National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) under the US Department of Energy has announced funding to support research projects focusing on better grid integration of renewable energy.
NREL has set aside $6.5 million to share costs of such research projects with industry, universities, or other stakeholders.
According to a report in WindPower Engineering and Development, the teams that would participate in NREL’s initiative named Integrated Network Testbed for Energy Grid Research and Technology Experimentation, or INTEGRATE, will be able to try their technologies out on the megawatt-scale Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) of NREL.
Bryan Hannegan, the director for energy systems integration at NREL, has stated that INTEGRATE will support research on advanced control systems, smart consumer devices, energy storage, and emerging communications technologies.
The initiative is aimed at accelerating the modernization of the electric grid of the country and to enable clean, affordable and reliable energy future.
According to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the arm of Department of Energy sponsoring the project, INTEGRATE is aimed at providing open source interoperable platform that would allow renewable energy systems and other clean energy technologies to connect to a smart power grid in a “plug and play” manner.
Ajith Kumar S