IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2015 - 34

NREL's Energy Systems
Integration Facility (ESIF)
NREL's Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) is the
newest addition to its main campus in Golden, Colorado. This
17,000-m 2 building consists of
14 laboratories, two outdoor test
Outdoor Test Area
beds, a high-performance computing center, and visualization
and control rooms (see Figure 4).
It houses research aimed at facilitating the integration of various
energy systems, from renewResearch Electrical Distribution Bus (REDB)-ac and dc
ables and storage to advanced
Thermal Distribution Bus
Fuel Distribution Bus
fuels, conventional technologies,
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) System
energy efficiency, and smart grid
technologies.
figure 4. The layout of NREL's ESIF, showing its distribution buses (source: NREL).
As a U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE) user facility, ESIF
is designed to let researchers from
industry and academia collaborate on-site with engineers and
scientists from NREL and other
government agencies to rethink
the way energy systems operate
and cooperate. It was recently
recognized as Laboratory of the
Year by R&D Magazine.
ESIF's lab spaces can be
classified into four categories:
electricity; thermal; fuel; and
data, analysis, and visualization. In keeping with ESIF's goal
of cooptimizing across various
energy systems (not just electricity), the laboratories are interconnected by four bus types:
electrical (ac and dc), thermal,
fuel, and supervisory control and
figure 5. View of the AIT SmartEST laboratory, with its environmental test chamber
in the center (source: AIT).
data acquisition (SCADA). The
two ac research electrical distribution buses (REDBs) are rated
for
600-V,
three-phase
operation
at 1,600 A and 200 A.
them are critical to the creation of smart electricity grids
The two dc REDBs have similar current ratings and are
around the world.
rated for +/- 500 V dc. These REDBs link five electricity
laboratories:
State-of-the-Art Smart Grid and DER
✔✔ the power systems integration lab, which focuses on
Testing Laboratories
large-scale distributed energy systems
This section describes the test laboratory capabilities at the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Aus✔✔ the smart ower lab, which houses research on energy
trian Institute of Technology (AIT), and DNV GL. In the secmanagement and distributed energy
tion that follows, volt/var (VV12) test results are presented
✔✔ the energy storage lab, which contains research on staby NREL; power curtailment (INV2) and fixed-PF (INV3)
tionary and vehicular energy storage
results are presented by AIT; and low-voltage ride-through
✔✔ the electrical characterization lab, which focuses on
(LVRT) results are presented by DNV GL.
characterizing the ability of advanced and conventional
dc
ac

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2015

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2015 - Cover1
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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2015 - Cover3
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