Electricity Infrastructure
Carl Imhoff
Manager
(509) 375-4328
Biography
With demand for electricity expected to grow nearly 30 percent by 2040, our nation's electric infrastructure needs substantial upgrades. Technological advancements that use information technology for greater sensing, communications, and control throughout the power system promise to make the current power infrastructure more effective and offer opportunities to improve overall performance through new, smart transmission, distribution, and generation assets.
PNNL is delivering the science, technology, and leadership to transform our nation's aging power grid into one that is clean, efficient, reliable, and resilient. Focused on the vital needs of the energy infrastructure, we are taking a system-wide approach to grid modernization to help realize the "smart grid" of tomorrow—where energy technology meets information technology through a network architecture as big as the Internet but faster, with unprecedented updates at all levels: generation, transmission, distribution, and end use.
Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium
The challenge to transform the U.S. power grid to meet the demands of the 21st century is daunting and urgent. To meet this challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy harnessed the scientific and technical power of its national laboratory system with the formation of the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium.
This strategic partnership between DOE and 14 of its national laboratories involves coordinating unique capabilities across collaborating institutions. Together, grid experts are developing the framework for U.S. industry and regulators to achieve a national power grid that seamlessly delivers clean and reliable electricity to people wherever they are, whenever they need it.
-
Workshop Pursues Framework for Building Better Grid Tools
A recent gathering of industry and research experts at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory took important steps toward creating advanced computational tools to analyze and support power grid operation and planning, which ultimately will help ensure the grid’s reliability and efficiency.
-
Yousu Chen Receives IEEE Leadership Award
PNNL engineer Yousu Chen received the 2016 IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Leadership Award for his contributions to high-performance computing applications, power system operations and decision support, and power system simulations, as well as his leadership efforts that have resulted in increased IEEE member engagement and collaboration.
-
New PNNL Computing Project to Tackle Grid Modernization at Warp Speed
To solve our nation's most complex problems—such as clean energy, cyber security, and climate change—the ability to quickly and accurately connect and evaluate numerous variables is vital. With funding from DOE's Exascale Computing Project, researchers at PNNL are enabling super-fast calculations to help support grid operators. How fast? One quintillion calculations per second.
-
Xiaoliang Wei Wins Early Career Achievement Award
Energy Processes and Materials Scientist Xiaoliang Wei receives Ronald L. Brodzinski Early Career Exceptional Achievement Award for work on redox flow batteries for grid energy storage applications.
-
Guide for Documentation and Validation of Energy Storage System Safety
Many energy storage technologies coming to market are relatively new and, as such, are not specifically covered by safety-related codes and standards. The newly released Energy Storage System Guide for Compliance with Safety Codes and Standards helps fill the gap by facilitating the documentation and validation of safety until current codes and standards can ‘catch up’ with the technology by providing the specific criteria applicable to newer energy storage systems.