The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will be at the forefront of research, education, and technology for sustainable energy systems with a five-year, $18 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
This is the first time UT Knoxville has been honored to lead an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) and the first time an ERC will address power transmission systems. An NSF ERC is historically the most prestigious award given to a university industry team.
UT Knoxville will play a central role in President Barack Obama’s goal to overhaul the nation’s power grid. The president outlined a framework to take America’s early-twentieth-century power system into the twenty-first century through cutting-edge research. The NSF and DOE have partnered to address the nation’s critical need to develop a smart grid and has called upon UT Knoxville to lead the charge.
“Our country is in a defining moment in history as it relates to the urgency to address the aging infrastructure and managing our energy needs,” said Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “This award propels UT to the frontlines both domestically and internationally of smart-grid research. We have the leading experts and the sophisticated tools to develop the transformational technology that will make our power grid greener, safer, and smarter.”
Kevin Tomsovic
The new center, called CURENT (Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks), involves a consortium of academia, industry, and national laboratories.
Kevin Tomsovic, head of UT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, will direct CURENT, and Yilu Liu, Governor’s Chair for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, will serve as co-director.
The country’s electrical grid has chronically been overstretched, manifesting itself in costly and inconvenient blackouts. Since 1982, an increase in peak demand for electricity has exceeded transmission growth by almost 25 percent, according to the DOE. As the nation’s population grows, this overload is expected to worsen. CURENT seeks to solve this problem by focusing its technologies and methods to operate the power grid efficiently and reliably over long distances.
Yilu Liu
“Using wide-area synchronized measurements, large-scale computer simulations, and hardware testbeds that represent the major US power grids, we will seek fundamental breakthroughs and investigate the enabling technologies needed to achieve a resilient transmission network on a continental scale,” said Tomsovic.
CURENT engineers’ contributions will have a positive environmental impact. The center’s innovations will enable a global shift away from fossil fuels by facilitating higher levels of renewable energy resources within electric grids. To consumers, it means more green, more sustainable, and more reliable power.
The future workforce is also a focus as CURENT educates a new generation of energy leaders from diverse backgrounds with a global perspective. The educational mission concentrates on developing a broad interdisciplinary program that benefits graduate, undergraduate, and pre-college students.
CURENT will be housed in UT Knoxville’s new Min Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building.
CURENT enjoys broad industry support from more than forty companies, including electric power utilities, manufacturers, consulting firms, and national laboratories, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Partner academic institutions include Northeastern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tuskegee University, Tsinghua (China) University, the University of Waterloo (Canada), and the National Technical University of Athens (Greece).
CURENT has the potential for continued NSF–DOE funding of four to five million dollars per year over the next ten years.
For more information about CURENT, visit http://curent.utk.edu/.
To read the NSF’s announcement, visit http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121041&org=ENG&from=news.
Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, will address U.S. energy challenges, such as energy security, US competitiveness, and environmental impacts, during a visit to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on May 3.
Koonin, who took his current post in May 2009, will speak at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 3, in the Toyota Auditorium of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, 1640 Cumberland Avenue. The lecture will be webcast at http://tinyurl.com/5uoqs5k.
He also will discuss the DOE’s Quadrennial Technology Review (http://energy.gov/qtr), which is designed to put energy challenges and security issues into context and provide a framework for the department’s energy programs.
As the chief scientist at BP between 2004 and early 2009, Koonin developed the company’s long‐range technology strategy for alternative and renewable energy sources and played a central role in establishing the Energy Biosciences Institute.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2010. Koonin has been involved in scientific computing throughout his career and is a strong advocate for research into renewable energies and alternate fuel sources.
Koonin received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1972 and received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975. He joined the Caltech faculty in 1975 and served as the seventh provost of Caltech from 1995 to 2004.
The event is free and open to the public.
