Washington State University (WSU) recently announced it will be the U.S. lead of a consortium of nationwide universities and industry partners in a five-year joint research project with India with the aim of advancing the development of the power grid in both the U.S. and India. The Indian team is led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur. The project is funded by a $7.5 million from The U.S. Department of Energy, supplemented by $7.5 million from members of the consortium.
“WSU very much appreciates being selected for this award by DOE,” said Christopher Keane, vice president for research at WSU. “The award is a testament to the hard work and collaborative spirit of the WSU faculty and staff involved in grid research. The U.S.-India partnership will result in numerous important advances that support the power grid of the future.”
The project plans to deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies that will modernize the grids of both nations to make them “smarter,” while increasing resilience and reliability. A synergy is expected between the two countries with the U.S. participants gaining insight from India’s grid modernization efforts – such as expanding energy access to its remote areas, improving its grid reliability and resilience, and strengthening its energy security – while contributing their expertise and capabilities.
“WSU is excited to lead the U.S. team and collaborate with colleagues across this country and India to tackle the challenges of integrating renewables and storage for tomorrow’s distribution power systems,” said Noel Schulz, professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at WSU and the principal investigator for the team. “This project leverages the strengths of WSU’s Energy Systems Innovation Center and our power faculty and will provide national and international collaborations as we continue to advance our Drive to 25 to become one of the nation’s leading public research universities.”
