2022 SETO Peer Review – Systems Integration Review Summary

This summary of the Systems Integration portion of the 2022 Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) Peer Review covers discussions between reviewers and their discussions with SETO’s awardees. See descriptions of all Systems Integration projects that were analyzed as part of this review.

The first section covers the overall Systems Integration review, taking all projects into account. The subsequent sections cover specific topics within the Systems Integration portfolio

The following reviewers participated in the Systems Integration portion of the Peer Review:

Ryan Quint (chair, author of the Systems Integration Overall Portfolio Review section)
Luigi Vanfretti (lead reviewer, author of the Power Electronics and Enabling Technologies Portfolio Review section)
Saman Zonouz (lead reviewer, author of the PV for Resilience and Cybersecurity Portfolio Review section)
Mohit Singh (lead reviewer, author of the System Operation Reliability Portfolio Review section)
Venkat Konala (lead reviewer, System Planning Models and Simulation Portfolio Review section)
Lisa Bosman
Babak Enayati
Bo Gong
Wenjing Lou
Yousef Mahmoud
Favela Roberto
Wei Sun
Song Wang

Systems Integration Overall Portfolio Review

Goals and Strategy

The goal of SETO is to accelerate the development and deployment of solar technology to support an equitable transition to a decarbonized electricity system by 2035 and decarbonized energy sector by 2050, all in support of a nationwide effort to meet the threats of climate change. SETO is taking a multi-pronged approach to improve the affordability, reliability, and domestic benefit of solar energy on the electric grid. Focus areas specifically include: photovoltaics (PV), concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP), systems integration, manufacturing and competitiveness, and soft costs.

SETO’s goal of the System Integration track is to support the advancement of reliable, resilient, secure, and affordable integration of solar energy onto the U.S. electric grid. SETO’s strategy to accomplish this goal is to fund research and development (R&D) activities that integrate solar energy with other generation and energy storage resources, utilizing digital technologies to monitor and control system components, ensure scalability and economic feasibility, and provide strong physical and cybersecurity protections. Project areas specifically include:

Resilient distribution systems power by solar energy
Long-term system planning for solar integration
Integrating solar into day-to-day system operations
Solar power electronics devices
Solar cybersecurity

SETO’s strategy aligns with current industry challenges, yet could be further refined to ensure the R&D portfolio within systems integration can directly bring value to this area. The concepts of system integration are at the forefront on industry challenges today (not in the future), and industry is in dire need of innovation to ensure affordable, reliable, resilient, and secure electricity under high penetrations of solar resources. Below are some recommendations for the overall systems integration strategy:

Direct focus on modeling challenges: The inverter-based resource community, specifically solar PV resources connected to the bulk power system, have a significant modeling challenge presently that is in dire need of support. The research portfolio focuses on modeling but from a perspective that the industry needs new models, innovative models, advanced models, etc. What the industry needs is a set of standardized models that are interoperable that all applicable entities (OEMs, developers, consultants, planners, etc.) can use to study the interconnecting resource. More models or different models add complexity. We need to streamline the modeling process through advancing standardized library models that fit the needs of the OEMs and development community. This will enable a more expedited and streamlined interconnection study process, which is a big barrier to faster adoption of these resources. On the DER side, the challenge is developing aggregated models of widespread growth of DERs, and making those aggregate models sufficiently accurate and usable from the planner’s standpoint. The lack of data and information to conduct widespread studies involving growing levels of DERs introduces uncertainty and inaccuracy into planning and operations horizon studies, which can adversely impact system reliability. Support to the development of DER models and conducting system-wide studies with those models is needed by SETO.
Clear focus on large-scale planning challenges: A fundamental point of systems integration is how to ensure that the massive and rapidly growing penetrations of inverter-based resources, many of which are solar energy resources, will work together in future years. Particularly, what scenarios or situations will reliability issues present themselves, and can we identify those issues early enough to develop corrective actions. Studying the singular interconnection of a solar resource is straightforward, but studying future scenarios of extreme high penetrations to identify long lead-time corrective actions is needed. This falls slightly outside the normal transmission planning process and warrants more attention at the federal level if driven by policies and initiatives at the federal level. Engaging with industry stakeholders, utility professionals, grid planners and operators, etc., will help in this area.
Direct linkage to operational difficulties in systems with high solar energy penetrations: As stated above, the growth in solar energy resources will introduce significant challenges (along with the significant benefits) that grid operators will face. Uncertainty, variability, lack of data for analysis, unexpected operational performance during grid disturbances, ability to provide essential reliability services, etc., are just some of the issues grid operators face now and in the future as solar penetration levels grow. The introduction of hybrid plants will help alleviate some of the challenges but will inevitably strain the abilities of our existing operational tools like state estimation, contingency analysis, dynamic stability assessments, etc. Are there novel tools or operating procedures that could be presented to system operators for situational awareness purposes or improved decision making during normal and contingency conditions? Can we leverage advanced computational capabilities such as high-performance computing, cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in our advanced applications? Strategic focus on these areas will help the grid operator in their endeavors and unlock higher penetration levels.
Improvements to solar and hybrid plant infrastructures for fully-leverage operational capabilities: New designs in solar energy resources and particularly hybrid plants involving solar resources present new operational opportunities that industry is actively adapting to. The hybridization of these resources will help with smoothing out uncertainty and variability, but there are additional operational capabilities that can be unlocked. Idle capacity can provide essential reliability services such as fast frequency response, fast ramping, and even “inertial support” through grid forming technology (especially on the BESS component of a solar hybrid plant). Further, through clarifying existing policies such as operating limits, additional stored energy may be used above those existing steady-state operational constraints during severe conditions. Current practices preclude the use of this unlocked capabilities and this could be explored further on a technical level through R&D activities. There has been significant advancement in the photovoltaics side of the solar energy, and we need to ensure that operational use of that full capability is fully leveraged.
Direct cybersecurity focus for securing solar energy across entire electric ecosystem: The strategy brings to light the need to focus on securing solar energy resources; however, the projects do not focus directly on developing cybersecurity measures, practices, or even standards to help in this area. The current portfolio somewhat continues the “bolt on” approach to cybersecurity by attaching the concept of cybersecurity to existing project ideas, rather than a more integrated approach to cybersecurity at the forefront of system architecting. This is applicable, yet very different, to all types of solar resources—from rooftop solar systems, to utility-scale DERs, to sub-transmission resources that are not NERC jurisdictional, and to CIP-applicable assets at the bulk power system level. Further, with the introduction of the aggregator by FERC, another active market participant has been introduced into the ecosystem, and solar energy will play a key role in aggregation techniques moving forward. The industry needs to ensure secure cybersecurity practices are developed for all levels of assets, some of which are owned by end-use consumers, some of which are controlled by an aggregator, and some of which are large-scale assets that may not be subject to operational cybersecurity requirements. A concerted effort to drive cyber innovations at new and existing solar energy resources is strongly needed.

