California Solar Initiative Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment Program Process Evaluation

The California Public Utilities Commission chose Evergreen Economics to lead the evaluation of the California Solar Initiative Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment (CSI RD&D) program. This innovate solar research program has provided approximately $35 million in grant funding to 36 separate solar energy research projects. The funded projects focused on three key research areas: 1) grid integration that includes projects to help improve photovoltaic (PV) integration with transmission and distribution systems, 2) new PV production technologies, and 3) business development and deployment strategies that help support the solar market and end-users through innovative business models.

Evergreen began the evaluation by developing a comprehensive program logic model to identify key metrics and indicators to measure important program accomplishments. Based on the logic model and metrics, the Evergreen team engaged in several primary data collection activities, including a detailed review of the individual project documentation, 80 in-depth interviews with grantees and related researchers, a web survey of 120 solar industry market actors, and a network analysis to determine how the knowledge benefits from these projects were communicated to the broader solar community.

Using the logic model and associated metrics as a guide, Evergreen aimed to understand if the solar research funded through the program was of high quality and likely to achieve the longer-term program goals. An important step in this process was to confirm that the research knowledge obtained through the grantee projects was being disseminated to the industry in a useful manner, and then measuring how the CSI RD&D program was providing benefits to the users of this information within the solar industry.

Evergreen followed the best practices established for evaluating RD&D programs, and found extensive evidence of knowledge benefits and network effects resulting from the CSI RD&D funding of these projects. As part of the network analysis, the Evergreen team also identified additional research collaborations and networking activities that spurred new activity in the market. These types of effects, which are sometimes three or four steps removed from the initial project activities, would have been missed without a theory-based evaluation grounded in RD&D program evaluation best practices.