K-State professor to lead $1 million Department of Energy project

MANHATTAN (KSNT) - A K-State engineering professor will lead a $1 million two-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a tool to enhance the energy grid resistance in Ford County.

Bala Natarajan, a professor in the Mike Wiegers Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will lead the "Stakeholder-guided holistic Adaptive Framework for enhancing community Energy Resilience" (SAFER) which will provide $800,000 in funding to the K-State team.

The DOE announced the Renewables Advancing Community Energy Resilience (RACER) funding opportunity in April, 2022. The program allotted $33 million to enable communities to use solar and solar-plus-storage to prevent energy grid disruptions.

The team will work to identify how disasters, power grid resources, socioeconomic factors and the energy burden in Ford County can be enhanced for resilience.

"Working with a community like Dodge City, there are ice storms that can disrupt the energy infrastructure there," Natarajan said. "We're looking at how solar and solar storage can absorb those disturbances."

A total of 20 projects were selected based on merit from across the country, according to Natarajan. His team was the only one selected in Kansas.

"The team will produce a resilience analysis and planning tool that can enhance the energy resilience of this community," Natarajan said. "It will enable decision makers to evaluate solar-plus-storage investments that can lead to measurable impacts on resilience while also serving as a benchmark for other communities in Kansas and beyond."