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David Mooney, Director
NREL's Electric Systems Center (PDF 99 KB) is facilitating the transition to a new energy future—a future built on diverse and abundant renewable resources and distributed electricity generation. Leading these crosscutting efforts, the center contributes to advances across the laboratory in photovoltaics, bioenergy, transportation, wind technologies, buildings, and basic sciences.
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The Electric Systems Center was established in 2006 to support the Department of Energy's Distributed Energy Program and NREL's resource integration efforts for all renewable energy programs. Today, the Electric Systems Center leads NREL's distributed power systems integration and renewable resource measurement and analysis activities through two groups:
Ben Kroposki, Group Manager
The Distributed Energy Systems Integration Group (PDF 292 KB) supports NREL's Distributed Energy and Electric Reliability Program by conducting collaborative research and providing technical support that will enable the inteterconnection and integration of distributed energy resources (DER) with the electrical distribution system of the future.
Distributed Energy Systems Integration activities are focused on:
- Engineering and Test Development — Using the DER test facility to support standards development and investigate emerging complex systems integration issues. Scientists and engineers at this facility:
- Characterize, test, and evaluate DER systems to determine if they operate properly and meet interconnection, communication, and other standards
- Develop protocols and procedures for the testing and evaluation of systems to ensure they meet performance, safety, and compatibility standards
- Test advanced designs for grid-connected, standalone, and hybrid systems
- Coordinate laboratory and industry testing activities.
- Interconnection Standards and Codes — Providing expertise to support a national consensus effort to create a universal interconnection standard
- Regulatory Policy Issues — Providing state regulators and other policy makers with the background information and research needed to inform their decisions about policy issues related to distributed generation
- Applications and Analysis — Conducting research on potential DER applications to address systems integration issues, benchmark integrated systems, and identify potential issues and opportunities.
Learn more about NREL's Electric Infrastructure Systems Research.
Tom Stoffel, Group Manager
Renewable resources can vary considerably from one geographic location to another. Consequently, optimal technology selection, sizing, and siting of renewable energy systems requires knowledge of the resource characteristics at any given location.
The Resource Integration Group (PDF 169 KB) provides high-quality renewable resource data for U.S. and international locations. This section also:
- Maintains the Measurement and Instrumentation Data Center, which provides reliable time-series resource data from hundreds of instruments at several locations
- Develops manuals, maps, and other data products on renewable resources to support system design and project planning
- Uses GIS (geographic information system) mapping to manage, manipulate, and analyze resource, socioeconomic, and environmental data sets to evaluate development options
- Maintains the Renewable Resource Data Center (RReDC), which provides access to data on geothermal, biomass, solar, and wind resources and allows users to obtain customized resource analyses
- Manages the Solar Radiation Research Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, which monitors and disseminates solar radiation and other meteorological information and serves as the U.S. center for maintaining and transferring international radiometer standards to government, industry, and academic laboratories.
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