Bringing Solar Power to the Smart Grid

摘要

The term "smart grid" means many things to many people, but there is one characteristics that people agree on: the focus of technology developments that transform how they will regard future power generation and consumption. Realizing the magnitude of the issues, the US Department of Energy (DOE) initiated the Solar Energy Grid Integration System (SEGIS) project. SEGIS brings together utilities with communications to develop the products and technologies necessary to achieve high grid penetration of photovoltaic (PV) systems. As an increasing number of utility-scale PV power plants are being connected to the grid, problems are being identified related to the PV resource's intermittent nature and the conflict between a utility's need of a traditional power generation source and existing grid interconnect standards governing distributed PV system connection.