Energy Systems Integration Newsletter: January 2024

In this edition, the Energy Systems Integration annual reports are now available, NREL releases the 2023 Standard Scenarios, Vahan Gevorgian becomes an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow, and more.

Our Year in Review: Energy Systems Integration 2023 Annual Reports

The year 2023 was one of progress for renewable energy integration at NREL. We installed new research capabilities for the ARIES platform, including a new supercomputer; celebrated 10 years of the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF); and expanded our collaborations with industry.  

In the last year, NREL researchers were able to:

• Interconnect electric vehicles on a DC-DC charging hub for reduced cost and increased efficiency
• Better detect electrical oscillations that arise in renewable power systems to increase system stability
• Emulate cyberattacks on smart buildings to develop defense strategies
• Model a transition away from coal to support local leaders in Fairbanks, Alaska.

To learn about these research advances and many more, read the ARIES Annual Report and the companion ESIF Stewardship Summary, now available for 2023.

Possible Lower Emissions, More Renewables, and Continued Tax Credits on the Horizon, According to NREL’s 2023 Standard Scenarios

NREL released its 2023 Standard Scenarios earlier this month, showing potential changes in the U.S. electricity sector through 2050. The annually updated suite of scenarios uses NREL’s Regional Energy Development System (ReEDS™) to generate new scenarios that account for the latest technology cost and performance projections. This year’s Standard Scenarios show that by 2050, wind and solar power generation could increase fivefold and tenfold, respectively. It also reveals that currently nascent technologies, such as natural gas with carbon capture, could play a limited role in electricity generation under current policies; however, those same technologies could play a bigger role in decarbonized futures with breakthrough cost and performance improvements or national electric sector carbon dioxide emissions constraints. According to the Standard Scenarios, emissions are also expected to significantly decrease for at least the next decade. The mid-case scenario shows carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. electricity sector decreasing by 81% in 2035 with current policies.

Read more about the 2023 Standard Scenarios and listen to an NREL podcast episode featuring the scenarios.

Vahan Gevorgian, a Force in Grid Innovation, Becomes an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow

Some scientists take sharp turns in their career, but NREL Senior Research Fellow Vahan Gevorgian has powered ahead for 30 years in his original research path of integrating clean energy into the grid, and now he is being recognized for these accomplishments by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Gevorgian was elected to the 2024 IEEE Fellows Class, which is a special recognition for IEEE members of extraordinary contributions—in Gevorgian’s case, for contributions to the integration of wind and solar photovoltaics in grids.

Gevorgian has been a continual force in designing renewable energy systems. He works with the real hardware, building hybrid power plants from full-scale wind turbines, battery systems, solar arrays, and other devices to validate new grid integration methods. He has made widely impactful progress in power hardware controls and components and remains eager for more. “The technology is constantly evolving, and I’m always excited to see what’s next,” Gevorgian said in a recent Q&A. “We try to stay one step ahead of the industry so that when the industry runs into questions, we have answers.”

Gevorgian was the only NREL engineer elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2024, but he joins several others who have been recognized in past years. To read more about Gevorgian’s journey at NREL, read the story Behind the Blades: Vahan Gevorgian’s Three-Decade Clean Energy Odyssey.

For Solar Degradation, a Little Becomes a Lot

Solar photovoltaic (PV) fleets are designed to last decades, but gradual degradation can eat away at their energy production and lead to measurable losses. A new NREL data set quantifies incremental impacts on the U.S. solar PV fleet, revealing how extreme weather and system aging contribute to moderate but measurable breakdown.

The data set shows that the national median loss in performance is around 0.75%/year, with significant variance between hot and cold climates: Hotter zones exhibit nearly twice as much performance loss. Higher-intensity weather events also showed faster degradation, with wind, hail, and snow of certain strength causing greater performance loss.

With this data set, industry can make better-informed investments in solar installations and their maintenance, and researchers can learn how to strengthen fleets for the future. Read the full story on solar degradation to learn more.

Latest Tell Me Something Grid Dives Into 10 Things You Need To Know About Grid Reliability

There is a lot of planning and operations to ensure 24/7 access to reliable electricity that powers our homes, businesses, and communities. In the latest Tell Me Something Grid, NREL’s Paul Denholm shares the top 10 things to know about the reliability of the U.S. power grid and why renewable energy can help keep the lights on. He highlights a new package of NREL resources designed to support energy system stakeholders wanting to understand the complexities of power grid reliability as more renewables are added to the grid. The package includes fact sheets on current grid reliability, the causes of recent major outages, and maintaining a reliable future grid with renewables.

