Making the Economic Case for Small-Scale Distributed Wind -- A Screening for Distributed Generation Wind Opportunities: Preprint

This study was an offshoot of a previous assessment, which examined the potential for large-scale, greater than 50 MW, wind development on occupied federal agency lands. The study did not find significant commercial wind development opportunities, primarily because of poor wind resource on available and appropriately sized land areas or land use or aesthetic concerns. The few sites that could accommodate a large wind farm failed to have transmission lines in optimum locations required to generate power at competitive wholesale prices. The study did identify a promising but less common distributed generation (DG) development option. This follow-up study documents the NREL/Global Energy Concepts team efforts to identify economic DG wind projects at a select group of occupied federal sites. It employs a screening strategy based on project economics that go beyond quantity of windy land to include state and utility incentives as well as the value of avoided power purchases. It attempts to account for the extra costs and difficulties associated with small projects through the use of project scenarios that are more compatible with federal facilities and existing land uses. These benefits and barriers of DG are discussed, and the screening methodology and results are included. The report concludes with generalizations about the screening method and recommendations for improvement and other potential applications for this methodology.