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

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。 规划赠款不需要作为整个ERC竞赛的一部分，但旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划收敛，中心规模的工程研究。该奖项支持规划一个中心规模的项目，解决分布式能源（DER）。 DER，如屋顶太阳能，电动汽车，可控空调和热水器正在越来越多地连接。 然而，DER需要在实时信息流的支持下进行大量协调。这种转变存在众所周知的技术集成挑战，但同样重要的是，还有经常被忽视的非技术挑战。具体而言，消费者和当地社区可能由于隐私问题、风险认知、分配和程序公平性而不接受DER。这些担忧可能会破坏向智能和可持续能源未来的过渡。为了发展到现实世界影响所需的规模，可再生能源和DER需要一种整合技术和社会行为考虑的跨学科方法。很明显，这样的努力将需要一个合作的，跨学科的方法，这是融合研究的典范;从历史上不同的学科的方法和见解的合并，以解决存在于多个领域的接口的问题。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和社会科学家，工业界和政策制定者，并与现有和新的合作伙伴合作，提供国家领导，以应对这一挑战。该赠款将计划建立一个中心，有能力解决跨学科的技术和社会行为挑战，以DER集成到智能电网中。PI将应用团队科学（SciTS）科学的创新研究，以及跨学科研究愿景的设计和开发，以实现共同的，关键的社会目标，这在工程研究中尚未得到广泛应用。如果没有社会科学家参与工程设计过程，就不会采用大规模的解决方案，而这正是拟议规划过程的智力价值的核心组成部分。潜在的工程研究中心（ERC）的规划过程在其深入，有效的跨学科鸿沟的合作中是与众不同的，这种鸿沟很少有效地弥合。因此，除了在大规模分布式智能电力系统和社区心理学的创新合作研究，拟议的规划战略将提供一个案例应用SciTS，并确保知识的社会影响最大的过渡。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.