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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Decarbonization of Liquid Heating Fuels

Annually, residential and commercial buildings use about 5 billion gallons (18.9 billion liters) of distillate fuel for space and water heating. There is considerable interest in decarbonizing these markets through a combination of heat pumps and a future, carbon-free grid. An alternate approach that offers rapid and cost effective decarbonization involves substitution of low-carbon biofuels for fossil fuels within this market. Heating fuel marketers in North America and Europe are aggressively moving to achieve market penetration of biofuels. Processes for this include fuel specification standards, development of manufacturer-approved burners and all system components, development of standards for equipment listing, installation code changes, and generation of performance data. There has been considerable progress in these areas and each of these are reviewed in this paper. Currently, the most important biofuel for this market is biodiesel with a U.S. production capacity of 2.4 billion gallons (9.1 billion liters) and approximately a 75% reduction in GHG emissions. The biodiesel industry has stated a vision for dramatic increases in biodiesel production over the next decades. Fuel and equipment standards are in place to enable use of biodiesel blends to 20% and this blend is now widely used. Standard changes to extend this to as high as 100% biodiesel are nearing completion. Several states have implemented requirements for minimum levels of biodiesel in heating oil with these levels increasing over time.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Frequency Support From Electric Vehicles for Advancing Renewable Energy Integration

The integration of renewable energy resources (RERs) in the modern power grid is increasing rapidly because of aggressive decarbonization goals, lower costs, and increased government investment. However, higher penetrations of inverter-based generation can lead to frequency stability issues because of reduced system inertia. This paper develops a framework for quantifying the contribution of electric vehicles (EVs) toward providing frequency support to the grid and thus increasing the penetration limit of renewable energy resources (RERs). EVs are considered to provide both inertial response and primary frequency response support to the grid. A stochastic approach incorporating the uncertainties associated with the behavior of EVs is developed to derive the discharge limit of EV aggregators. A multi-machine system frequency response (MM-SFR) model is developed, which incorporates the dynamic virtual inertia and droop coefficients of EV aggregators derived from the EV control modules. Frequency security constraints are developed from this MM-SFR model, which, along with the converter voltage security and low voltage ride-through constraints, are integrated within a nonlinear optimization framework to determine the RER integration limit. Here, the efficacy of the proposed approach is validated using the RTS-GMLC test system.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tangible Solutions for Grid Operation Upgrade

Many countries worldwide are setting clean energy targets to decarbonize the energy sector and add higher wind and solar capacities. Given their distributed nature, variable renewable energy (VRE) assets can have unique grid integration considerations, and require grid operation practices to be modernized. When transitioning to higher renewable energy levels, many system operators configure a dedicated renewable energy desk to manage renewable energy resource operation in the system control center. Further, system operation planning is conducted with VRE and load forecasting to enable reliable real-time system operation. NREL has partnered with many system operators in the region to identify appropriate technology and grid modernization solutions. NREL and partners from system operators in the region will present on the challenges and some solutions that have been applied and share best practices such as energy management system upgrades, VRE forecasting framework, grid flexibility improvements, and staff training.

emerging economies↗
DOE OSTI2024

Resource Adequacy in Decarbonizing Power Systems

Decarbonization of the power sector is instrumental to reducing emissions worldwide. Following the 13th Clean Energy Ministerial conference (CEM13) in 2022, several governments signaled their intention to develop power sector decarbonization action plans. The 21st Century Power Partnership (21CPP), in coordination with all Clean Energy Ministerial power workstreams and collaborators, is providing technical support on critical focus areas as these countries prepare their action plans. Countries will present the action plans at the upcoming CEM14 in India. Brought to you by the Clean Energy Solutions Center and 21CPP, this webinar will focus on resource adequacy and grid flexibility, key themes in the CEM14 action plans and critical topics for integrating variable renewable energy into the grid while ensuring system reliability. Global energy experts will discuss how grid planners can ensure stable supply while rapidly decarbonizing the power system and how various policies can increase the power grid's flexibility.

emissions↗
DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging NREL's ResStock & ComStock Dataset to Evaluate Building Stock Electrification: Preprint

