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Bits & Watts Initiative is a cross-campus effort of the Precourt Institute for Energy.

About

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Innovating for the 21st century grid

Bits & Watts is a Stanford University initiative bringing together multi-disciplinary research teams to develop innovations for the 21st century electric grid. It works to develop a new grid paradigm that is needed to incorporate large amounts of clean power and a growing number of distributed energy resources, while simultaneously enabling grid reliability, resilience, security and affordability.

Overview: The Bits & Watts Initiative at Stanford University

The Bits & Watts Initiative seeks to

  • Offer and implement new research ideas and de-risk them for the electricity ecosystem
  • Educate faculty, students, post-doctoral fellows and staff about the holistic systems-focused approach to solving problems for the electricity ecosystem
  • Offer holistic on-site and online educational experiences for current industry executives and other leaders
  • Create open-source hardware and software solutions rapidly adopted by industry and policymakers
  • Maintain flexibility amid uncertainty to exploit emerging technologies
  • Be a trusted and unbiased convener
  • Create platforms and protocols for sharing data with due consideration of privacy, security and confidentiality

Leadership

Stanford provides a dedicated pool of excellent faculty, students, post-doctoral fellows and staff across engineering, business, economics, social sciences and law. We have a culture of cross-campus collaboration, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep engagement with industry. Bits & Watts Leadership is committed to bringing these resources together to create strategic value for our members in these times of significant change. We hope you will join us.

Previous faculty co-directors discuss the Bits & Watts Initiative