; and (C) facilitating increased deployment of energy storage across sectors, including facilitating— (i) the deployment of residential, commercial, and industrial applications; and (ii) the deployment to low-income individuals and communities; (6) advancing and validating the safety, reliability, and performance of energy storage, including by— (A) establishing procedures for evaluating, verifying, and reporting the performance of energy storage technologies, including the operational safety and usable life of energy storage technologies; and (B) refining existing or developing new industry-accepted codes, standards, and testing procedures to specify desired performance parameters for energy storage services; (7) mapping pathways for energy storage deployment that increase the reliability, efficiency, security, and resilience of the electricity system, including by— (A) increasing the understanding of trends in electricity system inertia; and (B) assessing the ability of energy storage to provide the technical services needed for management of electricity system inertia; (8) optimizing energy storage deployment— (A) to increase the deployment of variable renewable energy-generation technology and electric transportation; and (B) to support the optimal use of distributed and grid scale energy resources, including assessing the use of energy storage technologies to manage and optimize DERs— (i) at different levels of market penetration; or (ii) within integrated control systems or energy management systems, at different scales; (9) advancing analytical resources to employ storage technology effectively and profitably, including by— (A) using existing integrated resource planning, transmission, and distribution design tools and other resources to build staff capacity for State regulatory authorities, State energy offices, electric utilities, balancing authorities, and Federal power marketing administrations to assist in reducing the uncertainty and risks relating to energy storage deployment