A final consideration for the overall strategy is that the systems integration aspect is by far the track that most closely interacts with the real-world operational implications of the technology, and how the technology will integrate with the rest of the system. The track heavily emphasizes field tests and hardware in the loop testing, but these environments are not reflective of the “systems-of-systems” reality of the actual electricity ecosystem. Innovative controls ideas are presented in the portfolio and can be tested in a laboratory environment yet may not be feasible to implement in a hierarchical environment such as the North America power system. Focus needs to be on addressing real-world issues that current grid operators, planners, integrators, developers, end-use consumers, etc., are dealing with, with a strong engagement from industry partners to put the projects to test in the real world. Expanding the SETO focus to all aspects of the infrastructure used to successfully integrate solar energy to the existing grid moving forward will be key.

Alignment with Goals

Overall, the projects selected and managed under the System Integration track align with the defined goals and strategy of SETO. Further, the general topics included in the portfolio align with electricity sector needs for increasing penetrations of solar energy resources of all types. The projects cover a wide range of issues, ideas, and concepts facing the solar industry such as improved forecasting techniques, use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, improving grid resilience, accurate models and studies for high solar energy penetration levels, inclusion of storage and solar-thermal projects, new technologies such as grid forming inverters, and focus on cybersecurity. SETO has done well rolling out a set of projects that have the potential to provide value to the solar industry, the utility industry, and the American people. A couple salient points for improvement in the management of these projects moving forward:

Projects often attempt to meet too many of the stated goals of SETO in one project, spreading the topic and team too thin to make a meaningful contribution that can be applied and adopted in the real system (i.e., system integration). This results in projects with innovative ideas that never reach fruition due to the focus on replacing existing systems rather than integrating with them. SETO should ensure the projects in the Systems Integration track, in particular, focus on a specific set of issues or challenges in which the proposed project will overcome. Multi-faceted projects should have a very clear narrative explaining how the different topics of interest are linked and will be applied effectively in the industry (i.e., the end goal) from a system integration standpoint.
Along these lines, many projects focus on big grand challenges and do not address specific issues at hand for the industry, which are paramount to overcome to meet the decarbonization goals stated by SETO. SETO should consider prioritizing smaller, more directed projects to address real work issues.
Effective system integration of large penetrations of solar energy resources will require significant advancements in the areas of models, tools, hardware, software, operating procedures, etc., that span well beyond just solar technology. This requires a truly cross-cutting investment of diverse projects that tackle all aspects of system integration—planning, operations, design, protection, restoration, communications, cybersecurity, etc. Bringing in a broader set of experts to tackle ancillary challenges (e.g., how to integrate with the state estimator, how to build modeling platforms that handle large penetration levels, how to expedite interconnection of all types of resources, etc.) would bring value to the SETO portfolio.
The projects focused specifically on cybersecurity appear to mostly lack concrete cybersecurity contributions. Project reviewers highlighted that the inclusion of cybersecurity in the overall projects sometimes did not make much sense and caused the cybersecurity-expert reviewers to question the validity of the project in this space. More direct focus on cybersecurity and solar energy resources is needed to better align the projects with the mission. This includes a clear distinction and focus for the different cybersecurity needs between DERs, DER aggregators, and BPS-connected solar resources.

