ARPA-E: NODES Modification

Accordingly this modification,

•Corrected a clerical error in the “Expected Date for Selection Notifications” on the Cover Page of the FOA.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider full applications submitted through other means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).

Accordingly this modification,

•Inserted certain deadlines, including the deadlines for submitting questions and Full Applications. See Cover Page and Required Documents Checklist.
•Added clarification to validation requirements under Additional Technical Objectives, see Section I.E.2 of the FOA.
•Revised information regarding statement of substantial involvement, see Section II.C of the FOA.
•Inserted information concerning individual applicants, see Section III.A.1 of the FOA.
•Revised information regarding cost share code of federal regulations, see Section III.B.6 of the FOA.
•Revised the following sections of the FOA to provide guidance on required application forms and the content and form of Full Applications and Replies to Reviewer Comments: Required Documents Checklist and Sections IV.D, IV.E, and IV.G of the FOA. Applicants are strongly encouraged to use the templates provided on ARPA‐E eXCHANGE (https://arpa‐e‐foa.energy.gov).
•Inserted criteria that ARPA‐E will use to evaluate Full Applications, see Section V.A.2 of the FOA.
•Inserted criteria that ARPA‐E will use to evaluate Replies to Reviewer Comments in Section V.A.3 of the FOA.
•Inserted Program Policy Factors, see Section V.B.1 of the FOA.
•Inserted information on the anticipated announcement and award dates, see Section V.C of the FOA.
•Inserted information concerning Full Application Notifications, see Section VI.A.3 of the FOA.
•Inserted Administrative and National Policy Requirements, see Section VI.B of the FOA.
•Inserted Reporting Requirements. See Section VI.C of the FOA.
•Clarified that ARPA-E will only respond to questions that have not been previously answered, see Section VII.A of the FOA.
•Clarified the language regarding regulations applicable to resulting awards, see Section VIII.I of the FOA.
•Revised the instructions on submitting questions about the FOA. See the footer of each page of the FOA.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider concept papers submitted through other means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).

The Advanced Research Projects Agency ? Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) to:

?(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in?
(i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources;
(ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and
(iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and
(B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.?

ARPA-E funds research on and the development of high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. The agency focuses on technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with a modest investment over a defined period of time in order to catalyze the translation from scientific discovery to early-stage technology. For the latest news and information about ARPA-E, its programs and the research projects currently supported, see: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/.

ARPA-E funds transformational research. Existing energy technologies generally progress on established ?learning curves? where refinements to a technology and the economies of scale that accrue as manufacturing and distribution develop drive down the cost/performance metric in a gradual fashion. This continual improvement of a technology is important to its increased commercial deployment and is appropriately the focus of the private sector or the applied technology offices within DOE. By contrast, ARPA-E supports transformative research that has the potential to create fundamentally new learning curves. ARPA-E technology projects typically start with cost/performance estimates well above the level of an incumbent technology. Given the high risk inherent in these projects, many will fail to progress, but some may succeed in generating a new learning curve with a projected cost/performance metric that is significantly lower than that of the incumbent technology.

ARPA-E funds technology with the potential to be disruptive in the marketplace. The mere creation of a new learning curve does not ensure market penetration. Rather, the ultimate value of a technology is determined by the marketplace, and impactful technologies ultimately become disruptive ? that is, they are widely adopted and displace existing technologies from the marketplace or create entirely new markets. ARPA-E understands that definitive proof of market disruption takes time, particularly for energy technologies. Therefore, ARPA-E funds the development of technologies that, if technically successful, have the clear disruptive potential, e.g., by demonstrating capability for manufacturing at competitive cost and deployment at scale.

ARPA-E funds applied research and development. The Office of Management and Budget defines ?applied research? as ?systematic study to gain knowledge or understanding necessary to determine the means by which a recognized and specific need may be met? and defines ?development? as the ?systematic application of knowledge or understanding, directed toward the production of useful materials, devices, and systems or methods, including design, development, and improvement of prototypes and new processes to meet specific requirements.? Applicants interested in receiving financial assistance for basic research should contact the DOE?s Office of Science (http://science.energy.gov/). Similarly, projects focused on the improvement of existing technology platforms along defined roadmaps may be appropriate for support through the DOE offices such as: the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (http://www.eere.energy.gov/), the Office of Fossil Energy (http://fossil.energy.gov/), the
Office of Nuclear Energy (http://nuclear.energy.gov/), and the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (http://energy.gov/oe/office-electricity-delivery-and-energy-reliability).

Program Overview:

The infrastructure that defines the U.S. electric grid is based largely on pre-digital technologies developed in the first part of the 20th century. Through subsequent decades, grid development has evolved through emphasis on safety, accessibility, and reliability to security and resiliency. But the evolution of the grid now faces significant challenges in flexibility if it is to integrate and accept more energy from renewable generation and other Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) (e.g. rooftop photovoltaic and home energy-storage). The addition of intermittent generation along with changing usage patterns (e.g. increased penetration of electric vehicles) is leading to greater uncertainty and variability in the electric grid that may have a significant impact on grid reliability. However, a potential opportunity exists for these changes to be utilized to the benefit of the grid, with the deployment of the right control and integration technologies.

