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Center for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy and Resilience (WISER)

Center Overview

WISER is a leading energy industry-academia partnership, advancing research and cutting-edge technologies to continually improve power grid efficiency and reliability in the face of the increasing frequency of extreme weather and the transition to clean energy. WISER provides state-of-the-art weather and climate information and develops cutting edge research and modeling tools that address energy industry needs in order to empower and safeguard the energy industry of the future, all while providing students with industry-relevant research experience. WISER's primary research areas include renewable energy, outage management, grid resiliency, and managing future weather risk.

Universities

University of Connecticut
University at Albany

View Center Website

Center Personnel

Christopher Thorncroft
Center Co-Director (University at Albany)
+1 518 437 8700
cthorncroft@albany.edu

Emmanouil N Anagnostou
Center Co-Director (University of Connecticut)
+1 860 486 6917
manos@engr.uconn.edu

Jan Woodcock
Director of Operations
+1 917 971 2574
jwoodcock2@albany.edu

Matthew E. Reuter
Program Manager
+1 518 300 9475
mreuter@albany.edu

Research Focus

WISER's research thrusts are:

Grid Resilience: the ability to avoid or withstand grid stress events (brought on by extreme weather) without suffering operational compromise.
Outage Management: the processes and systems used by electrical grid operators to assist in the restoration of power.
Renewable Energy: includes solar, hydro, and wind.
Managing Future Weather Risk: accounts for changes in future predicted weather patterns (ex. heat waves) and their resulting impacts on energy industry members across the generation, transmission and distribution chain.

Current research projects include:

Assessment of the impact of compound extreme weather events on grid priorities based on historical high-resolution reanalysis data: heatwaves and wind droughts.
Medium Range Severe Weather Risk Assessment for Utility Operations in the Northeastern U.S.A.
Strengthening Grid Resilience: Improved Freezing Rain Nowcasting for Utility Outage Prevention
Automated Identification of Weather-Related Utility Outages
Predicting Extreme Weather-Induced Power Outages with Tabular Foundation Mode
Risk Assessment Indexes for Peak Loads Under Extreme Heat and Electrification States
Multi-Agentic Utility-Centered AI Digital Infrastructure for Storm Event Data Intelligence and Analytics Assistance
The North American Forecasting Model: Outage, Damage and Load

Awards

2312737

IUCRC Phase I Albany: Weather Innovation and Smart Energy Resilience (WISER)

This Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy, and Resilience is a collaboration between the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Connecticut. Using the innovation that comes from Center university faculty, students, and postdocs, this IUCRC will advance basic research and cutting-edge technologies to improve the energy industry’s power grid efficiency and reliability in the face of the intensification of weather extremes in a changing climate and the nation's transition to clean energy. The Center's research thrusts are: (1) renewable energy generation and power grid integration, (2) weather-caused outage forecasting, management, and restoration, (3) electric grid resilience assessment and economic analysis of resilience improvements, and (4) climate change effects on the current generation and the future distribution of renewable energy resources. The dues paying members of the Center include private sector companies, energy utilities, government entities, and other interested parties. Their membership fees are pooled and used to fund faculty-proposed projects that the Center's industrial advisory board recommends as of highest priority to their sector. Broader impacts of the Center include breakthroughs in weather prediction and precision, grid modernization and the integration of renewable energy into the electrical grid, and workforce development. Through the Center, students and postdocs will be trained to work on high-priority projects of industry importance and learn how to work with non-academic parties to deliver much needed innovation in the weather-impacted electrical delivery/grid resilience space. Additional impacts include broadening participation in their research projects. Other impacts include using remote sensing and predictive models to derive supply and demand analytics for the renewable energy industry (Solar, Hydro, etc.) to support decarbonization initiatives across various regions in the US. The coming together of SUNY Albany and the University of Connecticut into an industry-university cooperative research center and its combined involved faculty, instrumentation, and facilities will create an engine to solve problems facing the electricity distribution industry due to the impact of hazards posed by changing weather patterns and climate. Research at the University at Albany will produce state-of-the-art predictive modeling tools that leverage numerical weather prediction and artificial intelligence-based impact modeling for managing renewable energy and predicting storm outages from various kinds of weather events. The Center goal will be the integration of total system resilience modeling with dynamic economic and policy analysis and forecasting tools based on electric utility infrastructure systems. The University of Connecticut Site brings both expertise on electrical grid operations and resilience as well as novel, experimentally-derived knowledge about the effects of roadside forest management approaches and disturbance agents on tree biomechanics and stability, given that trees are one of the biggest factors in inclement weather-generated electrical outages. The basic knowledge generated by this Center is essential to dramatically improving approaches required for the integration of renewables into the present electrical grid. It will also use geospatial data on infrastructure and vegetation risk/health as well as socioeconomic and ethnographic data to identify and address barriers to the uptake of new management strategies. The Center will provide significant new insights into state-of-the-art renewable energy management that considers the economic and technological constraints to maintaining the desirable power grid reliability and resilience to extreme weather events and climate change. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. Read More >