Funding and Resource Allocation

As solar energy continues to dominate interconnection queues across the U.S., the focus on systems integration will only continue to grow. While SETO has established a robust portfolio of projects in this area, more focus in needed to enhance true system integration for solar resources, focusing on cross-cutting projects that tackle all aspects of the electricity ecosystem with regards to adoption of solar energy. This includes strong focus on planning-related challenges, operational improvements under high penetrations, functional use cases and reliability of solar energy resources, and securing the overall ecosystem from cyber vulnerabilities. The number of projects should not be a defining factor in success; it is the quality of the projects that will define the success of the program. Concerted effort to focus current and future projects on addressing real systems integration challenges, rather than presenting new novel ideas for future consideration, is a crucial goal to achieving the decarbonization goals by 2035. Given the slow pace of adoption of emerging technologies in the utility space, making significant changes to grid planning and (especially) operations will take many years to fully adopt in a reliable, resilient, and secure manner. As an industry, and with help from SETO, we need to focus on high-value projects that can help a significant number of entities ensure reliable operation yet unlock cheap, affordable, and equitable benefits of solar technology across all areas and portions of the U.S.

In particular, the sign of a mature technology is standardization and adaptability to emerging technology. SETO can help build programs around standardizing aspects of solar energy integration, particularly with other systems, to ensure reliable, resilient, and secure control, use, and delivery of solar energy in the future.

Again, to highlight, setting aside funding for small projects that solve a clearly defined problem will help bring immediate value to the industry in all the areas of the system integration track. In many cases, the projects are wide-reaching and do no address immediate industry needs in this area. SETO should consider refocusing and reallocating project funding to projects that address real industry challenges and help advance the technology’s full adoption and use in the near term (in addition to the longer-term R&D activities that SETO also funds).

Lastly, SETO should consider increasing funding in the Systems Integration track particularly because of the success of the other tracks, particularly the photovoltaics track. The cost of solar has dropped so dramatically that the development community is seeking interconnection of hundreds of thousands of MWs of solar resources in the coming years, with further cost reductions expected. A similar trend is being observed with batteries. Even today, the limiting factors for expedited interconnection often fall on the interconnection process, modeling, studies, developing mitigating measures to real reliability risks, etc. We should NOT advocate for skipping over these necessary steps to further adoption, otherwise we as an industry will build a system that cannot handle the rapid growth of this technology and will result in unreliable operation and possible, instability, cascading failures, and widespread outage. On the other hand, we can devote significant focus on breaking down existing barriers and streamlining the processes we need in place to avoid any rework or unnecessary roadblocks as we move toward high penetration conditions. SETO is well-situated to fund projects that directly help break down those barriers.

Technical Diversity

In terms of technical diversity, projects in the Systems Integration track are allocated evenly between industry, academia, and national laboratories. All projects have a wide-reaching technical base. Engaging the following entities for future projects will help them be more successful: system planning engineers, system operators, aggregators, utility partners, developers, software vendors, equipment manufacturers, and other technology businesses that could integrate with existing systems. A notable gap in technical expertise identified by multiple reviewers is a lack of cybersecurity expertise and focus in the projects. It appears that true cybersecurity focus is lacking and underrepresented on most projects. While the projects may mention cybersecurity, the main focus of the project is a novel engineering idea with cybersecurity considerations bolted on. SETO needs to strengthen its focus on cybersecurity for all types of solar energy resources being connected to the electricity sector. The projects also focus on “sub-system” aspects of solar energy technologies, and could be improved by a more wholistic look at integration with the overall power system, including technical expertise in the areas of planning, operations, design, protection, restoration, communications, market involvement, and cyber and physical security.

Advancing the Mission

The only way to achieve SETO’s decarbonization goals, particularly the 2035 goal, is to focus significant effort into systems integration of solar energy resources. This evaluation outlines a number of areas for improvement of the overall strategy to help achieve that goal; however, the overall scope of the projects does match SETO’s mission and does serve the interest of the U.S. solar industry and American people. The U.S. solar energy industry across all facets will benefit from SETO projects that address roadblocks in the system integration process, to unlock a reliable, resilient, secure, affordable, and safe electric grid under very high penetrations of solar energy in the future. The primary roadblock for widespread solar PV adoption is drastically ramping up speed of interconnection while at the same time ensuring the same or better levels of reliability and affordability. Projects need to ensure they are focused on integrating new technology with the existing system, rather than introducing entirely new ideas or concepts that will take decades to commercialize and adopt. Operational technologies where more stringent security measures are placed are a prime focus area where innovation is strongly needed yet must be closely integrated with existing practices.