Learn about the top 10 things to know about U.S. power grid reliability and dive into the fact sheets.

Estimate the Value of Resilience With the Customer Damage Function Calculator

The Customer Damage Function Calculator is a free, publicly available web tool for facility owners and resilience planners to understand the costs of an electric grid outage at their site. Using this tool is the first step in determining the potential avoided costs associated with resilience investments and informing decision-making based on the cost of inaction. Learn more about the calculator and how it works by watching the new overview video or visiting the Customer Damage Function Calculator.

Deadline Extended: Call for Vehicle-Grid Integration Use Cases for Advanced Distribution Management Systems

The final day to submit a proposal for the Advanced Distribution Management System Test Bed User Call is Feb. 16. Partners interested in evaluating vehicle-to-grid applications for distribution systems are encouraged to submit. Interested in using this award-winning capability? Learn how to apply.

You’re Invited: PR100 Study Final Results Public Webinar

Led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transition to 100% Renewable Energy (PR100) Study has been a two-year effort resulting in stakeholder-driven pathways for Puerto Rico to meet its renewable energy goals. Register now to join a presentation and discussion of final results from the PR100 Study on Feb. 7, 2024, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. AST (2:30 to 4 p.m. EST). This event will be presented in English with captioning and live interpretation in both Spanish and American Sign Language.

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

5G Securely Energized and Resilient: Task 2 and 3 Progress Report, NREL Technical Report (2023)

Advanced wireless communications offer promising security and resilience benefits for managing microgrids and electric power systems. In support of the U.S. Department of Defense’s efforts to ensure communications system resilience for military deployments, NREL designed, developed, and deployed a 5G wireless microgrid test bed to study the ability of 5G networks to facilitate microgrid controls, assess how 5G can improve microgrid operational efficiency and latency, and test its resilience against cyber threat scenarios.

In this progress report, the authors discuss how they integrated and configured a 5G wireless platform with virtual/simulated power system components and executed hypothetical use cases for distributed grid controls that could be used in deployment scenarios. Key findings from NREL’s work showed that 5G wireless communications introduced only moderate degradation in latency versus non-wireless, could be configured to be resilient to cyberattacks, and helped maintain power to communication systems in the face of grid disruptions.

The outcomes of this project have dual-use impact for both the U.S. Department of Defense and the commercial sector. NREL is currently assessing active physical power system components managed by unique 5G-enabled distributed controls to validate the initial findings and plans to report these findings later in 2024.

NOW-23: The 2023 National Offshore Wind Data Set, National Offshore Wind Report (2023)

This report presents the latest wind resource data set specifically tailored for offshore regions in the United States, the 2023 National Offshore Wind data set (NOW-23). It was developed by NREL and its partners, and it surpasses the previous resource data set, the Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit, which was released approximately 10 years ago, in its offshore component. The WIND Toolkit has been widely used by stakeholders involved in wind resource assessments across the continental United States. But with significant advancements in numerical weather prediction modeling during the past decade, the NOW-23 data set incorporates the latest research and development progress to provide stakeholders with an updated and cutting-edge resource for offshore wind analysis.

Power Sector Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Environmental Research Letters (2023)

This paper investigates the potential impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on the power sector, which is the focus of many core IRA provisions. The authors summarize a multimodel comparison of the IRA to identify robust findings and variations in power sector investments, emissions, and costs across 11 models of the U.S. energy system and electricity sector. The results project that IRA incentives accelerate the deployment of low-emitting capacity, increasing average annual additions by up to 3.2 times current levels through 2035. Carbon dioxide emissions reductions from electricity generation across models range from 47%–83% below 2005 in 2030 (68% average) and 66%–87% in 2035 (78% average). The study’s higher clean electricity deployment and lower emissions under the IRA, compared with earlier U.S. modeling, change the baseline for future policymaking and analysis. The IRA helps to bring projected U.S. power sector and economy-wide emissions closer to near-term climate targets; however, no models indicate that these targets will be met with the IRA alone, which suggests that additional policies, incentives, and private sector actions are needed.