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Health & Fitness

Argonne Software Tool to Help Plan Clean Energy Zones

Argonne researchers have developed a new software tool to help identify geographic areas suitable for the development of clean energy resources.

This will be the first installment of periodic updates from Argonne National Laboratory with information on new projects and other news we believe will be of interest to Patch readers. As one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest national laboratories for scientific and engineering research, our scientists and engineers are constantly involved in leading projects that aim to solve the nation’s most important challenges in energy, the environment and national security, and I’d like to tell you about one such project we are currently involved with.

The power grid in the Eastern United States, known as the Eastern Interconnection, consists of transmission lines that stretch for thousands of miles, from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Seaboard. In all, 39 states and Washington, D.C. are linked by the Eastern Interconnection. To foster collaboration and better coordinate the development of this network, representatives from these states have formed an organization known as the Eastern Interconnection States’ Planning Council (EISPC).

Recently, Argonne researchers developed a new software tool called the Energy Zones (EZ) Mapping Tool that will help EISPC members identify geographic areas suitable for the development of clean energy resources, which are renewables, natural gas, coal carbon sequestration, and nuclear. Certain forms of energy storage are also included.

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According to Argonne Energy Systems Engineer Vladimir Koritarov, the goal of the project is to provide stakeholders with the ability to identify geographic areas with higher densities of clean energy resources, which could potentially provide a significant amount of new power generation in the future.  Additionally, this would also provide important information for transmission planning.

The mapping tool includes an extensive mapping library of energy resource and related information, interactive models to locate areas with high suitability for clean power generation, a variety of reports that can be run for user-specified regions, and a clean energy policy and incentives database.

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Ideally, Koritarov says, state energy planning organizations and regulators could use the mapping tool to identify suitable clean energy resource areas and potentially designate them as “clean energy zones” to promote investment by the energy industry in developing clean energy in those areas, or use the information for other state policymaking considerations.

That’s all for now, and we hope you enjoyed hearing about this project.  Please be sure to check back periodically for news on other exciting projects of interest!

Brian Grabowski is the Communications Lead for Argonne’s Computing, Environment and Life Sciences directorate. He can be reached at media@anl.gov or 630-252-1232.

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