The US Grid Needs Reform to Handle Renewables, Experts Warn

America’s power grid will have to undergo significant changes before it is ready to effectively handle the massive influx of renewables. Electrification has emerged as one of the most critical weapons against climate change because it will allow for the use of renewables to power the country’s energy needs. However, even though the United States has made admirable progress in the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure, connecting renewables to the grid and getting it to customers has proved to be a significant challenge.

An expert team with members from Florida State University, Ohio State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is now working to develop a novel type of grid technology that can give regulators much better control over the flow and direction of electricity. The four-year project has culminated in the development of a device called a “back-to-back medium-voltage converter” that can significantly improve the grid operators’ control of electricity flow.

The new technology can achieve this at a fraction of the cost and weight of the infrastructure it has been designed to replace. NREL researcher and project lead Barry Mather says the technology provides utilities with an entirely new way of managing their distribution systems by allowing them to put significantly higher levels of distributed energy resources onto circuits.

The Grid Application Development, Testbed & Analysis for Medium-Voltage Silicon Carbide project (GADTAMS) was partly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The project’s final prototype is a first-of-its-kind tool that can function as a test bed for the study and improvement of other new grid technologies. It could be instrumental in helping to evolve America’s grid and enabling it to accept renewables from wind farms, solar panels and other sources.

As matters currently stand, America will have to expand its grid by around 57% to fully electrify the country. Such an expansion would make it possible for the grid to power everything from stovetops and heating systems to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) with renewables while remaining flexible and avoiding overloading. Wind and solar energy would undoubtedly form the bulk of the renewable capacity, but one factor makes them difficult to exploit: they are often generated far away from areas with high energy demand.

As a result, this green energy has to be transported along the grid, sometimes for extremely long distances, before it can reach communities that stand to benefit from using renewables. This can put incredible strain on the grid and lead to overloading, especially since much of the country’s power grid isn’t designed to accept sudden massive influxes of clean energy.

For instance, a sudden burst of solar energy during a particularly sunny afternoon could lead to grid faults that can snowball and result in outages or overload power lines. The new prototype could be used to develop new grid technologies to prevent such poor outcomes and allow the U.S. to integrate the energy generated from renewables into its grid.

As these efforts to accelerate adding renewables to grids gain momentum, other contributors to the energy switch, including critical minerals extraction companies such as Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. (CSE: RFLX) (OTCQB: RFLXF), are also ramping up their operations so that the demand for these metals can be adequately addressed in the coming years and decades.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. (CSE: RFLX) (OTCQB: RFLXF) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/RFLXF

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