NREL ARIES Federated Lab Demonstration (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video NREL ARIES Federated Lab Demonstration. 

This video shows how researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Colorado, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), in Washington, proved the OSCARS service can help overcome latency problems when transferring data between two geographically distributed sites—allowing them to operate as if in the same place.

Narrator: “The ESnet’s OSCARS service is a proven technology that supports multiple science applications across multiple science domains.”

Text on screen: From Theory to Practice: An NREL/PNNL Demo.

Narrator: “To prove OSCARS can help overcome the latency problems, NREL and PNNL developed a demonstration to transfer data between the two labs using ESnet’s OSCARS service. Based on this track record of success, the technology proved promising for the needs of the SuperLab workflow where geographically distributed sites needed to operate as if they were in the same place”

Text on screen: The ESnet brand and OSCARS acronym. In the background, an outline of a U.S. map appears. The image zooms into the U.S. West and Pacific Northwest. Text labels identify NREL in Colorado and PNNL in Washington. An animated line connects the two labs.

Narrator: “To see how this modeling works, let’s pay a visit to Cordova, Alaska.”

Arial photos of a coastal town, with green mountains in the background and an inlet marina in the foreground. The photo changes to a close-up of the marina, where numerous fishing and pleasure boats are docked.

Narrator: “There, a microgrid sends energy to homes and several critical services, including the hospital and the airport.”

Text in middle of screen: Cordova Microgrid.

Drawing of a microgrid—several houses are shown above the text. Below the text, to the left, are solar panels; wind turbines are in the center; and a hydroelectric plant is to the right. A vertical line connects the houses to the renewable energy production methods.

Narrator: “To help Cordova prevent outages, researchers can run dynamic simulations to create control schemes that keep critical infrastructure running under normal and emergency scenarios.”

Photo of entrance to the Cordova Community Hospital, covered in deep snow and ice. Video of a small-engine airplane taxiing on a runway. Video footage of a female researcher sitting at a large computer monitor showing simulations. Footage of heavy snow falling on pine trees on the side of a mountain.

Narrator: “In this demonstration, researchers are running an advanced control strategy for avoiding an outage affecting power that would otherwise serve a critical service—a regional airport.”

Footage of a large snowplow operating on a road with heavy snow falling. Footage of researchers working in a control room with multiple monitors on desks and walls. Photo of the terminal entrance for the Cordova airport, covered in snow.

Narrator: “First, an event such as extreme weather triggers the simulated protection scheme. Then, controls simulate advanced metering infrastructure and energy storage operations in the microgrid.”

The earlier drawing of the U.S. Pacific Northwest appears with PNNL and NREL identified as well as the connecting line between them. The map expands north up the coastline, showing western Canada and Alaska. A text label identifies Cordova. The earlier drawing of the Cordova Microgrid is superimposed on top of the map. To show a simulated protection scheme on the Cordova Microgrid, an airport control tower is added to the center-left of the drawing and a hospital is added to the center-right. The drawing of the airport control tower flashes darker, and the microgrid lines flash a different color.

Narrator: “The simulation proves out whether these approaches keep the lights on, de-risking new approaches to keeping Cordova’s most important infrastructure running.”

Footage of a dark city at night. Neighborhood by neighborhood, the lights come on until the entire city is lit. In daylight, a medical helicopter lifts off.

Narrator: “This demonstration is a critical step toward achieving the vision of the RT-SuperLab project.”

Map of the western United States, Canada, and Alaska, with text labels for Cordova, PNNL, and NREL, with a line connecting the two labs. The image zooms in closer to the two labs.

Text on screen: Coming Up Next: Stepping into the future of energy experimentation.