LF Energy Summit 2024

SolarNetwork, a open-source platform for DER data management and application building commenced in 2009, continues to offer rich APIs, hosted server resources and source code to allow renewable energy application creators to develop amazing applications. Their latest advancement comes with a $750k (USD) Department of Energy grant to develop machine learning capability that can be deployed and managed at the grid edge, using an open reference design for an edge compute node. Collaborating with Stony Brook University and Ecogy Energy in New York, SolarNetwork Foundation contributes to an open edge compute framework to deploy trained models at the grid edge, with the goal of optimizing preventative maintenance schedules for commercial and industrial (C&I) DERs. As DER orchestration proves to be one of the most practical and cost effective solutions for tackling the effects of climate change, the management of DERs will need to scale appropriately. SolarQuant aims to leverage edge compute capabilities by dovetailing recent advances in machine learning (ML) and to assist asset managers with increased visibility of their rapidly growing and evolving heterogeneous fleets.