CANSI

CANSI is gathering some of the strongest research institutions from the US and Denmark to identify challenges for the green transition within renewable energy, transmission and system integration and identify areas of collaboration based on climate goals and state of the art knowledge.

During 2023 and 2024 CANSI will offer webinars and seminars in the US and Denmark aimed for researchers, startups, corporates, policy makers and key opinion leaders.

Purpose

CANSI is a network of leading research institutions in the US and Denmark which aims to tackle challenges that hinder the green transition and ensure an optimal integration of renewable energy into the energy grid by​:

Identifying challenges through research collaboration,​

Building a consortium that links academia and industry,​

Applying for a project that work on tackling one or more of these challenges in the coming years,​

Supporting the signed MoU between Denmark and the US on clean energy research and science collaboration.

Challenge

The future of low-carbon societies calls for fundamental changes of the energy system as we know it today, in order to enable it to integrate higher shares of renewable energy (RE) into the power grid.

An efficient implementation of a low-carbon society calls for a system where demand follows production, however, RE does not provide a stable or reliable production of energy. Instead, it fluctuates in peak times and output, which is problematic for our current energy grids and energy consumption that are not designed to handle these variations. Thus, it is critical to tackle the challenges related to integrating RE in our energy grids in order to support the transition to low-carbon societies.

CANSI is a network of researchers from top US and DK universities that work together to face some of green transition’s biggest challenges – electrification and the integration of renewable energy. ​We will strengthen collaboration between the Danish and American partners while investigating, evaluating, and mapping out some of the challenges for a large-scale expansion of RE so that we can identify the most pressing challenges and ensure that they are tackled.

White papers

During the project, the group will jointly produce 4 discussion papers under the following themes.

Under preparation, expected completion Q1 2024
#1 - A Practical Framework for Understanding the US and European Energy Transition
#2 - Scalable grid architectures and digitalization for integrating flexibility

Future white papers
#3 –Hydrogen use, production and regulation – are we going down different paths in the US and the EU?
#4 – Offshore wind farms connected by an underwater power grid for transmission could revolutionize how the East Coast gets its electricity

Background

From 2020 to 2022, several partners within the CANSI-network have come together to organize multiple online events: ​

Click to watch the recorded sessions:

• October 29, 2020: Energy Webinar: System integration & Energy Conversion
  (Presentations from: MIT, Tufts, Ørsted, Energinet, DTU)​
• June 22, 2021: Towards Innovation and Large-Scale Integration – Energy Islands and Energy Flexibility​
  (Presentations from: NREL, Argonne, University of Vermont, Energinet, DTU, Danish Energy Agency) ​
• February 15, 2022: Research Webinar: Transmission-Distribution interfaces, markets, and flexibility​
  (Presentations from: NREL, PNNL, University of Vermont, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, DTU, AAU)
• June 30, 2022: Research Webinar: Large-scale system integration​
  (Presentations from: MIT, Johns Hopkins, NREL/University of Colorado, Harvard, University of Vermont, DTU, AAU) ​

It was based on these activities that we decided to create a consortium, which would include both old and new friends, and apply for a project that would focus on the exact theme we had spent the last two years working on – the integration of renewable energy.​

We wish to identify challenges that hinder the green transition and, ultimately, build a consortium that will tackle one or more of these challenges in the coming years.

Financed by Global Innovation Network Programme (GINP)