Metering.com 14 NOVEMBER 2016
The US Department of Energy (DoE) and Israel’s Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources announce $4 million in clean energy funding.
The $4 million smart energy funding will be provided to five clean energy projects in Israel and the US, under the Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Energy project.
BIRD is a programme that was developed in 2009 to improve research, development and implementation of clean energy solutions including energy efficiency, renewable energy and grid cyber security technologies in Israel and the US.
The BIRD programme falls under the US-Israel Energy Dialogue and aims to help the two countries meet national, regional and international carbon emission reduction targets.
The programme brings together research institutions and companies from both countries to develop smart grid technologies to ensure Israel and the US have stable grid networks.
Recipients of the earmarked funds include Solview Systems (Israel) and Yarotek PR (Florida), who are jointly developing a solar analytics technology for industrial and commercial markets to increase and simplify the adoption of solar energy technologies.
Technion IIT (Israel) and Pajarito Powder (New Mexico) will use the BIRD funding to develop a technology to improve integration of distributed energy generation sources, energy storage and grid networks.
Dr. Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources, commented: “The climate change and clean energy challenges cross borders, and that’s where collaborative projects emerge and succeed.”
The DoE and the Israel Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources have managed to provide $26 million in smart energy funding to help 32 projects since the introduction of the BIRD programme.
The programme provides projects with 50% of a project’s total costs. Recipients’ funds must commit to repay up to 150% of the grant if the project leads to commercial success.
Smart energy funding
The news follows an announcement made by the DoE last week, that it partnered with IoT solutions firm Real-Time Innovations (RTI) for research and development of smart grid cybersecurity technology.
The DoE said it issued funding for the research and development of a solution to secure grid networks against cyber-attacks with regard to distributed energy resources and grid integration.
Paul Pazandak, leader of the Research Team at RTI, said: “As the assimilation of distributed energy resources continues to drive grid modernization, secure data transmission and processing at the edge is critical.”
RTI will use the funding from the DoE to partner with national laboratories, utility firms, smart grid equipment manufacturers and standardisation bodies in upgrading its IoT communication software RTI Connext DDS. [Israel: Electricity system vulnerable to ‘severe’ damage].
Under its collaboration with multiple parties, RTI will ensure its technology complies with existing and future grid cybersecurity standards.
The parties will aim to ensure the technology adds resiliency to existing grid networks against cyber-attacks.
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