Earlier this year, the Energy Department announced its Grid Modernization Initiative to improve the resiliency, reliability and security of the nation’s electrical power grid. As a means of achieving this, the DOE released $18 million in funding for six new SHINES solar+storage projects. These projects will help integrate solar energy onto the grid on a large scale to increase solar electricity that can be dispatched at any time, day or night, to meet consumer electricity needs while ensuring the reliability of the grid.
“The Energy Department is leading the way in the development and deployment of affordable, reliable grid integration technologies, including energy storage, intelligent inverters, load management and innovative PV solutions, that can boost the resiliency of our nation’s electric grid while allowing us to deploy greater amounts of solar and other renewable,” said Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy David Danielson.
The projects will use internet-capable inverters and work in conjunction with smart buildings, smart appliances, and utility communication and control systems. These projects are either led by a utility company or include a utility company as a key partner, and the teams will conduct at least a one-year field demonstration of their technologies. Ultimately, the solutions developed under this effort will enable the sustainable and holistic integration of hundreds of gigawatts of additional solar energy onto the electric grid throughout the United States. Here’s a look at a couple of the projects that will use intelligent inverter technology.
Carnegie Mellon University
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
SunShot Award Amount: $1,036,963
Partners: Aquion Energy, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
The project will develop a distributed system to integrate smart inverters, energy storage and commercial off-the-shelf home automation controllers and smart thermostats. The system will optimize PV generation, storage and load consumption behaviors using various algorithms.
“The project will use Aquion Energy’s Aqueous Hybrid Ion battery technology, which can simply integrate with high-performance intelligent inverters. We’re excited about the rapid development of both energy storage and power electronics, as it holds tremendous promise for increasing adoption of renewable energy. The benefits of this adoption extend from self-sufficient homes and businesses to the electricity grid, which will evolve from infrastructure based on fossil-fuels towards a smarter, interconnected renewable energy platform.”
-Matthew Maroon, Vice President of Product Management, Aquion Energy
Austin Energy
Location: Austin, Texas
SunShot Award Amount: $4,300,000
Partners: 1Energy Systems, Clean Power Research, ConnectDER, ERCOT, Ideal Power Converters, Landis & Gyr, Pecan Street, Inc., Samsung SDI, Solar Edge, Tesla
The goal of the Austin SHINES projects is to show a solution that’s adaptable to any region and market that offers a credible pathway to a lower cost of energy for solar energy when using storage. The solution aims to establish a template for other regions to follow to maximize the penetration of distributed solar PV. Austin Energy will incorporate Ideal Power’s 125-kW and 30-kW power conversion systems paired with lithium-ion batteries.
“We’re proud to partner with Austin Energy, our local utility, to support this initiative. These projects will enable us to demonstrate the role of our grid-resilient power conversion systems in integrating energy storage with PV for grid stabilization.”
-Dan Brdar, CEO of Ideal Power
“Austin Energy is a forward-thinking utility with a track record of supporting new and innovative technology, and it is looking for the best way to integrate higher levels of renewable energy into its grid. The solar + storage projects that are part of the SHINES program will provide Ideal Power real-world deployments in our own backyard, and will substantiate the business case for distributed solar generation with storage assets. The objective of these projects is to demonstrate the DOE SunShot goal of delivering electricity from solar integrated storage at 14 cents per kilowatt hour. We expect the projects will show that the industry can meet or exceed these goals in the near term.”
-Ryan O’Keefe, Senior Vice President of Business Development for Ideal Power
