DOE picks SmithGroup for $135M energy facility
From the Washington Business Journal: The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has signed a contract with JE Dunn and SmithGroup to begin design and construction for the latest research building on the NREL campus.
The Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) will be the nation’s only facility that can conduct integrated megawatt-scale testing of all components and strategies critical to deploying renewable energy and other energy-efficiency technologies into the nation’s electric grid at utility scale.
The ESIF will be approximately 175,000 square feet and the building will house laboratories as well as office space for up to 250 NREL researchers and support staff. The ESIF will also include a state-of-the-art, high-performance computing and data center that will expand NREL’s capabilities in modeling and simulation of renewable energy technologies and their integration into the existing energy infrastructure.