The Network Optimized Distributed Energy Systems (NODES) Program aspires to enable renewables penetration at the 50% level or greater, by developing transformational grid control algorithms and architectures that optimize the usage of flexible load and DERs. The challenge is to reliably manage, locally or globally, dynamic changes in the grid by leveraging these additional grid resources, while having minimal impact on customer quality of service (QoS). The expected system level benefits include net energy savings, reduction of CO2 emissions in power generation by directly offsetting load consumption by renewable energy production, and lowering required operating reserves. Additional savings are expected to be achieved by supporting higher penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) that is expected to reduce energy-delivery losses by delivering energy where it?s needed, and when it?s needed.

A significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions may be realized through the NODES Program. A preliminary study of the impact of a NODES approach on flexible load and DERs integration was completed for the PJM market (~20% of US electricity market) with a simulated 50% penetration of renewable generation resources. The results were extrapolated to represent the entire US market. Compared to a baseline scenario of no load or DERs flexibility, the curtailment of VERs was reduced from 21% to 6%, offsetting 3.3 quads of thermal generation and displacing 290 MT of CO2 emissions. Additionally, 4.5 GW of spinning reserves could be replaced with flexible load and DERs, a value of $3.3B per year. However, all of these benefits are in addition to the ability to transition from current penetration of renewable energy (16% for PJM) to 50% penetration. This transition would have otherwise been limited due to the declining capacity factor of renewable generators as greater amo
unts are curtailed to maintain the base-load generation, leading to increased Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE).

The future U.S. electric grid requires real-time adaptation by advanced controls to enable an interconnected power system, with a high level of renewable generation and a large number of DERs with the ability to reliably integrate customer side assets while providing benefits to system users. Traditionally, hierarchical control architectures defined by time-scale separation have been the engineering approach of choice for control of complex dynamical systems, as it is reflected in the grid?s current top-down management structure. More recently, distributed control architecture has been explored as an alternative solution for large-scale system control, where system decomposition presents the major challenge. Accordingly, the power systems community has recently began looking into alternative grid management architecture that would enable seamless integration of numerous DERs into the grid, leading to more efficient grid operation and reduced CO2 emissions. Proposed grid control archi
tecture solutions vary from having ISOs manage the entire grid top-to-bottom, to running grid as a network of micro-grids. The NODES Program aims to explore which architectures and corresponding resource aggregation approaches will allow consumers and grid operators to adapt their operations to achieve significant improvements in system-wide operational cost and energy efficiency. If successful, the NODES Program will leverage advances in computing and data communications to enable control of load and distributed generation and facilitate large-scale renewables integration.

This program will build on grid-wide sensing, and energy efficient building control improvements accomplished over the past decade that have broadened the number of grid edge assets that can be controlled. It will integrate benefits from other federal programs, including: the Department of Defense?s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) ; the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy?s (EERE) SunShot initiatives on distributed solar integration; flexible load programs in EERE?s Building Technologies Office (BTO) ; and the DOE Office of Electricity?s (OE) ?Integration of Variable Renewable Generation using Demand Response? program. By focusing on developing technologies that enable novel functionalities at the distribution level and facilitate seamless integration of flexible load and distributed energy resources into the grid, NODES will complement programs aiming to integrate renewables into the electric transmission system such as ARPA-E?s Green
Electricity Network Integration (GENI) Program and OE?s Advanced Computational and Modeling Research for the Electric Power System.

Recent advances in sensing, communication, and asset control enable the creation of a new paradigm for grid operations that utilizes novel system architectures and active control of load side resources to provide additional reserves and grid balancing services. At high deployment levels, DERs can collectively become a valuable system asset if coordinated with system needs and control processes, as they are very fast acting, and are close to the loads. In addition, with improved load and generation forecasting, and the introduction of local control and coordination algorithms DERs could easily provide timely services to the grid and could be integrated into the current power grid. At the same time, these technologies will provide a vehicle for the long-term transformation to a future grid that equally benefits from all assets, regardless of their placement at the distribution or transmission level.

The NODES Program is intended to bring together different scientific communities, such as power systems, control systems, computer science, and distributed systems to accelerate the development of new technologies enabling active control of load and DERs in coordination with the grid, and engage with stakeholders who can drive these new operational approaches towards market adoption. ARPA-E strongly encourages teaming among experts from these interdisciplinary technical fields in responding to this FOA in order to have the sufficient breadth of expertise necessary to achieve the targeted advances in the management and control of the electric grid.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. ARPA-E will not review or consider concept papers submitted through other means. For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx).