Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Integrated Systems Operations and Planning of a Carbon Neutral Electric Grid

规划资助：碳中和电网综合系统运行与规划工程研究中心

• 批准号: 2124215
• 负责人: Badrul Chowdhury
• 金额: $ 9.96万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2022-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2124215&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

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.The pathway to a sustainable carbon neutral electricity ecosystem requires a paradigm shift. While the new operational paradigm is not yet fully known, the new paradigm must cultivate an ecosystem that optimizes for stability, reliability, affordability, and carbon neutrality, while also accommodating a relentless list of needs: new stakeholders, industry models, and regulatory policies, the ever more rapid and numerous digital and technical advances, the increasing pervasiveness of the digital and technical (i.e., IoT), the variability and uncertainty in human behavior, the expected and unexpected transitions to more sustainable energy solutions, the need for flexibility and agility, and the anticipated climate variability. To achieve this, there must be a recognition of the significance of the value of the services enabled by energy rather than the energy itself. If successful, the planned ERC will be the first of its kind to bring convergence to power systems modeling and simulation with human centered modeling and simulation. The approach is critical, transformative, sustainable, and realistic, which not only leads us to a carbon-neutral energy grid, but also provides full human interaction and customer participation on a highly automated, large scale planning and operational framework. This ERC planning grant will further identify gaps, potential stakeholders including team expansion, key personnel and evaluate the goal and overarching objectives for the future center. Additionally, the potential ERC will have a broad set of university researchers and key industrial stakeholders across a broad range of disciplines and backgrounds including (1) power systems; (2) optimization and control; (3) high performance computing; (3) software engineering; (4) computational social science; (5) data science; (6) policy and government; (7) economics; (8) behavioral science, (9) environmental economics; (10) building architecture and design; (11) transportation planning; (12) cybersecurity. There is no base of modeling and simulation tools, methods, or experience to support such an unprecedented effort. Forecasting has been a science that has evolved slowly, relying heavily on experience from past data. But new science, enabling technology, and systems integration based on revolutionary improvements in predicting interactions by prosumers, a new blend of consumer and producer who responds to the available energy supply in complex ways governed by a system of transactional energy. The proposed center liberates the proposed team from the fundamental problems existing within the scope of current funding which achieve incremental improvements; this ERC aims to achieve a quantum leap by utilizing a digital twin that simultaneously manages complex scale and complex interdependencies. The PIs’ direct involvement in cutting-edge digital-twin development provides them the perspective to note that effectively addressing the challenges of integrating technologies at scale in an uncertain political, financial, and socio-economic landscape requires the type of transformative and convergent work that can only be performed through an ERC.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.

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。规划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是为了在团队之间建立能力，以规划汇聚的、中央规模的工程研究。通往可持续的碳中性电力生态系统的道路需要范式转变。虽然新的运营模式尚未完全为人所知，但新的模式必须培养一个优化稳定性、可靠性、可负担性和碳中和的生态系统，同时也要适应一系列持续不断的需求：新的利益相关者、行业模式和监管政策，越来越快和更多的数字和技术进步，数字和技术(即物联网)日益普及，人类行为的变异性和不确定性，向更可持续的能源解决方案的预期和意外过渡，对灵活性和敏捷性的需求，以及预期的气候多变性。为了实现这一点，必须认识到能源带来的服务价值的重要性，而不是能源本身。如果成功，计划中的ERC将是第一个将以人为中心的建模和仿真融合到电力系统建模和仿真中的项目。该方法是关键的、变革性的、可持续的和现实的，它不仅将我们带到一个碳中性能源电网，而且还在一个高度自动化的大规模规划和运营框架上提供充分的人类互动和客户参与。这笔ERC规划拨款将进一步确定差距、潜在利益相关者(包括团队扩展)、关键人员，并评估未来中心的目标和总体目标。此外，潜在的ERC将拥有广泛的大学研究人员和关键的行业利益相关者，涉及广泛的学科和背景，包括(1)电力系统；(2)优化和控制；(3)高性能计算；(3)软件工程；(4)计算社会科学；(5)数据科学；(6)政策和政府；(7)经济学；(8)行为科学；(9)环境经济学；(10)建筑建筑和设计；(11)交通规划；(12)网络安全。没有建模和仿真工具、方法或经验的基础来支持这种史无前例的努力。预测是一门发展缓慢的科学，在很大程度上依赖于过去数据的经验。但是，新的科学、使能技术和系统集成基于在预测消费者相互作用方面的革命性改进，生产者是消费者和生产者的新混合体，他们以复杂的方式对可用能源供应做出反应，由交易能量系统管理。拟议的中心将拟议的团队从现有资金范围内存在的基本问题中解放出来，这些问题实现了渐进的改进；该ERC旨在通过利用同时管理复杂规模和复杂相互依赖的数字孪生兄弟来实现巨大飞跃。PIS直接参与尖端数字双胞胎开发为他们提供了一个视角，以指出在不确定的政治、金融和社会经济格局中有效应对大规模整合技术的挑战需要只有通过ERC才能完成的变革性和汇聚性工作。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。