US DOE provides $9 million to accelerate solar ene US DOE provides $9 million to accelerate solar energy deployment
REM Friday, 01 February 2013
US Department of Energy is providing $9 million to seven projects through its SunShot Initiative to accelerate solar energy deployment in the United States.
The projects are located in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas. The DOE says each represents an opportunity dramatically transform the operations of solar researchers, manufacturers, developers, installers, and policymakers, and speed the commercialization and deployment of affordable, clean solar energy.
“Through powerful analytical tools developed by our nation’s top universities and national labs, we can gain unparalleled insight into solar deployment that will help lower the cost of solar power and create new businesses and jobs,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Projects like these will help accelerate technological and financing innovations – making it easier for American families and businesses to access clean, affordable energy.”
As part of the investment, the DOE will provide $7 million to research teams led by Sandia National Laboratories, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Yale University and the University of Texas – Austin.
These teams will partner with public and private financial institutions, utilities and state agencies to apply statistical and computational tools to industry problem-solving and lead regional pilot projects across the country to test the impact and scalability of their innovations.
For example, Yale University researchers will partner with SmartPower’s New England Solar Challenge to design and implement innovative strategies that can increase the effectiveness of community-led bulk solar purchase programs.
The team from the University of Texas – Austin will work with complex datasets from six Texas utilities to better understand customer needs and identify opportunities to streamline installation and interconnection. Similarly, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, will lead another project with Clean Power Finance to develop a computational model to analyze data from a network of U.S. solar installers and help identify new types of community- and regional-scale strategies that drive down financing and deployment costs.
Additionally, the Energy Department is investing $2 million across three projects led by the University of North Carolina – Charlotte, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and SRI International to analyze decades’ of scientific publications, patents and cost and production data. Through these projects, researchers will be able to obtain a complete picture on the US solar industry and discover methods to accelerate technological breakthroughs and remove roadblocks to greater cost reduction.
Based in Menlo Park, California, SRI International will develop advanced software that reads and analyzes thousands of scientific publications and patents to discover new ways to speed solar energy technology innovation and commercialization. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina – Charlotte will apply computational tools to patent, cost and production data to speed up solar technology cost reductions and better forecast future cost reductions for new energy technologies.
The SunShot Initiative is a collaborative national effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade.
https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/article/us-doe-provides-9-million-to-accelerate-20130201