Energy Systems Integration Facility News
Explore our archive of energy systems integration news stories.
Dec. 30, 2020
To expedite distributed energy resource integration and plan for more distributed energy generation, the Michigan Public Service Commission contacted NREL for help updating its rules.
Dec. 30, 2020
A recent feature story in IEEE Spectrum magazine covers current progress and the opportunities ahead for autonomous energy grids (AEGs), and how the Basalt Vista neighborhood has made NREL's vision for AEGs a reality.
Dec. 30, 2020
NREL has been awarded a large share of funds from the Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) 2020 funding program. NREL leads three projects. Two will target broad challenges in systems integration and the third will apply artificial intelligence to solar optimization.
Dec. 22, 2020
A team of experts from NREL and several collaborating institutions have published the Research Roadmap on Grid-Forming Inverters, a comprehensive guide to understanding inverter-dominated power systems. The roadmap provides a system-wide perspective on the integration of inverter-based resources.
Dec. 22, 2020
NREL researchers and staff reached countless goals and achieved numerous successes in science, partnerships, and technology commercialization in 2020, from breaking world records to launching new initiatives. Here are just a few of the highlights.
Nov. 30, 2020
An NREL team and external collaborators have invented near-replicas of energy systems—realistic down to individual devices and up to interstate power transmission. The team's creation, Smart-DS, is set to become the new standard in modeling and simulating energy system scenarios.
Nov. 25, 2020
Since joining NREL as a summer intern in 2015, Tarek Elgindy has since become a key engineer, developing SMART-DS: Synthetic Models for Advanced, Realistic Testing: Distribution Systems and Scenarios through the Power Systems Engineering Center.
Nov. 18, 2020
A power outage involving a transformer at NREL's Flatirons Campus provided an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of the new Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform. ARIES was used to repower the Campus exactly as envisioned for renewable microgrid systems of the future.
Oct. 30, 2020
A new publication looks toward the future of renewable energy and explains research direction in the areas of renewable energy transmission, consumption, and generation.
Oct. 29, 2020
When it comes to cybersecurity for the electric grid, researchers at NREL are looking ahead.
Oct. 29, 2020
As a cybersecurity researcher in NREL's Energy Security and Resilience Center, Charisa Powell spends her time developing current strategies for energy-sector organizations to be vigilant and resilient in their cybersecurity safeguards.
Oct. 27, 2020
The NREL-composed team developed a solid state transformer that allows the independent regulation of solar, battery, load, and grid sources. The team is further working to optimize the technology's performance and cost efficiency.
Oct. 2, 2020
R&D World magazine today presented NREL with four of its annual R&D 100 Awards for research innovations. In addition to the R&D 100 winners, two additional NREL technologies were given Special Recognition Awards.
Oct. 1, 2020
The FCC recently ruled that utilities can secure and prioritize their communications via broadband wireless in a spectrum that offers wide-area coverage. What does this mean for NREL and Anterix, who partnered to better understand resilient and secure communications for emerging energy systems?
Sept. 30, 2020
Algorithms developed by Andrey Bernstein have become the basis for a growing research agenda named autonomous energy grids. Now, Bernstein is revisiting math from his academic past to merge machine learning and distributed control for wide-scale energy systems operation.
Sept. 29, 2020
Hybrid systems of floating solar panels and hydropower plants may hold the technical potential to produce a significant portion of the electricity generated annually across the globe, according to an analysis by researchers at NREL.
Sept. 15, 2020
Across the world, renewable power is displacing traditional generation, but can renewables also replace the critical stability functions that go with it? NREL studies are confirming in the field and on live power systems that solar, wind, and hybrid power plants can provide their own source of grid stability—potentially unlike anything currently on the grid.
Aug. 27, 2020
Finding energy solutions for a changing global climate and advocating for women to choose careers in science and technology drive Sakshi Mishra's mission as an energy researcher and power systems engineer.
Aug. 26, 2020
With support from U.S. Department of Energy Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), NREL developed the Distributed Energy Resources Cybersecurity Framework (DERCF), a web-based application designed to help users pinpoint gaps in their distributed energy systems' cybersecurity.