Areas of Improvement

Reviewers highlighted the following potential blind spots in the system integration track:

SETO focuses on a lot of early stage research in this area that would be extremely costly to commercialize and deploy operationally. Further, the projects fail to demonstrate value in the operational horizon and focus mainly on laboratory testing and demonstrations which is that representative of the real system. This may limit SETO projects from fully accomplishing their intended goal, and benefit mostly the researchers as they publish academic papers and the subject but do not ever reach full-scale deployment and operational benefit for U.S. taxpayers.
Projects related to modeling seek to deliver “new” or “novel” approaches rather than focus on the primary goal of developing models, tools, and applications that help system integration for industry practitioners. Models may be developed “open source” but then coded in a proprietary software that requires a license to a foreign company—in essence, voiding the concept of “open source.” Further, they are not developed in coordination with equipment manufacturers and utility planners to ensure that the models are actually useable to represent real equipment—they end up being an academic exercise.
One aspect of systems integration, particularly for DERs, is the concept of customer trust and the need for everyday consumers of electricity and DER owners to understand the reliability needs and benefits from their individual assets. This is particularly true for future advancement in the areas of DER aggregators and more active distribution system control and monitoring. The customer (and likely the DER aggregator in the future) is a vital element to successful system integration.
One of the most high-value areas of focus for expediting the interconnection of solar energy is supporting technological advancements in the interconnection process, including modeling, studies, analysis, and tools to ensure reliable operation during this process. This concept appears to be missing (at least explicitly or directly) from the SETO system integration track, yet is the number one biggest issue industry faces for integrating utility-scale solar energy resources on the bulk power system.
The projects focus mostly on the “subsystem” aspects, breaking down key functions or areas of the network for the project, yet few projects fully consider the wider operational implication of the “systems-of-systems” aspects of the actual power grid. It is very difficult for researchers to acquire operational data due to security concerns; yet, SETO should ensure that projects are not overly siloed on this focus and involvement of industry stakeholders, particularly when put in the context of the intended goal of the project.
As mentioned throughout this evaluation, a direct focus on cybersecurity and securing the solar energy resources across all levels of the power system is critical and should be made a serious priority by SETO. This includes standardization and development of operational requirements for existing and future systems. Are there any gaps in the current security practices all the way from DERs to BPS-connected solar resources?

Stakeholder Engagement

In general, the projects have appropriate engagement from necessary stakeholders. Reviewers highlighted teams of broad diversity, backgrounds, and expertise. However, there were some notable gaps identified by the project reviewers that are worth highlighting as they are systemic across all different sections of the Systems Integration track.

Utility industry involvement is lacking, particularly around power system operations topics: Multiple reviewers relayed concerns that the projects did not involve appropriate utility stakeholders, especially for project centered around revamping, modernizing, or overhauling the utility operations space. For example, projects proposed replacing grid operators with advanced automated controls, which is not a viable solution without strong industry engagement (which likely would steer the project toward complementing operator actions rather than replacing operations personnel). This highlights the very close interaction between industry professionals and the Systems Integration track if projects are to be successful. To support better utility engagement, SETO could consider a more streamlined process for utility involvement, which is often only a project demonstration partner and advisor and has very little bandwidth to manage heavy overhead often involved with federal projects.
Partnership with equipment manufacturers, developers, and generator owners is relatively rare: A number of projects also focused on innovations in the areas of physical equipment controls, plant controls, modeling, etc., that require close engagement and involvement from equipment manufacturers and the development community. As noted above, a number of projects focused on longer-term modeling initiatives to develop new models rather than support industry in the development of standardized, interoperable models available to all parties and easily integrated with existing tools used by industry. SETO can play a key role in bringing key stakeholders together, working with organizations like NERC, IEEE, and others, to develop unified solutions that all parties support and needed.
Software vendors or commercialization partners (for future) are absent: Software vendors (or possible commercialization partners) are often lacking in the SETO projects, particularly for those that are introducing new control strategies for system operations or solar integration. If projects are proposing vast modifications to control strategies, architectures, etc., the utilities need to be at the table but also the vendors for which the existing systems are built upon.
Cybersecurity professional organizations could further support SETO directly: The cyber security projects could benefit from direct engagement from cybersecurity professionals in the industry or from cybersecurity organizations that provide services, products, tools, or other practices to the industry. Linking the research community with cybersecurity practitioners in the utility and renewables space will help strengthen the cybersecurity focus that is strongly needed.

