Grid Facilities

ARIES: Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems

ARIES is the nation’s most advanced energy systems research platform—offering unmatched scale and complexity to accelerate the validation of secure, affordable, and integrated energy technologies across all sectors of the modern grid. 

ESIF: Energy Systems Integration Facility

The ESIF is a state-of-the-art user facility offering capabilities in areas like advanced grid management and cyber resilience with hands-on expertise to accelerate the development of future-ready, secure, and affordable energy technologies

Flatirons Campus

NREL's Flatirons Campus offers similar integration capabilities to the ESIF but at a larger (up to 20 MW) scale. Hardware here—such as wind turbines, battery energy storage systems, and solar arrays—can be connected virtually to the ESIF's software modeling and power hardware-in-the-loop capabilities.

Solar Radiation Research Laboratory

The Solar Radiation Research Laboratory is home to the world’s largest collection of radiometers in continuous operation. Researchers collect continuous measurements of basic solar radiation components using pyranometers, pyrheliometers, pyrgeometers, photometers, and spectroradiometers.

Controllable Grid Interface

The controllable grid interface comprises two systems, one at the 7 MW scale and one at 20 MW, that can validate the many active and reactive power control features of energy generation and storage technologies, most of which are on-site, in a customized research grid that can replicate any real-world condition.

ADMS: Advanced Distribution Management Systems Test Bed

NREL’s vendor-neutral evaluation platform for grid controls helps utilities, operators, and vendors evaluate and integrate control software including ADMS and distributed energy resource management systems.