The Office of Electricity’s (OE) Grid Controls and Communications Division manages research, development, and demonstration programs aimed at modernizing the Nation’s electricity delivery system including secure communications, controls, and protection systems. The Nation’s electric grid is a lifeline infrastructure, and the security of American’s lives are dependent on the safe and reliable delivery of electricity, but the future grid will be increasingly exposed to high-impact threats.
Our work accelerates adoption of end-to-end systems that protect and manage the grid; unlock new business models, policies, and regulatory frameworks; and coalesce the energy community around a common vision of the grid and its needs. Grid Controls and Communications programs are focused on advancing system modeling and planning, improving situational awareness and supporting grid operations, and developing technologies for secure operations of the power systems.
Programs
- Transmission Reliability: Supports collaboration between the national labs, the electric industry, and DOE to develop technologies that keep the nation’s electric grid resilient and secure, while reducing electricity bills and facilitating the integration of renewable energy. The program improves grid observability and situational awareness and develops tools to support grid operators.
- Advanced Grid Modeling: Supports building capacity and capability within the electric sector to analyze the electricity delivery system using Big Data, advanced mathematical theory, and high-performance computing to assess the current state of the grid, mitigate reliability risks, and understand future needs.
- Resilient Distribution Systems: Develops transformative technologies, tools, and techniques to enable industry to modernize the distribution system; supports transformation of the electric grid through the growing convergence of transmission and distribution portions of the electricity delivery system; and develops solutions that enable all consumers to participate in the clean-energy economy.
- Energy Delivery Grid Operations Technology: Supports operations, further development, and maintenance for the North American Energy Resilience Model to transition to a new energy planning, investment, and operations paradigm that is capable of proactively informing infrastructure investment strategies.
- SecureNET: Addresses R&D for critical energy sector secure data communications associated with electricity delivery systems and developing security-by-design solutions based on data and physics to address grid vulnerabilities and critical operational data processing, management, and communications systems that could expose the electricity system to cyber threats.
Division Leadership
Bill Parks, OE-20
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Grid Controls and Communications
Bill Parks currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Grid Controls and Communications in DOE’s Office of Electricity. He leads activities to help transform the system that powers our homes and businesses, and increasingly, even fuels our cars. His responsibilities include oversight of the Department's long-term strategic and foundational R&D efforts related to the resilience and reliability of our Nation’s electricity delivery system.