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

工程研究中心的规划赠款竞争是作为ERC计划内的试点招标运行。规划赠款不需要作为整个ERC竞赛的一部分，但旨在建立团队之间的能力，以规划收敛，中心规模的工程研究。通往可持续碳中和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了解，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，同时还要适应一系列无情的需求：新的利益相关者，行业模式和监管政策，越来越快和越来越多的数字和技术进步，数字和技术的日益普及（即，物联网），人类行为的可变性和不确定性，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，以及预期的气候变化。要做到这一点，就必须认识到能源而不是能源本身所提供的服务的价值的重要性。如果成功的话，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系统。该方法是关键的，变革性的，可持续的和现实的，这不仅使我们实现了碳中和的能源网络，而且还在高度自动化的大规模规划和运营框架上提供了充分的人际互动和客户参与。ERC计划拨款将进一步确定差距，潜在的利益相关者，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工业利益相关者，涵盖广泛的学科和背景，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）建筑结构与设计;（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样一个前所未有的努力。预测一直是一门发展缓慢的科学，严重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是基于对产消者互动预测的革命性改进，产消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的能源供应做出反应，这种方式受交易能源系统的支配。拟议的中心将拟议的团队从当前资金范围内存在的基本问题中解放出来，实现渐进式改进; ERC旨在通过利用数字孪生模型实现量子飞跃，同时管理复杂的规模和复杂的相互依赖性。PI直接参与尖端的数字孪生发展为他们提供了一个视角，即在不确定的政治，金融，和社会经济格局需要变革和融合的工作类型，只能通过ERC执行。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用的支持基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响评审标准。

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.