Latest Updates

CSI RD&D Final Project Webinar:

Advanced Distribution Analytics Services Enabling High PV Penetration

Principal Investigator: SCE

Date/Time: September 23, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/622290973251393538

Southern California Edison, Pacific Northwest National Lab, and QADO Energy teams have worked collaboratively for over two years as part of a research project entitled, “Advanced Distribution Analytics Services Enabling High PV Penetration”, which is funded in part by the CSI RD&D program. The project goal was to develop a framework for achieving high PV penetration levels on California feeders, specifically representative feeders in SCE's service territory, focusing on improving the standardization and transparency of the interconnection process and increasing understanding of cost effective paths to higher PV penetrations.

During this webinar, the project team will focus on discussion of the following topics and key lessons learned:

• Overview of detailed feeder model development, which includes behind the meter loads, and validation process using the GridLab-D simulation environment
• Methodology to determine feeder native limits which leverages PV adoption models and Monte Carlo simulation
• Potential upgrade paths to enable 50%, 75% and 100% PV penetration levels using traditional and non-traditional mitigation strategies such as advanced inverter controls and storage deployment
• Demonstration of the unique modelling, analysis, and methodology developed by the CSI project using QADO Energy’s GridUnity software

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Project website: http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/111-advanced-distribution-analytic-services-enabling-high-penetration-solar-pv

CSI RD&D Final Project Webinar:

Grid Integration of Zero Net Energy (ZNE) Communities

Principal Investigator: EPRI

Date/Time: September 16, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8575034387552180993

This project was designed to support construction and measure actual performance of ZNE homes and their impact to the distribution grid. The team worked with a national builder to develop California's first ZNE neighborhood with all homes located on specific transformers. The homes were not "test homes" but sold and occupied by real customers, many of them first-time homebuyers. To provide balancing, the heating loads were electrified, which also is aligned with California's long-term decarbonization goals. The PV sizing was designed to meet California's definition of ZNE, and PV orientation varied by a lot. All homes on one transformer were fitted with customer-side energy storage. The end devices were "smart" loads, capable of providing load balancing. The results confirmed that the load shapes of ZNE homes were substantially different, much more volatile, and does not show the standard summertime peak. The peaks are driven by coincidence of water heating and HVAC systems. Energy storage can provide some load shape balancing, but only if controlled for grid load, and not driven by customer economics. This webinar will discuss the experiences in developing the community, impact of solar combined with energy efficiency, strategies for DER integration and possible benefits of demand response and energy storage in the future California distribution grid.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Project website: http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/109-demonstration-of-locally-balanced-zne-communities-using-dr-and-storage-and-evaluation-of-distribution-impacts

CSI RD&D Final Project Webinar:

Comprehensive Grid Integration of Solar Power for SDG&E

Principal Investigator: University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Date/Time: August 18, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/9096103942467711234

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and its partners will present a webinar on their CSI RD&D Solicitation 4 funded project where they demonstrated forecasting and solar power integration tools. This work included refinement of forecasting and development of battery siting strategies to enable higher penetrations of solar power on the distribution grid.

The UCSD team developed operational solar and net load forecasting systems for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) that are being used today in grid operations. The purpose of the solar forecast system was to provide solar generation inputs into system-wide net load forecasts and operational load flow analysis. A numerical weather prediction atmospheric modeling system for coastal Southern California was implemented and post processing was applied to improve forecast accuracy.

The main thrust of the project was improving distribution feeder power quality under high PV penetration utilizing battery energy storage systems (BESS). UCSD conducted power flow simulations for 14 representative SDG&E feeders with high PV penetration to quantify voltage variations, overvoltage conditions, and load tap changer operations. The results of the case study highlighted that significant increases in PV penetration levels across all of the 14 feeders are feasible without network augmentation. BESS can further increase high PV penetration, but the ideal siting is a practical challenge. A methodology for optimal allocation of BESS sizes to maximize their support for integrating high penetration PV in residential distribution networks and minimize cost was developed and demonstrated. The effectiveness of the proposed method was demonstrated on the IEEE 8500-Node test feeder and a feeder in the SDG&E service area. Finally a way to leverage phasor measurement units for grid disturbance detection, modeling, and actuation using BESS was demonstrated. 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Project website: http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/112-comprehensive-grid-integration-of-solar-power-for-sdg-e

CSI RD&D Final Project Webinar:

PV Integrated Storage: Demonstrating Mutually Beneficial Utility-Customer Business Partnerships

Principal Investigators: Energy and Environmental Economics (E3)

Date/Time: August 11, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:   https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/9114053469453325827

This webinar will describe the work by Energy and Environmental Economics (E3) and their team on distribution grid impacts and economic benefits of behind-the-meter PV integrated energy storage deployed at residential customer sites in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). The novel contributions of this California Solar Initiative (CSI) funded demonstration project are: 1) directly dispatching customer owned distributed storage from a utility demand response management system (DRMS) with open automated demand response (Open ADR) protocols, 2) quantifying grid impacts of 34 Sunverge distributed energy storage systems over 16 events in 2015 using 1-minute interval data with participant and non-participant control groups, 3) quantifying the operational and distribution planning benefits of customer and utility controlled PV integrated storage with powerflow (OpenDSS) and integrated distributed energy resources (IDER) models and 4) using these results to design utility sponsored programs that can incentivize retail customers to deploy energy storage with maximum net benefits for utilities and their ratepayers. 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Project website: http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/108-pv-integrated-storage-demonstrating-mutually-beneficial-utility-customer-business-partnerships

EPRI - Standard Communication Interface and Certification Test Program

NOW AVAILABLE -  Draft final report, webinar slide deck and recording

http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/107-sol-4-standard-communication-interface

 Jun 30, 2016

CSI RD&D Final Project Webinar:

Standard Communication Interface and Certification Test Program

Principal Investigators: EPRI

Date/Time: June 30, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:   https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3922779686807180034

This webinar will provide the summary results of a two year project that has developed and assessed communication interoperability for solar inverters. The EPRI, SunSpec Alliance, Underwriters Laboratories, SCE, SMUD, Fronius, and SMA used the functional requirements identified during the revision of the California Rule 21 to guide the project. Two brands of smart inverters and two types of communication/control systems were independently developed, then tested in a two-by-two fashion in laboratory and field environments. The project resulted in a testable/certifiable framework through which future products could be compliance tested for both functional and communication performance.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Project website: http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/107-sol-4-standard-communication-interface

CSI RD&D funded project profiled in the New York Times

Jun 4, 2016

The EPRI project looking into the grid integration of a ZNE community which included solar coupled storage in Fontana, CA was profiled in the NYT article on Jun 4, 2016.

Link to the article http://nyti.ms/1Xp8VLl

CSI RD&D Final Project Webinar:

Analysis to Inform California Grid Integration Rules for PV

Principal Investigators: EPRI

Date/Time: May 26, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:   http://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6049761840273278724

This webinar will present the results of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) team’s project funded under the Solicitation 4 of the CSI RD&D Program. The EPRI team which included National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) with data provided from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) conducted research to determine optimal default settings for distributed energy resource smart inverter controls. The inverter functions studied are aligned with those developed by the California Smart Inverter Working Group (SIWG) and those being considered by the IEEE 1547 Working Group. The webinar will describe how electric utilities can leverage system information to ascertain the optimal default settings for smart inverters that will allow increased hosting capacity of distributed PV on the transmission and distribution system.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Project website: http://calsolarresearch.ca.gov/funded-projects/110-analysis-to-inform-california-grid-integration-rules-for-pv

High-Fidelity Solar Forecasting Demonstration for Grid Integration

Principal Investigators: UCSD

Date/Time: Dec 1, 2015 at 10 AM PST

Webinar Registration link: https://global.gotowebinar.com/ojoin/6433901512176124930/300000000000030309

