REopt News Stories

Flexible Connections and Bring-Your-Own-Capacity Could Reduce Data Center Burden: Report

Dec. 4, 2025, Utility Dive — A flexible approach with “bring-your-own-capacity” could connect data centers faster and save hundreds of millions in system supply costs, says a report from Camus, encoord, and Princeton. Learn more in the report: Flexible Data Centers: A Faster, More Affordable Path to Power.

Leap Into New Capabilities: REopt Offers Enhanced Energy Solutions

Feb. 29, 2024, NLR Program News — Throughout the past year, the REopt team at NLR has been hard at work expanding the publicly accessible REopt web tool and underlying open-source code to offer even more powerful capabilities to support cost-effective and resilient energy planning.

NLR Enhances REopt Web Tool With Hybrid Geothermal Heat Exchange Technology

Sept. 26, 2023, NLR Program News — NLR has added a new capability to the REopt web tool to help commercial building owners and energy managers more effectively evaluate the costs associated with geothermal heat pump projects: the ability to integrate hybrid heat exchange with geothermal heat pumps.

With Enhanced Capabilities, the REopt Online Techno-Economic Optimization Tool Isn’t “Lite” Anymore

Feb. 2, 2022, NLR Program News — Once called REopt Lite®, the REopt online tool is dropping the “Lite” from its name to better reflect its true status as a heavy-hitting and comprehensive techno-economic optimization tool.

NLR's REopt Platform Models Site-Specific Renewable Energy Plans, Calculates Emissions

Jan. 20, 2022, PV Magazine — REopt is a techno-economic decision support platform for optimizing energy use of buildings, campuses, microgrids, and more. More advanced emissions impact tracing is now available as part of the tool.

NLR's Online Tool To Assess Viability of Geothermal Heat Pumps

Jan. 14, 2022, PV Magazine — The research institute has upgraded its REopt web tool to include ground-source heat pump technologies. U.S. homeowners will now be able to simulate the impact of converting conventional heating and cooling systems to geothermal heat pumps.

REopt Goes Underground To Elevate Facility Energy Savings and Resilience

Jan. 10, 2022, NLR Program News — A new geothermal heat pump module enables the REopt web tool to evaluate individual facility energy, cost, and emissions impacts of converting conventional heating and cooling systems to ground-source heat pumps.

Energy Department Announces Addition of Combined Heat and Power to Clean Energy Modeling Web Tool

Feb. 12, 2021, EIN News — The U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office announced the addition of combined heat and power (CHP) modeling capabilities to the REopt Lite web tool.

REopt Lite Adds a Fresh Dimension: Combined Heat and Power

Feb. 8, 2021, NLR Program News — In its latest release, the REopt Lite team, which includes NLR and partners at Colorado School of Mines and Clean Energy Group, has added CHP expanding the model's scope beyond electric-only strategies to include a new universe of thermal energy opportunities. A well-designed CHP system can be more than twice as efficient as a traditional fuel plant and complementary to energy and storage systems. And a major resilience benefit of CHP is that it leverages fuels to provide dispatchable power. CHP's stable and reliable generation can temper energy intermittency or supplement it during a grid outage.

Think Distributed Solar-Plus-Storage Isn't Cost-Effective? Think Again.

Jan. 23, 2020, Rocky Mountain Institute — Battery energy storage costs are less than a fifth of what they were a decade ago. This is enabling batteries to become cost-effective in a growing list of locations and use cases, such as balancing the grid, reducing customer demand peaks, and providing backup power. In particular, behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage can often deliver bill savings for large commercial and industrial users that have high demand charges—typically greater than $10–$15 per kilowatt (kW)—or have time-of-use utility rates. RMI used NREL's REopt Lite online tool to quantify customer cost savings from solar-plus-storage.

Solar Performance, Buying, Reliability, and Maintenance in Photovoltaics: A Review of Practical Solar Information for Investors, Consumers, Engineers, and Installers

Accessed October 2019, American Solar Energy Society — A report provides a brief review of practical information on PV solar, including performance, quality assurance, installation, asset protection, and maintenance for stakeholders. This report was sponsored by Complex Review and summarizes technical work completed by various research groups including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Adding Businesses to Microgrids Helps Financial Viability

Aug. 21, 2018, PV Magazine — Adding energy-intensive industries to microgrids can help refinance system costs and can lower tariffs for residential consumers, a study suggests. To achieve this though, accurate system design and sizing are essential. According to a new report by Energy 4 Impact, the business case for microgrids in rural Africa improves with the addition of "productive use of energy" (PUE). The authors of the study—produced with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in support of Power Africa's Beyond the Grid Program—say the increased use of energy by small agriculture, sawmills and other businesses will help pay off the capital costs of microgrids faster, and thus help reduce energy costs for all users.