projections of three primary cost and performance factors: capital expenditures, capacity factor, and operations and maintenance cost.
- Documentation of the methodology and assumptions used to develop the projections of future cost and performance under conservative, moderate and advanced technology innovation scenarios.
- Discussion of the calculation of levelized cost of energy to illustrate the combined effects of the primary cost and performance factors, using two different sets of financing assumptions.
According to the 2022 ATB, based on a 30-year cost recovery period, for the market case:
- Conventional hydropower has an LCOE of $61 to $386/MWh, CAPEX of $2,574 to $16,283/kW, capacity factor of 0.31 to 0.66 and fixed O&M costs of $28 to $154/kW-yr.
- Pumped storage hydropower has CAPEX of $1,999 to $5,505/kW, fixed O&M costs of $18/kW-yr and variable O&M costs of $0.51/MWh.
NREL is operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC.