Kyocera Corp., the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan and other project partners have begun operations of an international smart-grid demonstration project in Los Alamos, N.M.
The project is a collaborative effort between NEDO, the New Mexico state government, the Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The project's goal is to promote the wider implementation of renewable energy and the promotion of energy conservation through the use of smart grid-related technologies.
Data collection and analysis is set to run until March 2014, at which time opportunities will then be provided for other companies and institutions to utilize the resources to conduct further academic research and product testing.
The project is located at three sites in Los Alamos and Albuquerque. One Los Alamos site consists of a power supply micro-grid that uses power distribution lines from a large-scale solar power plant to utilize related technologies and performance, as well as to minimize the effects of power output fluctuations. Kyocera supplied a 910 kW multicrystalline silicon solar module array.
For the other Los Alamos site, Kyocera constructed a hybrid energy management system that uses a 3.4 kW residential solar power generating system, a 24 kWh lithium-ion storage battery and an energy-efficient heat storage unit.
