On August 12, U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette announced the launch of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). ARIES is a cutting-edge research platform that will allow NREL researchers and the scientific community to address the fundamental challenges of integrated energy systems at scale.

ARIES represents a substantial scale-up in experimentation capability from existing research platforms, allowing for research at the 20MW level. It will make it possible to understand the impact and get the most value from the millions of new devices—such as electric vehicles, renewable generation, hydrogen, energy storage, and grid-interactive efficient buildings —that are being connected to the grid daily.