Energy Systems Integration Newsletter: December 2024

In this edition, NREL explores the drivers of distribution transformer demand, a new tool for energy resource modeling is now available, the U.S. Agency for International Development and NREL are supporting power sector resilience in the Caribbean and beyond, and more.

What Is Driving Distribution Transformer Demand Through 2050?

A new report by NREL, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity, finds that distribution transformer capacity will likely need to more than double by 2050. That means we will need to replace and upgrade our current fleet of aging transformers in the coming years to maintain reliability and resilience. Read more to find out how old our current in-service transformers are, what's driving demand growth on the grid, and how we can plan for the future grid.

NREL Releases National Climate Database Tool

From the team that brought you the globally popular National Solar Radiation Database, there is a new tool for energy resource modeling: the National Climate Database. The National Climate Database is a high-resolution, bias-corrected climate dataset consisting of the three most widely used variables of solar radiation—global horizontal irradiance, direct normal irradiance, and diffuse horizontal irradiance—as well as other meteorological data. It covers 95 years, from 2006 to 2100, for two Representative Concentration Pathway models. Learn more about the National Climate Database, and stay tuned for enhancements to the database.

USAID and NREL Help Energy Utilities Secure Island Infrastructure

Island communities face unique energy security challenges due to their remote geographic locations and high energy costs. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and NREL have worked closely with utilities across the Caribbean, including the Caribbean Electric Utility Services Corporation (CARILEC) and its community group, CARILEC Resilient Energy Community, to promote cybersecurity best practices in topics ranging from governance, or cybersecurity strategy, to incident response.

The collaboration with CARILEC was a joint multiyear effort that included several implementation partners and encompassed a webinar series, technical support, and access to NREL's Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework (DER-CF), a tool funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Federal Energy Management Program. In a recent webinar, NREL researchers and members from CARILEC, USAID, Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission, and Guyana Power and Light reflected on their long-standing collaboration and the lessons learned in energy development.

NREL Workshop Sparks Discourse on Distributed Systems

This December, NREL hosted 70 energy sector actors for a workshop demonstrating research from the Advanced Distribution Management System Test Bed, a unique laboratory capability used to demonstrate the integration and management of utility assets and functions. A project with high interest was the Federated Architecture for Secure and Transactive Distributed Energy Resource Management Solutions, an operational architecture to control the grid of the future. The workshop attendees were varied—power utility engineers, private-sector vendors, university researchers, federal officers, and software companies—but all are thinking proactively about the changing energy landscape. Support for the workshop came from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Building Technologies Office. Visit the Advanced Distribution Management System Test Bed webpage to learn how NREL is simulating, validating, and de-risking advanced distribution management systems.

This Year's Top News Stories and Downloaded Publications

News Stories

Thank you for subscribing to NREL's Energy Systems Integration Newsletter. A lot has happened this past year. To recap, we rounded up our top stories from Fiscal Year 2024 in one can't-miss list:

Publications

NREL's energy systems integration researchers had another busy year of publishing groundbreaking and impactful research. The directorate's publications logged more than 235,533 technical report downloads this past fiscal year. See our list of the top 10 downloaded publications from Fiscal Year 2024:

NREL Holiday Card

Text version

JISEA Cultivates Discussions and Partnerships in Sustainable Agriculture

It will take a lot of collaboration to grow new types of sustainability in the agriculture sector. That is the mission of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis's (JISEA's) Sustainable Agriculture Catalyzer, which held its first workshop to bring farmers, researchers, agriculture technology innovators, and policymakers together. Through its partnership with Colorado State University, JISEA is using workshops like this one to connect stakeholders across the agriculture sector to work toward wider adoption of new sustainable agriculture technology and methods. Read the full story to find out how the October conversation went and what is on the horizon for the catalyzer.

NREL Releases Video on Strategic Energy Security Research

NREL researchers are creating new methods and strategies that help decision makers understand the national security implications of the current global energy transformation. Two recent videos on YouTube expand on NREL's work in strategic energy security and how we're working with our partners to better understand energy system challenges with the goal of enhancing energy security and resilience.

Second Cohort of Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator Continues System Visibility Evaluations

Agility is key to responding to cybersecurity threats to the U.S. energy sector, but to navigate digital communication networks adeptly, the sector must first understand them at a deeper level. The Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator (CECA) program—in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response and utilities—aims to decrease cybersecurity risks in the electric sector by expediting the deployment of emerging operational technology security technologies. A newly released summary report details CECA's evaluation of Asimily's risk management platform. NREL tested Asimily's platform, which raises the visibility of connected devices by bolstering capabilities in device inventories, device vulnerability mitigation, risk modeling, threat detection, and incident response. CECA used four scenarios to evaluate Asimily's solution, which examines network traffic and parses protocols to aid with inventory management, vulnerability mitigation, and threat detection and investigations. Learn more about the Cohort 2 evaluation.

Publications Roundup

Current Practices in Distribution Utility Resilience Planning for Winter Storms, Current Practices in Distribution Utility Resilience Planning for Hurricanes and Non-Winter Storms, and Current Practices in Distribution Utility Resilience Planning for Wildfires, NREL Technical Reports (2024)

These reports are part of a series of hazard-focused case studies examining common practices in electric utility resilience planning. The authors use standard terminology defining resilience as the "ability to anticipate, withstand, absorb, and recover from hazards that cause long-duration outages." The authors distinguish between reliability and resilience using the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Std. 1366-2022, which defines a major event as "an event that exceeds reasonable design and/or operational limits of the electric power system." The reports focus on winter storms, in which the primary hazards are heavy snowfall, freezing rain, ice, extreme cold, severe wind, and flooding; non-winter storms, such as hurricanes and severe storms in which the primary hazards are precipitation or high winds; and wildfires, respectively. These hazards can contribute to generation shortages, resulting in bulk power system impacts and consequences for the distribution system, such as load shedding. The reports can be used as a starting point for understanding potential investment prioritization processes and investment options, and they are intended to improve utility resilience planning by supporting constructive dialogue among utilities, regulators, and other stakeholders.

How the U.S. Power Grid Kept the Lights on in Summer 2024, NREL Technical Report (2024)

Maintaining the reliability of the bulk power system, which supplies and transmits electricity, is a critical priority of electric grid planners, operators, and regulators. As demand for electricity increases and the U.S. resource mix changes, how grid operators meet peak demand is changing. In summer 2024, grid operators in all regions maintained enough capacity to keep the lights and air conditioners on during periods of peak demand, even as older generators have been retired. And an increasing number of regions used more solar and storage to meet peak demand. In this publication, the authors describe grid operations on the highest demand day in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and a few other regions and how solar and storage worked together to help meet peak demand.