Final Feedback

Cybersecurity: Ensure a much stronger focus on cybersecurity for solar energy resources in the near term. Projects should be dedicated to enhancing the security posture of these resources, and the networks and systems involved with these resources. Projects should not simply include cybersecurity as an additional topic; rather, the projects should more clearly integrate security considerations at the forefront of the project proposal, deliverables, milestones, and end goal. This requires strong engagement from cybersecurity professionals and organizations, and close collaboration with CESER.
Address Near-Term Roadblocks with Dedicated Projects: Systems integration is at the forefront of possible roadblocks that could limit or slow the rapid growth in solar energy resources across the U.S. These roadblocks are based on obligations that the electric grid remain reliable, resilient, and secure under all operating conditions. Therefore, we cannot simply eliminate these roadblocks—we must understand the challenges facing industry, define the problems explicitly, and seek corrective actions through industry partnerships to break down possible barriers. SETO is primed to support dedicated projects that address near-term challenges in additional to broader-reaching, longer-term research goals in this area.
Ensure Coordination with Key Industry Stakeholders: The challenges the solar industry and utility industry face during this rapid energy transition can only be addressed by bringing all necessary stakeholders to the table to tackle these challenges. This is very relevant for real-world operational issues as well as for the research community, particularly for system integration. A successful project in the system integration space requires all key players to be involved in the project’s conception, development, testing, and validation in the real-world system.

Power Electronics and Enabling Technologies Portfolio Review

Goals and Strategy

The strategy is partially appropriate; it needs to be refined. Systems integration needs to be assessed from a "systems-of-systems" perspective and consider cyber-physical aspects more comprehensively.

The current areas in the System Integration strategy heavily focus on power electronics, which is actually the energy conversion process. The emphasis put in this area is valid, but it makes the program focus the “systems integration” aspect on a “sub-system” of the overall power grid that is the power electronic inverters, leaving much less room for important aspects of actual “systems-of-systems,” meaning how to make it possible to integrate the solar technologies into existing power grids, especially large scale. The “systems-of-systems” approach has been proven successful in the development of complex engineering systems with even larger resiliency and reliability requirements, such as aircraft, through their entire lifecycle. These practices need to be better adopted to be able to achieve the level of system integration to operate the grid as more power electronic devices with embedded controls and inter-networking are introduced. A great example of other DOE programs that are leveraging this is DOE’s Building Technologies Office’s Emerging Technologies Program, where they are leveraging the same methods and technologies used in systems engineering for building energy modeling, controls, etc. (see the "Spawn" effort).

There needs to be more focus on cross-cutting engineering challenges on how to operate power converters at the exascale in harmony with the rest of the grid. That requires addressing system-level challenges for “orchestration” through dedicated system-level advances in co-design and co-operation (i.e. concurrent and integrated) of power electronics, power systems, communications and real-time embedded controls with ultra-large-scale distributed data systems.

Alignment with Goals

In general, the projects under this topic do align well with existing goals and strategy. However, I would say that a major issue for Systems Integration is that the means to achieve massive adoption of solar energy largely depends on advances in methods, tools, hardware, and software that are beyond solar technologies and require transversal or cross-cutting understanding and investment between existing tracks. For example, under Soft Costs, the topic of interconnection is critical for systems integration, however, they need to be integrated themselves. This would be the same with advances in photovoltaics and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP), that would need to be leveraged by system integration properly to take the most advantage of them possible.

Funding and Resource Allocation

Systems integration is the major roadblock to increase the adoption of solar technologies, yet the number of projects is the lowest compared to other tracks. This counters the goals of decarbonization by 2035. For example, to integrate solar with energy storage, load control, and DER, there should be a much larger effort on systems integration having emphasis on cross-cutting domains; for example, how to leverage solar technologies to help the grid recover quicker after physical or cyber disruptions. This would require a much larger effort in terms of bringing new teams with new projects to address such types of issues, which are relatively few when looking at the proportion allocated on the CSP and Photovoltaics tracks.

With regards to the funding by track, the Systems Integration track ranked third in terms of budget in (from lowest to largest and vice versa). I would recommend to prioritize this at least at the same level of Photovoltaics, or to keep the same proportion and create an entirely separate track on power electronics which outweighs other system aspects

Technical Diversity

I think the problem is that there is a lack of understanding of the technical diversity needed for integration of solar technologies. As explained earlier, there is a larger focus on the "sub-system" formed by the solar technologies, which does not leave room for the "power system" aspects related to planning (models and simulation), operations (real-time monitoring, real-time analytics, protective relaying and control systems), and cyber-physical interaction (networking and cyber-security).

Advancing the Mission

The major roadblock for solar adoption is the ability to integrate solar technologies faster while keeping the same (or better) levels of reliability, while at the same time providing new flexibility for resiliency. The majority of the projects would mostly benefit “sub-system” developers or component level; for example, power inverters or photovoltaics; but not industries related to operational technologies (e.g. monitoring and telecontrol) or system design/analysis technologies. In the case of system planning models and simulation, in fact, it only serves to strengthen the foothold of foreign-owned companies who control and own the simulation technology.

