NSF Awards OSU and the Ohio Supercomputer Center $1.675M to Develop Computational Modeling System for Determining the Impact of Alternative Energies

OSU and the Ohio Supercomputer Center have received a four-year, $1.675 million federal grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a computer tool that researchers, government leaders and the public can use to study and understand changes in energy-related technology, policy and pricing.

Researchers will develop a computational system called the Integrated Computational System for Energy Pricing and Policy (ICS-EPP), which models the national power grid. The ICS-EPP will enable analysis of various scenarios including the cost of adding electric vehicles to the grid, the effect of various pricing and incentive structures for users, changes in the demand on the system and resulting environmental impacts.

The goal is to make the model flexible and scalable so that anyone from policy makers to consumers can use it to determine how various alternative energies will affect costs of investments in the energy grid, costs to consumers and the environmental impact of policy decisions.

The federal grant will be shared by Ohio State’s College of Engineering and College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, as well as the Ohio Supercomputer Center.

“This program builds on collaboration between the Ohio State Center for Automotive Research and the electric utility and automotive industries,” said Giorgio Rizzoni, director of the Center for Automotive Research. “Our SMART@CAR consortium, consisting of 20 industry partners, will provide motivation and guidance for the program and will be early users of this model.”

For more information, see the release from the Ohio Supercomputer Center.