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

这个名为天气创新、智能能源和弹性的产学研合作研究中心（IUCRC）是康涅狄格大学和纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校的合作项目。利用来自中央大学教师、学生和博士后的创新成果，IUCRC将推进基础研究和尖端技术，以提高能源行业电网的效率和可靠性，以应对气候变化和国家向清洁能源的过渡中极端天气的加剧。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；(4)气候变化对当前发电和未来可再生能源分布的影响。该中心的会费缴纳成员包括私营企业、能源公用事业、政府机构和其他利益相关方。他们的会员费被集中起来，用于资助教师提出的项目，这些项目是中心工业顾问委员会推荐的最优先考虑的项目。该中心的广泛影响包括天气预报、电网现代化、可再生能源并入电网以及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方合作，在受天气影响的电力输送/电网弹性领域提供急需的创新。其他影响包括扩大他们对研究项目的参与。其他影响包括使用遥感和预测模型为可再生能源行业（太阳能、水电等）提供供需分析，以支持美国不同地区的脱碳计划。康涅狄格大学和纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校联合成立了一个产学联合作研究中心，其师资力量、仪器设备和设施将为解决配电行业因天气模式和气候变化带来的危害所面临的问题创造动力。康涅狄格大学的研究将产生最先进的电网整合和恢复方法，并为电力线附近更好的植被管理提供急需的信息、分析和方法。康涅狄格大学也将帮助确定经济影响，以及更好地管理和准备电网中断的方法。该中心的目标是将整个系统弹性建模与基于电力公用事业基础设施系统的动态经济和政策分析和预测工具相集成。康涅狄格大学的站点既提供了电网运行和恢复能力方面的专业知识，也提供了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影响的新颖实验衍生知识，因为树木是恶劣天气导致电力中断的最大因素之一。该中心产生的基础知识对于显著改进将可再生能源整合到现有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，确定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，该管理将考虑经济和技术限制，以保持理想的电网可靠性和对极端天气事件和气候变化的弹性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.