In a third round of funding from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Clean Power Research has been awarded a grant of approximately $850,000 from the California Solar Initiative Research, Development, Deployment and Demonstration (CSI RD&D) program.
Clean Power Research plans to use the funds to implement new photovoltaic fleet simulation tools that are expected to help predict the variability of solar power caused by cloud cover. The company will validate its PV fleet simulation methodologies and produce a one-minute, 1 km SolarAnywhere data set for California, which the company says is a requirement for calculating variability at the short time intervals typical for dispatching energy reserves.
These new PV fleet simulation capabilities will be made available via software to support projects in distribution planning, smart grid operation, utility load scheduling, and balance area planning and operation.
‘Accurate solar forecasting is critical for integrating ever-larger PV fleets into the grid, yet the expense and difficulty of obtaining this information can be very high,’ says Tom Hoff, president of research and consulting at Clean Power Research. ‘This grant builds on our previous CSI RD&D research, allowing us to validate our PV simulation models and make them widely available through easy-to-use software tools.’
Participants in the Clean Power Research project include California Independent System Operator Corp.; Pacific Gas and Electric Co.; Sacramento Municipal Utility District; University at Albany, SUNY; Electric Power Research Institute Inc.; Solar Electric Power Association; and University of California, San Diego.
