| Resource Type | Free online calculator |
| Author / Source | NREL/NLR (U.S. Department of Energy) |
| Publication Date | September 2022 (initial launch date) |
| Location | United States |
| Initiative Type | Technology, Program |
| Project Complexity | Beginner |
| Recommended For | Staff, Community Organizations (critical facility operators such as schools, clinics, and municipal buildings) |
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Why This Matters for Rural Electric Co-ops
This free, public tool helps identify a facility's outage vulnerabilities and estimate what an electric grid outage costs at that site. Since many of these facilities are co-op members, the results create common ground for understanding the cost of inaction.
A co-op can use it with large commercial members, schools, clinics, and other critical facilities to size the value of backup power, storage, or a microgrid. It can also support co-op business cases for hardening and energy security projects by showing how member losses grow as outages run longer.
Key Takeaways
| › | Outage costs are split into fixed, spoilage, and incremental costs, so users can see how losses build as an outage continues. |
| › | Costs are not always linear. For example, a school's costs stay fairly low until an outage passes about 8 hours, when a make-up day and extra staff pay kick in. The calculator is built to capture these shifts. |
| › | NLR describes the tool as a first step in finding the avoided costs of resilience investments, including the value of a backup system. Co-ops can use this framing when discussing member-sited resilience projects. |
| › | The results pair well with NLR's REopt modeling tool, which helps compare resilience value against the cost of onsite energy systems. |
Implementation Considerations
- Member Buy-In: The tool was built for facility owners and resilience planners, so co-ops should frame results carefully for commercial and community members and treat outputs as planning estimates, not firm figures.
- Staffing or Technology Requirements: The tool is free and simple to use, but results are only as good as the facility data entered. Co-op staff may need to work alongside member facility managers to gather cost inputs. Consider starting with one or two critical facilities.
- Time-Sensitive Information: Federal program support and hosting could change, and default assumptions may reflect 2022 cost data.
Notable Examples
- DOE Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP): Funded development of the calculator.
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ICE Calculator: A related DOE tool also used to estimate the hourly cost of outages to customers, suited to system-level estimates.
- NLR REopt modeling tool: Companion modeling tool for sizing and valuing onsite energy and resilience systems.
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Related to
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.