Residential and commercial buildings accounted for 40% of U.S. energy consumption in 2022 and represent a significant opportunity for decarbonization through energy efficiency and electrification, and for grid planning. Building stock energy modeling is a powerful tool that can evaluate what-if scenarios as utilities, municipalities, policymakers, building owners and others work towards equitable building decarbonization and climate goals. This presentation will highlight several high-impact use cases of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)'s highly granular, bottom-up building stock energy modeling tools, ResStock and ComStock. These use cases cover a wide range of project scale, from neighborhood electrification analysis and municipality long-term energy planning, to state energy code development and national policy evaluation. This presentation will showcase specific real-world applications for which ResStock and ComStock have been utilized across the country, including California codes and standards cost-effectiveness analysis, New York City affordable housing electrification cost gap analysis, and California targeted electrification and gas decommissioning analysis. For each use case, this presentation will illustrate how ResStock and ComStock played a crucial role in accurately characterizing regional building stocks, providing discrete and aggregated end-use load shapes, and calculating lifecycle consumption, emissions, and costs for a variety of building electrification strategies and scenarios. Finally, this presentation will demonstrate how the data provided by ResStock and ComStock can help unlock significant outcomes for these use cases, including but not limited to, customer bill impact, incentive and program design, and energy equity analyses.

building stock modeling↗
DOE OSTI2024

Generative AI for Power Grid Operations

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has captured into the mainstream, demonstrating capabilities that once belonged solely to the realm of human cognition. From defeating world champions in complex games to generating human-quality text and images, Generative AI has proven its potential to revolutionize countless industries. The electric power grid is no exception. Generative AI's ability to process vast amounts of data rapidly, assist decision support and identify patterns could significantly enhance power grid operations. For example, Generative AI could improve state estimation where measurements are not available or integrate renewable energy sources more efficiently with probabilistic forecasting. The key contributions of this whitepaper are outlined below: (1) Comprehensive overview of Generative AI's applications in power grid operations: It highlights the opportunities in areas such as forecasting, state estimation, and demonstrating the potential for enhancing efficiency, reliability, and resilience. (2) Expanding Generative AI's impact through synergies with emerging technologies: The paper introduce NREL developed eGridGPT and explores how AI orchestration, multi-agent systems, and Digital Twins can collaborate to optimize grid operations, addressing the complexities of a decarbonized and electrified future. (3) In-depth analysis of challenges in implementing Generative AI: This includes considerations like data availability and quality, model validation, certification, and ethical concerns, ensuring responsible AI deployment. (4) Emphasizing human-AI collaboration: The whitepaper underscores the importance of trustworthy, transparency, and explainability in AI systems to promote seamless interaction between human operators and AI, ultimately improving decision-making. (5) Exploring future research and development: It identifies critical areas for further advancement to fully realize Generative AI's potential in power grid operations. This whitepaper serves as a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers looking to harness Generative AI for a more reliable, stable, and cost-effective power grid.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Supply Chain Energy and Greenhouse Gas Analysis Using the Materials Flows through Industry (MFI) Tool: Examination of Decarbonization Technology Scenarios for the U.S. Glass Manufacturing Sector

Glass manufacturing is a major part of the U.S. economy, and glass products in multiple sectors - flat glass, container glass, and fiberglass - are a part of everyday life. Despite glass manufacturing's long history, there are still many opportunities for glass production to improve in terms of both in overall energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. Scenarios for the flat, container, and fiberglass sectors show the effect that each improvement has on primary energy demand and GHG emissions, starting from an industry baseline that reflects current manufacturing practices. Using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Material Flows through Industry tool, multiple scenarios are examined for each glass sector by applying a combination of energy reduction, increased electrification, hydrogen cofiring, a more renewable electric grid, and increased use of cullet. Additional decarbonization options are possible for glass but are left for later analysis due to cost, feasibility, or data issues. Primary energy demand can be reduced by 75%-83% compared to baseline inputs, depending on the sector, and GHG emissions are reduced by 82%-86%. Applying the maximum level of improvements listed here has the potential to save over 300 million GJ and 25 million metric tons of GHGs by 2050.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Competitiveness Assessment of Decarbonizing Electricity and Process Heat Supply to a Campus with a Small Nuclear Reactor

