During a visit to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo., Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz recently dedicated the nation’s first major research facility focused on clean energy grid integration and wide-scale deployment. The new Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) will help manufacturers, utilities, and public and private sector researchers overcome the challenges of integrating clean energy and energy efficiency technologies into today’s energy infrastructure.

“Strong partnerships between our national laboratories and America’s private industry, academia and entrepreneurs will help reduce the effects of climate change, increase the production of clean energy and accelerate the development of new technologies,” said Moniz. “The Energy Department has been at the forefront of large-scale computation and modeling, and new NREL supercomputing capabilities will support the groundbreaking science and innovation we need to address the effects of global climate change and pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future.” 

In addition, the Energy Department, NREL and Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, North America announced a collaborative research effort on integrating plug-in electric vehicles into the power grid. Scientists and engineers at ESIF and NREL’s Vehicle Testing and Integration Facility will use 20 Prius plug-in hybrid electric vehicles from Toyota to develop and explore ways to prepare grid operators and energy infrastructure that accommodate the growing U.S. electric vehicle fleet. 

Moniz and NREL Director Arvizu also unveiled Peregrine, the newest Energy Department supercomputer. NREL collaborated with HP and Intel to develop an innovative warm-water, liquid-cooled supercomputer. Peregrine will reside in the new ESIF data center, reportedly designed to be the world’s most energy-efficient high-performance computing data center. In addition, Peregrine’s petascale computing capability (1.2 quadrillion calculations per second peak performance) reportedly represents the world’s largest computing capability dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency research.

For more information, visit http://energy.gov.