NREL Annual Technology Baseline
nrel
Cost and performance projections for electricity generation and storage technologies, to 2050, in three scenarios.
Before you use this
- Projections, not observations. Every value is conditional on the scenario it sits in, and comparing figures across scenarios or across ATB vintages is a category error.
- ProvenanceUntraced
- DocumentationPartially documented
- Currency & maintenanceCurrent
How many layers of assumptions sit under this is not recorded. That is not the same as none.
The canonical US technology cost stack: capital cost, fixed and variable O&M, capacity factor and financing assumptions by technology and year, under conservative, moderate and advanced trajectories. Cataloged as one dataset with two domain facets rather than as two records — the storage tables and the generation tables are the same publication and splitting them would double every future update.
- Identifier
https://catalog.opengrid.org/ds/nrel-atb- Domains
- Emerging technology parameters, Cost & financial
- Keywords
- ATB, NREL, capex, cost, projection, storage, technology
Fitness for purpose
- Supports
- Capacity Expansion Modeling, Market Simulation
- Not suitable for
- Production Cost Modeling
The exclusions are the half you cannot get anywhere else. A dataset that is wrong for your question is worth knowing about before you build on it.
Structure
- Network topology
- Not captured
- Impedances
- Not captured
- Voltage classes
- Not captured
- Provenance class
- modeled
- Upstream sources
- Not capturedWhich is a statement about what the catalog can show, not about how the data was produced.
- Licence
- CC-BY-4.0
- Redistribution
- Not captured
Access terms, per path
CSV, one row per technology, year, scenario and metric
none
Geographic
- Bounding box
- 18.00° – 72.00° N, -170.00° – -66.00° E
- Granularity
- national
- Native CRS
- EPSG:4326
- Geometry types
- Not captured
- Features
- Not captured
- As WKT
POLYGON((-170 18, -66 18, -66 72, -170 72, -170 18))
Temporal
- From
- Jan 1, 2022
- To
- Dec 31, 2050
- Update cadence
- yearly
- Time resolution
- Not captured
| Field | Definition | Type | Unit | Concept | Value basis | Provenance | Report an issue with this field |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CAPEXOvernight capital cost | Overnight capital cost per unit of nameplate capacity, in constant dollars of the ATB base year. Caveat: Constant dollars of the ATB base year. Comparing against a figure in another year's dollars without deflating is the most common misuse. | float64 | Not captured | Not captured | modeled | Read from: nrel-atb | |
Fixed O&MFixed operating cost | Annual fixed operations and maintenance cost per unit of capacity. | float64 | Not captured | Not captured | modeled | Read from: nrel-atb | |
WACC RealReal weighted average cost of capital | Real WACC assumed for the technology and year, before tax credits. Caveat: DD9's structural note calls WACC almost entirely absent from open sources. This field is one of the few published values and is an assumption, not an observation. | float64 | Not captured | Not captured | estimated | Read from: nrel-atb |
The catalog says why, rather than leaving the cell blank.
Three independent facets
Graded separately and never combined. A dataset can be perfectly current and completely unprovenanced, and one number would hide exactly that.
Provenance
DUntraced
No upstream source is recorded. This is a statement about what the catalog can show, not about how the data was produced: a carefully measured dataset with no recorded lineage grades D, because a user cannot trace it.
Documentation
BPartially documented
0 of 3 fields are fully documented, 3 carry a definition. 3 lack a unit.
Currency & maintenance
ACurrent
Last updated 2026-07-01 against a stated cadence of P1Y; next due 2027-09-29.
Visible without signing in, deliberately: an evaluator comparing catalogs should not have to register first.
- 9Complementary
- 1Related
- EIA natural gas prices and Short-Term Energy OutlookStrength 2 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Market Simulation.
- · Both feed Market Simulation.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2027-12-31.
- · Bounding boxes overlap over 100% of their combined extent.
- · Both are national.
- NREL National Solar Radiation DatabaseStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2024-12-31.
- · Bounding boxes overlap over 32% of their combined extent.
- Ember Global Electricity Review and Renewable Target TrackerStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2025-12-31.
- · Bounding boxes overlap over 9% of their combined extent.
- · Both are national.
- Global Energy Monitor Global Integrated Power TrackerStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2026-07-01.
- · Bounding boxes overlap over 9% of their combined extent.
- Global Transmission DatabaseStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2024-01-01.
- · Bounding boxes overlap over 9% of their combined extent.
- PyPSA-Eur weather cutoutsStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2023-12-31.
- ECMWF ERA5 reanalysisStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2022-01-01 to 2026-08-01.
- · Bounding boxes overlap over 9% of their combined extent.
- PyPSA-Eur grid dataset (pre-built OSM network)Strength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Coverage overlaps from 2024-01-01 to 2024-08-01.
- OpenGrid Reference: Cascade InterconnectStrength 1 of 5Complementary
Both feed: Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- · Both feed Capacity Expansion Modeling.
- IRENA Renewable Cost DataStrength 1 of 5Related
Related through shared coverage; no stronger connection is recorded.
- · Both are national.
OpenGrid redirects you to the source and never proxies the bytes. For a partial read of a large dataset, use the SDK — it fetches an access plan and reads only the slice you asked for.
CSV, one row per technology, year, scenario and metric
● Checked and working- Size:
- 90 MiB
- No account needed:
- Yes