Solar +: Clean Energy Strategies for the Sunshine State (Final Technical Report (FTR) of the Florida Alliance for Accelerating Solar and Storage Technology Readiness (FAASSTeR))
- NHU Energy, Inc., Tallahassee, FL (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
This reports on a four-year effort to provide foundational research, analysis, strategies and assistance to help Florida, and other states that might learn from this work, to grow solar energy in conjunction with other distributed energy resources by addressing and overcoming existing barriers, and in way that delivers increased value. The start of this effort coincided with an inflection point of sorts into a new dawn for solar energy in Florida, where the Sunshine state’s national ranking in total installed solar, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), has rose from 13th to 4th. Florida has now become the national leader in annual utility-scale solar growth as dozens of large plants have come online. Also, during this time, Florida utilities have expressed a strong and growing interest in understanding the role of energy storage and how to best plan for and deploy this unique resource as part of strategies to grow solar. The utility-scale solar growth experienced has been fueled by the economics of solar cost-parity with natural gas combined cycle plants and Florida Public Service Commission’s (PSC) approval of cost-recovery for the Investor-Owned Utilities (IOU’s), primarily through the Solar Base Rate Adjustment (SoBRA) mechanism. This has led to gigawatts (GW’s) of rate-based solar capacity additions over several years, along with fairly significant amounts of energy storage. Meanwhile, municipal electric utilities, which, collectively, are the third largest source of power in the state, have been increasing solar considerably through power purchase agreements (PPA’s) and are on track to have close to 1 GW of grid-connected solar by 2024. Florida’s municipal utilities and the Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA) have been key partners in the Florida Alliance for Accelerating Solar and Storage Technology Readiness (FAASSTeR), formed to carry out this effort. The six largest of these have been Core Team utilities, engaging throughout the project in weekly calls, discussions, and project direction, participating in and hosting workshops and benefiting from technical assistance in several areas.
- Research Organization:
- NHU Energy, Inc., Tallahassee, FL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
- Contributing Organization:
- Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA); State of Florida Office of Energy; Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE); City of Tallahassee Utilities; Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA); Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU); JEA; Lakeland Electric; Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0007668
- OSTI ID:
- 1836191
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-NEI-07668
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
25 ENERGY STORAGE
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
solar
storage
energy storage
energy storage sizing
capacity credit
capacity value
balancing
reserves
balancing authority
municipal utility
municipal electric utility
ramp mitigation
solar PV
PV smoothing
Florida
NERC BAL
ACE
public utilities
electric power
high penetration solar
flamingo curve
duck curve
net load
net load curve
curtailment
forecasting
utility scale solar
community solar
distributed solar
dGen
distributed generation
floating solar
electric vehicles
ES
BESS
value stack