| NSF Org: |
RISE Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 13, 2023 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 31, 2024 |
| Award Number: | 2312737 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Barbara Ransom
bransom@nsf.gov (703)292-7792 RISE Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2023 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2028 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $750,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $342,474.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2024 = $192,474.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1400 WASHINGTON AVE ALBANY NY US 12222-0100 (518)437-4974 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1400 WASHINGTON AVE ALBANY NY US 12222-0100 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | IUCRC-Indust-Univ Coop Res Ctr |
| Primary Program Source: |
01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002728DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
This Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy, and Resilience is a collaboration between the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Connecticut. 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 and precision, grid modernization and the 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 SUNY Albany and the University of Connecticut 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 at Albany will produce state-of-the-art predictive modeling tools that leverage numerical weather prediction and artificial intelligence-based impact modeling for managing renewable energy and predicting storm outages from various kinds of weather events. 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 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.
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