(Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)

As a state-of-the-art capacity expansion planning model, Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) 2.0 provides unprecedented insight into how policy, economic, technology and regulatory variables will shape the transformation of the sector through 2050. ReEDS 2.0 empowers more users to make better-informed decisions that are pivotal to power system optimization because: It is freely available; has the highest spatial resolution of models of its class; incorporates NREL’s rich renewable energy geospatial data sets at high resolution; is sophisticated in its treatment of renewable energy integration issues. It also has earned the confidence of a diverse set of power system stakeholders. More than 400 people from more than 250 organizations — including universities, utilities, government agencies, financial institutions, nonprofit organizations, and software companies — have requested access to ReEDS2.0 since its public release. “ReEDS has been one of the main tools for understanding how climate and clean energy policy would reduce CO₂ emissions, impact overall electric system cost and change the electricity generation mix on a granular level,” said Sandra Sattler, Senior Energy Modeler, Union of Concerned Scientists