Siemens wins DOE research award to advance solar energy role in strengthening grid

Siemens Corporate Technology U.S. won a $6.4 million research award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) to advance solar energy’s role in strengthening the U.S. electricity grid.

Siemens will work to create an energy management system that can coordinate distributed microgrids to work together. It would use diverse technologies to increase grid resilience against natural disasters or cyber-attacks and use smart inverters to restore power during a blackout.

Siemens Corporate Technology US – the company’s central research and development (R&D) unit in the US — was picked and cyber-based abnormalities in the power system and use solar generation to recover from power outages.

Siemens is one of several projects that will develop technologies that show how solar energy will enhance power system resilience. Work is expected to begin by summer 2019.

“Siemens technologies are helping to modernize the U.S. electric grid and develop stronger, more resilient power systems that can detect and defend against physical and cyber-threats and support smart infrastructures,” Ulrich Muenz, Siemens CT head of the Autonomous Systems and Control Research Group, said. “This project advances innovative research and development for technologies that could one day become standard across the industry to enhance and protect critical infrastructure through autonomous and resilient energy management systems.”

Muenz and Sindhu Suresh will lead the Siemens team. They will work with partners from DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Columbia University, Siemens Digital Grid, and Holy Cross Energy to develop an Energy Management System for Autonomous and Resilient Operation of Energy systems with RenewaAbles.

“The increasing deployment of distributed solar resources gives grid operators like Holy Cross Energy an opportunity to rethink the design and operation of our electric power system, in ways that utilize these local assets to not only deliver value to the consumer, but also to enable and enhance the reliability and resilience of the power systems in which they are embedded. By working with Siemens and collaborators in this very important project, we will get a window into the future self-driving grid and discover the most important steps we need to take to get ourselves ready for it,” Bryan Hannegan, CEO of Holy Cross Energy, said.