Marisol Bonnet:
Hi everyone. Thank you all for joining us. We're just going to give everyone else a couple more minutes for a chance to join and I'll get started soon.
Alright, we're going to go ahead and get started.
Hello everyone and welcome to our webinar. I want to thank you for your interest in the US Department of Energy's efforts on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. My name is Marisol Bonet and I'm a Technology Manager with the Water Power Technologies Office and today I will be walking you through our Notice of Opportunity for Technical Assistance - or NOTA for short - titled Improving Hydropower's Value Through Informed Decision Making. So right now everyone is joined in listen only mode. If you are having audio issues and can't hear me very well, try connecting over the phone rather than your computer. And if the issue persists, just send us a note and we'll try to help you. You can use the chat box there.
As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded and it will be published on the EERE Exchange website. I also want to draw your attention to the email address on the left hand side of this cover page. So this is the official mailbox to direct all of your questions during the entire NOTA process. We ask that you please do not contact DOE individuals directly with questions; including myself. All questions related to this NOTA should be sent to this mailbox and all the questions that are received will be posted publicly in the Q&A section of the NOTA page on Exchange along with the answer. The questions will be posted in an anonymous way, but we do ask that, "Please try to not submit any information that might be business sensitive, proprietary, or confidential." We usually do try to respond to every question within three business days. If you have questions during this webinar, you can either send them to the email address or you can type in your questions in the chat box as they come up and at the end of this webinar we'll leave some time for a live Q&A.
All the questions that are asked during this webinar will also be posted on Exchange for everyone to see. There may be questions that come up today that require further discussion with EERE staff and will not be addressed today. So if you don't hear your question during the webinar just please check EERE Exchange in the next few days and the answer will be posted there.
Just a few other disclaimers before we get started: All applicants are strongly encouraged to read the NOTA document that's on EERE Exchange and adhere to the stated submission requirements. The presentation that I'm about to go through summarizes the contents of the NOTA but if there are any inconsistencies between the NOTA document and this presentation or statements from myself or other DOE personnel the NOTA should be in this the controlling document and applicants should rely on that NOTA language. If you see any discrepancies or inconsistencies between what I present to a and the NOTA document you can also contact us at the email address.
Also, we are not going to present any new information other than what is provided in the NOTA document itself. And just to be clear, there are no particular advantages or disadvantages ... during for the application or evaluation process by participating on this webinar today. The participation is completely voluntary.
Alright, so we got... I think all the housekeeping items out of the way and now I'm going to hand it over to Sam Bockenhauer who is going to offer some opening remarks.
Sam!
Sam Bockenhauer:
Great! Thank you, Mari.
So, yeah, I'm Sam Bockenhauer and I'm the lead for the HydroWIRES initiative, which this Technical Assistance opportunity is part of. And HydroWIRES is Water Power's grid integration program. So we focus on understanding new roles for hydropower to support the rapidly changing power system including by operating more flexibly to integrate new Wind and Solar while still ensuring grid reliability and resilience. So that's really the big focus here. We're seeing such rapid changes in how the system is evolving. We're seeing new markets, we're seeing changes, and in policy as well. And all of these have implications for Hydropower's role. So that's really what we're trying to understand in this research initiative. So echoing Mari's remarks, "Thank you so much for your interest in this Notice of Opportunity for Technical Assistance." I think this is a really exciting opportunity for DOE National Labs to help utilities and other stakeholders with pressing technical challenges. So this is really about you. This is about the challenges that you're facing or the questions that you have related to a lot of different technical issues that are emerging now and... but the great thing here there's also a lot of benefit from our perspective. So there's a lot of value for DOE and the National Labs and making sure that models, tools, and approaches that we're developing are usable and useful out in the real world. So, we don't want to trend toward to academic use of tools or of models that we're developing. We need to make sure that we're addressing industry needs and that we're grounded in the challenges that you all are facing. I'd say that we do a lot of work through the National Labs in improving the representation of hydropower in power system and water system models as well as techno-economic analysis for hydropower and pump storage and all of those capabilities will be brought to bear for the topics that we're offering Technical Assistance in here. Those topics informing market decisions, flow forecasting, integrated resource planning, and hydropower plus other other energy storage hybrid configurations. And I'd also note that in addition to the topics that you'll hear about, there's also an opportunity for open topic submission for ideas that don't fit neatly into one of these four set Topic Areas. So if there's a different challenge that you're facing that could benefit from lab technical assistance, please feel free to submit that or to consider submitting that. I'd also say feel free to share this opportunity with your networks. If there are others that could benefit from this kind of opportunity, please feel free to do that. And just thank you again for tuning in and feel free to ask questions during the Q&A or afterward as Mari had said. Thanks again and back to Mari.
