Clean Power Research has received Innovative Solar Partner of the Year award from the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) for its contribution towards developing PowerClerk Interconnect, software that takes solar interconnection processes distributed by utilities online and transform them.
PowerClerk Interconnect is funded by a U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative Incubator award.
It is an accessible, software-as-a-service solution that provides utilities the authority to plan and implement faster online interconnection application programs without custom software development.
In addition, this online application processing enables PV fleet data collection and storage in an online database that can be accessed for integration with customer engagement, planning and operational tools such as WattPlan and SolarAnywhere FleetView.
Together these software applications enable utilities to manage the distributed solar resources at every stage varying from production to end process.
Even though utilities helps to cut down the total installed cost of solar, only about 15 percent of utilities have optimized the processing of high numbers of interconnections in short periods of time, so there is opportunity to improve interconnection processes and reduce soft costs for both utilities and the solar industry, said, Julia Hamm, president, CEO, SEPA.
Recent SEPA research proves that utilities having online application platform process applications twice as quickly as normal utilities.
Launched in 2014, NV Energy was the first customer to implement PowerClerk Interconnect. SunShot Incubator award partners Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and the Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) tested and provided valuable feedback during development of PowerClerk Interconnect.
Recently, company expanded product offerings to allow utilities to leverage the solar PV system information they’ve obtained via PowerClerk® to better advise customers about solar and reliably integrate solar into their grid operations, said, Jeff Ressler, president, Software Services, Clean Power Research.
Sabeena Wahid
editor@greentechlead.com