Abstract: The disclosed technology includes systems and methods for determining network upgrade costs of a renewable energy project for an electricity generator. An example method can include selecting a region of an electric grid and receiving power flow data for the region. The method can include determining at least one overloaded electrical component based at least in part on the power flow data. The method can further include determining a network upgrade cost for the overloaded electrical component. The network upgrade cost can be based on one or more location-specific rules and electrical component upgrade cost data. The method can include generating a cost table based on the network upgrade cost. The disclosed technology can include a system configured to implement any embodiments of the methods for determining the network upgrade costs discussed herein.

Abstract: A system and a computer-implemented method for training a learning algorithm for siting a new energy generation facility comprises executing simultaneous simulations over multiple electrical power generation capacities by accessing land parcel characteristics, including electricity transmission and market demand data. A clustering algorithm produces a first training set with expected electricity output for subsets of land parcels. Combined scores are calculated based on cumulative land size, transmission length, and projected market revenue, ranked by highest score, and stored by lowest construction cost. The method identifies changes in land parcel characteristics, determines if the changes exceed a threshold, and, if so, re-trains the clustering algorithm by re-executing the steps using the updated characteristics as a second training set.

Abstract: Disclosed is a system and method for identifying various combinations of parcels of land with sufficient transmission, resources, market demand, and available land to build a wind farm or solar farm. Different criteria associated with each parcel of land include land characteristics including size, ownership, tree coverage, elevations, terrain, buildable land, transmission characteristics including substation hardware costs, network upgrades, general tie-in costs, market characteristics including historical locational marginal pricing (LMPs), and resource characteristics including net capacity factor (NCF) of wind or solar. In one example, the present invention identifies clusters of land parcels that minimize the number of land owners, maximize buildable land, minimize transmission cost, maximize NCF, and maximize nodal LMPs.