Now is Not the Time to Gut Funding for Innovative Energy Research

Last month, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives quietly voted to gut funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) efforts to promote innovative energy research. The DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) was first on the chopping block. The subcommittee voted to slash its funding from the current level of $252 million to just $50 million—an 80% cut. On top of that, the subcommittee cut funding for the DOE’s work on renewable energy in half.

ARPA-E was created by the 2007 America COMPETES Act, signed into law by then President George W. Bush. The agency is modeled after the successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—credited for transformative innovations like GPS and computer networking. ARPA-E is intended to facilitate small government grants for basic research into transformative energy technologies that are too risky for the private sector. Since its first funding allocation from the Obama administration in 2009, ARPA-E awardees have already doubled the world-record energy density for a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and pioneered a near-isothermal compressed air energy storage system.

ARPA-E’s numerous success stories and proven funding model have given it a measure of bipartisan support. ARPA-E is a major component of the Obama administration’s push for clean energy jobs, drawing high praise from Vice President Biden. Notably, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney agrees with the administration on this point: “Government has a role to play in innovation in the energy industry. History shows that the United States has moved forward in astonishing ways thanks to national investment in basic research and advanced technology.” In addition to Romney, other key Republican lawmakers have voiced support for ARPA-E: Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee both spoke at ARPA-E’s annual summit in February. Considering the fact that ARPA-E has already attracted over $450 million in private sector funding, its bipartisan support should come as no surprise.

This recent move to axe clean energy funding does nothing to truly address our budget woes and hurts our footing in the international race towards a clean energy future. As President Obama laid out in his landmark speech on climate change, it is time for Americans to come together and create a smart, clean, low-carbon economy that protects future generations from the threat of climate change. Programs like ARPA-E provide the vital funding needed to see innovative energy technologies through to commercialization.

Now is not the time to cut these vital programs. We must continue supporting clean energy research and inspiring the next great generation of scientists and engineers.

Source: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com

DOE Opens New Smart Grid Integration Testing Facility

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are launching a new user facility for testing utility-scale renewable energy grid integration.

The Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in Golden, Colo., already has its first industry partner, Advanced Energy Industries, whose aim is to build better performing solar power inverters. The US $135 million facility will test how technologies such as solar modules, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and smart appliances interact with each other and the grid. Wind and solar, for instance, can wreak havoc on the electrical grid because of their intermittency. The center should help accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies across the grid, from generation and transmission, down to individual buildings.  

“This new facility will allow for an even stronger partnership with manufacturers, utilities and researchers to help integrate more clean, renewable energy into a smarter, more reliable and more resilient power grid,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement.

ESIF (pronounced ē-sif), which was four years in the making, has more than 15 labs, plus outdoor test beds that will allow companies and researchers to test products at real grid load levels. The labs cover technologies in four areas: electricity, thermal systems, fuel cell and electrochemical research and data analysis, and visualization. The latter includes a high-performance data center designed to be one of the most energy efficient in the world, with a power usage effectiveness of 1.06 or better. The data center will allow researchers to do large-scale modeling and simulation.

Advanced Energy Industries worked with the DOE on the Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) project, which is aimed at bringing solar power more seamlessly onto the grid. Advanced Energy’s solar inverter allows for two-way power flows and utility communications at a lower levelized cost of energy than some other inverters.

Communicating with inverters will be increasingly important as solar penetration in the United States increases. In Germany, where there is far more solar PV, inverters are already required to help minimize negative effects on the grid by providing functions such as power ramping.

The inverter manufacturer will take advantage of ESIF’s megawatt-scale power-in-the-loop system; it can simulate different grid conditions, which will allow Advanced Energy to fine-tune the performance of its inverters and drive costs down further.

“ESIF will do something different. It will fill research gaps and provide a national focal point for systems-integration R&D,” Robert Shapard, chairman of the GridWise Alliance, a coalition of smart grid advocates, said in a statement. “ESIF will be one of a few facilities in the country capable of providing for the fully integrated field-testing of hardware and software technologies, enabling advanced visualization and simulation, establishing a virtual utility operations platform, and providing smart grid interoperability testing and validation.”

Source: www.spectrum.ieee.org

NREL and LBNL reports on PV system pricing

On December 4th, 2012 the US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL, Golden, Colorado, US) and DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley, California, US) jointly released two reports looking at solar photovoltaic (PV) pricing in the United States. 

The first report looks at historical progress for PV price reductions, as well as providing future projections, finding that system prices are likely to continue to fall through 2012 and into 2013. 

The second report looks at the components of "soft" costs for PV systems.

"There is often confusion when interpreting estimates of PV system prices," said NREL Solar Technology Financial Analyst David Feldman. 

"This report helps to clarify this confusion by bringing together data from a number of different sources and clearly distinguishing among past, current and near-term projected estimates."

PV prices tracked against SunShot goal:

"Photovoltaic (PV) pricing trends: historical, recent and near-term projections" looks at progress in price reduction in relation to the goals of the DOE's SunShot program to reduce the installed cost of PV systems by roughly 75% between 2010 and 2020. This report indicates that while data sources, assumptions and methods differ between the bottom-up analysis and the reported price analysis, the results support the validity of both analyses. The report draws on multiple ongoing NREL research activities.

Presentation of DOE analysis on soft cost:

The second report, "Benchmarking non-hardware balance of system (soft) costs for US photovoltaic systems using a data-driven analysis from PV installer survey results", presents results from the first DOE-sponsored data collection and analysis of such costs. 

The report finds that these costs made up 40-50% of residential and commercial US PV prices in 2010. The study benchmarks four particular categories of soft costs, looking at customer acquisition, permitting, inspection and interconnection, installation labor, and labor associated with arranging third-party financing.

NREL and LBNL found that these costs alone comprised 23% of residential PV system prices, 17% of small commercial system prices and 5% of large commercial system prices.