The POWER Podcast

3D printing is a process used to create an object by sequentially adding build material in successive cross-sections, one stacked upon another. It is a form of additive manufacturing. Once considered more of a novelty, 3D printing has evolved into an incredibly valuable production method used to create very intricate designs, including gas turbine components such as combustors. “We see a lot of activity and creative designs in the combustion section of gas turbines,” Scott Green, principal solutions leader with 3D Systems Inc., said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “If you look in the combustion can, there’s a lot of really interesting designs for fuel injectors or mixers,” Green said. “It lends itself well to additive manufacturing because everything inside the combustion can is going to fit inside most mid-frame 3D direct-metal printers. They’re not massive components. They’re relatively shoebox-size things that are a part of a bigger system. Now, those are relatively easy for engineers to graph. They can dump a ton of time into making the highest possible efficiency fuel injector, you know, with capillaries, and efficient swirling and mixing structures that are internal, really eliminating tons of braising operations. So, we see a lot of great designs in the combustion can—in the combustion components.” In addition to combustor parts, 3D printing is also used to manufacture stator vanes, impellers, and casings and ducting components for power industry applications. One of the reasons for this is that consolidating multiple-part assemblies into a single part increases manufacturing yield and component reliability, while the integration of highly efficient cooling channels improves thermal performance. Furthermore, new levels of machinery performance can be unlocked using additive manufacturing by improving design features and leveraging extreme temperature-resistant materials. All of this can be accomplished while reducing manufacturing costs and eliminating the need for expensive, long-lead-time tooling and five-axis machining. Many other industries have found 3D printing solutions to be of value too. 3D Systems works extensively with the automotive, aerospace, defense, semiconductor, and healthcare sectors, among others. Figuring out whether 3D printing is right for a specific application comes down to a six-step process, according to Green. He said not every customer will go through all of the stages, but the progression has led to success for many companies. “What we want to do is engage with the customer on their application. We want to learn more about what you do, why you’re interested in 3D printing, and get down to what’s the subject part,” he said. If a customer has a specific problem to solve and a goal in mind, such as improving efficiency by 10% or increasing speed by 10%, the team will work to achieve that outcome. They will consider which parts are suitable for additive manufacturing and which aren’t. “For the ones that are a good fit, let’s help you develop how to make them. So, we’ll recommend which machine will even do the build setup process, the material selection—alloy selection with you—testing and validation, and proving that the process actually works. And then, at that point in time, we can take over to do bridge production, which means we work with you to find the right cost, and the right volume and schedule to make the parts for you,” Green explained. “What we want to do is help deliver a plan to make the thing that solves the problem you have to whoever’s going to utilize the equipment.”

If you’ve flown on a commercial airplane, you’ve likely sat within a hundred feet of an operating gas turbine engine. Gas turbines have been used to power aircraft since the 1940s. But gas turbines like those on airplanes are also used for generating electricity. These designs are known as aero-derivative gas turbines and occupy a special place in the power market. Aero-derivative gas turbines are popular because of their reliability, efficiency, and flexibility. They are significantly lighter, respond faster, and have a smaller footprint than their heavy-duty counterparts, which makes them much easier to utilize for temporary purposes and in applications that require mobility. “If you look at the high-level goal for the industry in terms of decarbonization, grid resilience, resource adequacy, and affordability, the aero-derivatives fit perfectly in all those categories,” Harsh Shah, vice president of sales and business development with Mitsubishi Power Aero, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “We provide solutions that generate power from 30 MW to 140 MW, and we see a very strong demand for these products across the globe—everywhere—in developed nations, developing nations, whether it’s industrial, utilities, independent power producers, and even captive power producers.” Shah said the main reason for the demand is that when customers require fast-track power solutions, and can’t wait years between signing a contract and having the power come online, aero-derivatives are often the best option. “When time is an important factor, the aero-derivative solution is very important,” he said. Shah offered a recent example to demonstrate how quickly aero-derivative gas turbines can be deployed. Mitsubishi Power Aero (previously PW Power Systems, the company underwent a rebranding on April 1) worked with Mexico’s state-owned power utility, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), to add 150 MW of generation to help meet summer demand in the Mexicali, Baja California region. Negotiations began in January this year, and the capacity was available to the grid less than four months after the contract was signed. “We supplied five MOBILEPAC units. These are trailer-mounted, very-mobile, very-compact units—don’t require any site preparation, in terms of, you don’t need a concrete foundation, minimal work required at the site,” said Shah. “From the time we signed the contract, within 110 days we had power up and running.” Time plays into another benefit of aero-derivative gas turbines in that they can go from completely cold to full power very quickly. “Our aero-derivatives offer a very unique value proposition to our customers, whereby, we would be fully up and running in less than 10 minutes, and we’re pushing that envelope to lower and lower times—five minutes and such,” Shah said. Flexibility is also an important feature. “This is flexibility from different perspectives. You could have flexibility in terms of the ramp rates—how quickly you can go up and down. And this is especially important as across the globe you have more and more renewables on the grid. You need solutions that can cover when the sun is covered or the wind power drops off. So, the ramp up, ramp down, and fast responsiveness gives the very-much-required flexibility,” Shah said. “In addition to that, we get flexibility because of multifuel capability—whether you are using gas or liquid fuel. You also have flexibility for dual frequency in 50 or 60 Hz. And then the last aspect of flexibility that I will touch is very high power density. … Optimal use of land is very important, and the high power density of our solutions is creating a lot of demand.”

