Sandia National Laboratories hosted a Technical Assistance Workshop designed to provide guidance for DOE’s Solar Cities Tiger Teams and others who are engaged in Technical Assistance (TA) Activities.

The workshop was conducted by Dave Menicucci and Hal Post who have collectively over 30 years of renewable energy technical assistance experience for DOE and the Department of Defense. The workshop was tailored specifically to the DOE Solar City Tiger Teams who will be providing direct technical assistance to the municipal participants of the Solar Cities Program.

Dave and Hal reviewed their technical assistance activities from 1983 until 2003. They discussed how to effectively conduct TA while avoiding the many potential pitfalls. The presentations included relevant issues to the Tiger Teams including how to properly manage and monitor TA teams, how to select appropriate TA activities, and the requisites for successful renewable energy projects.

Other topics included how to mitigate risk in TA activities, how to monitor, measure, and report TA progress, how to leverage TA activities with other related work, and how to use customer feedback to improve service. Lessons learned were summarized.

Historic technical case studies were presented to exemplify the points made in the presentations. A cadre of past projects were presented, some showing glowing successes and others involving debacles. In each case Hal and Dave will present the background information about the case and then time was given for discussion. Attendees—both live and remote—were invited to comment on the case before the actual outcome was presented. The lessons learned from each case were discussed.



This workshop contains fundamental system design and maintenance issues for lead-acid batteries. This information is for anyone contemplating use of batteries in a PV system.

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