Dataset - Solar Photovoltaics on College Campuses: An Analysis of the Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act

Data corresponding to a geospatial analysis of the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on solar feasibility at higher education institutions.
Columns:INSTNM - Institution Name from IPEDSCITY - City of institution from IPEDSSTABBR - State of institution from IPEDSCreditBaseline - IRA Direct Pay Incentive estimate as a decimal (e.g., 0.30 corresponds to a 30% credit)YearlyEstimatedSavings - Yearly Estimated Savings, in US Dollars, approximated from NREL solar resource data. Assumes an 80 kW array.ANNUALAVG - Average daily solar resource data from NREL in Wh/m^2/day for the campus location given in IPEDS. Averaged over a year.EstimatedReturnRate - Estimated return rate on investment assuming $2.00/installed Watt of DC solar, 0.2 panel efficiency, 0.8 system efficiency, 12 cents/kWh, the tax credit for the institution as estimated from DoE data, and solar resource given by NREL data. (e.g., 0.11 corresponds to 11%). Data Provenance:College and University data comes from IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. In particular, school locations are from Directory information, institutional characteristics, 2022.Solar Resource data comes from NREL's RE Atlas.Energy Community data comes from the US DoE: Coal Closure Data 2024 and MSAs and Non-MSAs and their fossil fuel employment (FFE) and energy community status as of June 7, 2024.State line shape file data: 2018 US state 500k.School data was spatially joined with solar resource data to estimate the potential for solar power on each campus. The resulting data was then spatially joined with the DoE's energy community data to inform the tax credit available to each institution. Brownfield data is not included.