It’s not unusual for species to go extinct; it happens all the time. In fact, scientists estimate that at least 99.9% of all species of plants and animals that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. That’s pretty amazing, considering how many species still exist—up to 8.7 million, according to some experts. Mass extinction events, however, are not so common. A mass extinction event is when more than half of all species living at a given time go extinct over a relatively short period. The American Museum of Natural History found five significant mass extinction events in the Earth’s history that it thought were worth highlighting on the museum’s website. The largest of these happened about 250 million years ago, when up to 95% of existing species died out. Another that people may find particularly noteworthy occurred 65 million years ago. That one took out the dinosaurs, marking a major turning point in history. What hasn’t happened in the past is a mass extinction event caused by humans. However, Richard Heinberg, author of the soon-to-be-released book titled Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, thinks that may be coming, and some of the reasons are detailed in his 416-page book. “The book is a ‘big picture’ book, and I address three huge questions in it. One is: How did we—just one species—come to overpower the rest of nature to the point where we’re changing the climate and triggering what looks like it may be a mass extinction event? The second question is: How have we come to oppress one another in so many and so brutal ways? And the third is: Is there any way we can come to terms with power in such a way as to turn things around?” Heinberg said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Heinberg said people around the world must switch from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources to limit climate change, but he was pessimistic about the prospects for doing so quickly enough to make a difference in the long term. “It’s going to be very, very difficult to do that in fact, and for a number of reasons,” said Heinberg. “One, of course, is just the fact that solar and wind, which are our main candidates for replacing fossil fuels, they produce electricity, but electricity is only about 20% of global energy usage. So, the other 80%, we use solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels for agriculture and transportation, and industrial processes like smelting metals, and making cement for concrete, and on, and on, and on—a lot of high-heat industrial processes. Those things are going to be hard to electrify.” The only way to “get to the other side,” according to Heinberg, is for people in industrial countries such as the U.S. to reduce their overall energy usage pretty substantially. “That sounds really daunting, but it certainly is possible to do,” he said. “Europeans use half the energy that Americans do, and yet their quality of life is quite acceptable by anybody’s standards. So, we’re going to have to find ways of providing basic human needs in ways that use the least amount of energy, and then supply renewable energy for those purposes.” “I speak frequently to experts, not just in climate science, but in other environmental fields and social fields and so on. And everyone that I talk to is really, really concerned about where all of this is headed. So, if you’re worried, you’re not alone, the experts are worried too. But, we really have to start talking honestly with each other about all of this and getting our heads out of the sand because it’s just too easy to live in denial,” Heinberg said. “We’re going to have to step up to the plate and really show that we’re a species that deserves to survive.”

