The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a funding opportunity to support low-cost, flexible and reliable solutions for the integration of high solar PV grid penetrations through by using energy storage, reports PV Magazine.
The announcement is part of its SunShot program, done a week after Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz announced US$53 million in awards for R&D at the Solar Power International trade show.
Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) will provide up to US$15 million in funding for projects which use energy storage solutions. This will include projects that utilize smart inverters.
The continental United States does not have as high of penetrations of solar as Italy, Germany or Spain. All three of these nations met 5-7 percent of electricity demand with solar in 2013 and none have deployed widespread energy storage.
However, California has deployed utility-scale PV and solar CSP alone meeting 2.4 percent of demand over the course of 2013. Hawaii has high solar penetration rate, due to isolated island grids.
DOE is preparing for the future. The goal of SunShot’s systems integration team is to anticipate and proactively address any potential challenges that could occur if or when hundreds of gigawatts of solar energy are interconnected to the grid, said, Minh Le, office director, DOE Solar Technologies.
As the U.S. solar sector progresses towards such a high penetration scenario, it becomes increasingly possible that impacts on the electrical grid will occur due to the constrained availability and variability of solar energy, added Le.
It’s crucial to prevent such closures from occurring, as they’re a threat to achieving the nation’s renewable energy deployment goals in the fight against climate change, he continued.
Sabeena Wahid
editor@greentechlead.com