Aug. 24, 2020
A recent upgrade by NREL's Data Analysis and Visualization Group (DAV) has brought some order to laboratory data flow with a platform that makes data streaming and access much easier for ESIF researchers and partners.
Aug. 14, 2020
The Technical Resilience Navigator, a resilience planning tool co-developed by NREL and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, helps organizations identify their resilience gaps and prioritize solutions that reduce risk from energy and water service disruptions.
Aug. 13, 2020
Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette introduced two new acronyms to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) lexicon on Aug. 12: RAIL and ARIES. RAIL stands for Research and Innovation Laboratory, while ARIES is short for Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems.
July 29, 2020
Fei Ding is an electrical engineering researcher at NREL who publishes a substantial number of reports and articles about her work on grid resilience and reliability.
July 29, 2020
A new product developed at NREL has industry-shifting potential to help manage today's increasingly distributed energy infrastructure, and it has emerged as a commercial solution for real-time coordination of distributed energy resources.
July 21, 2020
Wind energy, water power, and grid integration research conducted at NREL's Flatirons Campus gained a boost with a recent upgrade to the power capacity at the facility.
June 29, 2020
Go-Solar is an NREL research initiative that enables utilities to monitor, estimate, and operate millions of photovoltaic arrays through efficient communication with only a small number of devices, instead of needing to connect to every individual rooftop solar system.
June 25, 2020
According to NREL researchers, seasonal energy storage can facilitate the deployment of high and ultra-high shares of wind and solar energy sources.
June 1, 2020
Daniel Bennett, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former director of research for the U.S. Army Cyber Institute at West Point, joined NREL in September 2019 as the senior technical advisor for NREL's Energy Security and Resilience Center.
June 1, 2020
A new National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) technical report details a milestone capability at NREL to develop, emulate, and visualize interconnected power and communications systems for the study of cybersecurity and distributed energy.
June 1, 2020
NREL has launched a new website featuring information on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standard 1547-2018 for integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) into the modernized electrical grid.
June 1, 2020
The new standard, IEEE 1547.1-2020, clarifies the test and evaluation procedures to ensure distributed energy resources comply with established standard 1547-2018.
May 28, 2020
The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has announced $3.4 million in project funding for an NREL-led team in a new program designed to assess the delivery risk of grid assets' ability to provide expected power.
May 14, 2020
A common vision for the future of the nation's energy grid involves homeowners selling unused power generated from rooftop solar panels to others in their communities, and working together to help ensure the reliability, resiliency, and security of the power grid everyone uses. But how can the grid manage such complex energy transactions at scale? Several emerging solutions rely on blockchain technology.
May 1, 2020
NREL and industry partner Anterix have validated essential communications functions over a 900 MHz private LTE network. Within the ESIF, the ability to transmit system protection signals at low latency to a network of devices was demonstrated on a realistic power system.
April 28, 2020
Jerry Davis works with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to develop renewable energy technologies for military operations and installations. Davis sat down with us to talk about his work on bringing advanced microgrid technologies and cybersecurity measures to support DoD and mission readiness.
March 30, 2020
Researchers at NREL have developed a framework for quantitatively modeling resilience metrics to show communities and utilities the benefits of investing in resilience strategies for the grid.
March 30, 2020
Ben Kroposki works at the innovative edge of renewable energy in power systems, leading to his current role at NREL as director of the Power Systems Engineering Center.
March 25, 2020
Ten years since its founding, the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis continues to provide critical insights linking energy, society, and prosperity around the world.
March 2, 2020
Biennial data compilation identifies changes in markets and power system operations as renewables are integrated onto the grid.
Feb. 28, 2020
A recent report from NREL has provided the first demonstration of how the revised standard helps improve stability of the overall power system.
Feb. 21, 2020
As new group manager for NREL's Energy Security and Resilience Center, Eliza Hotchkiss is developing resilience strategies for community, state, and federal agencies and organizations.
Jan. 24, 2020
As leader of the Integrated Decision Support Group at NREL, Andrea Watson advances complex energy projects and programs that require strategy development.
