C&I

Partners look to AI to reduce C&I solar project costs

Partners look to AI to reduce C&I solar project costs
Ecogy developed a series of solar energy systems with Leon N. Weiner & Associates, one of the nation's leading affordable housing developers. The portfolio consists of 20 rooftop systems and 1 ground-mount system. (Courtesy: Ecogy)

Joining Stony Brook University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Ecogy Energy is the latest DER owner/operator to join the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office’s efforts to advance machine learning and artificial intelligence for solar applications.

Ecogy will receive $230,000 of the $750,000 SETO is awarding to members of the research team, whose efforts will be focused on reducing O&M costs in commercial & industrial solar portfolios.

Commercial industrial solar portfolios represent over 20% of the industry’s total fleet, with the entire industry forecast to triple over the next five years. Although it has shown promising capabilities, machine learning is often out of reach for multi-vendor footprints due to complexity and cost. Ecogy, Stony Brook and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory aim to solve this problem using an open-source platform meant to boost interoperability both for devices from multiple manufacturers and multiple ML frameworks. 

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Ecogy’s machine learning solution is based on the SolarNetwork platform, an open-source software platform intended to bring interoperability and reduced costs for managing systems with complex topologies. Ecogy, Stony Brook and PNNL aim to provide the whole industry with a toolkit to help them operate their assets more effectively; all of these developments will be released as open source to maximize access.

Ecogy was selected as a part of the SETO Fiscal Year 2020 funding program, an effort to advance research and development projects that will lower solar electricity costs, increase the competitiveness of American solar manufacturing and businesses, improve the reliability and resilience of the grid, and expand solar to new applications. Ecogy’s is one of several projects that will leverage U.S. AI experience, especially in the area of machine learning, to develop disruptive solutions across the solar industry value chain by forming partnerships between AI experts and industry stakeholders.

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