Solar Energy Innovation Network Round 1 Video (Text Version)

This is a text version of the "Solar Energy Innovation Network Round 1 Recap" video.

Nate Hausman: How can we identify optimal locations to deploy solar?

Jonathan Monken: How do we make the grid more resilient?

Kyla Maki: How can Montana communities tap into electric transportation benefits?

Kiera Zitelman: Can we put these resources to work, improving system resilience?

Eric Lockhart, Innovation Network Program Lead: The work of the teams in the Innovation Network is particularly challenging because they're seeking to take a new idea that hasn't really properly been tested anywhere and bring it to scale in a new context. Over the course of a year and a half, the teams receive direct funding, analytical support, and coaching and facilitation assistance in a unique way that allows them to identify the problem that they're seeking to address, pursue novel modeling and analytical approaches to answer some of the key questions they need to work on, and pilot and test those ideas, both at home and with other teams in the Innovation Network.

Kate Bowman, Utah Clean Energy: The work through the Innovation Network is helping us to identify key opportunities where the local governments and utility can work together on mutually beneficial projects.

Brian Ross, Great Plains Institute: Our Minnesota team engaged stakeholders, assessed existing programs, rate structures, market transformations tools.

Chris Castro, City of Orlando: We looked at developing a "solar-ready design guide", leveraging the tools NREL has developed but tailoring them to Florida's market.

Kyla Maki, Montana State Energy Office: The Innovation Network helped analyze options, answer technical questions, and strengthen connections between communities, utilities, transportation planners, and other stakeholders.

Kiera Zitelman, NARUC: We worked closely with NREL researchers to investigate the capabilities of DERs to perform resilient services.

Rick Brown, TerraVerde Energy: The project is focusing on how solar plus dispatchable batteries aggregated into a virtual power plant can provide multiple benefits for the customer, as well as for the CCA.

Nate Hausman, Clean Energy States Alliance: All of the states participating in our project are grappling with these questions but each participating state, supported by Solar Energy Innovation Network analysis, is pursuing its own approach.

Eric Lockhart: Through the Solar Energy Innovation Network, the teams were able to take critical first steps in tackling novel applications of solar that laid the foundation for future progress for those teams and the industry at large. It was exciting to see the connections between the teams when they gathered here at NREL every few months to workshop their problems, test new solutions, and get really valuable feedback on how to move forward. We're looking forward to seeing where things go for these teams that have taken their ideas and advancement them to, sort of, concrete next steps and now following the Innovation Network, there's an opportunity to take that work even further.