Increasing penetrations of ever affordable renewable energy, while helpful in mitigating carbon and other atmospheric emissions, are effecting growing challenges related to grid management, power reliability, and dispatchability. With recent advances in control and communications networks, reactor designs, and carbon capture, the integration of various low-carbon energy generation technologies has the potential to concurrently achieve a broad suite of desirable outcomes: reduced emissions and environmental impact, energy system reliability and resilience, electric grid stability, decarbonization of the transportation and industrial sectors, resource optimization, etc. Currently, a number of U.S. national laboratories are co-investigating integrated hybrid energy systems, combining the best characteristics of available energy technologies in order to realize a more affordable, environmentally friendly, reliable, and resilient energy system for both electricity and industrial heat processes.
