ASU to aid governor's energy policy team to spur solar installs

The Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) at Arizona State University is one of the players on the Governor’s Office of Energy Policy team tapped by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to identify and eliminate barriers to easy and affordable rooftop solar installation.

Gov. Jan Brewer announced this month that the Arizona team received a $710,000 grant from DOE, the first-year award in a three-year $2.8 million initiative, with the goal of developing processes to lower costs by identifying best practices in finance, permitting and zoning.

The Arizona team, which is one of 22 regional teams receiving DOE grants, also includes the cities of Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff, and the nonprofit Arizona SmartPower, which is dedicated to helping Arizona residents make smart energy choices.

“This grant will help impact the cost and rate of uptake of solar installations in Arizona,” said Harvey Bryan, a senior sustainability scientist at the Institute, who will be the lead ASU researcher on the project. “We are focused on solving key challenges associated with the reduction of the non-module cost of installing solar energy systems such as: permitting, financing, interconnection, as well as planning and zoning.”

Bryan is a professor of architecture in the Design School at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and contributes to ASU’s LightWorks initiative. LightWorks pulls light-inspired research at ASU under one strategic framework.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative is part of the department’s larger effort to make solar energy more accessible and affordable, increase domestic solar deployment, and position the U.S. as a leader in the rapidly-growing global solar market. For fiscal year 2012, this initiative has awarded a total of $12 million to the 22 teams from around the country. More about SunShot is online at http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/index.html.

Amelia Huggins, Amelia.Huggins@asu.edu
480-965-1754

Carol Hughes, carol.hughes@asu.edu
480-965-6375