US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette announced the launch of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The ARIES research platform will allow NREL researchers and the scientific community to address the fundamental challenges of integrated energy systems at scale.

As our Nation’s energy system continues to undergo dramatic transformations, there is a growing need for research on how to best integrate all of our energy resources on the grid in order to provide the most reliable and affordable electricity to the American people. ARIES is a flexible platform that provides the opportunity to develop and evaluate new technologies at a size and scale that matters.

—Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette

ARIES represents a substantial scale-up in experimentation capability from existing research platforms, allowing for research at the 20MW level. It will make it possible to understand the impact and get the most value from the millions of new devices—such as electric vehicles, renewable generation, hydrogen, energy storage, and grid-interactive efficient buildings—that are being connected to the grid daily.

The scale of the platform will also make it possible to consider opportunities and risks with the growing interdependencies between the power system and other infrastructure like natural gas, transportation, water, and telecommunications.

ARIES creates a research environment to investigate challenges in the areas of energy storage, power electronics, hybrid energy systems, future energy infrastructure, and cybersecurity—five research areas of critical importance.

The platform will leverage existing capabilities at NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), new capabilities at NREL’s Flatirons Campus, and a virtual emulation environment connecting hardware assets at these sites with millions of digitally emulated devices. A high-speed data link will interconnect ARIES with other national laboratories and research partners to enable access to a greater set of research capabilities.

Over this past year, NREL worked in close collaboration with EERE to develop ARIES. Additional guidance was provided by DOE’s Office of Electricity and the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, as well as by other national laboratories, energy industry leaders, and academic partners.

In September, NREL will host an industry workshop to provide an overview of the platform to interested industry partners and share collaboration opportunities.