UT receives $18 million award to study nation's power grid

8/17/2011

The University of Tennessee is poised to be at the forefront of President Barack Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's energy grid thanks to a five-year $18 million federal award.

UT has been chosen to lead a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center that will study the transfer of electrical energy.

The new center, called CURENT or Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks, will focus on finding efficient methods of transferring electric power that could be used to build a new "smart grid" to deliver the nation's power. The existing grid has been overstretched because of increasing populations, leading to blackouts and lost energy.

The new center also will seek ways of shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

The center will be led by Kevin Tomsovic, head of UT's electrical engineering and computer science department, and Yilu Liu, a governor's chair and a top researcher in the country on power transmission systems.

This is the first time UT has been selected to lead a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center and only 33 schools have been selected to lead a center since NSF founded the program in 1984.

"Our country is in a defining moment in history as it relates to the urgency to address the aging infrastructure and managing our energy needs," said Chancellor Jimmy Cheek in a statement. "This award propels UT to the front lines both domestically and internationally of smart-grid research. We have the leading experts and the sophisticated tools to develop the transformational technology that will make our power grid greener, safer, and smarter."

Source: Knoxville News Sentinel