This paper analyzes the competitiveness of siting a small nuclear reactor to support decarbonization of sites requiring tens of MW of electricity and/or process heat to support centralized heating and cooling system. This paper focuses on campuses as representative of sites with collections of buildings and research facilities with decarbonization needs represented by buildings heating, and electricity consumption by electrical loads which may include cooling via chilled water (e.g., for air conditioning and to cool down computer clusters). A nuclear reactor can be considered to decarbonize a site’s high-temperature steam generation used mostly for building heating needs, climate control, and hot water, by supplying process heat capabilities, while electricity decarbonization would be achieved mostly by the grid. However, a secondary application can be considered to maximize reactor utilization and avoid ramping down the reactor if the steam demand varies significantly throughout the year. Chilled water generation through steam-driven systems was identified as an attractive secondary option for the site analyzed, due to potential for plant design simplification, while electricity generation could be considered as well to reduce electricity purchases for a wider range of site applications. For a campus with peak 60MW thermal power demand, a small nuclear reactor with similar thermal power rating would almost eliminate CO2 emissions from steam generation and reduce electricity imports for chilled water production. A preliminary techno-economic feasibility study shows that a small nuclear reactor design that is optimized to support process heat can represent an economically feasible option when compared with other decarbonization alternatives.

Stauff, Nicolas E.↗
DOE OSTI2022

How to Build a Connected Community: Policies to Promote Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings and Demand Flexibility

Efficient, connected, grid-interactive, smart, and flexible buildings are key to decarbonizing the U.S. energy economy, optimizing energy use, reducing electric consumers’ bills, integrating variable renewable energy resources, and improving the reliability and performance of the nation’s electricity grids. Such grid-interactive efficient buildings have high levels of energy efficiency layered with other distributed energy resources (DERs) and intelligent controls to provide demand flexibility. Policy support is unfolding at the federal, state, and local levels to transform homes and workplaces into state-of-the-art energy-efficient buildings and community-level grid services. This paper starts by describing the potential benefits. Next, it highlights existing policies — with a focus on state-level actions — that support grid-interactive efficient building deployment and demand flexibility. Finally, it identifies current trends and gaps, policies and programs that promote grid-interactive efficient buildings, and aggregations of grid-interactive efficient buildings referred to as Virtual Power Plants.

Schwartz, Lisa C↗
DOE OSTI2021

Markets and Economic Requirements for Fission Batteries and Other Nuclear Systems

Fission Batteries (FBs) are nuclear reactors defined by five characteristics which enable large-scale deployment: cost competitive, standardized sizes for economic mass production, easy installation and removal, secure and safe unattended operation with high reliability. FBs are not defined by technology or power level. Technical and market considerations suggest that most FBs will produce 20 to 30 MWt. This proceedings reports on the outcomes of two workshops that were held in January 2021 to better define markets and economic challenges for FBs. Three major markets were identified. The largest market is the industrial and commercial heat market. There are about 4000 industrial users (excluding utilities) that require more than one megawatt of heat. The number of customers versus size of heat demand was determined. In a low-carbon world there is the potential for many additional customers—including expanded biofuels production and district heat. The second market is for non-grid electricity. This includes co-generation plants that produce heat and electricity for a single customer. The third market is the maritime market with ~100,000 ships worldwide. In the United States, natural gas is the low-cost energy option today and will remain so unless constraints or taxes impact its use. If restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, the FB competition includes natural gas with carbon capture, biofuels, hydrogen and grid electricity. Natural gas with carbon capture is not economically viable on a small scale. Biofuels may be expensive but may be the economically preferred option for locations with small energy demands of a few megawatts. Hydrogen is a potential competitor with many of the characteristics of natural gas. Grid electricity is not a competitive source of heat. For FBs to be economically competitive, the price of delivered heat must be $20-50/MWh ($6-15/million BTU). The economically competitive range for non-grid electricity is estimated at $70-100/MWh. These electricity prices are competitive with the retail prices of electricity in many parts of the United States for the customer. FBs are not expected to be competitive selling wholesale electricity to the grid. To achieve the aforementioned cost targets for heat and electricity markets, FB designers must (1) maximize the power output within the constraints of a FB (e.g., truck transportability, passive decay heat removal), (2) drastically reduce the size of onsite staff, (3) adopt core designs with low fuel costs (enrichment and fabrication), and (4) develop a system design that is efficiently manufactured in factories. The business case depends upon more than being just a replacement for natural gas. The largest incentives for adoption of FBs is where they create new markets and new sources of revenue. An example is the paper and pulp industry that burns biomass wastes to provide heat and electricity to make paper. An external heat source could meet the demand for heat and electricity by the paper process and enable converting waste biomass into liquid biofuels rather than burning to provide heat. Other markets, such as data centers, are driven by special energy requirements such as extreme reliability. Most customers are not in the energy business but need heat and electricity to produce a product—a manufactured good, education, retail sales (shopping malls), marine transport or some other product. As a consequence, there will be large incentives to lease rather than own FBs. Leasing avoids the regulatory challenges that remain with the owner of the FB. Leasing creates large incentives for FP standardization of sizes and transportability to maintain the value of the FB at the end of the lease—similar to the leasing of jet engines and aircraft. The economic constraints combined with technical constraints suggest competitive FBs will likely have outputs exceeding 10 MWt. There appear to be little incentives for very long-lived reactor cores because such machines require much larger inventories of fuel. Maintenance requirements and the options to provide technology updates may favor shorter lifetimes (~5 years). The assessment is that there is the potential for FBs to be economically viable and play a major role in global decarbonization in three markets: heat, non-grid electricity and maritime applications.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Resilient Electric Grid: Defining, Measuring, and Integrating Resilience into Electricity Sector Policy and Planning

