Department of Energy awards $10.7M to EPRI for solar research

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office awarded the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) a $10.7 million grant for the research on how to improve the performance of solar energy systems.

“This research aims to identify and mitigate risks related to adding more photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity,” Arshad Mansoor, senior vice president, research and development at EPRI, said. “Considered as a group, these projects bring advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence, and traditional field-based research to inform the deployment of advanced solar generation to support grid reliability and resilience.”

The grant is for five different projects. One is $4.1 million for EPRI’s project “Adaptive Protection and Validated Models to Enable Deployment of High Penetration of Solar PV (PV-MOD)” to develop models of PV facilities for power system engineers’ use in planning, operating, and protecting transmission and distribution systems.

Further, $3 million will go toward EPRI’s “Enable Behind the Meter Distributed Energy Resources Provided Grid Services that Maximize Customer and Grid Benefits” to enhance the reliability and efficiency of the grid.

Also, $2 million will fund EPRI’s “Automating Detection and Diagnosis of Faults, Failures, and Underperformance in PV Plants” to address the underperformance of solar facilities to increase their productivity.

In addition, $1.4 million goes toward the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Light Detection and Ranging/Camera Technologies to Detect Avian Events and Other Environmental Measures at Utility-Scale Power Plants.” This is to develop machine learning and vision models for monitoring birds at solar facilities using drones and long-term imaging sensors.

Finally, $200,000 will be used to evaluate PV plant design innovations to reduce costs and enable more dispatchable solar energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office supports early-stage research and development to improve the affordability and performance of solar technologies on the grid.