DOE, NREL Announce New Research Center

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are collaborating to build the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in Golden, Colo. ESIF will focus on utility-scale clean energy grid integration. Congress provided $135 million to construct and equip the user facility."This new facility will allow for an even stronger partnership with manufacturers, utilities and researchers to help integrate more clean, renewable energy into a smarter, more reliable and more resilient power grid," says Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz in a statement.

The DOE says the 182,500-square-foot ESIF, located at NREL’s campus, will house more than 15 experimental laboratories and several outdoor test beds, including an interactive hardware-in-the-loop system that lets researchers and manufacturers test their products at full power and real grid-load levels. The facility will also feature a supercomputer that can support large-scale modeling and simulation.Colorado-based Advanced Energy Industries has signed on to work at ESIF developing improved solar power inverters.

Sunrun has opened a new solar design engineering center in Irvine, Calif.Sunrun says the Irvine facility will be an important resource for meeting consumer demand for solar. Once a homeowner decides to use solar power for their home, Sunrun collects their data and sends it to the design center.The company expects the design center will generate at least 50 permanent jobs through 2015, ranging from system designers to technical support.

see more at: Renesola