Decarbonizing the Power Grid with Hydrogen and Advanced Technology Many leaders around the world are focused on decarbonizing their countries’ energy supplies. For most, that means adding renewable energy resources to their electricity mix, and developing a path aimed at retiring coal and other fossil-fueled power plants. Yet, these are not the only decarbonization options. Research and development (R&D) efforts are also ongoing to expand the use of hydrogen and energy storage, and advance new technologies, such as carbon capture and artificial intelligence, in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. “I think there is a clear sign right now that the world has made the choice, and the choice is clearly the zero-CO2 emission,” Karim Amin, executive vice president of Generation with Siemens Energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “So, that's a given, and we are all working towards achieving this target.” Siemens Energy sees hydrogen as an important piece of the decarbonization puzzle. The company is working to bring the cost of hydrogen down through advances in its electrolyzer technology. Siemens Energy also has a very clear roadmap to make its advanced heavy-duty gas turbines capable of operating on 100% hydrogen before 2030. “Two years ago, we were barely at 30% of hydrogen co-firing. Today, our HL gas turbine is up to 50%, and some of our decentral gas turbines [are] up to 75%,” Amin said. “We are confident to be able to develop the technology, which is mainly around the combustion system in the gas turbine, to be able to handle 100% of hydrogen.” Most of the hydrogen produced around the world today comes from natural gas, which is often called “gray” hydrogen. In order to decarbonize the energy supply, it’s important for “green” hydrogen, which is produced from renewable energy resources, to replace the gray hydrogen. However, gray hydrogen is currently much cheaper than green hydrogen. “The cost right now to produce green hydrogen is rather expensive,” Amin said. “The technology is still not there to bring the cost of the hydrogen to affordable levels, and that’s what we are working on, and other players also in the industry [are] working on, to bring the cost of hydrogen down to levels that can be also sustainable in the future.” Amin made it clear, however, that hydrogen isn’t the only piece of the decarbonization puzzle. “Hydrogen is only one part. There are technologies around carbon capture—technologies, which we are also working on. There are technologies around storage, as I said. There are technologies around upgrading existing fleets. There is even a big part to be played by artificial intelligence, algorithms, and digitalization,” he said. “There [are] new horizons for the industry to explore and to take us to the next level, and that’s what we are investing in and working upon, besides all the other things that we talked about,” Amin concluded.

Leveling the Market Playing Field for Hybrid Power Plants The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is an independent agency that, among other things, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity. Its ultimate mission is to “Assist consumers in obtaining economically efficient, safe, reliable, and secure energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means, and collaborative efforts.” In the past, FERC has issued important orders, including 841 and 2222, which have helped clear the way for more energy storage to be added to the U.S. power grid. However, Chip Cannon, a partner with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, who heads the firm’s energy regulation, markets, and enforcements practice, believes the playing field requires further leveling for hybrid plants, that is, facilities pairing solar or wind farms with battery storage. Cannon said few hybrid plants existed on the grid a few years ago, but that is changing quickly. In fact, he said there are 102 GW of solar plus storage and 11 GW of wind plus storage capacity in the interconnection queue at the present time. “We have battery storage resources, typically paired with renewables, that are entering the interconnection queue at a very, very fast clip,” Cannon said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. That has created some challenges for the market. “The queue process has not really been set up for accommodating these hybrid resources, and we really don’t have very much experience for them in the market,” said Cannon. Hybrid plants offer a number of physical and operational traits that benefit the power grid. Solar and wind resources are obviously intermittent, meaning they only produce power when the sun shines and the wind blows. When paired with energy storage, which can be used to either add or remove energy to and from the grid, intermittency problems can be alleviated. The pairing also improves reliability, flexibility, and resiliency, and can help lower costs for consumers. Cannon explained that all of the regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs), such as PJM, CAISO, and NYISO, establish the “rules of the road” for generators to participate in their energy capacity and ancillary services markets. “But those market rules were not designed to reflect resources that can both take in energy as well as put energy on the grid. So, the concern here right now is that the market designs were simply not set up to accommodate energy storage resources,” Cannon said. While FERC doesn’t have the authority to establish rules that promote energy storage, it can look at the existing market rules to see if they are unduly hindering the ability of certain classes of resources to participate and compete in those markets. Cannon said FERC has held a technical conference regarding hybrid resources, which allowed various stakeholders to provide input. It also directed RTOs and ISOs earlier this year to submit information on how their markets are setup to accommodate hybrid resources. Cannon suggested it will be interesting to see how FERC ultimately addresses the issue. “We’re definitely at an inflection point in the power sector. I think the power sector has been going through an evolution for a couple of decades since FERC started going down the path of competition, and now we’ve got this radically new resource mix,” Cannon said. “I’m of the view, though, that the evolution is really turning into a revolution of the power sector with the speed of technological changes and falling prices. So, there’s a lot of really good stuff out there.”

