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Erick Petersen PV Powered, Inc. VP Sales & Marketing Ph: (541) 312-3832 erickpetersen@pvpowered.com

PV Powered Wins Stage 2 SEGIS Award: A Competitive DOE Grant Developed to Enable High Grid Penetration of PV

US Department of Energy award recognizes strength of PV Powered-led team and the company's position as a grid-tied PV inverter innovator

Bend, Ore. (July 31, 2009)—PV Powered, Inc., a US manufacturer of grid-tied photovoltaic inverters and industry leader in reliability, installability and maintainability, announced that it has been selected to receive a Stage 2 award under the Solar Energy Grid Integration System (SEGIS) program by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and contract manager, Sandia National Laboratories. As one of five companies selected – down from the original 12 contractors in Phase 1, this award reaffirms the company’s role as an innovation engine in the industry.

The PV Powered-led team for the Phase 2 work includes recognized distributed energy and smart grid leaders Portland General Electric (NYSE:POR), Northern Plains Power Technologies, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, and Sensus. All are committed to the research and development (R&D) necessary to fuel innovations that increase energy harvest, reduce the cost of PV systems, and remove barriers to high levels of PV grid penetration.

“The smart grid has the potential to be more responsive, reliable, integrated and efficient than the traditional power grid when distributed generation sources like PV are tightly integrated from the start,” said Steve Hummel, vice president of engineering at PV Powered. “The synergy of our team, technology companies working with utility companies fueled by government programs and consumer demands, ensures we will have the technology for supporting utility requirements of the future.”

The $24 million SEGIS project was developed by the U.S. DOE to encourage the development of new technology and products to significantly accelerate penetration of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems into the utility grids of America. The SEGIS project funds critical R&D to ensure solar energy solutions are cost-competitive with conventional forms of electricity. The grant aids PV Powered’s progress with the innovation and development of critical enabling technologies that will foster broad acceptance of PV across the utility market.