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

这个天气创新，智能能源和弹性的产学研合作研究中心（IUCRC）是康涅狄格大学和奥尔巴尼的纽约州立大学之间的合作。利用来自中心大学教师，学生和博士后的创新，该IUCRC将推进基础研究和尖端技术，以提高能源行业的电网效率和可靠性，以应对气候变化中极端天气的加剧和国家向清洁能源的过渡。该中心的研究重点是：（1）可再生能源发电和电网整合，（2）天气引起的停电预测，管理和恢复，（3）电网弹性评估和弹性改善的经济分析，以及（4）气候变化对当前发电和未来可再生能源分配的影响。该中心的会费支付成员包括私营部门公司，能源公用事业，政府实体和其他有关各方。他们的会员费被集中起来，用于资助学院提出的项目，该中心的工业咨询委员会建议作为其部门的最高优先级。该中心更广泛的影响包括在天气预报，电网现代化，可再生能源融入电网和劳动力发展方面的突破。通过该中心，学生和博士后将接受培训，从事具有行业重要性的高优先级项目，并学习如何与非学术团体合作，在受天气影响的电力输送/电网弹性空间中提供急需的创新。其他影响包括扩大对研究项目的参与。其他影响包括使用遥感和预测模型来获得可再生能源行业（太阳能，水电等）的供需分析。康涅狄格大学和纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校合并为一个产学合作研究中心，其合并后的教师、仪器和设施将成为解决配电行业面临的问题的引擎，这些问题是由于不断变化的天气模式和气候造成的危害的影响。康涅狄格大学的研究将产生最先进的电网整合和恢复力方法，并提供急需的信息，分析和方法，以更好地管理电力线附近的植被。康涅狄格大学还将帮助确定经济影响以及管理和准备电网中断的更好方法。该中心的目标是将整个系统的弹性建模与基于电力基础设施系统的动态经济和政策分析和预测工具相结合。康涅狄格大学网站带来了关于电网运营和恢复力的专业知识，以及关于路边森林管理方法和干扰剂对树木生物力学和稳定性的影响的新颖的实验知识，因为树木是恶劣天气产生的停电的最大因素之一。该中心产生的基本知识对于大幅改善将可再生能源纳入当前电网所需的方法至关重要。它还将利用关于基础设施和植被风险/健康的地理空间数据以及社会经济和人种学数据，以查明和解决采用新管理战略的障碍。该中心将为最先进的可再生能源管理提供重要的新见解，该管理考虑到维持理想的电网可靠性和对极端天气事件和气候变化的恢复能力的经济和技术限制。该奖项反映了NSF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。

This Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy, and Resilience is a collaboration between the University of Connecticut and the State University of New York at Albany. Using the innovation that comes from Center university faculty, students, and postdocs, this IUCRC will advance basic research and cutting-edge technologies to improve the energy industry’s power grid efficiency and reliability in the face of the intensification of weather extremes in a changing climate and the nation's transition to clean energy. The Center's research thrusts are: (1) renewable energy generation and power grid integration, (2) weather-caused outage forecasting, management, and restoration, (3) electric grid resilience assessment and economic analysis of resilience improvements, and (4) climate change effects on the current generation and the future distribution of renewable energy resources. The dues paying members of the Center include private sector companies, energy utilities, government entities, and other interested parties. Their membership fees are pooled and used to fund faculty-proposed projects that the Center's industrial advisory board recommends as of highest priority to their sector. Broader impacts of the Center include breakthroughs in weather prediction, grid modernization, integration of renewable energy into the electrical grid, and workforce development. Through the Center, students and postdocs will be trained to work on high-priority projects of industry importance and learn how to work with non-academic parties to deliver much needed innovation in the weather-impacted electrical delivery/grid resilience space. Additional impacts include broadening participation in their research projects. Other impacts include using remote sensing and predictive models to derive supply and demand analytics for the renewable energy industry (Solar, Hydro, etc.) to support decarbonization initiatives across various regions in the US.The coming together of the University of Connecticut and SUNY Albany into an industry-university cooperative research center and its combined involved faculty, instrumentation, and facilities will create an engine to solve problems facing the electricity distribution industry due to the impact of hazards posed by changing weather patterns and climate. Research at the University of Connecticut will produce state-of-the-art electrical grid integration and resilience methodologies and provide much needed information, analysis, and approaches for better vegetation management close to powerlines. The University of Connecticut will also help determine economic impacts and better means of managing and preparing for grid outages. The Center goal will be the integration of total system resilience modeling with dynamic economic and policy analysis and forecasting tools based on electric utility infrastructure systems. The University of Connecticut Site brings both expertise to the table on electrical grid operations and resilience as well as novel, experimentally-derived knowledge about the effects of roadside forest management approaches and disturbance agents on tree biomechanics and stability, given that trees are one of the biggest factors in inclement weather-generated electrical outages. The basic knowledge generated by this Center is essential to dramatically improving approaches required for the integration of renewables into the present electrical grid. It will also use geospatial data on infrastructure and vegetation risk/health as well as socioeconomic and ethnographic data to identify and address barriers to the uptake of new management strategies. The Center will provide significant new insights into state-of-the-art renewable energy management that considers the economic and technological constraints to maintaining the desirable power grid reliability and resilience to extreme weather events and climate change.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.