The US Department Of Energy has announced USD $32 million in funding to help train more American solar support workers, to further drive down the cost of solar power systems and to increase access to important solar data.
Up to $12 million will be available to develop a solar support workforce, including professionals in the real estate and utility industries. This is in addition to the Obama Administration’s Solar Ready Vets initiative and President Obama’s goal of training 75,000 workers install solar panels by 2020; announced last month.
“To ensure the continued growth of the U.S. solar industry and our clean energy economy, it is critical that we support workforce training programs that will give American workers the skills they need for well-paying jobs and also make sure American consumers have access to highly-trained, credentialed professionals when they choose solar to power their daily lives,” said Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.
Another $5 million will fund projects with a goal of improving market transparency and access to key solar energy datasets, such as electricity production and financial performance information. Projects under the program will create new capabilities enabling existing solar databases across the industry to interact in a more efficient way.
$15 million will support projects creating new designs for concentrating solar power (CSP) collectors – which currently represent around 40 percent of a total CSP system’s cost.
In other recent news from the DoE, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz last week announced the release of Enabling Wind Power Nationwide, a report showing how the USA can realise the massive potential for wind energy deployment across all states.
Technical advances could see a much larger chunk of the USA suitable for wind power, bringing the total area of technical wind potential to 1.8 million square miles.
“Wind generation has more than tripled in the United States in just six years, exceeding 4.5 percent of total generation, and we are focused on expanding its clean power potential to every state in the country,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
The DoE says its support of the wind sector to date has helped install nearly 66 gigawatts of wind power capacity – enough to supply the power needs of more than 17 million homes – has and assisted in decreasing the cost of wind energy by more than 90 percent.
