Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) User Call for Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) Test Bed Vehicle-Grid Integration Use Cases

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), is dedicated to transforming energy through the research, development, commercialization, and deployment of renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies. NREL’s mission is to advance the science and engineering of energy-efficiency, sustainable transportation, and renewable power technologies. NREL does this by providing the knowledge to integrate and optimize energy systems. The Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) is a national user facility located on NREL’s campus in Golden, Colorado. As a DOE user facility, state-of-the-art capabilities in the ESIF are available to the research community at large to conduct research that advances the missions of EERE and NREL. The mission of the ESIF is to accelerate the efficient transition to future energy systems that are secure, resilient, reliable, affordable, and clean. As a national user facility, the ESIF is equipped with an operations team that facilitates safe access to laboratory capabilities used for mission-aligned research experiments. NREL is issuing this user call to external research partners to identify projects that require using NREL’s Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) Test Bed for vehicle-grid integration (VGI) use cases. The ADMS Test Bed is a key capability of NREL’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES),1 a national research capability at NREL that addresses the challenges associated with integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) into the broader power system. ARIES encompasses capabilities at both the ESIF and the Integrated Energy Systems at Scale at NREL’s Flatirons Campus.2 Research at the ESIF supports up to 2 MW, which covers distribution-level testing. NREL’s Flatirons Campus allows for research at the 20-MW scale and beyond, representing the interface between the distribution and bulk power levels. The ADMS Test Bed was developed by NREL and the DOE Office of Electricity Advanced Grid Research and Development program through DOE’s Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium as a vendor-neutral evaluation platform for advanced grid controls implemented on ADMS platforms. NREL’s ADMS Test Bed works to advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s goals of transforming utility electric distribution management systems to enable the integration and management of all assets and functions across the utility enterprise regardless of vendor or technology. Located in the ESIF, the ADMS Test Bed is an evaluation platform consisting of software and hardware elements that realistically represent a power distribution system to a commercial or precommercial ADMS and/or other utility managements systems.