Communities can plan their clean energy transition with award-winning software that helps them choose an energy strategy specifically designed to address their needs.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), with support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), developed the Simulation and Emulation for Advanced Systems (SEAS) software and used it with the electric utility that serves the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, to plan and implement the transmission and distribution of clean energy technologies.
Fairbanks is a remote city with high energy costs and aging energy infrastructure. Snowstorms have caused lengthy power outages, bringing daily life to a potentially dangerous halt. Fairbanks officials understood that integrating renewable energy into its electric grid would increase the city’s resilience, especially as they plan to retire a coal plant. They received support from NREL to validate their plans as the pilot project in EERE’s Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) program.
C2C connects local governments, electric utilities, community groups, and others with experts from the national laboratories to help deploy clean energy systems that reflect community priorities. To help Fairbanks, a team from NREL went to work with the city’s utility. There, they used SEAS to de-risk different energy scenarios that encompass buildings, transportation, renewable energy resources, and the grid. Watch the utility’s chief executive officer discuss the process in this short video:
