FREEDM Center Schools the N. Carolina Legislature on Energy Storage Technologies
The NSF-funded Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Engineering Research Center, funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at North Carolina State University, delivered a technical analysis of multiple use cases for a wide variety of energy storage technologies, including batteries, water heating, flywheels, hydrogen, and pumped hydro to a committee of the North Carolina legislature.
The legislature will rely on the study in crafting policies related to energy storage, a next step after passing a bill that had tasked FREEDM with the study about electric utilities in the state, mandated an 18-month moratorium on new wind power applications, and modified a regulation that set prices for solar photovoltaics.
This project is an excellent example of the important impact FREEDM has on the industry and public benefits it delivers. Project stakeholders include clean energy advocates, storage system vendors, electric utilities, and the public.
The study evaluates over a dozen storage technologies for nearly 20 value streams to both utilities and consumers. Faculty disciplines involved include public policy, economics, energy system modeling, power systems analysis, and data analytics. The cross-disciplinary research team that produced the analysis spans three different colleges in the University.
