The Department of Energy yesterday announced an award of $7.5 million for a joint U.S.-India five-year project that will help advance the development of the power grid. The Indian Ministry of Science and Technology and industry partners will match DOE’s commitment, bringing the total commitment to $30 million. This initiative, supported by DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability builds on the Department’s commitment to fostering the reliable, resilient, and secure delivery of electricity needed for strong U.S. national security, economic growth, and global leadership, as well as furthering DOE’s collaboration with India under the U.S.-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE).
“This new consortium demonstrates U.S. and Indian commitments to ensuring access to affordable and reliable energy in both countries,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. “We know that continued grid innovation will promote economic growth and energy security in the United States and India.”
The U.S.-India collAborative for smart diStribution System wIth STorage (UI-ASSIST) was selected as the new consortia for Smart Grid and Energy Storage under the U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC). To help pave the way to a more advanced distribution grid that will allow for greater use of distributed energy resources, such as microgrids, and energy storage, the new consortia will bring together experts from academia, DOE’s national laboratories, and industry. Together with their counterparts in India, the center will conduct research and deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies that will modernize the grids of both nations to make them “smarter,” while increasing resilience and reliability.
Through JCERDC, U.S world-class installations and national laboratories will contribute their expertise and capabilities as India expands energy access to its remote areas, improves its grid reliability and resilience, and strengthens its energy security. In turn, U.S. participants will gain insight from India’s grid modernization efforts – a potential export market for U.S. equipment worth billions of dollars – as well as promote researcher access to India’s grid operational experience.
UI-ASSIST’s American team, led by Washington State University, is comprised of MIT, Texas A&M University, University of Hawaii, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Snohomish County (WA) Public Utility District, Avista, Burns and McDonnell, ETAP Operation Technology, ALSTOM Grid/GE Grid Solutions, Clean Energy Storage, ABB, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). The India team is led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and includes the partners IIIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Bhubaneshwar, and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) New Delhi.