2312880

IUCRC Phase I Grant University of Connecticut: Center for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy and Resilience (WISER)

This Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy, and Resilience is a collaboration between the University of Connecticut and the State University of New York at Albany. Using the innovation that comes from Center university faculty, students, and postdocs, this IUCRC will advance basic research and cutting-edge technologies to improve the energy industry’s power grid efficiency and reliability in the face of the intensification of weather extremes in a changing climate and the nation's transition to clean energy. The Center's research thrusts are: (1) renewable energy generation and power grid integration, (2) weather-caused outage forecasting, management, and restoration, (3) electric grid resilience assessment and economic analysis of resilience improvements, and (4) climate change effects on the current generation and the future distribution of renewable energy resources. The dues paying members of the Center include private sector companies, energy utilities, government entities, and other interested parties. Their membership fees are pooled and used to fund faculty-proposed projects that the Center's industrial advisory board recommends as of highest priority to their sector. Broader impacts of the Center include breakthroughs in weather prediction, grid modernization, integration of renewable energy into the electrical grid, and workforce development. Through the Center, students and postdocs will be trained to work on high-priority projects of industry importance and learn how to work with non-academic parties to deliver much needed innovation in the weather-impacted electrical delivery/grid resilience space. Additional impacts include broadening participation in their research projects. Other impacts include using remote sensing and predictive models to derive supply and demand analytics for the renewable energy industry (Solar, Hydro, etc.) to support decarbonization initiatives across various regions in the US. The coming together of the University of Connecticut and SUNY Albany into an industry-university cooperative research center and its combined involved faculty, instrumentation, and facilities will create an engine to solve problems facing the electricity distribution industry due to the impact of hazards posed by changing weather patterns and climate. Research at the University of Connecticut will produce state-of-the-art electrical grid integration and resilience methodologies and provide much needed information, analysis, and approaches for better vegetation management close to powerlines. The University of Connecticut will also help determine economic impacts and better means of managing and preparing for grid outages. The Center goal will be the integration of total system resilience modeling with dynamic economic and policy analysis and forecasting tools based on electric utility infrastructure systems. The University of Connecticut Site brings both expertise to the table on electrical grid operations and resilience as well as novel, experimentally-derived knowledge about the effects of roadside forest management approaches and disturbance agents on tree biomechanics and stability, given that trees are one of the biggest factors in inclement weather-generated electrical outages. The basic knowledge generated by this Center is essential to dramatically improving approaches required for the integration of renewables into the present electrical grid. It will also use geospatial data on infrastructure and vegetation risk/health as well as socioeconomic and ethnographic data to identify and address barriers to the uptake of new management strategies. The Center will provide significant new insights into state-of-the-art renewable energy management that considers the economic and technological constraints to maintaining the desirable power grid reliability and resilience to extreme weather events and climate change. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. Read More >

Member Organizations

IUCRC affiliated member organizations are displayed as submitted by the Center. Non-federal organizations are not selected, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the Center author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.