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Project Title: Behind-the-meter PV Data and Distribution Grid Analytics for High-penetration Solar
Funding Opportunity: SunShot Technology to Market (Incubator 10)
SunShot Subprogram: Technology to Market
Location:  Washington, DC
Amount Awarded: $499,894
Awardee Cost Share:  $125,000
Project Investigator: Mark Handschy, Ph.D

SolarRetina proposes to fill the information gap and provide distribution grid planners with the certainty they need to manage the grid. Working with distribution grid planning partners, they will build a commercially-ready beta version of the SolarRetina that will automatically acquire and integrate high-resolution solar data from a network of solar sites, and using that data, will provide superior analysis of the impacts and effects of distributed solar on partners’ distribution grids. The analysis will provide the precision, realism, and comfort that distribution planners need to remove technical and institutional barriers to ubiquitous solar deployment. 

APPROACH

Under this award, SolarRetina will develop a platform that automatically collects analysis of high temporal and spatial resolution generation data. As part of this project, electric distribution engineers and planners will use SolarRetina’s behind-the-meter solar PV intelligence to assess the impacts of integrating high-penetration distributed solar PV on portions of their distribution systems.

INNOVATION

Under this project, SolarRetina will demonstrate the efficacy of using data collected from customer-sited PVs to analyze the impacts of distributed solar on the distribution system and integrate higher amounts of solar. Unlike traditional methodologies for estimating behind-the-meter generation that rely on deploying special purpose sensors or using irradiance readings, SolarRetina provides analysis derived from measurements recorded by customer-sited solar PV systems.