Screening Tool for Equitable Adoption and Deployment of Solar (STEADy Solar)

Description

The Screening Tool for Equitable Adoption and DeploYment of Solar (STEADy Solar) is a database and mapping tool designed to promoting clean energy investments for low-income communities across the United States. The tool indicates locations that may be eligible for the Investment Tax Credit bonus adders defined in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and combines this information with demographics, social vulnerability, solar technical potential, solar economics (modeled net present value), and building counts by use-type. It can be used by states, municipalities, community-based organizations, developers, and researchers to identify sites where solar projects may be economical and where federal incentives may be available to support equitable adoption of solar.Specific values include: Areas eligible for the Energy Communities Tax Credit Bonus Program (including brownfield site counts)Areas eligible for the Low Income Communities Bonus Credit Program (including Tribal Lands, and covered affordable housing project counts)Areas categorized as disadvantaged by Justice40Commercial and Residential Solar economics characterized by the Net Present Value and Simple Payback PeriodTotal Population, Race, and EthnicityMedian Household Income, Poverty rate, Household TenureSocial VulnerabilityCount of buildings, developable rooftop solar capacity (in kWdc) and estimated annual generation potential (in kWh) on four building types: Government General Services, Government Emergency Response, Grade Schools, and Colleges/Universities. The linked report describes the STEADy dataset metadata and presents high level insights from the data. The downloadable and formatted excel dataset makes it easy for users to gain insights for their locations. Supporting .csv and shapefiles provide users with the full data to run their own analyses on equitable solar siting.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
33 This user-guide for the STEADy Solar Database: 1. provides an introduction to the tool, 2. provides sources, metadata, links, and descriptions of all included data, and 3. provides preliminary findings for all 50 states and Puerto Rico. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy24osti/85722.pdf
0 An ESRI shapefile version of the database is provided for more advanced GIS users or for integration into mapping applications. https://data.nrel.gov/system/files/238/1716529424-STEADy_May2024_4.zip
0 A CSV version of the database is provided for users to integrate into their own analysis tools. https://data.nrel.gov/system/files/238/1716529424-STEADy_May2024_5.csv
5 STEADy Solar's formatted excel gives users easy access to filtering, sorting, and summarizing equitable solar data. The 'Codebook' sheet describes all field names while the 'Data' sheet contains dataset. https://data.nrel.gov/system/files/238/1716529424-STEADy_May2024_3.xlsx

Tags

  • dgen
  • geospatial
  • commercial-solar
  • inflation-reduction-act
  • equitable-solar-adoption
  • solar
  • residential-solar
  • tribal-land
  • census-tract
  • lmi-communities
  • renewable-energy-potential-model
  • brownfield-properties
  • solar-economics
  • multifamily-affordable-housing
  • energy-communities-tax-credit-bonus
  • cejst
  • low-income-communities-bonus-credit-program
  • steady
  • solar-site-selection
  • national-structures-inventory

Topics

Categories