The Energy Systems Integration Facility hosts an array of fixed equipment and experimental resources to support component and system testing. Hundreds of pieces of equipment—everything from a petaflop-scale computer to a single voltmeter—are housed in the Energy Systems Integration Facility.
the Energy Systems Integration Facility, researchers have access to a variety of equipment to support energy systems testing and analysis.
Key equipment and experimental resources in the Energy Systems Integration Facility include:
- Electrical equipment
- 13.2-kV to 480-V Y-Y transformer 1,000 kVA
- Grid simulators in sizes from 15 kVA up to 1080 kVA
- RLC load banks up to 1.5 MW
- PV simulators up to 1.5 MW
- Bidirectional DC power supplies up to 660 kW
- Utility reclosers
- Residential transformers
- Real-time digital simulators (OPAL-RT and RTDS)
- Environmental chambers
- A large walk-in thermal cycling chamber (-65oC to 85oC with humidity control) for testing power electronics and similar devices under climate-specific conditions
- A large drive-in environmental chamber (-40oC to 140oC with humidity control) for testing commercial-size hybrid, electric, biofuel, compressed natural gas, and hydrogen vehicles
- Two large insulated test chambers (rated up to 60oC) for testing HVAC systems under simulated loading conditions
- Two bench-top environmental chambers (-20°C to 180°C with humidity control) for testing smaller devices (e.g., simulating building environments to test thermostat controls as part of an HVAC hardware-in-the-loop system)
- Thermal/combined heat and power equipment
- A 750,000-Btu-hour research boiler
- A 100-ton research chiller
- Systems that enable precise measurement of concentrating solar mirror surface slope and collector performance
- Test stand for measuring performance of receiver tubes for concentrating solar power applications
- Hydrogen/fuel cell test equipment
- Two fuel cell stack test stations that provide short-stack and full-stack (up to 30 cells) testing capability
- Multiple single-cell fuel cell testing stations
- Electrolyzer stack test bed
- Hydrogen dispensing station, 700 bar
- Other specialized equipment
- Analytical instrumentation for materials and products characterization, evolved gas analysis, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS), infrared imaging, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR)
- A continuous roll-to-roll processing line suitable for 6-in. to 18-in. webs
- Calibration equipment in accordance with or exceeding U.S. Federal Communications Commission standards.
