Dive Brief:

• A key to integrating more solar energy onto the grid will be the use of "smart inverters," technology that not only converts direct current to alternating but which can aid the broader power network when there are disturbances. 
• Currently most inverters can do this, but Midwest Energy News reports they are often hamstrung by regulations that require the inverters to shut down in the event of a disturbance.
• A Department of Energy report notes advanced inverters could more than double solar capacity, 

Dive Insight:

There are several reasons solar inverters have typically been set to shut down in the event of a grid outage or disturbance: too much voltage, large shifts in voltage, or rapid changes in the direction of energy flows. But as the grid modernizes, regulations will need to keep up to continue integrating more carbon-free power.

“It’s really just a software change in the controls and the technology is out there today, literally asleep on the shelf, and, in many cases, even installed in people's’ houses,”  National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Bryan Palmintie told the news outlet. “It’s just turned off because of the grid interconnection rules in the US that have recently allowed these capabilities to be used and previously didn’t.”

Commonwealth Edison will use smart inverters as part of a microgrid project the utility is executing in Chicago.  The U.S. Department of Energy contributed $4 million to the project, which will deploy solar capacity and a storage system in the Bronzeville Community Microgrid.

The project is controlled by a microgrid cluster controller and is electrically connected to an existing 12 MW microgrid. Initially, ComEd will eploy a 2 MW islandable feeder. 

According to a DOE explanation, the total installed solar and storage capacity within the project will achieve instantaneous penetration levels between 20% and 35% of the microgrid’s peak load.

The Microgrid-Integrated Solar-Storage Technology "will be scalable to significantly higher levels of penetration with standardized and proven external and internal interoperability capabilities," according to DOE.