UConn, Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory Announce Partnership for Analysis and Innovation

UConn has reached a partnering settlement with the U.S. Division of Vitality’s (DOE’s) Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory (NREL) on a collaboration for clear vitality innovation and grid resilience.

NREL will set up a analysis collaboration with UConn on the Innovation Partnership Constructing (IPB) on the UConn Tech Park designed to leverage scientific information and state-of-the-art amenities to deal with world vitality challenges, together with vitality effectivity and resiliency, renewable vitality applied sciences, and sensible grid innovation.

“The partnership between UConn and NREL additional builds our college’s popularity as a frontrunner within the subject of fresh vitality analysis and innovation,” says UConn President Radenka Maric. “Connecticut is named the birthplace of the gas cells that offered electrical energy to the command module within the Apollo moon mission. Quite a lot of associated training, analysis, coaching, and demonstration associated to gas cells, hydrogen, and batteries occurred and continues to occur at UConn.

“As one among solely 5 analysis universities to collaborate with NREL within the japanese United States, we’re in a choose group of main establishments whose work will form the best way bus

inesses and governments reply to the vitality challenges of the twenty first century,” Maric says. “I’m proud that UConn is enjoying an essential position on this essential sector, and I’m excited to see the creativity and dedication our college and college students convey to this work.”

NREL is one among 17 DOE nationwide laboratories uniquely targeted on making a clear vitality future. Primarily based in Golden, Colo., NREL has an unlimited community of trade, educational and authorities companions all through the world.

UConn is now a member of a prestigious cohort of universities engaged with NREL via its College Partnerships Program. It joins MIT, Princeton, Georgia Tech, and Carnegie Mellon, to call just a few, within the japanese half of the nation. By way of its College Partnership Program, NREL works throughout disciplines to reinforce analysis, foster an change of concepts, mobilize assets and create alternatives for undergraduate and graduate college students in cutting-edge fields associated to the clear vitality economic system.

“NREL sees the partnership with UConn as a crucial a part of reaching clear vitality at scale that brings collectively expertise from each establishments to additional our collective targets,” says Dr. Ellen Morris, director of College Partnerships at NREL.

Among the many many targets of the partnership, UConn and NREL will work collectively to spend money on the event of joint options to wash vitality challenges within the Northeast and improve funding alternatives not in any other case accessible to both particular person establishment. This system permits pathways for undergraduate and graduate college students to work collectively with NREL scientists and UConn college.

“Partnering with NREL opens UConn to limitless prospects and developments in clear vitality analysis and innovation,” says Dr. Pamir Alpay, UConn’s interim vp for analysis, innovation, and entrepreneurship. “We now have labored laborious to construct our popularity as a frontrunner within the subject, creating alternatives for college kids and our college to contribute world options to satisfy vitality wants and cut back dependency on carbon. NREL brings assets and collaborations that develop our attain, to the advantage of the vitality and workforce infrastructure of UConn and the state.”

NREL will assist analysis within the IPB, UConn’s state-of-the-art facility for laboratories and specialised gear. A number of nationwide and worldwide firms and organizations assist analysis facilities throughout the IPB, collectively investing greater than $150 million within the UConn Tech Park.

The IPB is the house of extremely seen vitality facilities, together with the Eversource Vitality Heart, a dynamic partnership with New England utility firm Eversource Vitality that advances main interdisciplinary analysis and know-how to make sure the dependable provision of fresh energy and resilience to excessive occasions; the DOE Southern New England Industrial Evaluation Heart, which presents vitality effectivity audits to small and medium-sized manufactures throughout the southern New England area; and the Connecticut Heart for Utilized Separation Applied sciences, which helps the trade via analysis and improvement to determine vitality and cost-efficient options for separations wants.

The NREL partnership is the most recent endeavor for UConn in its development in clear vitality analysis and innovation. In Might, U.S. Secretary of Vitality Jennifer M. Granholm visited the IPB and the Heart for Clear Vitality Engineering, the place she known as UConn and its Evaluation Heart an “instance of what we need to have occur throughout the nation.”

“It’s simply actually an thrilling time to be on this vitality area,” Granholm mentioned throughout her go to. “We really feel like we’re in the course of historical past being made. Typically it’s laborious to inform that you simply’re making historical past if you find yourself in the course of it, however we’re proper within the thick of simply an unimaginable time.”