Intertie Incorporated — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 12c

Description

California needs to advance the grid of the future to achieve the State’s climate change goals that requires significantly more renewables and electric vehicles. Currently, the biggest obstacles to achieving California’s ambitious climate goals are solar photovoltaic overgeneration and grid congestion caused by current electric vehicle fast charging technology. The Project overcomes both obstacles by deploying a modular smart-grid solution that integrates local solar photovoltaics with intelligent storage while simultaneously providing energy management, low-impact fast charging and grid services. The penetration and value of solar is maximized by leveraging large storage and load control to integrate onsite solar and transact with excess solar on the same distribution circuit. The software is designed to optimally route solar energy to the site host, a large battery system; to charge electric vehicles at super- fast speeds and to supply grid power services while improving grid reliability, raising utilization and allowing others to realize greater value from their clean energy investments. To date, engineering design, simulation, component selection and system integration into the modular microgrid are largely complete. The Phase I Project goal is to develop control, communications and transaction software necessary to integrate onsite and local solar resources. The software shall also provide analytics and optimization to direct and control power flow from a solar portfolio and battery storage to serve the highest value load, in the most efficient, cost-effective manner. Following the completion of the software objective of Phase I, a prototype modular, microgrid will be installed at the site and operated that harvests site solar; transacts & wheels a portfolio of local PV sources to store and supply power for super-fast electric vehicle charging system, the site and grid. A key objective is to demonstrate the project’s scalability, a blueprint for optimizing distributed solar by efficiently storing and routing power to highest value loads including electrifying transportation. The Project’s success will promote public and private sector use of solar to power super-fast charging stations in a cost-effective way.