Ask the Grid

NREL Annual Technology Baseline Cost and Performance Projections

Projected overnight capital cost, grid connection cost, fixed and variable O&M, capacity factor, fuel cost, heat rate, round-trip efficiency, financing terms and LCOE for US generation and storage technologies, including utility-scale, commercial and residential battery storage, solar, wind, gas, nuclear and hydropower, for every published ATB edition (2023-2025) by scenario and projection year.

NREL ATBGeneration dataERCOT marketNYISO marketCAISO marketPJM marketMISO marketISO-NE marketSPP market
Query with the agent
Native record
ATB edition x technology configuration x metric x scenario x financing case x projection year
Annual editions publication cadence
Evidence
Reference data
Stable context used to interpret other datasets
Time basis
Date-labelled records
UTC · event_time

Overview

These are national planning reference values from the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL), not a forecast for any site or market. Editions restate each other: pin one atb_year.

Query contract

Pin atb_year, technology, core_metric_parameter, display_name, scenario, core_metric_case and tax_credit_case, then read core_metric_variable as the projection year. Take the latest atb_year unless the question names an edition, and say which edition was used.

Analysis rules

  • Never average or sum across atb_year, scenario, core_metric_case or crpyears. Rows with display_name '*' and scenario '*' are technology-wide or scenario-independent and overlap the detailed rows.

Interpretation

  • Values are national reference assumptions in the dollars and units the edition states, not quotes, prices or a forecast for any project, site or market. Core_metric_variable is a projection year, not an observation date.

Access

Query from your own tools

Use the guarded HTTP endpoint directly, or connect an MCP client and load the dataset contract with describe_data before calling query_data.

ERCOT MCP CAISO MCP NYISO MCP PJM MCP SPP MCP MISO MCP ISO-NE MCP BPA MCP API reference
HTTP endpoint
POST /api/v1/datasets/nrel_atb_projections/query

Need the full history of this dataset in Snowflake, Databricks or your own storage? Data services delivers it on a schedule.

Schema23

Column
Type
event_timeDateTime64(6, 'UTC')
atb_yearInt64
core_metric_keyString
core_metric_parameterString
core_metric_caseString
tax_credit_caseString
crpyearsNullable(Int64)
technologyString
technology_aliasNullable(String)
techdetailString
techdetail2String
resourcedetailString
display_nameString
is_defaultNullable(Int64)
scaleString
maturityString
scenarioString
core_metric_variableInt64
unitsNullable(String)
valueNullable(Float64)
ref_summaryNullable(String)
ref_evidence_typeNullable(String)
ingested_atDateTime64(6, 'UTC')

Sample data

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Coverage

Coverage history is not available yet.