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Susan Hock, Director
NREL's Center for Electric & Hydrogen Technologies & Systems (EHTS) (PDF 153 KB) is helping to facilitate the transition to a new energy future—a future built on diverse and abundant renewable resources, distributed electricity generation, and integrated renewable-hydrogen production systems. Leading these crosscutting efforts, the Center's activities contribute to advances across the laboratory—in photovoltaics (PV), bioenergy, transportation, wind, buildings, and basic sciences.
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The EHTS Center was established in 2002 to support DOE's Distributed Energy, Hydrogen, Fuel Cells & Infrastructure Technologies Programs, and NREL's established renewable resource integration efforts. Today, the EHTS Center leads NREL's distributed power systems integration, and hydrogen and fuel cell R&D, and renewable resource measurement and analysis activities through three groups:
Ben Kroposki, Team Leader
The Distributed Power Systems Integration Team (PDF 202 KB) supports NREL's Distributed Energy and Electric Reliability Program by conducting collaborative research and providing technical support that will enable the inteterconnection and integration of distributed energy resources (DER) with the electrical distribution system of the future.
The Distributed Power Systems Integration Team activities are focused in several key areas:
- Engineering and Test Development — The DER test facility supports standards development and to investigate emerging complex systems integration issues. Scientists and engineers at this facility:
- Characterizing, testing, and evaluating DER systems to determine if they operate properly and meet interconnection, communication, and other standards
- Developing protocols and procedures for testing and evaluating systems to ensure that they meet performance, safety, and compatibility standards
- Testing advanced designs for grid-connected, standalone, and hybrid systems
- Coordinate laboratory and industry testing activities
- Interconnection Standards and Codes — Providing expertise to support a national consensus effort to create a universal interconnection standard
- Regulatory Policy Issues — Providing state regulators, their state regulators and other policy makers with the background information and research needed inform their decisions about policy issues related to distributed generation.
- Applications and Analysis — Conducting research on potential DER applications to address systems integration issues,benchmark integrated systems, and identify potential issues and opportunities
Learn more about NREL's Electric Infrastructure Systems Research.
Lynnae Boyd, Group Manager (Acting)
The Hydrogen Technologies & Systems Group (PDF 207 KB) supports DOE's Hydrogen, Fuel Cells & Infrastructure Technologies Program by coordinating and integrating NREL's hydrogen and fuel cell research activities, and working with government agencies, industry, communities, universities, and other national labs to implement the National Hydrogen Energy Vision for America's clean and secure energy future.
The Hydrogen Technologies & Systems Group is facilitating the transition to a hydrogen economy by contributing to several key research areas, including:
- Infrastructure development — Making the shift from the current fossil-fuel supply infrastructure to a safe and widespread hydrogen production, storage, and delivery system
- Coordinate development of codes and standards — Establishing a market-receptive environment for commercializing hydrogen-based products and systems by ensuring the safety of hydrogen in storage and transport
- Conduct analysis — Ensuring consistent methodologies are applied to the analysis being conducted on hydrogen and fuel cell systems
- Hydrogen production and utilization:
- Producing hydrogen using renewables, such as biomass and water.
- Developing hybrid power systems incorporating renewable energy and fuel cells.
- Improving the materials, manufacturability, and operation of fuel cells.
Learn more about NREL's Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Research.
Tom Stoffel, Group Manager
Renewable resources can vary considerably from one geographic location to another. Consequently, optimal siting of renewable energy systems requires knowledge of the resource characteristics at any given location.
The Resource Integration Group (PDF 347 KB) provides high-quality renewable resource data for U.S. and international locations. This group also:
- Maintains the Measurement and Instrumentation Data Center, which provides reliable time-series resource data for thousands of locations worldwide.
- Develops manuals, maps, and other data products on renewable resources to support system design and project planning.
- Uses GIS (geographic information system) mapping to manage, manipulate, and analyze resource, socioeconomic, and environmental data sets to evaluate development options.
- Maintains the Renewable Resource Data Center (RReDC), which provides access to data on geothermal, biomass, solar, and wind resources, allowing users to obtain customized resource analyses.
- Manages the Solar Radiation Research Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, which monitors and disseminates solar radiation and other meteorological information, and serves as the U.S. center for maintaining and transferring international radiometer standards to government, industry, and academic laboratories.
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