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

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。计划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是为了在团队之间建立能力，以计划集中的、中心规模的工程研究。该奖项支持针对分布式能源(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需要由实时信息流支持的大量协调。这种过渡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。具体地说，消费者和当地社区可能因为隐私问题、风险认知、分配和程序公平而不接受DER。这种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所需的规模，可再生能源和可再生能源需要一种融合了技术和社会行为考虑的跨学科方法。显然，这种努力将需要一种协作、跨学科的方法，这是融合研究的典范；融合历史上不同学科的方法和见解，以解决存在于多个领域交界处的问题。该项目支持跨学科规划过程，由康奈尔大学领导的工程师和社会科学家、行业和政策制定者参与，并动员现有和新的合作伙伴提供国家领导力，以应对这一挑战。该赠款将规划一个能够应对跨学科技术和社会行为挑战的中心，以进一步整合到智能电网中。PIS将应用团队科学中的创新研究，以及跨学科研究愿景的设计和开发，以实现一个共同的、关键的社会目标，而这一目标尚未在工程研究中广泛应用。如果没有社会科学家参与预先的工程设计过程，大规模的解决方案将不会被采用，这是拟议的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)的规划过程的独特之处在于其跨越学科鸿沟的深入、有效的合作，而这一鸿沟很少被有效地弥合。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，拟议的规划战略还将在本科学技术领域提供案例应用，并确保最大限度地将知识转化为社会影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.