The Department of Energy plans to offer $26 million for up to nine projects that show how the grid can reliably run with only solar, wind and energy storage.
The Solar and Wind Grid Services and Reliability Demonstration funding aims to support new ways for inverter-based resources — like solar and wind — to provide the same grid services provided by traditional power plants, such as voltage support and frequency stability, according to a funding notice released Tuesday.
“Because new wind and solar generation are interfaced with the grid through power electronic inverters, they have different characteristics and dynamics than traditional sources of generation that currently supply these services,” DOE said. “Demonstrating that a grid fully powered by inverter-based resources is as reliable or more reliable at providing these services is a key barrier to the clean energy transition.”
DOE is offering grants for two types of projects:
- One must include at least 10 MW of solar, wind and storage for long-duration demonstrations at existing large-scale wind and solar generation facilities connected to bulk power systems to show their ability to provide grid services at scale.
- The other is for large-scale studies of transmission protection systems to determine how they respond to faults where there are large amounts of inverter-based resources.
DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office is holding a webinar on the funding opportunity on Aug. 17. Concept papers are due by Sept. 1 and applications are due by Nov. 10.