Brazil is blessed with a wealth of natural resources. It gets almost two-thirds of its electricity from hydropower facilities, and it also has enormous potential for wind, solar, and natural gas-fired power. Yet, the country is saddled with higher than average electricity prices compared to most developed nations. A study conducted by McKinsey & Company analysts found that Brazil’s electric power rates for captive industrial consumers were 65% higher than rates in the U.S. in 2019, and 35% greater than Canada’s, which has a similar reliance on hydropower. “The price of energy in Brazil only goes one way, and that’s up,” Lisarb Energy Chairman Jamie MacDonald-Murray said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “It's driven by inflation, but largely, it’s also driven by the fact that the grid operators are having to reinvest in the infrastructure. They’re having to renew the grids. They’re having to add capacity and modernize the grid, and that cost they’re passing on to the consumer.” Lisarb Energy is focused on developing large-scale solar projects in Brazil. These include distributed energy solar parks for the corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) market, as well as high-yielding utility-scale solar parks for the free market and government auctions. The company was established in 2017, and has already become one of Brazil’s fastest growing solar developers. “We’ve been very successful,” MacDonald-Murray said. The ability to lock in power prices through a PPA is one of the key incentives for Lisarb Energy’s corporate clients, according to MacDonald-Murray. “We now have over 200 MW of PPAs signed with some of Brazil's largest companies, and we have another 700 MW in various stages of negotiation that I think will close out 2021 with just over 1 GW of corporate PPAs signed,” he said. The fact that legislation will be enacted next year requiring solar generators in Brazil to contribute money toward distribution costs has incentivized PPA agreements in the near term. “The price that we can offer won’t be as attractive [in 2022] because obviously, if we’re going to have to start contributing to distribution costs, then, obviously, we’re not going to be able to offer such a competitive price to our off-takers,” said MacDonald-Murray. Still, Lisarb Energy believes solar power’s growth potential in Brazil is enormous. The company cited a forecast by the Brazilian Solar Photovoltaic Energy Association, ABSOLAR, which says “solar will take the largest share (38%) of the Brazilian electricity matrix, producing 125 GW by 2050.” Brazil’s government recently exempted various types of solar equipment from a 12% import duty, which Lisarb Energy said shows that officials recognize “the strategic importance of the solar market.” Lisarb Energy has already secured land for 3 GW of solar PV development in Brazil. The majority of the company’s existing projects are smaller in size (about 2.5 MW), but it is currently working with a mining company on a 250 MW system. “That one’s slightly different,” said MacDonald-Murray. “We’re working with a partner to provide a battery system to obviously increase the usability of the energy that’s generated.”

According to a report released in 2019 by the U.S. Department of Energy, geothermal electricity generation could increase more than 26-fold by 2050—reaching 60 GW of installed capacity. That may seem like a pipe dream to some power observers, but if new well-drilling techniques allow enhanced geothermal systems to become economical, the reality could be much greater. In fact, Quaise Energy, a company working to develop enabling technologies needed to expand geothermal on a global scale, claims as much as 30 TW of geothermal energy could be added around the world by 2050. Most of the geothermal systems that supply power to the grid today utilize hydrothermal resources. These tap into naturally occurring conditions in the Earth that include heat, groundwater, and rock characteristics (such as open fractures that allow fluid flow) for the recovery of heat energy, usually through produced hot water or steam. Enhanced geothermal systems contain heat similar to conventional hydrothermal resources but lack the necessary groundwater and/or rock characteristics to enable energy extraction without innovative subsurface engineering and transformation. The technology that Quaise Energy is working on would allow drilling down as far as 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) to utilize heat from dry rock formations, which are much hotter and available in almost all parts of the world. “The key thing is we’re going for hotter rock, because we want the water to get hotter,” Carlos Araque, CEO of Quaise Energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “We want it even to be supercritical, which is the fourth phase of water—when it goes above a certain temperature and pressure—that’s what we’re looking for.” But drilling to those depths is difficult. “It really boils down to temperature,” Araque said. “The state-of-the-art of drilling technologies is in the 200C neighborhood, and the reason for that is electronics that go with the drilling systems. Making higher-temperature electronics is a very, very difficult task.” Another problem is the hotter the rock gets, the faster drill bits wear out. “So, if you imagine drilling at five kilometers below the surface of the earth, your drill bit will only last a few hours, because the rock is so hot and so hard,” said Araque. He explained that pulling the drill string out of a five-kilometer-deep hole so that the drill bit can be changed, and then pushing it back into the hole can take a significant amount of time. “So, a week to pull out of the hole, a few hours to change the drill bit, a week to push down into the hole to drill a few more hours. It becomes exponentially impossible to do that,” he said. “That’s where the drilling technology that we’re proposing comes into play. We’re basically trying to do directed-energy drilling with millimeter waves,” Araque said. “Imagine a microwave source on the surface, it’s called a gyrotron. We beam this energy through a pipe into the hole. Together with this energy, we push a gas—could be nitrogen, could be air, could be argon, if necessary—and at the bottom of that pipe, this energy comes out, evaporates the rock, and the gas picks up the vapor of that rock and pulls it back out. What comes out of the hole looks like volcanic ash, and the hole actually burns its way down, you know, five, six, 10, 15, 20 kilometers, as needed, to get to the temperatures we’re looking at.”

