Since 2016, E3 has supported NYSERDA and the New York Department of Public Service in developing both innovative valuation frameworks for distributed energy resources (DERs) and retail rate designs. This work has included a variety of services related to DERs including calculating the benefits and costs of various types of DERs and developing tools for developers and investors to evaluate DER projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Historically, E3 has developed, maintained, and updated NYSERDA’s Solar Value Stack Calculator for solar and hybrid energy storage projects. With a new update to the Solar Value Stack Calculator, E3 updated and merged the tool with the separate Energy Storage Calculator, creating a single tool for valuing solar, hybrid storage, and standalone storage systems under value stack tariff across all New York utility service territories.
E3’s 2024 update to the Solar Value Stack Calculator integrates the previously separate energy storage calculator to ensure consistency in model assumptions and data sources, while expanding the functionality of standalone storage modeling to include all utilities in New York State. The tool helps developers estimate project revenue under New York’s Value Stack methodology, a nuanced tariff structure to value and compensate DERs based on both when and where they inject energy into the grid. E3’s latest update addressed a critical need from the developer community as it increasingly pursues standalone storage projects throughout New York.
In addition to the Updated Value Stack Calculator, E3 and NYSERDA recently released a training video for users of the tool. The calculator itself, including E3’s latest improvements, can be downloaded from the NYSERDA site. The E3 team supporting these latest updates includes Jun Zhang, Andrew Solfest, Caitlin McMahon, and Kush Patel.
