The Austin SHINES program set out to establish a working business model for distributed energy resource (DER) optimization in grid, commercial and residential applications. Backed by a $4.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), the program aims to establish repeatable methodologies for designing and operating energy storage and solar PV on a grid.
Over the last three years, Austin Energy has designed and installed DERs with a diverse team of partners. Doosan GridTech collaborated with the utility to develop software control architecture and optimization strategies that enable load to be served at the lowest possible cost in a system with high distributed solar penetration. SHINES resources consist of Doosan’s distributed energy resource optimizer platform, two utility-scale energy storage systems (ESS) designed and installed by Doosan, several customer-sited ESS at residential and commercial properties, smart inverters, real-time data feeds, and a vehicle-to-grid (electric vehicle) component.
The program includes more than 5 MW total of energy storage and PV assets – with resources on both sides of the meter. The scale and variety of Austin SHINES resources allow the utility to explore, test and evaluate different asset mixes and dispatch strategies under different scenarios to develop and document replicable best practices. SHINES resources include:
Utility-scale energy storage + PV
- 2.5 MW PV at La Loma Community Solar Farm
- 1.5 MW / 3 MWh Li-Ion Battery Storage at the Kingsbery location
- 1.5 MW / 2.5 MWh Li-Ion Battery Storage at the Mueller location
- Commercial energy storage + PV
- Aggregated storage installations at three site
- One 18 kW / 36 kWh Li-Ion Battery Storage installation
- Two 72 kW / 144 kWh Li-Ion Battery Storage installations
- All sites have existing solar (300+ kW)
- Residential energy storage + PV
- Aggregated storage installations at six homes (10 kWh each)
- Each with existing rooftop solar
- Utility-Controlled Solar via Smart Inverters at twelve homes
- Autonomously Controlled Smart Inverters at six homes
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