Open-Source Technology Benefits Transmission and Distribution Operators The term “open source" is well-recognized in the technology world, but may not be as widely understood in other sectors. What open source means is that the software code is publicly available so that anyone can contribute to the code base and create add-on extensions. This enables the growth of a market of providers that can offer hosting and add-on functionalities that can be utilized by all users. In the energy sector, LF Energy has taken a leading role in facilitating the development of open-source technology. LF Energy is part of The Linux Foundation, which is the umbrella organization for more than 425 open-source projects. Among LF Energy’s projects are platforms that help automate demand response; assist electricity, water, and other utility operators in managing systems; monitor and control microgrids and other distribution assets; and perform dynamic power flow simulations, among other things. Arjan Stam, director of System Operations with Alliander (a distribution system operator [DSO] in the Netherlands), and Lucian Balea, research and development program director and open-source manager with RTE (a transmission system operator [TSO] in France), were guests on The POWER Podcast and explained how open-source technology is being used by their companies. “We are talking about applications that would help assist the grid operators in operational control rooms to manage the power system in real time. We are talking about applications that help us to simulate the behavior of the power system to make sure that we can operate under safe conditions. We are talking about application that would increase the automation of the power grid so that the grid can react automatically in an optimized manner,” Balea, who is also the board chair for LF Energy, said. Stam, who is also an LF Energy governing board member, said DSOs are less experienced than TSOs when it comes to managing energy flows on the grid. He suggested it’s hard to start from scratch in developing greater power management capabilities. “It's really helpful if you can find an example that you can use to build this new capability,” said Stam. With open source, that’s what Alliander found. “We needed also new applications, and also the knowledge you need, and standardization you need, and interoperability you need,” said Stam. “The best way to build that and to create it is with other parties that have the same challenges. And that’s what we found in working with open source. So, it delivered us quite a lot.” Stam suggested open-source technology can also help speed the transition to renewable energy. In order to increase the level of renewable energy in the system, he said, “we need quite specialized applications that are not yet really available in the market.” However, by teaming up with other companies that have the same needs, development of the technology can happen more quickly. “And that’s actually what’s happening in open source,” Stam said. “Open source has to be seen as an accelerator. That’s the lesson that we learned from the experience of other industries,” Balea said, specifically mentioning cloud services as an example. He said by relying on open-source collaboration, cloud services technology was built and scaled very quickly. “In LF Energy, we apply this open-source acceleration lever to a great cause, that is, the energy transition,” Balea said. “If we look at the projects that we have, they are all guided by the need to adapt to a future energy system that will have to cope with a high share of distributed renewable energy resources.”

