The wind and solar siting locations that minimize the energy system cost differ significantly from the locations with the highest wind/solar resource potential on average.

While current renewable energy tax incentives in the U.S. reward total energy production – our results suggest that wind and solar complementarity and alignment with power demand can lead to a more cost-effective energy system design.

We design minimum-cost decarbonized energy systems in three regions (ISO-NE, CAISO, ERCOT). Using downscaled meteorological data at km-scale yields lower cost compared with typical meteorological data at resolutions over 30 km (i.e. reanalysis).