Energy Transitions

Increasing renewable energy in the nation’s power grid is the most direct and effective decarbonization approach to help combat climate change. But renewable sources are intermittent and so integrating them into the grid will require storage options at the gigawatt scale that can function economically for long durations. New technologies must also meet the challenge of complex storage and generation integration in the face of energy markets with growing volatility and complexity while addressing technology development, implementation and deployment. 

Equally important are policy strategies and community adoption concerns. The latter has delayed or halted many projects, e.g., a recently canceled wind farm with hydroelectric storage. Existing methods for understanding the need for energy storage in an increasingly renewable energy grid require modeling innovations that span global and regional scales and integrate network models of grid operations. 

The project will develop new approaches for pathway models for wind energy penetration and energy storage in new regions of the U.S. to ensure deep decarbonization of our power grid. This framework will consider social co-design, data-assisted siting approaches, dynamics between grids, storage and renewable generation, and optimum modalities of integration.  The project will look at how the scales at the community level (e.g., siting of wind farms and energy storage near a small town) interact with the scales at the grid-level (e.g., composed of several states.  In particular, the research would aim to understand how community co-design of technology and siting of wind energy and energy storage can improve project techno-economic efficacy with an ultimate goal of positive societal impact.