Traditionally, electric grid planning seeks to maintain safe, reliable, efficient, and affordable service for current and future customers. As policies, expectations of the energy system, and the threat landscape evolve, additional objectives for power system planners are emerging, including decarbonization, resilience, and equity. Renewable and clean energy goals, especially in the context of deep decarbonization strategies, are changing the mix of resources on the electric grid and prompting new considerations for grid architecture. The increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events over the last two decades, coupled with cybersecurity concerns, have elevated resilience as a key system need. More recently, there has been greater focus on equity and energy justice in grid planning to ensure that disadvantaged communities are not adversely affected by grid modernization and have equal access to its benefits. In response, new thinking around multi-objective decision planning is exploring improvements in grid planning processes to better integrate approaches to meet decarbonization, resilience, and equity objectives. To provide a foundation for this work, a series of white papers was produced to summarize these emerging objectives.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Equitable Electric Grid: Defining, Measuring, and Integrating Equity into Electricity Sector Policy and Planning

Traditionally, electric grid planning seeks to maintain safe, reliable, efficient, and affordable service for current and future customers. As policies, expectations of the energy system, and the threat landscape evolve, additional objectives for power system planners are emerging, including decarbonization, resilience, and equity. Renewable and clean energy goals, especially in the context of deep decarbonization strategies, are changing the mix of resources on the electric grid and prompting new considerations for grid architecture. The increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events over the last two decades, coupled with cybersecurity concerns, have elevated resilience as a key system need. More recently, there has been greater focus on equity and energy justice in grid planning to ensure that disadvantaged communities are not adversely affected by grid modernization and have equal access to its benefits. In response, new thinking around multi-objective decision planning is exploring improvements in grid planning processes to better integrate approaches to meet decarbonization, resilience, and equity objectives. To provide a foundation for this work, a series of white papers was produced to summarize these emerging objectives.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Energy-water interdependencies across the three major United States electric grids: A multi-sectoral analysis

As water availability and timing of delivery fluctuates and the US electric grid sees rapid transformation and reconfiguration under decarbonization and resource adequacy strategies, there is a critical need for information and data that supports understanding the water-energy interdependency landscape. The United States currently lacks comprehensive data, informative visualizations, and analysis of energy-water interdependencies at scales necessary to support resource and operational decision-making. This article provides US electricity interconnection-level Sankey diagrams that show the relative reliance of water and energy across various economic sectors. A deeper analysis is additionally provided at the county level to illustrate trends and potential opportunities related to resiliency and efficiency in multi-sectoral water and energy flow distributions and intensities. We find that the electricity interconnections in the US vary dramatically in their water and energy interdependencies across applications and economic sectors.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Comparative Life Cycle Analysis of Carbon Dioxide Utilization in Concrete Products

In this study, a comparative LCA of CO2U concrete processes is conducted, revealing promise in several research areas. The environmental impacts of replacing conventional binder and aggregates with carbonated steel slag and direct carbonation of concrete are investigated in ten different product systems, which include both ready-mix and pre-cast concretes. The results indicate that cement substitution, CO2 uptake, electricity consumption, and the electricity grid mix constitute critical levers for deep decarbonization of concrete building materials. This presentation applies LCA to inform the use of CO2U concrete technology pathways in the design of sustainable concrete while promoting transparency and rational assumptions in the presence of uncertainty. Broader themes in the work include LCA of emerging technologies and the sensitivity of LCA results to co-product management methods.

