Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center For Sustainable Energy Smart Solutions (SUESS)

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。该奖项支持一个解决分布式能源（DER）的中心规模项目的规划。屋顶太阳能、电动汽车、可控空调和热水器等DER正在越来越多地连接起来。然而，DER需要实时信息流支持的大量协调。这种转换存在众所周知的技术集成挑战，但同样重要的是，也存在经常被忽视的非技术挑战。具体来说，由于隐私问题、风险认知、分配和程序公平性，消费者和当地社区可能不接受DER。这些担忧可能会阻碍向智能和可持续能源未来的过渡。为了达到对现实世界产生影响的必要规模，可再生能源和DER需要一种跨学科的方法，将技术和社会行为因素结合起来。很明显，这样的努力将需要一种合作的、跨学科的方法，这是趋同研究的典范；将历史上不同学科的方法和见解融合在一起，以解决存在于多个领域界面的问题。该项目支持一个跨学科的规划过程，由康奈尔大学领导的工程师、社会科学家、行业和政策制定者，以及现有和新的合作伙伴，为应对这一挑战提供国家领导。这笔拨款将规划一个中心，该中心有能力解决将分布式电源集成到智能电网中的跨学科技术和社会行为挑战。PIs将在团队科学（SciTS）中应用创新研究，并设计和开发跨学科研究愿景，以实现共享的、关键的、社会的目标，这在工程研究中尚未得到广泛应用。如果不让社会科学家参与工程设计过程，大规模的解决方案就不会被采用，这是拟议计划过程中智力价值的核心组成部分。一个潜在的工程研究中心（ERC）的规划过程在其跨越学科鸿沟的深入、有效的合作中是独特的，而这种鸿沟很少有效地弥合。因此，除了大规模分布式智能电力系统和社区心理学方面的创新合作研究外，拟议的规划策略将为科学与技术创新提供案例应用，并确保最大限度地将知识转化为社会影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.This award supports planning for a Center-scale project addressing Distributed Energy Resources (DER). DER such as rooftop solar, electric vehicles, controllable air conditioners and water heaters are connecting in increasing numbers. However, DER requires massive amounts of coordination supported by real-time information flows. There are well-known technical integration challenges with this transition, but just as importantly, there are non-technical challenges that are often overlooked. Specifically, consumers and local communities may not accept DER due to privacy issues, risk perceptions, distributional and procedural fairness. Such concerns can derail the transition to a smart and sustainable energy future. To grow to the requisite scale for real-world impact, renewables and DER require an interdisciplinary approach that integrates technical and socio-behavioral considerations. It is clear that such an effort will require a collaborative, transdisciplinary approach, which is exemplar of convergent research; the merging of approaches and insights from historically distinct disciplines to address problems that exist at the interface of multiple fields. This project supports an interdisciplinary planning process, with engineers and social scientists, industry, and policy makers, led by Cornell and engaging current and new partners to provide national leadership to address this challenge.The grant will plan a Center with the capacity to address the interdisciplinary technical and socio-behavioral challenges to DER integration into smart grids. The PIs will apply innovative research in the science of team science (SciTS), and the design and development of the transdisciplinary research vision toward a shared, crucial, societal objective, which has not been widely applied in engineering research. Solutions at scale will not be adopted without involving social scientists in the engineering design processes up front, and therein lies a core component of the intellectual merit of the proposed planning process. The planning process for a potential Engineering Research Center (ERC) is distinctive in its deep, effective collaboration across a disciplinary chasm that is rarely bridged effectively. Thus, in addition to innovative collaborative research in massively distributed smart electric systems and community psychology, the proposed planning strategy will provide a case application in SciTS and ensure maximal transition of knowledge to societal impact.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.