Combinatorics applications to energy engineering?

My name is Kadin Shah, and I am a rising senior at Arizona State University studying Applied Mathematics with an emphasis in mechanical engineering. I'm interested in using creative problem-solving solutions in a collaborative setting with engineers at a large company such as a National Laboratory.

Fairly recently, I became interested in combinatorics, especially combinatorial game theory, through AoPS and people at my online math tutoring company. I'm wondering how I can possibly implement some of these concepts I really enjoy to PDE's and numerical analysis for environmental engineering. I tried to ask professors at ASU as well as look things up, but the results I got seemed far too general.

So do you think that implementing more combinatorics and discrete state-based systems to engineering research has a lot of potential to analyze the world's environmental impact on a deeper level? Both CGT and the rise of renewable energies are heavily increasing areas of research, so I feel like there's potential for me to discover and research some sort of intersection. I just want to start an interesting conversation in the comments, so let me know your thoughts.