The site suitability criteria
included in the techno-economic land use screens are listed below. As this list
is an update to previous cycles, tribal lands, prime farmland, and flood zones
are not included as they are not technically infeasible for development. The
techno-economic site suitability exclusion thresholds are presented in Table 1.
Distances indicate the minimum distance from each feature for commercial scale
solar development.Attributes:Steeply sloped areas: change in
vertical elevation compared to horizontal distancePopulation
density: the number of people living in a 1 km2 areaUrban
areas: defined by the U.S. Census.8Water
bodies: defined by the U.S. National Atlas Water Feature Areas,
available from Argonne National Lab Energy Zone Mapping Tool9Railways:
a comprehensive database of North America's railway system from
the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), available from Argonne
National Lab Energy Zone Mapping ToolMajor
highways: available from ESRI Living Atlas10Airports:
The Airports dataset including other aviation facilities as of July 13, 2018 is
part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)/Bureau of Transportation
Statistics' (BTS's) National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). The
Airports database is a geographic point database of aircraft landing facilities
in the United States and U.S. Territories. Attribute data is provided on the physical
and operational characteristics of the landing facility, current usage
including enplanements and aircraft operations, congestion levels and usage
categories. This geospatial data is derived from the FAA's National Airspace
System Resource Aeronautical Data Product. Available from Argonne National Lab
Energy Zone Mapping ToolActive
mines: Active Mines and Mineral Processing Plants in the United
States in 200311Military Lands: Land owned by the federal government that is part of a US military base, camp, post, station, yard, center or installation.Table
1
Solar
Steeply sloped areas
>10o
Population density
>100/km2
Capacity
factor
<20%
Urban areas
<500 m
Water bodies
<250 m
Railways
<30 m
Major
highways
<125 m
Airports
<1000 m
Active mines
<1000 m
Military Lands
<1000m
For more information about the
processes and sources used to develop the screening criteria see sources 1-7 in
the footnotes.
Data updates occur as needed, corresponding to typical
3-year CPUC IRP planning cycles.Footnotes:[1]
Lopez, A. et. al. “U.S. Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: A GIS-Based
Analysis,” 2012. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51946.pdf[2] https://greeningthegrid.org/Renewable-Energy-Zones-Toolkit/topics/social-environmental-and-other-impacts#ReadingListAndCaseStudies[3] Multi-Criteria Analysis for Renewable Energy (MapRE),
University of California Santa Barbara. https://mapre.es.ucsb.edu/[4]
Larson, E. et. al. “Net-Zero
America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts, Interim Report.”
Princeton University, 2020. https://environmenthalfcentury.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf331/files/2020-12/Princeton_NZA_Interim_Report_15_Dec_2020_FINAL.pdf.[5]
Wu, G. et. al. “Low-Impact Land
Use Pathways to Deep Decarbonization of Electricity.” Environmental Research
Letters 15, no. 7 (July 10, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab87d1.[6]
RETI Coordinating Committee,
RETI Stakeholder Steering Committee. “Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative
Phase 1B Final Report.” California Energy Commission, January 2009.[7] Pletka,
Ryan, and Joshua Finn. “Western Renewable Energy Zones, Phase 1: QRA
Identification Technical Report.” Black & Veatch and National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, 2009. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/46877.pdf.[8] https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php?year=2019&layergroup=Urban+Areas[9] https://ezmt.anl.gov/[10]
https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=fc870766a3994111bce4a083413988e4[11] https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mineplant/CreditsTitle:
Techno-economic screening criteria for utility-scale solar photovoltaic energy
installations for Integrated Resource PlanningPurpose for
creation: These exclusion criteria are for use in electric system planning, capacity
expansion modeling, and integrated resource planning.Keywords: solar,
photovoltaic, resource potential, techno-economic, PV, IRPExtent: western
states of the contiguous U.S.Use LimitationsThe
geospatial data created by the use of these techno-economic screens inform
high-level estimates of technical renewable resource potential for electric
system planning and should not be used, on their own, to guide siting of
generation projects nor assess project-level impacts. Confidentiality:
PublicContactEmily Leslie Emily@MontaraMtEnergy.comSam Schreiber sam.schreiber@ethree.com Jared Ferguson Jared.Ferguson@cpuc.ca.gov
Oluwafemi
Sawyerr femi@ethree.com