In the area of power electronics, residential-level or low-capacity power electronic systems are of course of great value, but I doubt it will be possible to compete with foreign manufacturers on final cost. Instead, there needs to be a bigger emphasis in making American industry competitive for large scale power transfer capabilities, moving large amounts of solar from the deserts in the west to New York, where American industry has taken a back seat in the last 30 years.

Areas of Improvement

To meet its ambitious goals, SETO needs to champion the adoption of open access standards and open source technologies to reduce the barrier of entry, create competition, and foster innovation. All the way from how measurements are sent over in data networks and used by operators, to the modeling and simulation technologies used to plan and operate the system needs to be accessible. Moreover, to meet the new diversity, equity and inclusion targets, this would facilitate access to the communities that would be otherwise unable to become part of the “green economy” due to the high cost barriers for entry that it entails.

Stakeholder Engagement

In the projects reviewed, there was a very mixed approach. While some projects had a fantastic and exemplary level of engagement, others did not. This depends entirely on the type of project; for example, a project developing a new micro-inverter doesn't really need too many stakeholders, while a project dealing with "system-of-systems" integration needs to have at least a utility as an advisor, if not part of the project.

I was very surprised by the very little active participation of utilities and businesses in the projects, and this has to drastically change if you want the technology to be adopted at a faster pace. However, it is not the utilities or businesses that are at fault. The electrical power industry has major challenges to find talent. This is because compared to other engineering domains, compensation is substantially lower. Hence, with the few people they have, they are already struggling to keep the lights on. Having worked with utilities for the last 12 years, I know why they are not participating in these research programs, and the major issue is that it is extremely onerous to work with most federal offices, and in particular, with SETO. From the amount of work required to submit an application, which is excessive, to the large amount of logistic support to run projects due to the reporting, it is no wonder why they are not represented. There needs to be a great amount of simplification of the entire process if you want to meet the goals you have in your agenda.

Final Feedback

In Systems Integration, the representation of operational aspects was very narrow with the focus mostly on very long time scales (forecasting and dispatch), while the most challenging problems with power-electronic-based solar technologies happen within seconds and milliseconds, especially the interaction between the power converter control functions and system-level control and protection design. There needs to be build-up in the capacity to understand real-world data of the interplay between these technologies and the existing grid, and how they will evolve, so operators can leverage solar to their benefit instead of curtailing it.

The topic of system planning models and simulation lacks any innovation to address exascale inverter-based solar technology adoption. The majority of the projects lacked innovation to address the challenge of answering: how will we plan for a system with 100,000 utility-scale inverters? Instead, most projects only aim to provide some new modeling capabilities in existing simulation tools, which are “black boxes” and only a few experts can use, and more importantly, even afford. This is counterproductive to the goal of massive solar integration and needs to be addressed. There needs to be a serious effort in addressing the barriers of entry to modeling and simulation technology so the resistance to change and adoption is decreased. Right now, the relatively few proprietary tools being used in the projects and the industry, makes the cost of entry very high and limits the innovations that are needed to meet SETO's goals. Furthermore, there needs to be a high level of support to open access standards for modeling and simulation technology, with accompanying open source implementation, if there is to be a rapid change in the status quo. Again, the DOE Building Technologies Office efforts with the Spawn project, which by adopting such open access standards and technologies, enables competition that fosters innovation.

There is a larger focus on the "sub-system" formed by the solar technologies, which does not leave room for the "power system" aspects related to planning (models and simulation), operations (real-time monitoring, real-time analytics, protective relaying and control systems), and cyber-physical interaction (networking and cyber-security). Cross-cutting engineering challenges on how to operate power converters at the exascale in harmony with the rest of the grid require addressing system-level challenges for “orchestration” through system-level advances in co-design and co-operation of power electronics, power systems, communications and real-time embedded controls with ultra-large-scale distributed data systems.

Finally, there is a staggering amount of projects being allocated to national labs, especially the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This creates a very unequitable and exclusive environment for development of the “green economy” and for American society to really leverage these investments. Moreover, due to the very “localized” presence of national labs, the benefit is hard to access. For example, while California and New York have the most aggressive policies for renewable adoption, why are such states not better supported so the goals of SETO are also leveraged better? Can you imagine how much communities can benefit from having easier access to facilities and know-how if they don’t have to go to Colorado? Hence, If SETO is going to be serious about diversity, equity, and inclusion, there needs to be engagement with institutions that touch American society daily, like colleges and universities, especially minority-serving ones, instead of localizing a third of the funding to a few institutions and national labs. If we want to be competitive, we need the people in the national labs to go to or create new industries, and not to unfairly compete with colleges. In the same vein, there was an excessive number of projects allocated to a few institutions; while this makes sense due to the concentration of competence, it creates the same problem as disproportionally allocating substantial funding only to national labs. If you want to take DEI seriously, and you still want to only concentrate funding within the traditional universities, at least those institutions need to bring along and share both the opportunity and the budget with minority serving institutions, as a start, perhaps you can also be more equitable and put a limit on how many applications can come from a given institution, as it is done by many other funding agencies.