Marisol Bonnet:
Awesome! Thanks, Sam.
Alright! So now we can officially get started on our agenda. So these are the topics that I'm going to walk through today:
So starting with just an overview of our NOTA,
a brief description of the Topic Areas,
information about the award and any cost sharing requirements,
I'll touch on the NOTA timeline,
the different steps of the application,
Concept Papers which are required for this NOTA,
as well as Full Applications and the process and content of those,
I'll touch on the Merit Review and Selection process,
registration requirements for EERE Exchange,
and like I, said we'll try to leave 15 minutes or so for some live Q&A.
As I go through this presentation, I encourage you to have a copy of the NOTA in front of you so that you can reference it as I go through this.
So first, "What is a NOTA?" So again NOTA stands for Notice of Opportunity for Technical Assistance. And this is a mechanism that DOE uses to provide tailored technical assistance to competitively selected organizations and we do that through the use of Technical Assistance teams that are specifically assembled for for different topics. The Technical Assistance teams for this NOTA are comprised of subject matter experts from at least two of the National Laboratories that you see here on the screen. So Argonne National Lab, Idaho National Lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Once we make selections the recipients will enter into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement or CRADA with the lab team for that topic and that is the document that's going to establish the detailed scope of work and ensure protection of any data and information that is either brought to the project or produced through the award. As a reminder there is no financial assistance provided under a NOTA; only technical assistance.
So the objectives of this particular NOTA, which is valued at 1.75 million dollars, are to:
One, provide hydropower decision makers with National Lab expertise and capabilities so this is a unique opportunity for anyone to access the capabilities of the National Labs to address their challenges and capture new opportunities for their systems.
It, also, helps us validate National Lab led modeling, analysis, and tools that have been developed under the HydroWIRES initiative that Sam just introduced.
And, also, it helps us further our collective understanding of potential roles for hydropower under different or evolving power system conditions.
It's, also, important to know that the tools and the methodologies that are developed for this NOTA are going to be designed in a way that they're broadly applicable beyond the purview of just each recipient so that it has a broader impact and applicability to the public. And we do intend to make the methodologies or the tools publicly available along with some key results.
Alright, so now I'm going to quickly walk through the Topic Areas that are in this NOTA. So Sam just quickly walked through these. So there's four main Topic Areas and we also have an open topic. We expect to make one award per topic - except for the open topic where we expect making up up to two awards.
Because we only have an hour today and we have a lot to cover, I'm just going to give you a brief overview of each Topic Area. But if you go to Section B of the NOTA, you're going to find the following information for each of the topics. So each of the topics are going to have a Background section that sets the context for the topic; it's going to describe the National Lab Team Capabilities are available for that topic; the Anticipated Scope of Work and task structure; Expected Outcomes both in terms of Value to the recipient and and the Value that we see to the broader industry; Applications of Interest and characteristics that we look for in applicants for each of those topics; as well as Data Requirements that we expect recipients to bring into the project.
So the first Topic Area is Participation in Energy Imbalance Markets. And with this Topic Area we expect recipients will receive a customized analysis and modeling approach that's going to help them assess the potential implications and benefits of joining an EIM or Energy Imbalance Market based on that recipient's specific location, supply and demand resources, transmission system infrastructure, and scheduling dispatch practices.
So to provide this assistance the lab team is going to use a comparative analysis framework in which the benefits are computed as the differences in revenue streams between a scenario where the recipient system participates in the energy and balance market in a scenario in which the recipient doesn't.
And again, the methodology developed will be made publicly available and this will help provide new tools for any entity that is evaluating an opportunity to join an Energy Imbalanced Market.
The second Topic Area is Assessing the Value of Inflow Forecasting Tools and Practices. So the recipient is going to receive an evaluation of the potential value of having physical improvements in their probabilistic inflow forecast for their system. Value in this case will be quantified using metrics that will be defined together with the awardee that are of importance to to the owners or to the awardees. So that includes increased hydropower potential, sales revenues, avoided costs, and others like that. And the technical assistance is going to result in an industry roadmap that codifies the overall value assessment methodology that's going to help assist other utilities to explore the potential value of flow forecasts for their generation assets
The third Topic Area is Hydropowered in Integrated Resource Planning. So the topic focuses on improving the representation and improving representation of the value of hydropower and pump storage in integrated resource planning tools and just planning more generally. The lab team is going to identify and review the current practices of hydropower and pump storage valuation within the recipient's IRP methodology and models. And upon completion of the valuation analysis the Technical Assistance team is going to provide recommendations to the awardee on how to improve the valuation of hydropower and pump storage within their IRP process. So these recommendations may include depending on the type of recipient, suggestions to improve the current planning and valuation practices, proposing new valuation methodology development, or recommending improvements to existing models and tools.
