Clean energy Innovation District anchor Satcon was awarded a $3 million US Dept. of Energy “SunShot” award last week.  DOE’s SunShot initiative aims to make solar power cost competitive with fossil fuel based grid power by the end of the decade.

If you could buy premium gasoline at the pump for the same price you pay for regular, you’d choose premium, right?  Who wouldn’t choose a superior energy source (no carbon solar) over a polluting, carbon intensive one if prices were equal?  That’s essentially the goal of the sunshot initiative.

In case you’ve forgotten, as recently at 2007, solar installation costs in Massachusetts were hovering around $9 a watt.  Installation costs are half that these days and panel and balance of system efficiencies are improving, thanks to healthy competition, component innnovation, and smart, market based industry incentives from the state and federal goverment.

The shift away from fossil fuel based grid power (produced largely out of state) toward solar (installed locally, some components manufactured locally) also produce substantial macroeconomic benefits.  Each megawatt of solar installed in Massachusetts generates 41 job years, $2.3 million in wage and salary compensation to workers and $6.1 million in economic activity (Source:  DOE).  Solar installations also reduce local emmissions by offsetting fossil fuel based power generation.  These reductions have real human health and economic impacts.  According to the US EPA, for each megawatt of solar installed in Massachusetts, reductions in emissions (sulfer dioxide, nitrogen oxide, CO2) generate $1.03 million in health benefits.

Satcon has been growing steadily at its location in the Boston Marine Industrial Park, adding jobs and manufacturing capacity.   Satcon will use the award to develop a new inverter architecture that eliminates the impacts of voltage variation caused by PV system generation variability.

We congratulate them, and the three other Massachusetts SunShot award recipients, on their latest achievement.