Past Market Transformation Activities

Current activates have built upon past efforts, most notably the Solar American Cities (now Communities) program in recent years.

Solar American Cities

Sandia provided technical assistance to U.S. cities, nongovernment organizations, and federal facilities that won awards for our services, which included

• facilitating solar site selection and optimization;
• providing systems performance projections;
• identifying and quantifying the full value of solar systems;
• evaluating financing approaches;
• informing approaches for compliance with relevant codes and portfolio standards; and
• capturing, documenting, and providing information on replicable case studies.

In the process of doing this, we also identify unfulfilled needs and technical problems that we brought back to the labs to solve through invention, testing, and technical evaluation.

The purpose of the Solar America Cities (now Communities) projects was to accelerate the adoption of solar technology at the local level by engaging city governments. With the city’s authority for permitting, zoning, and inspections, our partnership with cities can effectively tackle an array of technology barriers and opportunities with a limited set of decision makers at the city level. As the energy load centers in the country, cities offer an important testing ground for addressing major market and regulatory barriers to solar use.

It is important note that the current Market Transformation actions still perform many of these same functions.

For more information about Market Transformation program at Sandia National Laboratories, contact Roger Hill, rrhill at sandia.gov, (505) 844-6111.

Sandians Working in Solar American Cities