6. ENERGY TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND DEMONSTRATION
growth in renewables supply and more active participation of consumers in electricity consumption and distributed generation; and 4) reliability, resilience and security threats to the electric infrastructure, including cyberand physical threats and extreme weather.
To help modernise the electric grid while overcoming challenges, the Office of Electricity invests in advanced grid RD&D activities focusing on four priorities:
North American Energy Resiliency Model (NAERM): develop an integrated NAERM to conduct planning and contingency analysis to address vulnerabilities in the North American energy system.
Megawatt-scale grid storage: pursue grid-scale storage capable of supporting frequency regulation, ramping and energy management for bulk and distribution power systems.
Revolutionising sensing technology utilisation: pursue integration of high-fidelity, low-cost sensing technology for predictive and correlation modelling for electricity and oil and natural gas systems.
Transmission: pursue electricity-related policy issues by carrying out statutory and executive requirements, while also providing policy design and analysis expertise to states, regions and tribes.
As the US electric grid sees increasing variability in supply and demand under growing threat environments (cyber, physical, extreme weather), the DOE’s RD&D efforts into improving the six key grid characteristics are critical and timely, and will be increasingly relevant in future years.
The DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER) also runs the Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems RD&D programme to assist private owners of energy infrastructure in developing cybersecurity protections to improve the reliability and resilience of US energy delivery systems. Since 2010, CESER has devoted over USD 240 million in funds to cybersecurity RD&D projects conducted by industry, national labs and universities.
Pathways to commercialisation
Technology-to-Market
In an effort to promote the deployment of energy technologies beyond national labs, the DOE runs the Technology-to-Market Program (Tech-to-Market), which helps remove barriers that promising technologies might face on their way to market.
The first focus area under Tech-to-Market is market readiness, which fosters collaboration with industry to bring the perspective of market participants into the labs. Among its work streams are: Build4Scale, which teaches energy innovators about manufacturing and design principles; the Cleantech University Prize, which provides competitive funding opportunities to clean-energy student entrepreneurs; Energy I-Corps, which fosters partnerships between researchers and industry mentors; and Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programs, which embed top entrepreneurial scientists and engineers in national labs.
The second focus area for the Tech-to-Market programme is resource access, which enables access to physical and capital resources for innovators and entrepreneurs. The work streams under this focus area include: the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship
119
ENERGY SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION
IEA. All rights reserved.