NREL ESIF a hub of energy infrastructure research

September 13, 2013 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

There's a lot going on at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The NREL has announced the official opening of the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) -- the country's first research facility dedicated to clean energy grid integration and wide-scale deployment -- and has dedicated a supercomputer with the world's largest computing capability to be utilized within the ESIF. The new facility will also be home to research collaborations with Toyota and the U.S. Army.

ESIF exterior. Credit: Dennis Schroeder/NREL

The ESIF will help manufacturers, utilities and public and private sector researchers overcome the challenges of integrating clean energy and energy efficiency technologies into today's energy infrastructure. ESIF will address generation, transmission, distribution, and end-use challenges to advance renewable energy, electric vehicles, energy storage batteries, microgrids and next generation building technologies.

"Strong partnerships between our national laboratories and America's private industry, academia and entrepreneurs will help reduce the effects of climate change, increase the production of clean energy and accelerate the development of new technologies," said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a press conference. "The Energy Department has been at the forefront of large scale computation and modeling, and new NREL supercomputing capabilities will support the groundbreaking science and innovation we need to address the effects of global climate change and pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future."

A collaborative research effort with Toyota will focus on integrating plug-in electric vehicles into the power grid. Scientists and engineers at ESIF and NREL's Vehicle Testing and Integration Facility will use 20 Prius plug-in hybrid electric vehicles from Toyota to develop and explore ways to prepare grid operators and energy infrastructure that accommodate the growing U.S. electric vehicle fleet.

NREL is also working with the U.S. Army to develop the Consolidated Utility Base Energy (CUBE) System -- a solar, battery and generator hybrid power system that provides electricity to forward operating bases. Under a research agreement with Wyle Labs, the Army's Rapid Equipping Force is funding NREL to complete a prototype CUBE system and validate its performance, reliability, and projected fuel savings through a fully integrated test at ESIF.

"The research at ESIF will help refine the pathways for the successful integration of high penetration distributed resources including renewables and energy efficiency across a wide spectrum of technologies," said NREL's Director Dan Arvizu.

The NREL will also be home to Peregrine -- the newest Energy Department warm-water, liquid-cooled supercomputer designed to be the world's most energy-efficient high performance computing data center representing the world's largest petascale computing capability (1.2 quadrillion calculations per second peak performance) dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency research.

The new supercomputer will further strengthen NREL's modeling and simulation capabilities to support fully integrated energy systems research that would otherwise be too expensive, or even impossible, to conduct. By pairing this capability with the facility's interactive hardware-in-the-loop system, researchers and manufacturers can test their products at full power and real grid load levels, helping increase reliability and efficiency, as well as lower cost clean energy technologies.

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