In the fast-paced world of renewable energy project development, project developers face a myriad of challenges that can significantly impact their bottom line. From navigating complex datasets to keeping up with ever-changing industry trends, the traditional approach to project siting is not only time consuming but also financially burdensome.
Challenges Faced by Project Developers:
- Fragmented data and software: Developers often rely on a patchwork of datasets and software solutions, leading to inefficiencies and increased risk of errors.
- Time-consuming analysis: Tasks such as analyzing integrated resource plans, filtering buildable acreage and mining interconnection queues can eat up valuable time, hindering productivity.
- Costly due diligence: Conducting third-party injection studies can be both expensive and time-consuming, adding to the financial burden of project development.
Impact of Unsolved Challenges:
- Missed opportunities: Inability to swiftly identify and capitalize on promising investment opportunities can result in missed chances for growth and expansion.
- Reduced competitiveness: As the renewable energy market evolves rapidly, developers who fail to adapt and streamline their processes risk falling behind competitors.
- Diminished returns: Inefficient project siting not only affects the speed of development but also impacts the overall profitability of projects, leading to diminished returns on investment.
Without the right tools and strategies in place, developers risk missing out on lucrative opportunities and falling behind in a competitive market.
Transforming Project Siting Efficiency With Enverus
Enverus understands these challenges and has built a solution to streamline the project siting and asset acquisition workflows. By leveraging cutting-edge technology and comprehensive datasets, Enverus empowers developers to make informed decisions quickly and efficiently, ultimately maximizing their return on investment. Here are some of the key workflows Enverus solution streamline in the project siting process and the expected savings versus traditional methods performing the same workflows.
To come up with savings, we assumed the following hourly salaries (including benefits) per each function needed to perform the workflow:
- Project developer: $100/hour
- Engineer: $50/hour
- GIS or data analyst: $40/hour
- Senior GIS or data analyst: $75/hour
Performing Integrated Resource Plan Analysis
An integrated resource plan (IRP) is a comprehensive long-term planning document used by utilities, energy regulators and policymakers to outline strategies for meeting future energy demand while considering factors like reliability, affordability and environmental sustainability. More than 185 IRPs are released every year and can run 250 pages or longer. It is crucial to understand which utilities are planning to develop power plants and the timeline for implementation. These IRPs are released on different cycles/submission periods depending on the state, such as South Dakota, which releases every two years. If a developer does not review the IRP, they may miss critical insights into which utilities are developing power plants and their timelines. This oversight can result in poorly informed investment decisions, potential misalignment with market trends and lost opportunities for strategic partnerships and developments.
With Enverus P&R PRISM Foundations and Project Tracking, users can streamline the monitoring of 185+ utilities’ 250+ page IRPs without needing extensive GIS, data analytics or developer resources. Users gain immediate access to:
- Consolidated and maintained utility IRP information across the U.S.
- Curated IRP data reviewed by the Enverus research team
- Summarized additions and retirements by technology and year in the IRP through our analysts
- Dynamic displays for visualizing key information
- Digitized maps of existing and upcoming transmission lines
- Additional relevant datasets, including power plants and buildable acreage
- Insights into the impact of transmission lines on existing power plants
Estimated Annual Savings: $103,600*
*Based on 185 IRPs per year, requiring 3 hours from a data analyst, 3 hours from a GIS analyst and 6 hours of developer resources per IRP. Does not include startup and subscription costs for analytics mapping software.
Performing Interconnection Queue Analysis
The interconnection queue provides critical information to forecast what the energy landscape will look like in the future based on what is planned in the area, who is building it and what development phase each project is in. The interconnection queue changes frequently and must stay updated for developers to make the best decision. If decisions are made based on dated interconnection queue information, developers risk missing out on strategic opportunities and fail to anticipate potential competition or collaboration prospects.
