US DOE approves $12m funding for solar technologies
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has authorised $12m in further funding for solar forecasting technologies. The money will be split between eight projects which aim to enhance forecasting technologies, advance variability management and improve grid reliability and resilience. Some $1.8m of the funding will go to the Electric Power Research Institute in Tennessee, towards a scheme developing better probabilistic solar and net load predictions. Other winners include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of Arizona and John Hopkins University.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) will extend USD 12 million (EUR 10.1m) to finance eight projects developing technologies that forecast solar generation levels, it announced on Tuesday.

The funds will be provided by the Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) that supports early-stage research and development (R&D) in the solar sector. They will be split between eight projects seeking to advance solar forecasting technologies, improve variability management and thus enhance grid reliability and resilience.

“These projects will address a critical gap in our research, which is knowing precisely how much solar electricity to expect at any given hour on any given day,” said energy secretary Rick Perry.

More specifically, four of the selected projects will seek to make “significant advances” in solar forecasting, while another project will develop an open-source framework for evaluation of solar irradiation, plant generation and net-load forecasts. The other three schemes will explore the integration of advanced forecasting technologies with grid planning and operations systems.

The largest portion of the financing, of USD 1.8 million, will go for the Electric Power Research Institute in Tennessee for a project that will develop improved probabilistic solar and net load forecasts for three separate utility case studies. The other winners are the University of Arizona, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of California San Diego, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which will work on two projects, the Brookhaven National Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.844)

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