April 2020
Monthly Update
Jim Saber, President & CEO

I hope that all of you reading this are healthy and staying safe. Like many of you, dealing with COVID-19 has presented many challenges to our daily lives and businesses. We continue to work from home to protect our team and their families while ensuring we can continue to support the changing needs of our clients and partners.

While we typically view the outcomes of our work to be measured by reduction of green-house gas emissions and moving towards a carbon free future, the impacts of COVID-19 are forcing our clients and partners to address overall safety and resiliency in addition to emissions of our mobility and energy systems.

With this, we are extremely proud to be supporting PlanetM's launch of the COVID-19 Mobility Solutions Grant which addresses the impacts of COVID-19. Read more.
Whether you are an innovator offering smart mobility or smart grid technology solutions, or a community, city or organization in need of solutions to address your most pressing challenges; our established network can provide opportunities and connections to help you achieve your goals.
NextEnergy Blog
Resilience in the built environment
Eric McDonald CEM, LEED AP
Director, Testing and Infrastructure Development

Resilience in the built environment is essential in today’s connected, urban world, and continuous and safe operation of buildings and other infrastructure during unusual or calamitous events is a necessity for economic stability.

Resilience encompasses many aspects outside of a structure’s physical ability to withstand disaster; it also includes the anticipatory strategies used to maintain operation of equipment, networks, building systems and infrastructure. Some of the most important parts of these strategies include backup power storage, indoor air quality maintenance and data and information technology (IT) security.  Read more.
What we're reading

We've asked the NextEnergy team to share the industry-related news, stories and information that have grabbed their attention this month. We hope you find it useful! For more recommendations you can explore past editions on our website .
Jim Saber, President & CEO
What he's reading: Downtime on the Microgrid
Media: N/A
What makes it interesting: Interesting perspective on the grid, smart cities, and resiliency.
Wayne Snyder, Director, Technology Development
Media: U.S. Department of Transportation
What makes it interesting: This report summarizes how adverse weather and road weather conditions affect vehicle sensors and perception systems and how drivers react to or take back control from their vehicles. Key technology conclusion: vision only systems were overall the most affected by adverse weather; especially snow and ice.
Eric McDonald, Director, Faculties & Infrastructure Development
Media: NPR
What makes it interesting: The plastics industry has spent millions of dollars to convince the public to recycle but, the industry never saw recycling as viable. In the last 40 years, only 10% of plastics have been recycled. Petroleum now makes producing new plastic more economical than recycling. The industry expects to triple plastic production by 2050.
Tim Slusser, Director, Smart Mobility Initiatives
Media: Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA)
What makes it interesting: The path to a hydrogen economy is becoming clearer. From this link: "A coalition of major oil & gas, power, automotive, fuel cell, and hydrogen companies have come together to develop a Road Map to a US Hydrogen Economy. This comprehensive Road Map details how the U.S. can expand its global energy leadership, by scaling up activity in the rapidly emerging and evolving hydrogen economy, as policy makers and industry work together and take the right steps."
Funding Opportunities
View our full list here
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Funding Opportunities


Deadline: April 30, 2020
Awards: $10M
This funding opportunity from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has two topic areas:
·          Topic Area One: The overall goal of this topic area is to provide funding for a project that will improve wind resource modeling and predictions in offshore wind energy development areas. Using lessons-learned and information gained during the previous program work in complex-terrain wind resource modeling and prediction, this topic area will focus on improving wind resource model physics for foundational wind forecasts and other applications in offshore wind energy development areas.
·          Topic Area Two: The overall goal of this topic area is to provide funding for a project(s) that will enable demonstration of a novel technology and/or methodology that will advance the state-of-the-art of offshore wind energy in the United States. The proposed project must either implement an innovative technology at engineering/pilot or full-scale, and/or employ a novel methodology that has yet to be utilized commercially in the United States for offshore wind.
Tags: Active Funding Opportunities


Deadline for Responses: May 12, 2020
Awards: TBD
The goal of this planned FOA would be to demonstrate the ability of efficient buildings to interact with the grid to provide demand flexibility. This includes the ability to shift and modulate load in both existing and new communities across diverse climates, geography, building types and grid/regulatory structures, while maintaining (if not enhancing) occupant satisfaction and productivity.
Tags: Upcoming Funding Opportunities


Deadline: June 22, 2020
Awards: $17M
The Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) program aims to develop the core research needed to engineer these complex CPS, some of which may also require dependable, high-confidence, or provable behaviors. Core research areas of the program include control, data analytics, and machine learning—including real-time learning for control, autonomy, design, Internet of Things (IoT), mixed initiatives including human-in- or human-on-the-loop, networking, privacy, real-time systems, safety, security, and verification. By abstracting from the particulars of specific systems and application domains, the CPS program seeks to reveal cross-cutting, fundamental scientific and engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and physical elements across all application domains. The program additionally supports the development of methods, tools, and hardware and software components based upon these cross-cutting principles, along with validation of the principles via prototypes and testbeds. This program also fosters a research community that is committed to advancing education and outreach in CPS and accelerating the transition of CPS research into the real world.
Tags: Active Funding Opportunities


Deadline: July 8, 2020
Awards: $4.5M
The goal of this program is to create resources that will help those on the front lines of distributed energy resources adoption—like first responders, safety officials, and building managers and owners—keep up with these rapidly emerging and advancing technologies. These professionals are at the forefront of America’s energy transition and play a role in easing adoption, ensuring safety, and reducing installation costs. Because of this, the participating Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy offices see these professionals as key to enabling understanding and acceptance of new energy technologies.
Tags: Active Funding Opportunities


Deadline: July 21, 2020
Awards: $9M
The Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) is a research and action competition in the Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) domain designed to build a more cohesive research-to-innovation pipeline and foster a collaborative spirit. Building on the National Science Foundation’s S&CC program and the extensive S&CC ecosystem, CIVIC aims to accelerate the impact of S&CC research, and deepen cooperation and information sharing across sectors and regions. CIVIC will lay a foundation for a broader and more fluid exchange of research interests and civic priorities that will create new instances of collaboration and introduce new areas of technical and social scientific discovery. CIVIC will fund projects that can produce significant community impact within 12 months (following a four-month planning phase) — in contrast to many community-university partnerships that take years to provide tangible benefits to communities — and have the potential for lasting impact beyond the period of the CIVIC award.
Tags: Active Funding Opportunities


Deadline: TBD
Awards: Up to $1M
The AFFECT 2020 funding opportunity will help federal agencies advance the energy efficiency, resilience, and security of their operations. Select agency projects will be chosen that leverage performance contracting to enhance federal agency goals at critical sites and address the issue of aging infrastructure and deferred maintenance and repairs.
Tags: Upcoming Funding Opportunities


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