Platform will allow researchers to test energy system integration at scale

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently launched the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform.

ARIES will allow NREL researchers and the scientific community to address the fundamental challenges of integrated energy systems at scale. It will enable research at the 20MW level to help understand the impact and get the most value from millions of new devices connected to the grid.

These items include electric vehicles, renewable generation, hydrogen, energy storage, and grid-interactive efficient buildings. The scale of the platform will also make it possible to consider opportunities and risks with the growing interdependencies between the power system and other infrastructure like natural gas, transportation, water, and telecommunications, DOE says.

“The ARIES platform will lay the foundation for the next generation of energy systems that are resilient, reliable, secure, affordable, and clean,” said NREL Director Martin Keller. “We are thrilled to welcome this new research capability to NREL and look forward to transforming the future energy landscape with our partners through ARIES-enabled research.”

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.