Disaster Recovery and Response Innovation through Fuel Cell Deployment

在过去十年中，气候变化加剧了自然灾害（如野火和飓风），但提高社区应对这些灾害造成的停电的能力的方法基本没有变化。在家庭和社区层面，大多数与电力供应有关的恢复力工作都集中在部署屋顶太阳能或柴油发电机上。虽然这些资源可以提供备用电力，但拥有这些资源存在障碍（例如，太阳能光伏发电的屋顶空间和柴油发电机的适当通风），而且低收入人口并不总是能够获得这些资源。这个灾害恢复研究补助金（DRRG）项目调查建立在新技术（如固体氧化物燃料电池）上的模块化微电网在灾难响应和人道主义救援工作中提供恒定电力的程度。这项工作将使社区受益，因为它允许更多的居民在灾难发生后留在原地，使医疗救援人员能够维护更多的设施，并减少受停电影响的区域。该研究通过结合经济分析、电力规划和运筹学方法，调查并制定了新兴技术（基于燃料电池的微电网）的减灾战略。这种新颖的方法将促进新的能源过渡分析，可以评估分散的基础设施将在多大程度上减少停电时间，并提供一个框架，以便在灾难发生后立即更好地部署初步人道主义救济工作。这项工作将微电网优化模型与多标准决策分析模型相结合，以评估1)这些新兴技术在灾害期间提供不间断电力的能力，以及2)成本、弹性和公平目标之间的权衡。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。

In the past decade, natural disasters (e.g., wildfires and hurricanes) have been exacerbated by climate change, yet the methods for improving community resilience to electricity power outages resulting from these disasters have remained largely unchanged. At the household and community levels, most resilience efforts related to electricity supply focus on deploying rooftop solar or diesel generators. While these resources can provide backup power, there are barriers to ownership (e.g., roof space for solar photovoltaics and proper ventilation for diesel generators) and they are not always attainable for low-income populations. This Disaster Resilience Research Grants (DRRG) project investigates the degree to which modular micro-grids built on novel technologies (e.g., solid-oxide fuel cells) can supply constant electrical power during disaster response and humanitarian relief efforts. This work will benefit communities by allowing more residents to remain in place after disasters, enabling healthcare responders to maintain more facilities, and reducing the area impacted by power outages.The research investigates and crafts disaster mitigation strategies for an emerging technology (fuel-cell-based microgrids) by combining economic analysis, electricity planning, and operations research methods. This novel approach will facilitate new energy transition analyses that can assess the degree to which decentralized infrastructure will reduce the electrical outage time, and provides a framework for better deployment of initial humanitarian relief efforts immediately following disasters. The work will combine a microgrid optimization model with a multi-criteria decision analysis model to evaluate 1) the capability of these emerging technologies to supply uninterruptible power during disasters, and 2) the trade-offs between cost, resilience, and equity objectives.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.