Topic Area 4 is Optimization of Hybrid Hydropower and Energy Storage Systems. So here the recipient is going to receive a full assessment of the potential costs and benefits of adding energy storage systems to an existing or a planned hydropower plant. And this includes evaluation of financial performance under different scenarios as well as control optimization and help with energy storage size selection and optimization. This topic is going to demonstrate the enhanced opportunity for existing and new hydropower plants to benefit from technical and cost advancements in energy storage technologies that allows them to increase revenue of hydropower plants in competitive electricity markets. This topic is going to result in an open source tool for optimizing energy storage systems - both type of energy storage and the size - and so that people can evaluate how to integrate them with hydropower plants based on their generation profiles and market opportunities to maximize their financial performance.
And lastly our Open Topic allows any potential applicants to request assistance with other decision-making questions regarding hydropower's role and the evolving grid that are not being addressed through any of the other four Topic Areas. And so for this, we are asking applicants to clearly describe the type of assistance requested to be provided by the National Laboratories. And the requested technical assistance should align with the HydroWIRES initiatives objectives and specify how this assistance will result in overcoming specific challenges for hydropower.
Alright. So just an overview for information about this award. Again, the Total Technical Assistance is valued at up to one 1.75 million dollars. WPTO is going to provide the funding directly to the National Labs that are going to provide the technical assistance. Again, there's no financial assistance under this NOTA. For Topic Areas one through four we see we value the technical assistance at up to four hundred thousand dollars per project. And for the Open Topic, we have up to $150,000 worth of assistance.
In terms of Types of Agreement, I touched on this briefly already, but the official agreement will be between the technical assistance team with the National Labs and the recipient through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement for CRADA. We expect these awards will have a Period of Performance of 12 to 24 months and there is no Cost Share Requirement for this NOTA.
In terms of eligibility, any for-profit and non-profit company or entities that are incorporated of a as part of a state or a territory of the US are eligible to apply. This also includes state, local, and tribal government entities. However, federal agencies and federally funded research and development centers are not eligible to apply. foreign entities, whether it's for profit or otherwise, are eligible to apply as long as they can designate in the application a subsidiary or affiliate incorporated under a state or a territory in the US.
In addition to this criteria, we also ask that, again, like I mentioned each Topic Area describes the Applications of Interest and so that provides more of a description of what we're looking for in applicants for each of the topics. And how responsive an applicant is to that section is going to be part of the review criteria.
Data Requirements. So the anticipated studies and analyses that are going to be conduct conducted as part of this NOTA are going to be data-intensive in nature. So the types of data that are going to be requested from the NOTA recipients are, again, outlined within each of the Topic Areas and in section 1B. And applicants are not expected to provide the data as part of the application. This will be once selections are made but in the application we do asset applicants at least discuss how they will obtain and provide the data that is described.
Any data that is considered confidential or proprietary has to be marked as such when it's provided to the lab team upon selection. Again, the success of these studies and the value to the recipients is going to be dependent on that data quality and availability. So as part of the review criteria and the review process, we give careful consideration to data access and availability.
Cost Sharing. This is really quick. There is no cost share required as part of this FOA. However, we do see that successful projects typically have in-kind contributions, again, in the form of data, like I just mentioned, but also having involvement from the recipient in terms of providing information and critical review of the results as necessary.
So the timeline is shown on the screen right now. The first big key date is the Concept Paper Due date and that's on December 18th of this year. The next step, we will provide an Encourage or Discourage Notification on that kind of paper by January 12th. I'll describe the Concept Paper process in more detail briefly. The Full Applications are due on February 12th of 2021. Applicants are going to receive comments from the Reviewers by March 15th and have a chance to respond to those by March 22nd. And we expect making selections and awards by May of 2021.
So Concept Papers. Concept Papers are required for this NOTA. Concept Papers are brief descriptions of the proposed project and it allows applicants to submit their ideas with minimal time and expense. If an applicant fails to submit an eligible Concept Paper, the applicant is not going to be eligible to submit a Full Application. So you must submit a Concept Paper in order to be able to submit a Full Application.
