Title: Beneficial Integration of Energy Storage and Load Management with Photovoltaics 

Image

Funding OpportunitySustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV
SunShot SubprogramSystems Integration
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Amount Awarded: $3,124,685
Awardee Cost Share: $3,240,262

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is working with five utilities to design, develop, and demonstrate technology for end-to-end grid integration of energy storage (ES) and load management with photovoltaic (PV) generation. The technology is an optimized control architecture that will be demonstrated and have its effectiveness verified at three sites: Flushing, NY, Cleveland, OH and northern Florida. This project will demonstrate utility-level system control, such as a distribution management system (DMS), with a consumer-level, local controller. 

APPROACH

The project validates an optimized control architecture technology at three demonstration sites. This offers the advantage of different integration challenges and combinations of distributed resources. One residential and two commercial sites will be used. These sites provide the opportunity to compare and contrast configurations and sizing ratios, as well as, different grid interconnections and solar resource variability.

INNOVATION

Significant investments have been made to understand ways to enable a higher penetration of PV. These include feeder screening methods, applying smart inverters, advancing battery technologies, optimizing load management, and providing better communication and control of energy resources at a consumer level or at the distribution level. The major impact of this project will be to bring together these efforts to provide beneficial integration in a sustainable and holistic way.

Download the presentation from EPRI at the SHINES Technical Kickoff Meeting.