Symposium Description
Modern energy systems are increasingly complex, spanning materials, devices, infrastructure, and human systems across different spatial and temporal scales. While integrating energy sources across these scales is essential for decarbonization, resilience, and reliability, it is far from straightforward.
The growing intensity and frequency of extreme events, such as ice storms, heat waves, and wildfires, further underscore the need for energy systems that are redundant, adaptable, and reliable. Achieving this resilience will require thoughtful integration of diverse power systems and energy sources, including centralized grids, distributed generation, storage, and emerging technologies operating at multiple scales.
A central theme of the symposium is the role of scale in the development of new materials, devices, and architectures that can enable decarbonization. How do phenomena at the atomic or material scale influence performance at the device, system, or grid level? How can insights from complex systems science help bridge these scales and guide the design of robust, low-carbon energy solutions? By bringing together researchers and practitioners from across disciplines, this symposium aims to foster dialogue on how to better understand, design, and integrate energy systems across scales - advancing both fundamental knowledge and practical pathways toward a resilient, decarbonized energy future.
Registration Coming Soon!
Registration for external attendees will be $175. Vanderbilt students, staff, and faculty can attend at no cost.
Agenda
Proposed Parallel Session Themes:
- Cross-Scale Energy Integration and System Complexity
This session focuses on the fundamental challenges of integrating energy sources such as nuclear, fossil fuel, renewable energy, and technologies across spatial and temporal scales. Topics may include coupling between devices, buildings, communities, and grids; emergent behavior in complex energy systems; and methods for modeling, controlling, and optimizing multi-scale energy networks.
Key ideas: nonlinearity, system-of-systems design, coordination across scales.
- Distributed Energy Resources and Flexible Storage
This session centers on energy storage and distributed resources that blur traditional boundaries between sectors and scales. Examples include vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid systems, second-life batteries, hybrid storage architectures, and the co-design of storage with generation and demand.
Key ideas: flexibility, bidirectional power flow, sector coupling, and user participation.
- Energy Resilience and Power System Management Under Extreme Events
This session addresses the role of energy systems in the mitigation of and response to extreme weather events. Topics may include resilient grid architectures, microgrids, redundancy, recovery and adaptation planning, and real-world case studies of power system performance during disruptions.
Key ideas: reliability, redundancy, resilience, climate-adaptive energy systems.
- Materials, Devices, and Technologies Across Scales for Decarbonization (Cluster Hire)
This session highlights how advances at small scales enable (or constrain) performance at larger scales. Topics may include energy materials, electrochemical systems, power electronics, critical mineral extraction, manufacturability, lifecycle considerations, and how material- and device-level choices influence system-level decarbonization pathways.
Key ideas: scale bridging, materials-to-systems thinking, technology translation.
- Towards climate mitigation and adaptation through energy transition
This session explores innovative methods at the intersection of science and policymaking that advance climate adaptation and mitigation through the multi-scale integration of energy systems that link local infrastructure decisions with national energy transition while accounting for predicted spikes in energy demands (e.g., data centers). The focus is on the role of coordination across scales in achieving resilience, emission reduction, and reliable energy systems under daily operation and climate uncertainty.
Key ideas: energy transition, policymaking, system interdependencies.