University Research to Advance Solar Integration

Solar generation is the fastest growing generation resource in the past decade, increased by 25 times in the US from 2010™s 2.7 GW to 2019™s 67.7 GW, and 15 times from 38.3 GW to 596.3 GW worldwide during that same period of time. High penetration of solar generation together with wind generation results in many fundamental challenges for power system operation and planning because of lower inertia, more uncertainties, and more distributed resources. But solar generation, if properly controlled and optimized, can also help the grid to be more reliable, resilient, flexible, and secure. To achieve these goals, the Solar Energy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy has been supporting fundamental technology advancements in multiple fronts such as modeling and simulation, hybrid photovoltaic and energy storage operation, smart inverters, sensors and data analytics. This panel brings together principal investigators from universities and discusses the impacts of university research in advancing fundamental technologies for solar integration.