PV for Resilience and Cybersecurity Portfolio Review

Goals and Strategy

It looked great to me. I would be a bit more specific regarding the cybersecurity topics of interest. At this point, it is described at very high abstract levels.

Alignment with Goals

They were fairly fine. However, they all lacked concrete cybersecurity contributions and mentioned the cybersecurity topics that at some points did not make much sense. The proposed work fell a bit short in terms of rigor for cybersecurity protections such as intrusion detection and response against malicious (non-random) perturbations.

Funding and Resource Allocation

They looked fine to me.

Technical Diversity

The projects could have been more concrete and of better quality in terms of their contributions with regard to cybersecurity.

Advancing the Mission

The scope of these projects match SETO’s mission and serve the interest of the U.S. solar industry as a whole.

Areas of Improvement

I think the strategy and the calls could be more clear and specific in terms of the cybersecurity challenges that the PIs are expected to tackle in their projects.

Stakeholder Engagement

A few projects could have included academic parties to ensure their solution novelty, and a few were missing industry engagement to ensure practical deployment.

Final Feedback

I have nothing else to add.

System Operation Reliability Portfolio Review

Goals and Strategy

The Systems Integration (SI) area of SETO has the following goals and strategies:

Goals: Modernize the grid; integrate more solar, BESS, and renewables; integrate digital tech for monitoring and control; and protect against physical and cyber risks.

Strategy: Fund planning and operations research, solar + X (BESS/other) research, power electronics research, and code/standard development.

Overall this is a good strategy. SETO has had a few years to test the effectiveness of the strategy out and fine-tune it, which has led to a successful approach in terms of moving towards SETO's goals. SETO has helped to build a strong PV SI research community. I would add machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI) for systems integration as a separate additional strategy item. Many of the selected projects are already in that space.

Alignment with Goals

All the projects in this set aligned with SETO's stated goals and fell within one or more of the defined strategic areas. SETO has done a good job of selecting high-impact projects in the SI space. All reviewers for the project set agreed that the projects aligned with SETO's goals. This indicates a good job was done during the project selection process. If I had to offer some feedback, the projects in this set often attempted to meet too many of the goals in one project and spread themselves out over too many strategic areas rather than focusing on making a deep contribution in a single strategic area. Rather than attempt to check all the boxes for all the strategic areas, researchers should be encouraged to focus on one or two areas and attempt a deep, transformative project. Projects that do broadly span all the areas should offer a cohesive narrative of what each piece brings to the table and how the whole is greater than the sum of the pieces.

Funding and Resource Allocation

The funding level is appropriate, particularly since most of the projects involve HIL validation and field tests or demonstrations. In the reviewer's comments, this need for realistic and field-tested projects was a recurring theme. The number of projects is also appropriate for the current way that projects are designed and awarded. However, it might be useful to set some funding aside for small projects that solve a clearly-defined problem. It might also be useful to set some money aside for competitions. For example, SETO could have a project to create a simulated test system on an HIL platform and conduct a contest to see which research group could integrate the most PV on that simulated test system within stability and steady state limits. Each year, the test system could be made more complex, more constraints could be added, and the test system would eventually come to more closely resemble a realistic power system. Over time the best algorithms, ML/AI tools and control strategies would emerge.

Technical Diversity

Overall the projects showed good technical diversity. Projects in this project set covered all the SETO SI strategic areas other than code/standard development. One overall theme was use of machine learning and AI. This is a strong trend in the industry as a whole and it is good that SETO is funding research in this area. I would recommend that, similar to what SETO has done for cybersecurity, a researcher with strong expertise in this area be added to the SI review team.

Projects in the operations and planning strategic area focused more on fully automating operations, but mostly did not address improving existing planning or existing operations. This could be a gap, since many gigawatts of transmission PV is already in ISO/RTO queues and improving planning processes could speed up their deployment. There were also few projects to improve visibility and predictability of PV behavior for operators.

Projects in the Solar + X strategic area covered hybrid PV + BESS plants and improving their dispatchability and control. Such plants are already in existence and are being operated today, so this is definitely relevant, but participation from developers of such plants was missing. It would be interesting to hear from them how these plants operate and what improvements they wish to see.

The power electronics area was also well represented, with some strong and innovative projects improving inverter design and performance. This is a strong area for SETO but reviewers noted that inverter OEMs could be added to project teams for better results.

Advancing the Mission

SETO's mission is to accelerate the development and deployment of solar technology to support an equitable transition to a decarbonized electricity system by 2035 and decarbonized energy sector by 2050. The projects in this set do indeed support that mission. The U.S. solar industry as a whole will greatly benefit from easier integration with the existing power system. Innovation is critical to survival of an industrial sector and PV is no exception. For U.S. interests, it is important that SETO identify patentable IP within the research projects and encourage PIs to file for patents where applicable.

