Resource Hub

Renewable Energy Resources You Can Put to Work

Practical tools, checklists, guides, templates, and reference materials for renewable energy professionals

Use them to prepare projects, organize your work, strengthen your process, and better understand how the pieces of a project fit together.

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Tools & Templates

Practical resources for the decisions, documents, and challenges renewable energy professionals encounter every day. Use them on their own, share them with your team, or pair them with Energy Academy training to go deeper.

Browse by Category

Select a category below to filter the featured resources.

Keep important steps, requirements, and deliverables from falling through the cracks.

Start with a practical framework instead of rebuilding the same spreadsheet, tracker, or process from scratch.

Quickly understand contracts, project structures, terminology, processes, and common industry considerations.

Test your judgment, work through project scenarios, and apply concepts in a more hands-on way.

Statistics on a laptop

How to Use a Solar Financial Model to Evaluate Project Returns

A plain-English walkthrough of a solar financial model — project costs, energy production, revenue, operating expenses, financing and incentives — and how to test each assumption in The Energy Academy's free interactive model.
How to Use PVWatts to Estimate Solar Energy Production

How to Use PVWatts to Estimate Solar Energy Production

A step-by-step guide to NREL's PVWatts Calculator: what to enter, which assumptions matter, how to read annual production and capacity factor, and the mistakes that skew early estimates.

Solar Interconnection Process: An Interactive Project Roadmap

The eight stages of commercial solar interconnection, from early feasibility review through permission to operate, plus the risks and questions that shape project schedule and cost.
Solar Project Finance Basics: How Costs Become Returns

Solar Project Finance Basics: How Costs Become Returns

How construction cost, energy production, contract revenue, operating expenses, incentives and financing combine into solar project cash flow — and what investors and lenders look for in a financeable project.

Coming soon. We’re adding new resources to this category regularly — check back shortly, or browse the other categories above.

Need More Than the Tool?

Many of these resources are supported by free Energy Academy courses and lessons that explain the concepts behind them.

Use the resource now. Learn the why when you need it.

Vendor Directory

Find companies supporting renewable energy projects across development, engineering, construction, equipment, finance, legal, software, and more.

Browse by service, technology, project type, or geography to find the right partner for your project.

The directory is being built. Listings are not open yet — the categories below show what it will cover.

EPC & Construction

Contractors and builders supporting project execution from mobilization through commissioning.

Engineering

Electrical, civil, structural, geotechnical, and interconnection engineering services.

Solar Equipment

Modules, inverters, racking, BOS components, and procurement support.

Energy Storage

Battery systems, integrators, controls, and storage technology providers.

Software & Technology

Design, modeling, asset management, monitoring, CRM, and workflow tools.

Finance

Lenders, tax equity providers, investors, and project finance advisors.

Legal

Law firms and specialists supporting contracts, land, permitting, finance, and transactions.

Operations & Maintenance

O&M providers, asset managers, monitoring platforms, and field-service partners.

Course & Learning

Explore free courses and lessons that help you understand the renewable energy project lifecycle—from origination and development through finance, construction, and operations.

DEVELOPMENT

Solar Development 101

Learn how a project moves from raw land to notice to proceed, covering site qualification, site control, permitting, interconnection and construction readiness.

DEVELOPMENT

Site Control Fundamentals

Understand leases, easements and option agreements, plus the title work and property rights that decide whether a site can actually be built.

DEVELOPMENT

Interconnection Essentials

Follow a project through the interconnection queue: feasibility and system impact studies, upgrade costs, and the timing risks that reshape a schedule.

ENGINEERING

Solar Engineering 101

Work through the engineering decisions behind a solar plant, from array layout and equipment selection to electrical design and constructability review.

ENGINEERING

Rooftop Solar Design

Design for existing buildings: structural loading, roof condition and attachment, fire code setbacks, and the tradeoffs that shape a rooftop array.

ENGINEERING

Utility Interconnection

Examine the technical side of connecting to the grid, including protection requirements, metering, and the studies utilities run before approval.

CONSTRUCTION

Solar Construction 101

See how a solar project gets built, from mobilization and civil work through racking, module installation, electrical work, and commissioning.

CONSTRUCTION

Construction Planning & Field Execution

Plan the work and run the site: schedules, crews, submittals, inspections, and the field decisions that keep a build on time.

CONSTRUCTION

EPC Agreement

Break down the contract that governs construction, including scope, milestones, liquidated damages, warranties, and how risk is allocated.

FINANCE

Solar Project Finance 101

Understand how solar projects get funded, covering capital structure, tax equity, debt sizing, and what lenders and investors look for.

FINANCE

Project Costs & Revenue Streams

Map where the money goes and where it comes from: development and EPC costs, energy revenue, incentives, and operating expenses.

FINANCE

IRR, NPV & Payback

Learn the metrics used to judge a project, how each is calculated, and where they mislead if the underlying assumptions are weak.

