About Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems

The Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform is designed to derisk, optimize, and secure current energy systems and provide insight into future energy systems that are clean, secure, resilient, reliable, and equitable.

Aerial view of NREL’s Flatirons Campus and Grid Integration Research Pads.

Transforming the Grid

One of the primary challenges to our transition to a clean energy future is the gap between clean energy ambitions and real-world deployment. ARIES, a unique asset of the U.S Department Energy (DOE), can help.

DOE's national laboratories tackle the most complex energy challenges, such as developing ways to derisk investments in clean energy technologies. NREL's ARIES takes in the full picture—from consumers and communities, to industry, to utilities—rather than evaluating clean energy and energy-efficiency technologies in silos. This perspective uncovers opportunities and risks in the spaces where energy technologies and sectors—such as transportation, buildings, and the electric grid—meet.

With an energy system that is undergoing dramatic transformations, ARIES is a flexible platform that provides the opportunity to develop and evaluate new technologies at a size and scale that matters. ARIES is critical for implementing some of our most important programs, including Clean Energy to Communities."
— Kevin Lynn, ARIES lead and director of Grid Modernization, DOE

NREL, DOE, and its other national laboratories are working together to provide communities with access to assets like ARIES, through programs such as Clean Energy to Communities, to clear obstacles to their clean energy transition.

Where Energy Alternatives Come to Life

The bold strategies being pursued by partners are within reach because of ARIES—where experiments are unconstrained by limits on power or computation and can push as far ahead as technology permits. Partners can accelerate their energy innovations through the pilot stage to commercial-scale deployments by using the ARIES platform to try their idea in real-world conditions before going live.

Read more about our partners in the 2023 ARIES Annual Report and our project highlights.