The funding will support a consortium of DOE national laboratories and partners supporting critical research and development over the next three years to help modernise the US power grid.
Secretary Moniz also announced the release of DOE’s comprehensive new Grid Modernization Multi-Year Program Plan (MYPP), a blueprint for the Department’s research, development and demonstration agenda to enable a modernised grid. This will be supported by the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) which will bring its array of experts and resources together to participate in 48 of the 88 projects announced by Moniz on January 14th.
“Modernizing the US electrical grid is essential to reducing carbon emissions, creating safeguards against attacks on our infrastructure, and keeping the lights on” said Secretary Moniz said at the announcement. “Our Quadrennial Energy Review and Quadrennial Technology Review identified needs and opportunities to invest in the grid. This public-private partnership between our National Laboratories, industry, academia, and state and local government agencies will help us further strengthen our ongoing efforts to improve our electrical infrastructure so that it is prepared to respond to the nation's energy needs for decades to come.”
The Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC) involves 14 DOE National Laboratories and dozens of industry, academia, and state and local government agency partners across the country. The new research funding is being awarded in response to a challenge by DOE to the National Laboratories to establish, through the GMLC, a comprehensive grid-related research and development effort to address a range of emerging challenges and opportunities in the nation's power grid.
NREL Associate Laboratory Director Bryan Hannegan and co-chair of the GMLC added that the US economy needs a modernised grid and that the GMLC is a new way of efficiently leveraging the strengths and capabilities of American laboratories to deploy new concepts and technologies in order to make the grid cleaner, more productive and more secure.
DOE's Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) and National Wind Technology Center (NWTC), both located at NREL, will be key facilities for developing new technologies and serving as a testing centre for the deployment of grid technologies. ESIF and the NWTC house a powerful collection of state-of-the-art capabilities that support the development, evaluation, and demonstration of innovative clean energy technologies.
Outcomes of the projects will include a national network of laboratory facilities for use in testing and validation of emerging grid-related technologies and systems, new common standards and test procedures to ensure that emerging grid technologies can communicate with one another and work together to provide energy services to customers and new decision support tools for integrated planning and operation of distributed energy technologies, such as solar, demand response and smart consumer appliances.
Advances in grid design and planning tools will take into account the increasing number of emerging technologies being deployed on the grid in homes, businesses and communities. A new testbed for development of advanced distribution management systems will allow grid operators to more effectively utilise grid assets, increasing resilience and reliability and enabling a wider choice of energy services for consumers.
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