| June 22, 2010
DOE Announces New Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems Awards of up to $11.8 Million
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The SEGIS team at Sandia National Laboratories
Left corner (Ward Bower, Abbas Akhil, Carolyn David)
Right corner(Sigifredo Gonzalez, Lisa Sena-Henderson, Scott Kuszmaul)
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The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) announced five cost-shared, follow-on projects in Stage 2 of the Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) sub-program. The total DOE investment for these projects is up to $11.8 million and includes $5.0 million under the Recovery Act, subject to annual appropriations. Private sector contributions averaging 40% cost share will further increase the financial investment for a total of up to $19.5 million. The selections announced today are part of DOE’s continuing work to help assure the nation’s electrical grid reliability is maintained or improved as solar energy technologies reach cost competitiveness with conventional sources of electricity and when heightened levels of photovoltaic (PV) solar electricity flows into the nation’s electrical grid.
Announced in 2007 and begun in 2008, the SEGIS sub-program is a partnership between DOE, Sandia, industry, utilities, and universities with an emphasis on complete system development. Teams have successfully completed conceptual designs, market analysis and team building during the prior phase. The competitively judged, down-selected, projects focus on the most promising technology advances for development of intelligent system controls and ultimately to maintain or improve power quality and reliability while increasing PV solar technologies contributions and economic value to the U.S. electrical grid. |
SEGIS Stage 3 Awardees
| Petra Solar (South Plainfield, NJ) with the University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL) and Fifteen Electric Utilities with service in NJ, PA, OH, DE, MD, DC, FL, TX: The aim of this project is to address grid interactivity, cost reduction, PV system reliability, and safety through low cost, easy-to-install, modular and scalable inverter power architecture. A primary goal is to develop a solar power management platform to cost effectively transform the electric grid to a more distributed, reliable, resilient, and safer architecture. Specific focus is placed on multi-layer control and communication architecture. It includes an offsite utility distribution system operator and monitor. It also monitors and controls a cluster of AC module inverters and a strategic energy management system switch junction box. |
| Princeton Power (Princeton, NJ) with Transistor Device Inc (TDI), LaGuardia Community College (New York, NY), Idyllwild Municipal Water District (San Diego, CA), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Princeton, NJ), Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (Princeton, NJ), Premier Power, SPG Solar (Novato, CA), and Spire (Bedford, MA): This project will develop a complete design for a 100-kW “Demand Response Inverter” based on Princeton proprietary topology and components. The design will be optimized for low-cost, high-quality manufacture, and will integrate control capabilities including energy storage and demand response through load control. |
| PVPowered (Bend, OR) with Portland General Electric (Portland, OR), South Dakota State University (Brookings, SD), and Northern Plains Power Technologies (Brookings, SD), Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (Pullman, WA), SENSUS (Raleigh, NC):The aim of this project is to address the fundamental objectives of the SEGIS program and includes the development of a suite of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithms to optimize energy production from the full range of available and emerging PV module technologies. It will also include development of advanced communications integration with electric utilities and facility energy management systems and wraps five interdependent SEGIS developments with a platform integration task. |
| Florida Solar Energy Center/UCF with Team Partners: Satcon Technology Corporation (Boston, MA), SENTECH, Inc. (Bethesda, MD), SunEdison (Beltsville, MD), Cooper Power Systems EAS (Minneapolis, MN), Northern Plains Power Technologies (Brookings, SD) and Lakeland Electric Utilities (Lakeland, FL): This project focuses on utility control of advanced PV systems to provide the grid support expected of conventional utility generators, as well as enhanced features uniquely available from solid-state generators. The project includes the implementation of a larger “shared” inverter serving multiple residential or commercial PV arrays utilizing a common DC bus to aggregate the energy, with the inverter owned by the utility and located at the pad-mounted distribution transformer. The enclosure will include utility control, communication and monitoring functions, or building energy management systems (BEMS), with optional energy storage capabilities. |
Results from the 5 partnered SEGIS teams will be competitively evaluated for a follow on stage intended for pilot production. Selection criteria will include projects with the highest likelihood of commercialization that best enables and accelerates integration of solar PV technologies into the electrical grid.
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SEGIS Stage 1
Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems RFP |