Clarke, James↗
DOE OSTI2023

Emulation and Adversarial Analysis of EV Charging Networks

In the effort of decarbonization and evolution of the modern electrical grid, electric vehicles (EVs) play a key part to transform the grid. However, due to the rapid adoption of EVs and the demand of the charging infrastructure required to power said EVs, risk of a cyber-attack may impose serious consequences. There is a need to analyze and protect the charging ecosystem infrastructure from cyber threats before it reaches wide-scale deployment. In an effort to secure vehicle to grid (V2G) communications, standardization is necessary for continued reliable system operation. The protocol ISO 15118 outlines controls and practices that should be implemented for secure vehicle to grid (V2G) communications. The standard is gaining momentum for American markets as the demand for EV infrastructure grows. The adoption of ISO 15118 in American markets poses several challenges: the deployment of a public key infrastructure (PKI) as outlined within the standard, interoperability of charging different EVs with chargers from different manufactures using the PKI, and scaling the ecosystem to meet the demand while managing risks. This project was created to understand potential cyber and scaling challenges of PKI for EV infrastructure through utilizing a series of emulated components mapping to what exists in the EV ecosystem today, and the components of the PKI that are under development. The key nodes within the emulation that are under development are: electric vehicle (EV), electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), charge network operator (CNO), certificate authority (CA), and online certificate status protocol (OCSP) that must all interact using secure and trusted communications. With these emulated components and utilizing orchestration methods to rapidly deploy and scale the components, the ability to analyze risks of the ecosystem and address gaps before the PKI ecosystem is fully deployed to production should yield a more robust and mature production charging infrastructure. Our approach will use a modular architecture of virtual machines within an orchestration platform and will target scales of 100s, 1000s, and 10,000s of entities interacting. The core research questions trying to be answered with this scope of work are: what are the impacts of a rogue CA, what are the risks of certificate revocation list (CRL) management, what is the value of OCSP stapling, what components are vulnerable to DOS attacks, and what test effective payloads may impact the components.

charging ecosystem↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cybersecurity Considerations for Emerging Energy Technologies

AI, cloud computing, post-quantum cryptography, zero-trust architectures, microgrids, and virtual power plants. What do these things have in common? They are all emerging technologies in the clean energy space that will be a critical part of grid modernization efforts. As we work towards clean energy and decarbonization targets, these technologies, developed to solve real-world problems, will help us reach goals and achieve new efficiencies as the paradigm of grid operation shifts. However, there are growing concerns about the cybersecurity risks associated with these trending topics as they are used in critical infrastructure applications. This talk will cover gaps, challenges, and opportunities for the secure implementation of grid modernization solutions and novel energy applications of state-of-the-art networking and communications. Proactive risk mitigation strategies, including the application of cyber-informed engineering, will be discussed. Practical applications of these techniques will help provide countermeasures to the impact of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure technologies in a new, digitized grid landscape.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Sustainable Port Operations: Powered by NREL

Seaports are vital economic hubs that allow the United States to compete on a global scale. But the heavy vehicles and cargo equipment that enable their operations also emit harmful air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. For nearly two decades, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers have worked toward comprehensive seaport decarbonization. They fuse world-class analysis with deep vehicle and transportation systems knowledge to guide strategic deployment of low- and zero-emissions vehicles, charging and refueling infrastructure, and grid improvements. Together, these capabilities can enable sustainable port operations. This fact sheet outlines major seaport and airport decarbonization capabilities across the laboratory, including: fleet research, energy data, and insights for decarbonization; comprehensive hydrogen infrastructure deployment; optimized charging through grid integration; strategic blueprinting for clean, optimized technology deployment; and integrating diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility considerations into decarbonization efforts.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,ENERGY CONSERVATION, C↗
DOE OSTI2023

AI-Based Optimal Design and Controls Can Greatly Reduce Carbon Emissions and Enhance Resilience in Residential Communities in Cold Climates

Net-zero energy residential communities are crucial for achieving decarbonization goals, but the high-penetration photovoltaic (PV) in those communities is posing challenges to the distribution grid. Traditional design and operation of net-zero communities rely on rule-of-thumb methods and may not work in complex scenarios. Artificial intelligence and machine learning methods can optimally size PV for net-zero energy, identify user preferences and usage patterns, and fully unlock the potential of distributed energy resources to address distribution grid issues.

artificial intelligence↗