We're asking that each entity submits only one Concept Paper and one Full Application for each topic of this NOTA. If we receive more than one for the same Topic Area, we're going to request a determination from the applicant as to which application should be reviewed. We're going to provide feedback on the Concept Paper in the form of an "encouraged" or "discouraged" notification along with some reviewer comments. So that the applicant can make an informed decision of whether to expend additional resources to prepare a Full Application. That being said, an applicant who receives the "discourage" notification can still submit a Full Application.
Section III.B of the note that describes all the information that needs to be included in the Concept Paper and it looks like this. So in the NOTA you will find a table - exactly like this one - that shows you the information that we're looking for in a Concept Paper. So what goes in the cover page and the Technical Description and Impacts and the Addendum.
So when you're preparing your Concept Papers, it's good to keep in mind the review criteria, which is also found in the NOTA. So these are the factors that we are going to use to evaluate your concept. So things like the extent to which the applicant provides the detailed description of the proposed work and the requested assistance; the applicant identifies the specific challenges that can be addressed through DOE-funded technical assistance; the qualifications, experience, capabilities, and other resources that the applicant brings to the table. And the extent to which to propose work, if it's successfully accomplished, I will clearly meet the objectives as stated in the NOTA.
So Full Applications, again, these are due on February 12th of 2021. Again you need to have submitted a Concept Paper to be able to submit a Full Application regardless of whether you got an "encourage" or "discouraged" decision or notification on it. You're going to find this table in the NOTA as well. Which is the different elements or documents that are requested as part of the Full Application. So we ask for one summary slide that summarizes the major aspects of the project and there's a template that's offered on EERE Exchange. The Technical Volume which is the main technical submission. Resumes we ask that they're kept to one page for all the key participating team members. Letters of Commitment from any partners or sub-recipients. And a form SF-424 which is your official application for federal assistance.
So I'll go into more detail on the Technical Volume, because, again, like I mentioned this is your main body of the technical submission.
So the key technical component of the Full Application, again, it's a technical volume and this helps applicants frame the technical information that the application is going to be evaluated on. So this is comprised of a Cover Page, a section on Project Ojectives and Description, your anticipated Project Impact or impact of DOE-funded technical assistance on your entity organization. And a description on the Technical Qualifications and Resources and this includes how the data requirements for that topic will be fulfilled.
Then there's also Topic Area Specific Requirements for the technical volume. So when you go to the NOTA document you'll see that - depending on the topic that you're applying to - there's going to be different information that you may need to provide in addition to what's shown on the screen.
So I'll walk through the Merit Review and Selection Process for Full Applications now. So for the Merit Review process there are multiple phases that includes an eligibility review to see if the applicant meets the eligibility requirements that I walk through and also a thorough technical review. We establish a panel of subject matter experts and they are the ones that conduct the rigorous technical review of each application, but ultimately it is the Selection Official who makes the decision considering recommendations from the reviewers and other things like program policy factors which I'll touch on in a bit.
So just like with the Concept Papers while you're writing your Full Application, it's good to keep in mind the Merit Review criteria that we will use to to review your applications. And this consists of three criterions the first one is Project Objectives and Description which has a weight of 40% and this criteria is really evaluating things like the extent to which relevant information was provided, how compelling the motivation is for requesting Technical Assistance, and how well the assistance requests it aligns with the National Lab capabilities.
There's also Project Impact, also with a weight of 40%. And so this really evaluates the impact that Technical Assistance would have on the organization and improving hydropower's value in the US.
And then we have Roles, Responsibilities, and Capabilities with a weight of 20%. And so this evaluates anything having to do with the team's qualifications and the likeliness that they will be a successful partner to the Technical Assistance team.
So after the Full Applications are reviewed by the subject matter experts, we are going to provide applicants with reviewer comments and applicants are going to have a brief opportunity to review those comments and prepare a short reply.
Applicants should anticipate receiving the independent Reviewer Comments approximately three business days before the due date which is March 22nd. The reply to reviewer comment is an optional submission. You're not required to submit a reply to Reviewer Comments, but this does provide applicants with a unique opportunity to maybe correct any misunderstandings or misinterpretations and to provide additional information that actually might influence the selection process in their favor. These replies are considered by the reviewers and and also the selection official.
When providing your replies to Reviewer Comments, you must confirm to the content requirements that are listed here and also in the NOTA. So things like, there's a page limit for example, so if a reply to Reviewer Comments is more than the three pages that is stated here, we're only going to review the first three pages and disregard any additional pages.
As part of the selection process WPTO, may decide to interview a subset of competitors. These interviews would be held prior to the announcement of winners and would serve to help clarify any questions that the reviewers may have. And participating in these interviews is not required and the interviews are also not an indication of winning.
