Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center

Strategic Systems Analysis and Engineering (SSAE) is a core competency of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), which is the only federally operated facility within the constellation of seventeen Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories. NETL implements significant portions of DOE research and development programs and awards under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In addition, NETL conducts intramural research supporting program, primarily that of the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

The SSAE directorate provides the decision science and analysis capabilities necessary to evaluate complex energy systems. The directorate’s capabilities address technical, economic, resource, policy, environmental and market aspects of the energy industry. These capabilities are critical to strategic planning, direction and goals for technology R&D programs and the generation of market, regulatory and technical intelligence for NETL senior management and DOE. SSAE offers a range of multi-criteria and multi-scale decision tools and approaches for this support:

• Process systems engineering research: advanced modeling, simulation and optimization tools for complex dynamic systems
• Process and cost engineering: plant-level synthesis, process modeling and simulation of energy systems with performance estimates
• Resource and subsurface analysis: evaluation of technologies, approaches and regulations for subsurface energy systems and storage
• Market and infrastructure analysis: economic impacts and program benefits
• Environmental life cycle analysis: cradle-to-grave emissions and impacts

These tools and approaches provide insights into new energy concepts and support the analysis of energy system interactions at the plant, regional, national and global scales. The speaker will highlight examples to pertinent electricity sector issues as the generation mix of the United States continues to change.

Peter C. Balash, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the Strategic Systems Analysis and Engineering Directorate at the United States Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has followed energy markets, energy security, and technology issues for DOE/NETL since 2002, focusing on market and technology interactions across the entire energy value chain. Recent activities include studying reliability and resilience of the electricity system. Current duties include managing the SSAE directorate, an enterprise of 140 professionals forming interdisciplinary teams of engineers, economists, and scientists that produce economic, systems, optimization, regulatory, environmental life cycle, and infrastructure reliability analyses, all to inform strategic planning. In the recent past he has directed studies of the economic impacts of energy and climate change mitigation policy and assessed energy security options in a carbon-constrained world, inclusive of fossil-energy based solutions. From 2018-2022 he served in the leadership of the DOE Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium. From 2017-2023, Mr. Balash served in the leadership of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics, including as President in 2022. Prior to DOE Mr. Balash worked for the Internal Revenue Service in Houston, TX, engaged in multinational corporate audits and transfer pricing issues. Dr. Balash earned his doctorate in economics in 1992 from the University of Texas at Austin. He received a bachelor’s in economics from Xavier University, Cincinnati, in 1987