The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) and its partners developed, improved, and demonstrated solar power grid integration models. At the broad system level, relevance of solar forecasting to resource adequacy was demonstrated at very high penetration levels based on a characterization of meteorological conditions when large aggregate solar ramps are likely occur. This effort included a number of different areas: • Task 2: Demonstrating forecast performance during meteorological conditions with greatest impact on SDG&E operations and recommending monitoring improvements: Variability in solar irradiance across the San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) territory informed the partitioning of solar climate zones that can be leveraged to optimize ground station coverage and solar plant allocations. • Task 3: Day-Ahead Solar forecast models for marine layer clouds: A well-known but often poorly forecast California-wide phenomenon is the burn-off of marine layer clouds. These clouds can cover a large fraction of rooftop PV systems throughout California. The project team developed forecasting tools through a combination of very high resolution numerical weather prediction, statistical modeling, and dense measurement infrastructure installed by SDG&E. • Task 4: Localized Solar Forecasting and Distribution Feeder Modeling: distribution feeder power quality analysis was forced with total sky imager cloud maps and forecasts to identify voltage control needs under high PV penetration. The modeling was conducted on five representative feeders with variations in PV penetration, location / meteorology, and voltage regulation equipment. When realistic PV input profiles are used tap operations were reduced substantially compared to using the same profile for all PV systems on the feeders. • Task 5: Forecast Integration with Utility Models for Resource Adequacy: For these same feeders net load forecast models were also developed and validated. Solar variability was found to significantly influence net load fore

CSI RD&D media features

Nov 5, 2015

• CSI Newsletter feature of PV and EV evaluation tool by Clean Power Research
• EnergyBiz article on CSI RD&D Program's Grid Integration efforts
• EPRI's ZNE residential community project in SCE territory gets profiled in several news articles
  • SCE webpage
  • LA Times article
  • EPRI press release

Two CSI RD&D Final Project Webinars:

Quantification of Risk of Unintended Islanding 

Principal Investigators: GE

Date/Time: Jul 22, 2015 at 10 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:   https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8169543285948101377

This webinar presents analytical and experimental work performed by GE and PG&E to evaluate the likelihood of unintended islanding of solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters in distribution applications under realistic field conditions.
Most PV inverters used in distribution applications in the United States today are certified to UL 1741, which ensure that an individual inverter can detect islanding and de-energize within 2 seconds when it is coupled to a defined synthetic load. Realistic conditions in actual distribution circuits, however, are never matching the exact conditions of the UL test – the field conditions generally involve inverters of different makes and models and loads of greater variety than the synthetic load used in the UL anti-islanding test. This raises concerns about feasibility of islanding detection in realistic system conditions and poses the question: What is the maximum level of penetration that can be safely allowed on actual distribution circuits?

GE and PG&E undertook a three-year study to answer this question by performing experimental work using actual PV inverters and the flexible load specifically designed to enable streamlined evaluation of different load compositions. The flexible load uses a power electronic inverter to simulation distribution load in real time based on WECC’s composite load model executing on a Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). This enables evaluating loads of different compositions to more closely represent load variety found on distribution circuits in PG&E service territory.

Methods for Screening Distribution Feeders: Alternatives to the 15% Rule

Principal Investigators: EPRI

Date/Time: Jul 24, 2015 at 10 AM PDT

Webinar Registration Link:   https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3077174972957233922

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), National Renewables Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) will be presenting a final webinar on the Methods for Screening Distribution Feeders: Alternatives to the 15% Rule project. The objective of this project was to improve the utility application review and approval process for interconnecting photovoltaics (PV) to the utility distribution system. Working with the three investor-owned utilities, the project team evaluated the impacts of PV on the distribution system through detailed hosting capacity analysis. The results of this analysis led to the identification of additional fast-track initial and supplemental review screens that could be applied alongside the existing California Electric Rule 21 screens. These new screens are derived directly from our technical analysis and will better predict the amount of PV that can be accommodated on a feeder regardless of its loading. 

Read more: Latest Updates

Solicitation 5 (Small Grants)

Solicitation Summary

The California Solar Initiative (CSI) Research Development, Demonstration and Deployment (RD&D) Program is pleased to announce the release of the Small Grants Solicitation. The primary objectives for this solicitation include:

• Improving the economics of solar technologies and increasing system performance.
• Addressing key market barriers thereby increasing market penetration of solar installations in California to meet and exceed the CSI generation capacity goals.

