SunPower Corp. has been awarded two grants totaling approximately $1.5 million from the California Solar Initiative Research, Development, Deployment and Demonstration Program.
SunPower says it will participate in two distinct projects with leading solar technologists to research how to facilitate high levels of distributed photovoltaic penetration in the utility distribution system.
The company will use the funding for the first project to explore the planning and modeling of high-penetration PV on the California transmission and distribution network, researching the development of tools and resources necessary to facilitate the study of high-penetration PV scenarios using industry-standard simulation tools.
SunPower will team up with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) on the second project to research the new hardware and software tools for providing bi-directional communication and management between PV systems and utility controls using advanced metering infrastructure. The company will provide supplementary funds to SMUD for the latter project.
SOURCE: SunPower Corp.
