The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been awarded a large share of funds from the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) 2020 funding program, receiving more than $9 million to study solar integration and reliability.
Within the SETO-2020 program, and alongside a network of collaborators, NREL will lead three projects and support three others.
“Solar power has grown substantially on the electrical grid, and we expect that growth to continue. Now we are focused on optimally integrating that solar: for resilience, reliability, and efficiency,” said Ben Kroposki, a co-principal investigator on one of NREL’s awarded projects. “The SETO-2020 funding program will allow NREL and partners to continue developing cutting-edge controls and strategies to support hybrid and high-solar power systems everywhere.”
Of the three projects that NREL leads, two will target broad challenges in systems integration, and another will apply artificial intelligence to solar optimization. NREL is also a sub-recipient on projects in systems integration and in photovoltaic (PV) reliability.