Energy Systems Integration Newsletter: May 2023

In this edition, a new model helps airports optimize deployment for electric bus fleets, NREL’s work in strategic energy security supports a secure and resilient transition to a clean energy future, new projects will demonstrate grid-supportive wind and solar deployments, and more.

NREL Model Cuts Complexity in Deploying Electric Buses at Airports

As the U.S. aviation industry generates 2% of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions and consumes 10% of transportation energy, NREL is leading the way to find pathways to sustainability, including through sustainable aviation fuels, electrification, and new transportation options. 
  
To help one of the largest airports in the world strategically deploy an electric bus fleet, NREL developed a simulation-based optimization modeling framework. The framework accounts for battery capacity, charging power, placement and number of charging stations, travel distance of nonelectric buses, passenger wait times, and other key factors to show optimal emissions-reducing configurations.

New Research Area Supports the Secure and Resilient Transition to a Clean Energy Future

Energy security is the ability to maintain energy services at global, national, or local levels against natural or human disruptions. As part of NREL’s energy security and resilience research portfolio, the lab is developing a new area of research in strategic energy security, which aims to help decision makers navigate a secure and resilient transition to a clean energy future. In this work, NREL is collaborating with a broad set of partners to advance the understanding of the national and international security implications of global energy transformations. Learn more about NREL’s work in strategic energy security.

NREL Awarded $4.4 Million for Grid-Supportive Wind and Solar Deployments

NREL will lead one U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded project and support three others that demonstrate how solar, wind, and storage can support a reliable and efficient power system. With funds forthcoming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, DOE recently announced $26 million for projects that apply new technologies and control solutions to real systems across 13 states.

The NREL-led project will continue work in Hawaii, where high levels of inverter-based resources are broadly changing grid behavior. This project will improve transmission system reliability using new fault detection methods. “We will provide immediate solutions for protection engineers working on transmission systems that are dependent on inverter-based resources," said Jing Wang, NREL project lead. “Our solution will resolve the most frequent issues of relay misoperations and remove a major barrier to the resilient operation of transmission grids.”

In three other projects, NREL will lend its expertise in power system controls and design. One project will demonstrate grid-forming controls at a newly constructed wind power plant in central Iowa, allowing the plant to become a flexible stand-alone resource that provides grid stability services. Another project will modernize protection systems for 100% renewably-powered systems and will demonstrate the method in Illinois and Puerto Rico. The third project will use a company’s artificial intelligence product to forecast, optimize, and control distributed energy resources in New Mexico.

Analysis Points to Emerging Tech to Meet Solar Manufacturing Targets

An “unprecedented ramp-up of production capacity” over the next two decades is needed to provide enough solar power to completely decarbonize the global electrical system, but that goal can be achieved, according to a recent analysis led by NREL.

The target is 63.4 terawatts of installed capacity of photovoltaics needed between 2050 and 2060—a 60-fold increase in the amount installed worldwide today. Published in the journal Solar RRL, the study captures the dynamics of the financing needed to build manufacturing capacity to produce enough photovoltaic (PV) modules. It also suggests that emerging technologies could be crucial in ramping up solar PV manufacturing capacity.

Manufacturing Masterminds: A “Bottomless Cyber Enthusiast” Works To Secure U.S. Power Grid Against Hackers

A blizzard cut power to 1.7 million residents in upstate New York, leaving them without heat in lethal subzero temperatures in December 2022. “New York state was not prepared for it,” said Danish Saleem, a senior energy systems cybersecurity researcher at NREL. “The same might happen if there’s a cyberattack.” In a recent edition of our Manufacturing Masterminds series, Saleem explains how he’s working to build security into distributed clean energy technologies to protect the country’s power grid from the increasing threat of cyberattacks.

REopt and Federal On-Site Clean Energy: Three-Part Training Series

A new Federal Energy Management Program training series provides an overview of NREL’s Renewable Energy Integration and Optimization (REopt®) techno-economic optimization platform, which can be used to evaluate distributed energy resources to support energy cost savings, resilience, and decarbonization goals. The trainings focus on REopt web tool capabilities and a tool demonstration, site data requirements (including energy load profiles and utility rate tariffs), and a deeper dive into REopt’s decarbonization and resilience modeling capabilities.

Register for the 41st International Energy Workshop

The International Energy Workshop, hosted by NREL and the Colorado School of Mines, is a leading conference for the international energy modeling community. Each year, the International Energy Workshop provides a venue for energy analysts to compare quantitative energy projections, analyze mechanisms behind diverging views of future energy developments, and observe new trends in global energy production and consumption. The workshop will host more than 100 presentations covering high-impact topics.

Register now to participate in the 41st International Energy Workshop to be held in Golden, Colorado, from June 13–15, 2023.

Workshop: Improving the Interconnection Process for Distributed Energy Resources

NREL is hosting a virtual workshop on Improving the Interconnection Process on Thursday, June 15. Expert speakers will address three topics: strategies for reducing timelines, strategies for improving technical screens, and strategies for improving prospecting tools. The material is designed for state public utility commissions, but it is open to all stakeholders who are interested in establishing or improving process-related elements of interconnection. The 3.5-hour workshop includes time for questions and answers as well as interactive polls for audience participation. Register for the Improving the Interconnection Workshop.

Sponsored by the DOE Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, this workshop series provides guidance and clarity to local authorities on the rules around integrating distributed energy resources with the grid using IEEE Standard 1547-2018. View previous workshop presentations on bulk power system considerations and coordination and modern distributed energy resource capabilities and deployment concerns.

Job Postings

Interested in joining NREL? We are rapidly growing and looking to fill a variety of positions. Following are job openings within NREL’s Energy Systems Integration team. Check out the NREL careers page to find even more opportunities and explore a future with NREL.

Publications Roundup

Community Resilience Options: A Menu for Enhancing Local Energy Resilience 

This document highlights areas of potential community resilience improvements, especially those that relate to clean energy deployment for communities and municipalities. This document introduces 10 categories of resilience-enhancing projects at a high level, intended for community members and decision makers who are new to the topic to build their understanding of which solutions best fit their community. These categories primarily focus on community-scale measures, and how different options might be available at larger scales. Full implementation of the measures described here requires in-depth, site-specific considerations that go beyond the scope of this document.

How Much Might it Cost to Decarbonize the Power Sector? It Depends On the Metric, ScienceDirect

One of the most prominent questions about decarbonizing the power sector is how much it might cost. In this work, the authors quantify the cost of decarbonization using five types of cost metrics: 1) the total system cost, 2) the bulk power electricity price, 3) the average retail rate, 4) household energy costs, and 5) carbon abatement costs. The authors show that the reported cost of decarbonization highly depends on the metric chosen, and they discuss how the choice of metric can aid in discussions about decarbonization costs. The authors also compare these costs to the emissions reductions and health benefits of decarbonization and find that the benefits can be many times greater than the costs.

Understand the Costs of an Energy or Water Outage With the Customer Damage Function Calculator

NREL’s Customer Damage Function Calculator is designed to help federal facility owners, building energy managers, and resilience planners estimate the costs incurred at their site from an outage and understand and quantify the value of resilience to justify investments that would prevent or lessen the impact of a disruption. This new Federal Energy Management Program fact sheet summarizes the web tool’s features and benefits.