Areas of Improvement

A missing element is building trust between customers and entities in the power industry, a lack of which may slow adoption of PV. Projects that affect the customer should build in some mechanisms to build the customer's trust and give customers a feeling of control over their equipment (such as giving customers the ability to temporarily override settings applied by the utility for example). The customer is a critical part of SI.

On the transmission side, one of the major technological barriers to integrating large amounts of PV is the difficulty bulk power system planners face in studying and approving these interconnections. Projects that focus on speeding up the existing interconnection study process may offer the best "bang for the buck" when it comes to rapidly integrating PV on the transmission system.

Nearly all the projects reviewed in this set were focused on distribution feeders, microgrids, island systems, or individual plants. The bulk transmission network also needs some attention from the research community. This may be a side effect of utilities' data security requirements making it harder for researchers to get access to transmission data. There may not be an easy fix for this issue but this leaves a research gap.
Currently, researchers rely on their own personal networks to assemble collaborations. Perhaps if SETO offered a platform for collaborators to find each other, or even to evaluate weak areas of proposals and help enlist collaborators, some of these weaknesses could be resolved.

Stakeholder Engagement

The majority of projects appeared to have strong collaboration and IAB participation. Overall, the project set was well-informed and results were disseminated for feedback. Most reviewers agreed that the PIs assembled good teams for their projects. However, many reviewer comments suggested inclusion of utility and/or OEMs in project teams. Since a large number of projects involve development and deployment of software, there is also a need to include software vendors on the IABs. This is especially true of software that is to be deployed for operations.

There is a lack of participants from the power system operations area that may prove detrimental to the projects in that space. In many cases the projects focus on fully automating control of the power system and leaving out operators entirely. I think this may be an oversight and there is a lot of potential for projects to augment rather than replace operator capabilities.

While formerly there were fewer entities between generator and customer (utilities & ISOs), today there are more entities in that space (DER aggregators, PV installers, BESS vendors, PV community/solar home developers). These entities need to be included in the overall SETO strategy and enlisted as participants if possible.

Final Feedback

SETO has done a commendable job selecting, funding, and reviewing these very complex and technologically advanced projects. Kudos to SETO and the SI organization for all the good work and the thoroughness of the review. Your work is very valuable to the U.S. as a whole. I appreciate the opportunity to be involved in the review process.

System Planning Models and Simulation Portfolio Review

Goals and Strategy

Given the high penetration of variable generating resources in both distribution and transmission systems and already co-existing generating resources (operating and scheduled for phasing out as part of the green energy initiatives), there is need for short- and long-term planning studies under normal and contingency operational scenarios by the system operators to ensure the grid stability, flexibility, and reliability.

With the variability of generation, there is a high need for advanced forecasting tools and accurate, reliable plant generator, and transmission and distribution networks models to perform planning studies by system operators. SETO's goals and strategy aligns very well with these requirements.

Alignment with Goals

Based on the review of the projects assigned, the projects included advanced solar energy forecasting techniques based on irradiance, various net-load forecasting based on the machine learning techniques and end outcome of transfer, high fidelity accurate PV models for system planning studies, PV and storage projects that test a wide spectrum of reliability and resilient services when operating under real and simulated grid and islanded conditions, grid forming inverter technology that is required with higher penetrations of renewable with decreasing inertia in the grid, and co-simulation tools that will allow various models to interact with other and influence each other's behavior.

All of the above SETO initiatives align well with the defined goals and strategy. While all of the initiatives align well, a point to be noted is the net-load forecasting projects seem to have similarities.

Funding and Resource Allocation

The funding levels for these projects are appropriate, but there is a need for more funding on initiatives for developing standardized high-fidelity PV plant models, specifically U.S.-based software tools that are readily available to utilities and ISOs for system planning with little to no cost to the end users.

Technical Diversity

Based on the projects reviewed in this topic area, there is appropriate level of technical diversity within the teams. Most of the projects have appropriate industry involvement, but there are projects where the industry involvement needs to include systems planners, utilities, developers, and equipment OEMs.

Advancing the Mission

The scope of these projects match SETO's mission and serve the interest of the U.S. solar industry as a whole.

Areas of Improvement

There are no significant blind spots associated with this topic in the technical front. SETO provides a lot of funding in development of tools with labs and other stakeholders. The tools after development may be commercialized and expensive for the end user. SETO should, if possible, make all the tools available to end users at little to no cost.

Stakeholder Engagement

Most of the projects have appropriate industry involvement but there are projects where the industry involvement needs to include a larger participation of systems planners, ISO's, developers, and equipment OEMs.

Final Feedback

With high penetration of variable resources, there is a need for more initiatives around standardization of modelling resources and tools. Also, from a system protection perspective, there needs to be initiatives to review if traditional protection schemes are still viable solutions.

.....

See more review summaries from SETO’s 2022 Peer Review.