Eligible Research Topics

The focus of this solicitation is to fund small tasks or projects that address the following topic areas:

• Grid Integration, Storage and Metering - demonstrations or other small projects that provide solutions to integration of PV into the electricity grid.
• Business Development and Deployment- demonstrations or other small projects that support solutions to building a self-sustaining market for solar energy in the state.
• Energy Generation Technologies - demonstrations or other small projects that improve the economics of solar technologies and/or increases system performance.
• Cross-Cutting - demonstrations or other small projects that integrate energy efficiency, demand response and energy storage with PV.

Funding Available

A maximum of $1 million in funding is available through this grant solicitation. The maximum amount of funding available for a single project is $100,000. The minimum project size for this solicitation is $50,000.

Key Dates (solicitation has closed)

• Sept 3, 2013 Solicitation Released
• Sept 11, 2013 Questions on Solicitation Due
• Sept 17, 2013 Responses Posted
• Oct 10, 2013 Grant Proposals Due
• Nov - Dec 2013 (estimate) Grants Approved by CPUC
• Jan 2014 (estimate) Grants Start Date

Eligibility

Any individual, business, public entity, non-profit organization, university, or national laboratory is eligible to apply to this solicitation. Itron and its subcontractors are not eligible to apply for funding from any solicitation under the CSI RD&D Program.
Solicitation Documents

• Download the Small Grants Solicitation document here
• Download the Templates for Exhibit A (Coverpage) and B (Budget Summary) in MS Word format here .

Questions

Questions on this Solicitaiton are now closed.

Q and A document (posted Sept 17, 2013).

Submission of Proposals

Proposals must be submitted electronically and must be received no later than 
4:00 P.M. (PDT) on October 10, 2013. (deadline has passed)

Key Principles of the Solar RD&D Program

SB 1, signed by Governor Schwarzenegger in August 2006, authorizes the CPUC to allocate $50 million of the CSI funds for research, demonstration, and deployment of solar technologies. The CPUC adopted the CSI Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment Plan which lays out the seven key principles that the CSI RD&D Program must adhere to:

1. Improve the economics of solar technologies by reducing technology costs and increasing system performance;
2. Focus on issues that directly benefit California, and that may not be funded by others;
3. Fill knowledge gaps to enable successful, wide-scale deployment of solar distributed generation technologies;
4. Overcome significant barriers to technology adoption;
5. Take advantage of California's wealth of data from past, current, and future installations to fulfill the above;
6. Provide bridge funding to help promising solar technologies transition from a pre-commercial state to full commercial viability; and
7. Support efforts to address the integration of distributed solar power into the grid in order to maximize its value to California ratepayers.

Additional Information

For more information on the CSI RD&D Program, please visit the CPUC's website at: www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/Solar/rdd.htm

For more information on California's Solar Programs administered by the CPUC and the California Energy Commission, please visit the Go Solar Website at: www.gosolarcalifornia.com

CPUC-DOE High Penetration Solar Forum

Solar Forum 2013

February 13-14, 2013
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, California

This jointly sponsored forum was held to address the CPUC's California Solar Initiative goals as well as the DOE SunShot's strategic goal to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity by the end of the decade. Featuring presentations from the grid integration awardees of both programs.

• Agenda (PDF)

(Click on the presentation PDFs to view in browser or right click to download file. The webcast recording can be viewed as flash files, use the icon on the bottom right of the clip to view in full screen mode.)

Solar Forum 2011

March 1-2, 2011
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, California

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) hosted the High Penetration Solar Forum, March 1-2, 2011, at the Seaside Forum of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, to bring together industry experts and stakeholders such as utilities, to present the demonstration and modeling projects simulating high penetrations of solar. These projects were funded through the DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Program, and, or, the California Solar Initiative's Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment Program.

• San Diego Union Tribune article on the event.
• DOE also launched their High Penetration Solar portal at this event.
• Attendee list ( PDF )
• Webinar registered attendees ( PDF )

(Click on the presentation PDFs to view in browser or right click to download file. The webcast is availble for viewing as flash files and can be viewed full screen by clicking the icon on the bottom right of the player)