NYSERDA awards five teams in Future Grid Challenge

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced awards in its Future Grid Challenge, which was created to develop solutions to integrate renewable energy into the electric grid.

The project teams will help various New York’s utilities, including Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Consolidated Edison, National Grid, and Orange & Rockland, improve efficiency and reliability to advance renewable energy integration.

One of the winning teams is ConnectDER, UL/AWS Truepower and Itron, which will develop a new communication system to integrate aggregated solar data directly into Con Edison’s existing Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI).

Another winning team was Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Integrated Analytics and Clean Power Research, which will utilize real-time data collection to forecast distributed energy resource generation to improve operations at Con Edison.

A third winner is Smarter Grid Solutions, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Borrego Solar, which will test smart inverter integration with Orange & Rockland’s Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) to better understand smart inverter functions, control, and communications capabilities.

The EPRI, Schneider Electric, General Electric and Smarter Grid Solutions team was awarded for their project to help Central Hudson Gas & Electric develop and demonstrate a system that can integrate large amounts of renewable energy resources for transmission and distribution systems.

Finally, the Utilidata, National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), Standard Solar and Chint Power Systems team was recognized for a project with National Grid to evaluate how to integrate solar power into utility operations using smart inverters to maintain system reliability.

“Under Governor Cuomo’s leadership, NYSERDA is proud to support projects critical to advancing a carbon-free electricity grid. The teams selected show how expertise, experience, and innovation are coming together to advance forward-thinking solutions that can meet the State’s future energy needs to enhance grid reliability and the integrity of renewables while decreasing harmful emissions, reducing energy use and lowering costs for all New Yorkers,” Alicia Barton, president and CEO of NYSERDA, said.

These awards are for the first two rounds of the Future Grid Challenge.