Kate Anderson is the Strategy Lead at NREL. In this role, Kate aligns and integrates strategic and business planning, ensures lab investments support critical objectives, and measures progress toward lab goals.

Prior to this role, Kate was chief of staff for Energy Systems Integration where she supported operations and strategic planning activities focused on power systems, energy security and resilience, systems analysis, and decision science. She coordinated energy justice activities across NREL to embed equity in all phases of NREL's work from research through deployment and led the LA100 Equity Strategies project to develop strategies to achieve a just transition to 100% clean energy in Los Angeles.

She served as senior engineer and manager of the NREL Modeling and Analysis Group for 13 years. Her team developed tools and provided techno-economic modeling and analysis to support energy deployment decisions for federal, state, and local governments, tribes, universities, and industry partners. Anderson served as the program lead for the development of NREL's REopt model, employed by over 50,000 users to evaluate cost-optimal selection and sizing of energy systems and inform clean energy deployment worldwide.

In 2019, she was an R&D 100 Award nominee for REopt Lite, and in 2021, she was recognized by the U.S. Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative with the Social, Economic, and Policy Innovation Award. In 2022, she was a DOE Oppenheimer fellow and a Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) fellow.

Prior to joining NREL, Anderson launched satellites as a captain in the U.S. Air Force. She has a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering from MIT, a Master of Business Administration in management of technology from the University of New Mexico, a Master of Science in renewable energy science and technology from Loughborough University, and a Ph.D. in advanced energy systems from Colorado School of Mines.

Research Interests

Energy equity and justice

Energy optimization

Techno-economic modeling

Value of resilience

Education

Ph.D., Advanced Energy Systems, Colorado School of Mines

M.B.A., Technology Management, University of New Mexico

M.S., Renewable Energy Systems Technology, Loughborough University

B.S., Aerospace Engineering, MIT

Featured Work

Looking Beyond Bill Savings to Equity in Renewable Energy Microgrid Deployment, Renewable Energy Focus (2022) 

Integrating the Value of Electricity Resilience in Energy Planning and Operations Decisions, IEEE Systems Journal (2021)

Optimality Versus Reality: Closing the Gap Between Renewable Energy Decision Models and Government Deployment in the United States, Energy Research & Social Science (2021)

Optimizing Design and Dispatch of a Renewable Energy System, Applied Energy (2021)

After the Hurricane: Validating a Resilience Assessment Methodology, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (2020)

Energy Resilience Assessment Methodology, NREL Technical Report (2020)

When the Lights Go Out, Nature Energy (2020)

Solar Plus Storage: What Works Where and Why, The Electricity Journal (2019)

Impacts of Valuing Resilience on Cost-Optimal PV and Storage Systems for Commercial Buildings, Renewable Energy (2018)

Power Couples: The Synergy Value of Battery-Generator Hybrids, The Electricity Journal (2018)

Quantifying and Monetizing Renewable Energy Resiliency, Sustainability (2018)