Funding Opportunity: SuNLaMP
SunShot Subprogram: Photovoltaics
Location: Sandia National Lab, Albuquerque, NM
SunShot Award Amount: $89,000
This project is focused on independent stakeholder engagement activities conducted by Sandia National Laboratory relating to photovoltaic (PV) outreach at the national and international level.
APPROACH
The International Energy Agency (IEA) Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme is one of the collaborative R&D agreements established within the IEA. Participants have been conducting a variety of joint projects in the application of photovoltaic conversion of solar energy into electricity. Sandia organized and cohosted the PV Performance Modeling and Monitoring Workshop in partnership with TÜV Rheinland in Cologne, Germany in October 2015.
Sandia manages the PV Performance Modeling Collaborative (PVPMC) and its website. This project will incorporate new technical content developed at Sandia and submitted and/or solicited from PVPMC members. Sandia plans to continue organizing PVPMC workshops and tutorials due to high industry interest, and has enlisted industry partners to host them.
Sandia’s PV reliability group will continue to play an important role in solar standards created by the Underwriters Laboratories (UL), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and National Electric Code (NEC) committees, working to pass UL1699B (Arc Fault detection) and the NEC’s 2016 revision of the code, which deals with PV systems installation, interconnection and safety. Sandia aims to include its recommendations on an important safety issue, arc-fault tripping thresholds, to NEC 690.11 in the 2018 NEC revision cycle.
INNOVATION
These stakeholder engagement activities are important for contribution of the PV module and system expertise at Sandia to international PV industry groups.