The UT Energy Symposium welcomes Dr. Adam Warren, Integrated Applications Center Director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to give a talk titled Hawaii, a Postcard from the Future.
Adam Warren is the Director of the Integrated Applications Center at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). His Center addresses the technical, policy, and market hurdles to developing resilient, renewable energy systems at scale. The Center’s mission is to help partners meet ambitious energy goals while informing the technology and policy research at NREL.
Adam is the co-director of the newly formed Advanced Energy Systems graduate program, a joint effort between NREL and the Colorado School of Mines. This interdisciplinary graduate program leverages the engineering, science, and analysis strengths of both institutions to provide students with the breadth of knowledge needed to address the complexity of tomorrow’s integrated energy systems.
Prior to joining NREL, Adam supported PepsiCo’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use in North America. Adam’s team led the successful development of PepsiCo’s “Net-Zero” plant, an Arizona manufacturing facility that operates almost entirely on renewable energy and recycled water while producing close to zero landfill waste. Adam holds PhD and B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering.
Abstract: The nation’s energy supply is in the midst of a remarkable transition. This a transition in terms of our nation’s energy supply and in how we consume energy. Renewables like solar photovoltaics (PV) are being incorporated into the grid at increasing levels, which can drive down costs but also creates new challenges related to technology, policy, and business models.
In this talk, we explore the energy transition underway in Hawaii. Working with partners like Hawaiian Electric and SolarCity/Tesla, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) helps address the safety, reliability, and stability challenges of interconnecting high penetrations of distributed PV within the existing electric power system. This work involves hardware-in-the-loop testing of inverters at NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF). The talk discusses the technical results of this testing, and the implications for the Hawaii power system with an emphasis on how these innovations impact the US grid of the future.
The UT Energy Symposium meets every Thursday during the long semesters. Come early to attend a networking session before the talk.