Best Practices for Integrating Research and Education in Grid Forming Technologies

Future power systems will have millions of inverter-based resources (IBRs) interfacing wind, solar, and energy storage. Research and development projects across industry and academia have demonstrated the virtue of grid-forming (GFM) inverters in maintaining stability, performance, and resilience. There is a pressing need to foster an ecosystem that enables researchers, industry partners (inverter manufacturers, software vendors), utilities, and system operators to pursue advances in a broad range of GFM technologies. This panel will focus on best practices for workforce training focused on planning, designing, and operating grids with a high level of GFM IBRs. Speakers include leading experts across academia, national labs, and industry. They will overview education and workforce-development activities relevant to GFM IBRs, particularly as they relate to industry-academia-national lab partnerships. Integration of research spanning several TRL levels into education and outreach in an emerging technology space will also be a focus theme.