With Enverus P&R PRISM Foundations and Project Tracking, users can avoid the manual tasks of reviewing interconnection queue data, identifying project owners and estimating project locations on the grid. Users gain immediate access to:
- The latest, analysis-ready on more than 50 queues with various update schedules from intra-daily, monthly, or longer
- Project location estimates on the grid
- Enhanced data filters for interconnection queue visualization
- True project owners and developer information
- Linked point of interconnection (POI) names to substation profiles
- Detailed project location estimates based on POI data
Estimated annual savings: $535,200*
*360 hours of developer, full-time GIS analyst and a team of data analyst resources. Does not include startup and subscription costs for analytics mapping software.
Analyzing Parcels at Scale
For renewable projects, uncovering the best parcels to build on next is crucial for development. Parcels have physical characteristics, such as flood plains, slope and canopy, which can affect the project’s returns and development costs. Neglecting to thoroughly evaluate these factors can lead to higher expenses and reduced profitability.
With Enverus P&R PRISM Core Foundations and Project Tracking solutions, along with the Suitable Land Analytics and Parcels add-ons, users can avoid scraping outdated parcel data, calculating buildable acreage and researching nearby grid infrastructure. Users gain immediate access to:
- 156 million parcels across the United States
- 153 million parcels with wind and solar resources
- More than 9 million parcels with pre-calculated buildable acreage
- Parcel ownership information
- Advanced geospatial filters, including buffering around grid infrastructure
- Ability to overlay substation and transmission line data onto parcels
Estimated annual savings: $348,000*
*360 project developer hours, 2 full-time GIS analysts and 1 full-time data analyst. Does not include startup and subscription costs for analytics mapping software.
Identifying Project POI
Developers need to understand how the grid will behave if they were to connect a power project to the grid. One method is analyzing the available transfer capability (ATC) at the point of interconnection. Typically, third-party consultants perform injection studies for this purpose, costing $100k per study and taking 2-3 weeks for analysis. However, with the right software, ATC analysis can be completed in minutes and earlier in the workflow, saving time and reducing the number of sites needing costly injection studies.
Enverus’ P&R PRISM Congestion Analytics uses proprietary ATC estimates that utilize our industry leading power trading software to compute available capacity under 10,000+ post failure scenarios that have been identified by each ISO. The ATC we calculate is the worst case over those failure scenarios. While running all of these scenarios drastically increases the computation time, it’s the only way to do a full contingency analysis. Models that ignore this effort inflate the available capacity and can lead to situations where new generation or load (such as data centers) create massive congestion and skyrocket power prices.
Avoid a site for a paid injection study: $100,000 savings per site
Designing the PV Plant
When designing a PV plant, numerous parameters need to be considered, including the parcel’s generation potential, equipment selection, capacity planning, civil aspects, grid connection and electrical configuration. Each step must be meticulously analyzed to ensure the project achieves the expected ROI.
Traditionally, it takes an engineer 2 weeks to create a PV design, averaging 26 PV designs per year. This process involves finding and selecting PV equipment, and manually building and optimizing PV designs. With Enverus RatedPower, users can eliminate these mundane, repetitive tasks and reduce the need for large engineering teams. RatedPower provides:
- A built-in library of more than 7,000 pieces of equipment
- Calculated optimal input values
- A single platform to iterate and compare multiple designs
- 400+ pages of documents and all necessary technical drawings ready for engineering review
- One-click download and editing of documents
What once took 2 weeks to create, RatedPower can perform in 30 minutes.
Estimated Savings per Design: $3,975
Estimated Annual Savings (4,160 designs): $16,640,000
Enverus P&R PRISM provides developers with savings for the most common workflows when it comes to project siting. In addition, Enverus can perform additional workflows of value to developers, including:
- Assessing competition or potential partners
- Finding project sites with tax incentives
- Building proxy nodes with similar characteristics to nodes of interest
- Performing full-scale congestion, cost and basis risk studies
- Benchmarking project financials
By using Enverus, users can save considerable resources around data curation and analysis, so that developers can focus on making informed decisions in identifying prime project locations and maximizing their investments in future projects.
