The US Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have announced the creation of a new research centre focused on exploring smart grid technology. The Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) is located on the NREL campus in Golden, Colorado, and is the latest DOE facility and the only one in the US to focus on utility-scale clean energy grid integration. The facility’s first industry partner, Colorado-based Advanced Energy Industries, has already signed on to start work at the centre in order to develop lower-cost, improved performance solar power inverters.
“Our National Laboratories are a national treasure that help America’s entrepreneurs and innovators to accelerate the development of new technologies,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “This new facility will allow for an even stronger partnership with manufacturers, utilities and researchers to help integrate more clean, renewable energy into a smarter, more reliable and more resilient power grid.”
The new centre covers 182,500-square-foot of ground and will be looking at a variety of promising clean-energy technologies, from solar modules and wind turbines to electric vehicles (EVs) and efficient, interactive home appliances. The aim is to test how these technologies interact with each other and the grid at utility scale. The facility will house more than 15 experimental laboratories and several outdoor test beds including an interactive hardware-in-the-loop system that lets researchers and manufacturers test their products at full power and real grid load levels. There will also be a petascale supercomputer available that can support large-scale modelling and simulation at one quadrillion operations per second.
“ESIF is an excellent example of the impact that federally-funded research can have on solving national problems beyond the scope of private investment” added NREL Director Dan Arvizu. “ And, it demonstrates the importance of partnerships among the federal government, industry, and academia. With NREL's 35-year focus on developing competitive renewable energy and efficiency technologies, we’re pleased to take a leadership role in this next frontier of energy research.”
The purpose of the ESIF is to help overcome generation, transmission, distribution and end-use challenges in order to support a cleaner US energy mix that is also more affordable and more secure. Research will be conducted into next generation building technologies, microgrids, energy storage and utility-scale renewable energy. As the cost of clean energy falls, seamless integration into the grid will help to make these resources even more affordable while giving Americans even more control over how they use energy in homes and businesses. ESIF is the latest addition to the DOE’s national network of user facilities that provides nearly 30,000 scientists and engineers each year with open access to some of the world’s best instruments and tools.
Over the last four years, solar generation alone in the US has more than doubled while the costs for PV equipment have dropped by 80 percent. Lower cost solar inverters will help to introduce an increasingly diverse electricity portfolio while helping consumers and businesses with reliable and affordable energy options.
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