PI: Rudy Shankar
University: Lehigh Universityy
Substantial energy, economic, and environmental benefits are available to communities and their business owners and residents by aggregating and harnessing these targeted distributed energy resources (DER). Traditionally, renewable energy in communities has been implemented one building at a time, sometimes in conflict with the grid, and without assessing a community’s energy resources as an optimized and targeted solution. The integrated approach improves utility and regional grid operations by reducing the most expensive artifact of our current centralized electricity model: the system peaks. This solution represents a new distributed, integrated, and balanced energy system for the state and beyond. It enables communities and cities to accelerate their energy, economic, and environmental goals related to renewable energy targets, GHG emission reductions, increased energy resilience and security, regional economic development, lower cost grid operations, and smart city innovation that optimizes existing community resources. Advanced Energy Communities can optimize these targeted resources rapidly across the state via a replicable solution.