The Benefits of Flow Batteries Over Lithium Ion Lithium-ion (Li-ion) is the most commonly talked about battery storage technology on the market these days, and for good reason. Li-ion batteries have a high energy density, and they are the preferred option when mobility is a concern, such as for cell phones, laptop computers, and electric vehicles. But there are different energy storage technologies that make more sense in other use cases. For example, iron flow batteries may be a better option for utility-scale power grid storage. An iron flow battery is built with three pretty simple ingredients: iron, salt, and water. “A flow battery has a tank with an electrolyte—think of it as salt water to be simple—and it puts it through a process that allows it to store energy in the iron, and then discharge that energy over an extended period of time,” Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS Inc., a manufacturer of iron flow batteries for commercial and utility-scale energy storage applications, explained as a guest on The POWER Podcast. Iron flow batteries have an advantage over utility-scale Li-ion storage systems in the following areas: • Longer duration. Up to 12 hours versus a typical duration of no more than 4 hours for large-scale Li-ion systems. • Increased safety. Iron flow batteries are non-flammable, non-toxic, and have no explosion risk. The same is not true for Li-ion. • Longer asset life. Iron flow batteries offer unlimited cycle life and no capacity degradation over a 25-year operating life. Li-ion batteries typically provide about 7,000 cycles and a 7- to 10-year lifespan. • Less concern with ambient temperatures. Iron flow batteries can operate in ambient conditions from –10C to 60C (14F to 140F) without the need for heating or air conditioning. Ventilation systems are almost always required for utility-scale Li-ion systems. • Lower levelized cost of storage. Because iron flow batteries offer a 25-year life, have a capital expense cost similar to Li-ion, and operating expenses that are much lower than Li-on, the cost of ownership can be up to 40% less. “People have been really interested in flow batteries for a lot of reasons, but the most common one that you’ll hear about is the long duration,” said Dresselhuys. So, why haven’t iron flow batteries overtaken Li-ion batteries in the power grid storage market? “I think lithium has had an advantage for a couple of reasons historically,” Dresselhuys said. “The first is that it’s been more broadly available.” Dresselhuys explained that even though Li-ion batteries weren’t specifically developed for grid applications, the fact that they are well-suited for cars and other uses, where the energy density that lithium provides has real advantages, allowed manufacturing efficiencies to develop. That, in turn, has brought costs for Li-ion down and accelerated growth. Therefore, it’s taken some time for other technologies to catch up. Still, there are companies implementing iron flow battery projects. ESS announced in April that it had contracted with a Chilean utility to provide a flow battery system for use in the environmentally pristine Patagonia area. ESS’s 300-kW/2-MWh Energy Warehouse system will be integrated with renewable resources in a local microgrid with the aim of eliminating about 75% of the diesel-fueled generation previously used to power the area. “The project there was actually originally designed and spec'd out to be a lithium project, because, of course, that’s what people thought was available,” said Dresselhuys. ESS’s team of experts talked to the owners about the advantages of the iron flow battery system and came away with the order.

Looking for Carbon-Free Energy Resources? Don’t Forget Nuclear Power As leaders around the world take steps to decarbonize energy supplies, many people have focused their attention specifically on wind and solar power. What they may fail to recognize is that nuclear power provides more electricity in the U.S. than all other carbon-free sources combined. This is true in some other countries, such as France, Sweden, and Ukraine, as well. “I think it’s a really exciting time to be in [the nuclear power] industry, not only because of all the technology that is starting to really be leveraged and come all together into a system to deploy a new reactor concept, for example, but the fact that our product has always been a clean energy source,” Dr. Rita Baranwal, former head of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Nuclear Energy, who now serves as vice president of Nuclear Energy and Chief Nuclear Officer with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “It can be a solution to decarbonization, not only for states and countries, but the world as a whole. And so, to me, it’s a very exciting time and a great time to be in the business,” she said. EPRI is an independent nonprofit organization that conducts research, development, and demonstration projects in collaboration with the electricity sector and its stakeholders. It focuses mainly on electricity generation, delivery, and use, with a goal of benefiting the public, and the organization’s U.S. and international members. EPRI has many programs designed to support the nuclear industry including in the areas of materials management, fuels and chemistry, plant performance, and strategic initiatives. “Some of the things that we’re working on are deployment of small modular reactors—SMRs—and other advanced technology. We at EPRI have partnerships in this area with Kairos, NuScale, and LucidCatalyst. That’s one area. The other is around workforce opportunities and development. EPRI does a lot of work in developing training and delivering that kind of training,” Baranwal said. While most of the world’s existing reactors are large units with capacities as high as 1,000 MW and greater, advanced designs, such as the SMRs Baranwal mentioned, may open up opportunities to use nuclear power in new applications. For example, microreactors with capacities under 10 MW may be suitable for use in very remote areas or on islands. They could also be important for Department of Defense installations. “Let’s talk about Alaska,” said Baranwal. “Right now, they rely on extensive diesel to be driven in to help generate electricity for them. If you can envision a microreactor instead, you are reducing the reliance on that fossil fuel and also creating small communities that can have a microgrid and a microreactor, and be very self-sustained.” She suggested a similar arrangement could be used in places like Puerto Rico. Baranwal said what keeps her enamored with the nuclear industry is its clean-energy attributes. “I want to leave our environment as good or better than what we are experiencing today, and I know that nuclear—it being a clean energy source—will absolutely have a vital role to play in the decarbonization efforts that we’re all experiencing and trying to accomplish,” she said.