LEGAL

Solar Legal 101

Get oriented in the contracts and legal structures behind a renewable project, and learn where deals most often run into trouble.

LEGAL

Site Control

Review the agreements that secure land rights, what each one obligates, and the diligence that protects a project before capital is committed.

LEGAL

Power Purchase Agreements

Work through PPA structure and the terms that drive value: pricing, term, delivery obligations, credit support, and termination.

ORIGINATION

Origination 101

Learn how deals are sourced and shaped, from identifying offtakers and sites to qualifying the opportunities worth real development spend.

ORIGINATION

Power Purchase Agreement

Understand what an offtaker actually cares about and how PPA terms get negotiated from the origination side of the table.

ORIGINATION

Solar & Commercial Real Estate

Explore rooftop and land deals with property owners, including lease economics, tenant considerations, and what makes a site attractive.

ENERGY MARKETS

Energy Markets 101

Understand how electricity is bought, sold and dispatched, and how market design shapes the value a renewable project can capture.

ENERGY MARKETS

Renewable Energy Fundamentals

Cover the technologies, policy drivers and economics behind the energy transition, and how renewables fit into the wider power system.

ENERGY MARKETS

Market Structures & Tariffs

Compare regulated and deregulated markets, ISO and RTO roles, and the tariff structures that determine what a project is paid.

ASSET MANAGEMENT

Asset Management 101

Learn what it takes to run an operating portfolio, covering performance, contracts, compliance and reporting across the asset lifecycle.

ASSET MANAGEMENT

Performance Monitoring & Reporting

Track production against expectation, investigate underperformance, and produce the reporting that owners and lenders require.

ASSET MANAGEMENT

O&M Contract Administration

Manage the O&M relationship: scope and service levels, availability guarantees, warranty claims, and vendor performance.

Industry Resources

Curated guides, databases, calculators, reports, and reference materials from trusted organizations across the renewable energy industry.

Use these resources to answer questions, validate assumptions, and go deeper on the topics that matter to your work.

PV Operation and Maintenance Best Practices Guide

PV Operation and Maintenance Best Practices Guide

NREL / Sandia / SunSpec Alliance
The industry's reference O&M guide for PV and storage, now in its 3rd edition and free.
NREL PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative

NREL PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative

NREL / U.S. Department of Energy
Fleet-wide degradation benchmarks built from real operating plant data, not laboratory estimates.
FEMA Flood Map Service Center

FEMA Flood Map Service Center

FEMA
The official flood hazard maps, free, searchable by address before a site ever reaches diligence.
OSHA Solar Worker Safety: Green Job Hazards

OSHA Solar Worker Safety: Green Job Hazards

OSHA
OSHA's own hazard guidance for solar work, organised by the hazards that actually injure people on site.
NREL Solar Cost Benchmark

NREL Solar Cost Benchmark

NREL
Bottom-up installed cost modeling for residential, commercial and utility-scale PV, broken down line by line.
pvlib python

pvlib python

pvlib python / NumFOCUS
The open-source Python library for PV modeling, and the reference implementation of most published models.
NABCEP Certification

NABCEP Certification

NABCEP
The industry's recognized credentialing body for solar and storage practitioners, and what each credential actually signals.
Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+)

Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+)

Lazard
The most-cited cross-technology cost comparison in the industry, free, and now in its 2026 edition.
PJM Data Miner 2

PJM Data Miner 2

PJM Interconnection
PJM's public market data portal: prices, load and generation, searchable without an account.
EIA Electric Power Monthly

EIA Electric Power Monthly

U.S. Energy Information Administration
The official monthly statistical record of U.S. electricity: generation, capacity, sales, revenue, and price.
FERC Order No. 2023: Interconnection Process Reform

FERC Order No. 2023: Interconnection Process Reform

FERC
The federal order that reshaped generator interconnection queues, in the primary source rather than a summary of a summary.
LevelTen PPA Price Index

LevelTen PPA Price Index

LevelTen Energy
Quarterly PPA pricing built from real offers rather than surveys, with free executive summaries.

Challenges

Put your knowledge to work with short, real-world renewable energy scenarios designed to test judgment, reinforce concepts, and make learning more practical.

CURRENT CHALLENGE

Does the Project Pencil?

Twenty-four project assumptions. Eight are wrong. You get eight flags to spend.

Test your ability to spot the assumptions that can make or break a renewable energy project.

Project Finance 101 · About 10 minutes · $100 Amazon eGift Card + custom-branded YETI Rambler · Entries close September 30 at 11:59 p.m. PST

Past Challenges

ORIGINATION · JULY 2026

Can You Close the Deal?

Twenty negotiating moments from real power purchase agreement discussions. Pick the response a seasoned originator would make.

CLOSED
CONSTRUCTION · JULY 2026

What Would You Do? Construction 101

Field decisions from real construction sites. Choose what you would do, then see how your call compares.

CLOSED

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