Aurora’s SolarTAC readies to press ‘play’ on new $1.5-million project

AURORA | When he started at the Solar Technology Acceleration Center in 2009, Dustin Smith almost immediately started dreaming about a day when scientists could lug their inventions to the site in northeast Aurora and quickly test them in real-world scenarios.

Smith, the executive director of SolarTAC, said that “plug-and-play” capability is crucial because it could mean technologies don’t sit idle during months of development and they can hit the market sooner.

“I felt very early on that having the plug-and-play capability for balance of systems was going to be a very important part of our future,” Smith said.

This week, that dream took a step closer to becoming a reality.

The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade announced Monday that SolarTAC had received a $500,000 grant through the office’s Advanced Industry Accelerator Grant Program. In all, the program doled out $4.3 million to five Colorado companies.

Smith said the $500,000 grant is a huge moment for SolarTAC. The organization has scrimped and saved in recent years to set aside another $1 million for the project, which Smith estimates will cost a total of about $1.5 million.

With the project’s total price tag now covered, Smith said he is hopeful the project can be operational within 18 to 24 months.

Smith said one of the challenges facing the renewable energy industry is that it can be difficult, and expensive, to build the sorts of infrastructure needed to test new designs in a real-world scenario.

Now, companies often have to rely on consumers who are willing to test the product for them, he said.

Especially with companies that are building new battery technologies, Smith said money can be tight early on and finding investors to foot the bill for testing is tough.

“It’s hard for those companies to find the money to build infrastructure to test their systems on,” he said.

SolarTAC’s Accelerator program will provide companies that baseline of infrastructure needed to test their equipment, including solar power generation, a connection to a power grid and devices that mimic typical heavy use. And it will all happen outdoors, in a regular environment so they can see how the devices respond to rain, cold, rabbits and whatever else the rolling plains on the city’s eastern edge can throw at them, Smith said.

Hopefully, Smith said, the project will go beyond battery companies to include companies using bio-fuels and other renewables.

The idea is to get these technologies out of the development phase quickly and get them to market, he said.

“This is not just about continuing study and thinking about things forever,” he said.

Katie Woslager, advance industries senior grant manager for OEDIT, said the grants are meant to help companies with large-scale projects that might not otherwise be able to get them off the ground.

That’s especially important for organizations such as SolarTAC, who are competing in an already competitive industry, Woslager said.

“I think its important to help our renewable energy companies particularly,” she said.

SolarTAC is a partnership between the city of Aurora and several energy companies that serves as a testing ground for new renewable energy products. Since the site opened it has grown to include a few high-tech solar panels — including 13 massive, 65-foot-wide panels — and a variety of other devices that could one day power your home. It’s attracted some big names in solar, including Amonix, Abengoa Solar, SunEdison and Hitite Solar.