Grid and Hybrid Energy Systems Integration

NREL's technical experts optimize wind energy systems for high-penetration renewable energy grids, autonomous energy grids, and next-generation hybrid power systems.

Electrical grid system next to wind turbines.

At the Flatirons Campus, NREL combines advanced research techniques with real-world operations and planning experience to develop technological solutions for improved grid stability and power system resilience. Our Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform offers our partners in industry and academia access to a virtual emulation environment powered by NREL's 8-petaflop supercomputer. NREL's unique renewable energy expertise allows our team to identify, anticipate, detect, protect against, and respond to today's—and tomorrow's—biggest threats to the energy grid.

Capabilities

Optimal Hybrid System and Grid Planning and Operation

NREL works with universities, utilities, transmission systems, and power systems to enable seamless integration of wind energy into the nation's power grid and local microgrids to meet demand. The lab's world-class research spans different hybrid energy systems, from thermal to electric, including integration with advanced transportation systems, hydrogen-based power and fuel systems, and thermal management systems that integrate with advanced energy storage options.

Capabilities include:

  • Controls research for multiple technologies
  • Grid integration studies
  • Transmission modeling and tools development
  • Integrated energy resource assessments and forecasting
  • Microgrids and autonomous energy systems
  • Probabilistic planning
  • Solutions for operational challenges of weak grids
  • Optimal infrastructure utilization for integrated energy systems.

Plant Performance and Grid Stability

NREL provides new analytical tools and testing methods at scale to evaluate stability impacts of wind power plants. Researchers are developing advanced control functions to improve the grid's ability to absorb high amounts of wind energy while also lowering the cost of grid integration, such as through the lab's patented yaw consensus control algorithm technology (available for licensing) and wake simulation.

Capabilities include:

  • Power systems and advanced controls
  • Dynamic behaviors of power grids with high penetrations of wind
  • Technological solutions for improved grid stability
  • Testing methods for utility-scale applications
  • Short-circuit currents and impacts on grid protection.

Systems Engineering and Optimization

Our team applies a variety of advanced analysis methods in multidisciplinary design analysis and optimization to the study of wind plant system performance and cost. We are working to develop a common platform and toolset that promote collaborative research and analysis among national laboratories, industry, and academia.

Capabilities include:

  • Modeling wind turbines and plants together, multidisciplinary analyses, and overall cost of energy
  • Assessing system engineering and cost impacts of technology or logistic innovations.

Cybersecurity and Resilience

In addition to improving our current understanding of both human-caused and natural energy service disruptions, NREL technical experts are working to develop intrinsic security design principles for a future intelligent, distributed grid in which millions of interconnected devices can automatically detect and respond to threats.

Capabilities include:

  • Development of tools for identification, prevention, and mitigation of malicious threats to wind turbines and power plants
  • Cyber-energy emulation and visualization of wind systems
  • Automated intrusion detection
  • Automated threat response with autonomous energy systems.

Projects

NREL is improving a suite of grid models to better capture the complexities of transmission system planning and operations. The data and methods are also broadly applicable to bolster transmission modeling across the industry.

The Atlantic Offshore Wind Transmission Study, co-led by NREL, evaluated coordinated transmission solutions to connect energy generation with power needs along the U.S. Atlantic Coast, addressing gaps in existing analyses.

At NREL, researchers develop reference architectures and validation platforms to evaluate cyber threats, quantify cyber risk, produce advanced intrusion detection systems using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The Infrastructure, Environmental Considerations, and Community Readiness for Gulf Coast Transmission Planning project examines opportunities and challenges for transmitting energy produced in the Gulf to customers on land.

NREL is developing analysis and optimization tools to design more cost-efficient and grid-friendly energy plants by taking advantage of the benefits of hybridization—from addressing technical challenges around controls and electrical infrastructure for combining technologies to determining the optimal locations for deployment across the United States.

NREL's wind energy systems engineering initiative has developed an analysis platform to leverage its research capabilities toward integrating wind energy engineering and cost models across wind plants.

Resources and Tools

Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform (facility at NREL's Flatirons Campus)

Collective Consensus Control (patented, licensed technology)

Controllable Grid Interface real-world testing facility (facility at NREL's Flatirons Campus)

End-of-Service Guide (WINDExchange)

Open Multi-Disciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (OpenMDAO) software package to integrate complex models for multidisciplinary analysis work

Regional Energy Deployment System (REEDS) for Energy Systems Analysis

REopt® techno-economic decision-support platform to optimize energy systems

Renewable Energy Potential (reV) Model, a spatiotemporal assessment tool for geospatial, grid infrastructure, and land-use effects on capacity, generation, and cost

Sienna Modeling Framework for Energy Infrastructure Systems

System Advisor Model™ (SAM) for techno-economic analysis of energy technologies

Wildlife Knowledge Base (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory database)

Wind-Plant Integrated System Design and Engineering Model (WISDEM®) integrated system analysis tool (Github)

Explore all of NREL's wind energy facilities and data and tools.

View all wind publications.

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Contact

Jennifer King

Mechanical Engineering Group Research Manager

[email protected]

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Last Updated Nov. 25, 2025