Three weeks ago, during the confirmation hearing of President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, a leaked memo described plans to eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), which most solar observers assumed meant the imminent death of the Sunshot Initiative.
But yesterday a plaintive cry, like the old man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was heard: “We’re not dead yet!”
With the announcement of up to $30 million in new projects designed to integrate solar energy into the grid to improve its reliability, SunShot announced funding for 13 projects, showing its determination to keep its presence in the solar industry alive as long as it can.
“SunShot is working to lower the cost and complexity of integrating solar with the electric grid,” says SunShot Director Charlie Gay. “These projects give grid operators the tools to manage a modern electric grid.”
This round of funding is designed to give grid operators access to real-time measurement and forecasting data from distributed-energy sources. Having such data, powered by the latest sensor, communication and data analytics technologies, allows grid operators to maximize the output of solar plants.
In addition, Sunshot is hoping to improve the grid’s reliability by providing utilities with dynamic, automated and cost-effective management of solar and other distributed energy sources with scalable, data-driven software and hardware solutions.
For a full list of the awardees, amounts of money and descriptions of the projects, click here.
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