Impacts
Read examples of how communities, companies, governments, and other energy leaders are making an impact using the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform to achieve their energy transition goals.
Projects
Energy Transformations for U.S. Ports and Transit Hubs
NREL has modeled traffic flow at one of the busiest transit hubs in the world—Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport—by creating a “digital twin” of the airport with artificial intelligence tools to determine optimal designs and energy-saving decisions. This advanced modeling is helping other hubs consider how technologies such as electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles can be integrated into their own operations.
ARIES Will Be the Proving Ground For Concepts That Can Transform Community Energy Systems
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Clean Energy to Communities program helps local governments, utilities, and community-based organizations achieve their clean energy goals. Using the R&D 100 award-winning ARIES software, Simulation and Emulation for Advanced Systems, NREL showed how large-scale wind power and a new battery energy storage system could be added to the grid in Fairbanks, Alaska to improve reliability and facilitate Fairbanks’s retirement of its 50-MW coal plant and 20-year-old nickel-cadmium battery.
Hybrid Power Plants Maximize Value of Renewable Resources
NREL is leading a large national collaboration named FlexPower to pioneer new approaches for multi-technology power plants to provide grid services for resilient, stable, and efficient operations. The FlexPower project brings NREL together with Idaho National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories to develop a hybrid generation power plant enhanced with energy storage at NREL's Flatirons Campus. This electrons-to-molecules scheme is being evaluated in a Grid Modernization Initiative-funded project that will reduce costs via standardization and through the possibility of scaling up electrolyzer integration. Such hybrid power plants will accelerate the adoption of variable renewable energy and hydrogen storage by proving new value streams for these resources.
Speeding Cyber Innovation
Using ARIES, the Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator is identifying security gaps in the electric grid and expediting solutions to market. This technology partnership of federal experts, industry partners, and innovators accelerates the deployment of cybersecurity solutions for the nation's evolving grid. The accelerator's first cohort—which includes Blue Ridge Networks, Sierra Nevada Corp., and Xage Security—is validating its proposed solutions in the ARIES cyber range, which provides a safe, emulated environment to evaluate cybersecurity innovations without putting customers or utility networks at risk. Read more about the first cohort members.
Microgrid in Cordova, Alaska, Is Model for Resilient, Local Energy
The city of Cordova, Alaska, is enhancing the resilience of its microgrid with support from DOE's Grid Modernization Lab Consortium—including Idaho National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory—and nine industry partners. The resilience-enhancing technologies include new energy storage; new controls for its hydropower resources; and a fleet of meters, sensors, and advanced zonal controls using smart metering infrastructure to manage recovery, improve resilience, and support the city's fishing economy by serving seasonal and critical loads. Using ARIES, Cordova validated its improved microgrid against plausible events, such as power loss from an earthquake or avalanche, allowing the local electric cooperative to observe and control the network with more precision. This is important for Cordova and indigenous communities throughout Alaska because microgrids are their last resort for energy, and controls make it easier to adapt during critical events.
2023 Accomplishments
To learn more about our 2023 accomplishments and impact, check out the ARIES Annual Report 2023.
R&D 100 awards
Peer reviewed journal articles
High-impact publications
Conference papers
Technical reports
Software records/copyright
Records of invention
Patents
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