Long Story Short With Scott Cary on Airport Energy System Integration (Text version)

This is the text version of the video Long Story Short With Scott Cary on Airport Energy System Integration.

[Text on screen: Long Story Short Scott Cary on Airport Energy System Integration]

[Text on screen: The short story]

[Text on screen: Scott Cary, Integrated Energy Systems Engineering Project Manager, National Renewable Energy Laboratory]

>>Scott Cary: Capacity for airports is growing. Passenger throughput is expected to double by 2050. The electricity demand is growing even faster. Airports are trying to figure out how to plan for additional passengers and also plan for everything that's needed to make sure that you can continually operate that airport safely and effectively.

[Text on screen: The long story]

>>Scott Cary: Airports have always been transportation nodes. They've also always been energy nodes. Traditionally, the airport system has been very low in electricity. That dynamic is changing with facilities taking on more energy. The traditional methods of energy system planning is not attuned yet to the variable loads that come with transportation loads. This is a systems integration discussion. That's really where we see the opportunity to help bolster that system.

One methodology that's becoming more prevalent as we get into large users—they're called microgrids. And it's taking that concept of moving generation closer to the source of use, which helps the utility with their distribution and transmission systems but also brings that asset close to where you're going to use it. Energy planning needs to go along with traditional facility planning, and so NREL is helping understand and forecast those potential loads.

One way we're doing that is through a collaboration with our partners at NASA called airports as energy nodes. Airports and energy nodes is intending to provide analysis to allow airports to decide how they want to react to new, very large transportation loads. We also have a platform called the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems. We call it ARIES.

NASA came to us as part of the airports as energy nodes program, specifically to work with ARIES. They're calling it their X-plane for energy. They would typically build an entire aircraft to test these things while NREL already has that. There are over 5,000 public airports in the United States. There are more airports than counties. We expect them to be up and running even in the worst conditions.

The future of flight lies in resilient and abundant energy. The airport system does not work without it. We want to make sure that airport planners and operators are able to confidently plan for this exciting future with NREL, state of the art tools, data modeling, and analysis.

[Text on screen: NREL logo]