Cost and performance assumptions for energy modeling

If you've ever had to model out costs and performance in renewable and traditional energy power generation, you know that finding data can be difficult - especially for the newer technologies.

To this end, I highly recommend this Technical Appendix from the Union of Concerned Scientists' recent analysis on the impact of potential national RPS ("Cashing in on Clean Energy"). The UCS report has made a number of modifications to EIA assumptions, and is far more aggressive (positively) in its treatment of renewable technologies' capital costs, capacity factors and learning curves and much less so for the traditional tech (coal, nuclear, natural gas).

Given my own concerns with some EIA assumptions and reports, I welcome the approach. Happy forecasting!