The Electric Power Research Institute was selected has secured a $10.7M research and development funding from the Department of Energy to accelerate solar energy generation and integration and lower solar electricity costs.

EPRI said Monday a large portion of the funding will be used to develop and validate high-fidelity models of photovoltaic facilities for use in planning, operating and securing transmission and distribution of solar energy systems and technologies. 

DOE also tapped the nonprofit organization to demonstrate aggregation and control systems to boost grid services, help solar facilities identify underperformance and increase productivity, create machine learning and vision models for monitoring purposes as well as evaluate PV plant design innovations to reduce costs.

“Considered as a group, these projects bring advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence, and traditional field-based research to inform the deployment of advanced solar generation to support grid reliability and resilience,” said Arshad Mansoor, senior vice president for research and development at EPRI. 

DOE announced in November that it will select 75 research projects to receive a total of $128M in funding to advance solar technologies. 

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced legislation that would require the Customs and Border Protection to deploy enhanced detection technology at land ports of entry in an effort to boost border security.

The Securing America’s Ports Act calls on the Department of Homeland Security to develop a plan to increase the scanning rates of vehicles entering the U.S. at border crossings through the use of non-intrusive inspection systems and create a timetable to implement the technology, the office of Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, D-N.M., said Monday. 

The bill would also require the DHS secretary to initiate a one-year pilot program to research and develop enhancements to NII systems and enhance their use across the U.S. borders. 

“By leveraging this effective technology to examine most vehicles, we help CBP officers work smarter and faster in detecting contraband while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel border states depend on,” said Torres Small, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Congress approved $579M in fiscal year 2019 to bolster DHS’ use of NII technology at ports of entry.

The U.S. Air Force plans to soon demonstrate a new concept designed to help the military manage battlefield assets for multi-domain operations, Fedscoop reported Monday.  The Advanced Battle Management System’s first demonstration is scheduled to take place in about a month, the report noted.

“We’ll connect F-22s, F-35s, SpaceX Starlink satellites, Navy ships, Army soldiers,” Will Roper, USAF assistant secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said at an event with the Center for a New American Security.

The MDO approach involves integrated operation between military units and assets in air, land, sea, space and cyber domains. Roper said USAF will use cloud to drive the system that builds on existing commercial internet technology.

“We’re designing this with champions of commercial internet technology who are willing, just out of patriotism, to be contracted designers, to make sure that we don’t get outside of what worked for the internet,” the assistant secretary added.

The FBI said FaceApp and other mobile applications originating from Russia may pose a counterintelligence threat, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the bureau said Russia’s intelligence services can remotely access all servers and communications on Russian networks without seeking consent from internet service providers.

The letter is in response to Schumer’s July request for the bureau and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate potential privacy and national security risks associated with Russia-based Wireless Lab’s FaceApp, which allows users to alter genders and ages in photographic portraits.

CyberScoop reported Schumer called on U.S. citizens to consider removing the app from their mobile devices and exercise “extreme caution when downloading apps developed in hostile foreign countries.”

“The personal data FaceApp collects from a user’s device could end up in the hands of Russian intelligence services,” Schumer added.