With Kestrel on Deck, Advanced Computing Hit a Home Run Over 300 Clean Energy Projects | News

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) high-performance computing (HPC),
efficient data center operations, and powerful visualizations have left an indelible
stamp on clean energy innovation. As the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) only
national laboratory solely dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy research,
NREL has highlighted the impactful contributions of advanced computing in its Advanced
Computing Annual Report for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023.

While the NREL operations team spent much of FY 2023 preparing for, installing, and
bringing the new Kestrel HPC system online, NREL’s HPC powered over 300 renewable
energy projects from every technology office within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy.

“Computational approaches are critical to the energy transition,” said Ray Grout,
center director of NREL’s Computational Science Center. “HPC enables the energy community
to make critical advances in core science as well as translate scientific discoveries
into practical solutions. With Kestrel ready to provide greater computing power, the
future of renewable energy is stronger than ever.”

Take a peek at the Advanced Computing Annual Report highlights or download the full report to learn how advanced computing contributed to important DOE research, including:

Kestrel—installed and tested in the laboratory’s Energy Systems Integration Facility
data center—will provide more than five times the computing power of its predecessor,
Eagle, when fully configured. Kestrel’s heterogeneous architecture—which includes
both CPU-only and GPU-accelerated nodes—is designed to bring a much greater GPU capacity
to workloads compared to Eagle, enabling rapidly advancing applications in artificial
intelligence and expanding research in new directions for computing.

Learn more about advanced computing capabilities at NREL.