The Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) program develops and demonstrates integrated photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage solutions that are scalable, secure, reliable, and cost-effective.

The projects will work to dramatically increase solar-generated electricity that can be dispatched at any time – day or night – to meet consumer electricity needs while ensuring the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid. Achieving the SHINES goals is a critical step in the pathway towards enabling hundreds of gigawatts of solar to be integrated reliably and cost-effectively onto the electric grid. SHINES is part of the Energy Department’s Grid Modernization Initiative, which aims to accelerate the strategic modernization of the U.S. electric power grid and solve the challenges of integrating conventional and renewable sources, while ensuring a resilient energy system combining energy storage with central and distributed generation.

These awards were announced on January 19, 2016. Read the press release and Assistant Secretary David Danielson's blog

APPROACH

This is the first funding program within the Department of Energy focusing exclusively on connecting renewable power to storage. The solutions developed under this program incorporate dynamic load management, advanced forecasting techniques, utility communication and control systems, and smart buildings and smart appliances to work seamlessly to meet both consumer needs and the demands of the electricity grid. These solutions will enable widespread sustainable deployment of low-cost, flexible, and reliable PV generation, and provide for successful integration of PV power plants with the electric grid.

OBJECTIVE

The widespread adoption of storage solutions will be a transformative influence on the current state-of-the-art of solar grid integration and will significantly contribute to an economically viable pathway toward energy efficient and sustainable integration of solar generation at much higher penetration levels than currently possible today. These solutions will enable widespread sustainable deployment of reliable PV generation and provide for successful integration of PV power plants with the electric grid at the system levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of less than 14 cent per KWh.

AWARDEES

Austin Energy

Location: Austin, Texas
SunShot Award Amount: $4,300,000
Awardee Cost Share: $4,337,683
Project Description: The goal of the Austin SHINES project is to demonstrate a solution adaptable to any region and market structure that offers a credible pathway to a LCOE of 14¢/kWh for solar energy when augmented by storage and other distributed energy resource management options. The solution aims to establish a template for other regions to follow to maximize the penetration of distributed solar PV. In addition, the proposed solution will enable distribution utilities to mitigate potential negative impacts of high penetration levels of PV caused by the intermittency and variability of solar production.

Carnegie Mellon University

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
SunShot Award Amount: $1,036,963
Awardee Cost Share: $1,038,083
Project Description: This project will develop and demonstrate a distributed, agent based control system to integrate smart inverters, energy storage, and commercial off-the-shelf home automation controllers and smart thermostats. The system will optimize PV generation, storage, and load consumption behaviors using high-performance, distributed algorithms.

Commonwealth Edison Company

Location: Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois
SunShot Award Amount: $4,000,000
Awardee Cost Share: $4,000,000
Project Description: This project will address availability and variability issues inherent in the solar PV technology by utilizing smart inverters for solar PV/battery storage and working synergistically with other components within a microgrid community. This project leverages on the DOE-funded microgrid cluster controller and is connected to the existing DOE-funded 12 megawatg IIT microgrid.

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)

Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
SunShot Award Amount: $3,124,685
Awardee Cost Share: $3,240,262
Project Description: In this project, EPRI will work with five utilities to design, develop and demonstrate technology for end to end grid integration of energy storage  and load management with photovoltaic  generation. The technology is a simple, two-level, and optimized control architecture. This technology will be demonstrated and its effectiveness verified at three field locations. 

Fraunhofer USA, Center For Sustainable Energy Systems (CSE)

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
SunShot Award Amount: $3,493,921
Awardee Cost Share: $3,560,744
Project Description: This project will develop and demonstrate a highly scalable, integrated PV, storage, and facility load management solution. Through the SunDial Global Scheduler, the system tightly integrates PV, energy storage, and aggregated facility load management to actively manage net system power flows to and from the feeder, regardless of whether these individual components are co-located at the same site, or distributed at different sites.

Hawaiian Electric Company

Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
SunShot Award Amount: $2,437,500
Awardee Cost Share: $2,437,500
Project Description: This project will demonstrate successful SHINES deployments and will show the system-level benefits of enhanced utility visibility and control of distribution system/edge-of-network electricity resources. This project will enable proliferation of a reliable base of PV and storage distributed technologies that offer more plug-and-play customer options for grid participation, and provide cost-effective “grid response” capabilities to system operators.

Learn more about SunShot's other systems integration funding programs.