The generation story is straightforward: if new electricity demand is served with lower-cost clean supply and flexible peak resources instead of new fossil-heavy additions, the power bill falls and emissions fall with it.
In the simulator, this is modeled as roughly 40% lower cost than new fossil additions for the exposed part of the generation stack. The point is not that every existing fossil plant disappears by 2035. It is that the next increment of capacity and energy can be served more cheaply.
This cost-reduction lever is grounded in Berkeley Lab's U.S.-Germany residential PV comparison: median installed prices were about twice as high in the United States as in Germany, driven mostly by soft costs rather than module hardware. Faster permitting, standardized interconnection, simpler customer acquisition, and stronger installer competition therefore lower delivered clean-energy cost without waiting for a new technology breakthrough.
Median installed price for residential systems in the Berkeley Lab study of 2012 installations.
Largest pieces of the U.S.-Germany residential PV price-gap decomposition reported by Berkeley Lab for 2011-2012.
The calculator treats VPPs and demand response as lower-cost peak-serving capacity. That follows DOE's VPP work and the attached playbook, which together argue that flexible, customer-side resources can avoid expensive peaker additions and reduce the peak-driven part of generation cost by up to 50% for the affected slice of the system.
The playbook’s generation message is not just “build more clean power.” It is “open the market so low-cost clean power, batteries, and aggregators can compete directly with fossil additions and peak-capacity buildout.”
Use all-source procurement, direct clean transition tariffs, and procurement rules that compare solar plus storage to new fossil on a like-for-like basis instead of assuming the incumbent thermal option wins.
Instant or near-instant permitting, standardized interconnection rules, and permission-to-operate automation lower delivered clean-power cost without waiting for any new hardware breakthrough.
Require utilities to evaluate VPPs as supply-side capacity in IRPs and procurement, support default enrollment where devices are enabled, and allow third-party aggregators to compete directly.
Florida and Texas show the biggest modeled generation savings, while California and New York gain more from pairing cheaper supply with transmission and distribution discipline.