IUCRC Planning Grant University of Connecticut: Center for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy and Resilience (WISER)

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Every year, with increasing frequency due to a warming world and the concomitant generation of extreme weather events, billions of dollars are lost due to electrical grid outages and powerlines triggering forest wildfires. To address this serious and economically devastating issue, this funding provides resources for the State University of New York in Albany and the University of Connecticut to explore the formation of a two-Site industry-university cooperative research center for Weather Innovation and Smart Energy and Resilience (WISER). The Center is focused on combining the strengths, intellectual capacity, and resources of universities, industry, and the public sector to tackle some of the largest problems in electrical grid reliability and reduction of grid outages caused by extreme weather events, via predictive models. The Center will also address issues of grid integration for climate/weather-related renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, as well as tree biomechanics. The latter issue is critical to include because falling trees are one of the biggest causes of powerline and transformer loss, causing local power outages. Through a Center planning meeting, the University at Albany and the University of Connecticut and their administrators will engage a broad spectrum of utilities and other public and private entities to identify and discuss collective needs with the goal of creating a viable research roadmap and associated research thrusts in which partners are willing to participate and fund. Topics and potential Center research thrusts will be discussed, and those of highest importance to industry will be identified upon which a viable Center can be created. Broader impacts of the work include workforce training where students participate in industry-relevant, basic, pre-competitive research projects proposed by university faculty; the engagement of underrepresented groups via various partnerships with institutional entities focused in recruiting and retraining students from underserved populations; and improvements in the reliability of the nation’ electrical grid in areas of the country experiencing extreme weather events. Industry-university cooperative research centers, like the one proposed to be focused on extreme weather and the reliability of the nation’s electrical grid by The University of Albany and University of Connecticut, are powerful partnerships between universities; the private sector; government; non-profits; and local communities. These Centers operate as consortium focused on university faculty and students carrying out fundamental research that addresses collective industry and community needs and where projects are funded by membership fees and other financial contributions from Center members. In this construct, the intellectual power; infrastructure; and student talent of universities is focused on real world problems of critical interest of a segment of the economy in need of innovation to overcome conceptual and technological hurdles individual entities are unable to overcome themselves. The planning meeting proposed will bring together interested parties to hear proto-Center leadership describe the Center’s value proposition and potential return-on-investment of those entities wishing to become members of the Center. Those at the planning meeting will also help the Center create a research road map and research thrusts that best address the most pressing needs of the collective membership in the Center.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.