I mentioned earlier Program Policy Factors which a Selection Official may consider when making final selections. And these are different factors that the Selection Official can use to, say, select one application over another despite of the scoring. So things that like technological diversity, so diversity in the types of projects that are applying, whether it's pump storage versus reservoir hydropower versus run-of-river plants - those types of things. Market structure diversity, so selecting applicants that are in different market environments. Or geographical diversity, so there's a preference to select applicants in different geographical regions of the US. This could also be ownership diversity, so whether the applicant is a utility versus an independent power producer. So ensuring diversity in the type of hydropower ownership. Also, project complexity, so giving preference to applicants whose requests for assistance are in line with the available computational and analytical capabilities of the Labs. And project originality, so preference of selecting unique use cases, services, or system benefits that would be difficult to evaluate otherwise without Technical Assistance from DOE
So to apply to the NOTA applicants have to register through EERE Exchange and all the application materials is submitted through EERE Exchange. We will not review or consider applications that are submitted through other means like email. It has to be submitted through the EERE Exchange platform. There's a link to a website here that has the manual for how to apply to DOE Funding Oopportunities through Exchange; how to register and all of that.
Some Key Submission Points to to keep in mind as you go through this application process. We suggest that you obtain a control number at least 24 hours before the first submission deadline in case there are any issues.
Check and double check entries in Exchange. If there is an incorrect entry or an error that might be in your submission and ineligible.
We, also, strongly encourage the applicants submit their materials one to two days prior to the deadline to allow for a full upload of applications and to avoid any potential technical glitches. Also, make sure to hit the submit button. Any changes that you make after you hit submit will unsubmit your application and you will need to hit the submit button again. So keep that in mind. And always for your records, print out the EERE Exchange Confirmation page at each step and make sure that it contains the applications Control Number.
If you have questions about this NOTA, please send them to WPTONOTA@ee.doe.gov. All the questions related to this NOTA and the responses are going to be posted on EERE Exchange in an anonymous way, of course.
We will attempt to respond your to your questions within three business days after we receive them. If we receive questions that are similar to each other, we might consolidate them, but you should still check the EERE Exchange after you submit your question to make sure that your your response is there. If you have problems with EERE Exchange or the EERE Exchange platform in general, you should email the EERE Exchange support at the email address listed on this slide and please make sure to include the NOTA name and number in the subject line. Every question that's asked during this presentation will be posted on EERE Exchange as well.
And so that takes us to our last section of the agenda which is a live Q&A. So we are going to keep everyone muted to avoid any noise issues or background issues, but please feel free to type in any question that you may have. Like I said before, there may be questions that require further discussion internally and those will not be addressed today so if you don't hear your question during the webinar just check EERE Exchange in the next few days and we will post the answer there.
And looks like we already had a few questions come in so I'm going to start with those.
Oh no! Someone had audio issues hopefully; I didn't just notice that.
Are universities or educational institutes eligible to apply? Yes, they are. Again, as long as they're either a domestic university or institute or if they're foreign they must have a subsidiary in the US. And in addition, we will take into account how well the entity, whether it's a university or otherwise, complies with or is responsive to the applications of interest section within each of the Topic Areas.
Any other questions? I think those are the only ones I see so far. I'll wait here a couple more minutes to give everyone a chance to process 40 minutes of me talking and see if anything comes up.
Ah! Let's see, we got another one. What is the page limit for the Letter of Intent? So I just want to first clarify that for this NOTA we don't use Letters of Intent, instead we use Concept Papers. Which the difference is really that it allows us to provide potential applicants with some feedback as well as an "encourage" or "discourage" notification and a Letter of Intent that's just applicants letting us know that they may apply and we don't get a chance to provide feedback. So for the Concept Paper... let's see there is a page limit. And yeah if you go to page 25 of the NOTA document, the table specifies the page limit for each section. So the cover page is just one page, the Technical Description and Impact section is four pages, and the Addendum is a maximum two pages; so overall it's a maximum of seven pages.
When will this presentation be available to the website that you can access? So we will post the slides right away. However, the recording is going to take a few days but by next week there should be both the slides, a transcript, answers to any Q&A, as well as of the full recording of this presentation.
The transcript will be a little behind that because they're backed up.
Last call for questions.
Okay, well I guess we'll go ahead and end this a bit early again. If you do have any questions, just use the NOTA mailbox; I'll scroll to that one more time.
It's WPTONOTA@ee.doe.gov.
And, yep! Again every question that you submit we do our best to respond within three business days. So just keep refreshing the EERE Exchange and you'll see the response there. Alright! Thank you everyone for joining us today and I hope you have a great rest of your day.