We are honored to be selected by the CSI RD&D committee for this award, said Eric Alderman, Solarnexus CEO. The solar energy industry is at a critical inflection point requiring greater productivity to meet its potential… Participating in research and development projects under the California Solar Initiative, and partnering with leading vendors like SaveEnergy123 and kW Engineering, will be a benefit to Solarnexus business and will accelerate the success of solar and energy efficiency programs in California.
The IEP Model project team is already well underway. Work has started on identifying and interviewing industry stakeholders, documenting existing standards in the field, and beginning to define the scope of the eventual software standard.
Ad-hoc approaches are not working
?The growth of the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries has spawned an assortment of websites, online services, and software tools to help solar system buyers (homeowners and businesses), service providers, and suppliers select and install solar power systems, says the company. These tools and services address different, specific tasks that make up the entire project cycle to identify and deliver products and services.
However, it continues, there are currently no established standards by which all of these websites and tools can readily share information about customers, projects, products and services. Consequently, service providers and buyers are often bogged down in redundant, time-consuming tasks that complicate the completion of solar energy installations.
What is IEP??
The IEP Model will introduce a common language for use by any software application involved in the specification and management of a solar-energy system. It will provide a comprehensive, standardized definition of a project and associated data, as well as a framework that facilitates communication among parties involved on a project. The IEP model aims to simplify and streamline processes, reduce time and costs for both the consumer and contractors, produce a better ROI for both, and remove key market barriers to the adoption of both energy efficiency measures and solar energy.
The California Solar Initiative (CSI), overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission, offers solar incentives to energy users (except new homes) in investor-owned utility territories in California. The CSI Program has a goal to install 1,940 MW of new solar by 2017.
To help achieve California's goal of creating a vibrant solar industry, the state legislature created the Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment Program. This program will invest USD$50 million to fund solar research and demonstration projects that will measurably reduce the cost and accelerate the installation of solar and other distributed technologies that could employ solar for the generation and storage of electricity, or that could reduce the use of natural gas.
