Electricity, Resources, and Building Systems Integration Center
NREL's Electricity, Resources, and Building Systems Integration Center's research and development (R&D) work spans across the entire electricity system—from generation to transmission and distribution down to the end user—in order to accelerate the impact renewable energy technologies can have on the electric power system and help strengthen our nation's electricity system.
David Mooney is the current Center Director.
Activities and Capabilities
The Electricity, Resources, and Building Systems Integration Center's grid integration and optimization activities are associated with large-scale deployment of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and demand control technologies. These activities are performed by a diverse group of engineers and scientists and contribute to advances in resource measurement and forecasting, concentrating solar power, thermal systems, solar photovoltaics, wind energy, vehicle-to-grid, and commercial and residential buildings technologies in the areas of:
Generation. The Center's generation research and development (R&D) includes resource measurements for optimal renewable energy generation plant siting, as well as research and development in concentrating solar power (CSP) technology.
Transmission. The Center's transmission R&D focuses on wind and large-scale CSP systems interconnected at transmission voltages and provides data, analysis, and techniques to accelerate industry adoption of new wind turbines and CSP. Transmission efforts also include utility operations modeling and transmission planning to optimize access to renewable energy resources.
Distribution. Distribution R&D focuses on solar photovoltaic (PV) implementation, distributed wind, and vehicle-to-grid technologies that interconnect at the distribution level. It includes distributed energy testing and certification, interconnection standards and codes, interconnection and control technologies, energy management and grid support applications, and distributed energy regulatory and institutional issues.
End Use Applications. The Center also has extensive capabilities in the areas of commercial and residential building technology R&D and whole-building modeling and optimization. Buildings research includes solution development for zero net-energy buildings through whole-building design, integrated PV, and integrated solar thermal technologies. Buildings R&D in the Center accelerates the use of advanced technologies in the built environment and reduces energy consumption in this sector.
