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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 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

PSY (PowerSystems.jl) [SWR-23-105]

PowerSystems.jl is a package to organize and manipulate data for the study of energy systems with diverse modeling requirements. This software serves two main purposes: to reduce the burden of large power system data set development, and to promote reproducible research and simulation. PowerSystems.jl implements an abstract hierarchy to represent and customize power systems data and includes data containers for quasi-static and dynamic simulation applications. Key features include efficient management of large quantities of time series data, optimized serialization, and comprehensive validation capabilities. For further information regarding the Sienna modeling framework at NREL, see: https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sienna.html

Lara Aguilar, Jose Daniel↗
DOE OSTI2024

Distributed Energy Resources as an Equity Asset: Lessons Learned from Deployments in Disadvantaged Communities

For an Energy System to be truly equitable, it should provide affordable and reliable energy services to disadvantaged and underserved populations. Disadvantaged communities often face a combination of economic, social, health, and environmental burdens and may be geographically isolated (e.g., rural communities), which systematically limits their opportunity to fully participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Assessing the Impact of Energy Transition Initiatives on the Policy Cost of Saudi Arabia's Net-Zero Ambition

Saudi Arabia's ambitious goal to achieve a net-zero economy by 2060 offers a unique opportunity to diversify away from fossil fuels while fostering long-term economic resilience and sustainability. Crucial to this transition are energy policies that guide the Kingdom from a fossil fuel-based economy toward carbon neutrality. This study uses GCAM-KSA, a multi-sectoral integrated assessment model tailored to Saudi Arabia's economic and energy systems, to evaluate the impact of early energy transition initiatives on the policy costs of achieving the Kingdom's net-zero target. These initiatives include ongoing and proposed energy efficiency measures, renewable energy deployment, and fuel displacement targets. The study highlights that early implementation of these initiatives can significantly reduce barriers to adopting low-carbon technologies, ultimately lowering the economic burden of achieving the net-zero goal. Compared to a delayed implementation scenario, early action reduces long-term policy costs by 38–72% over the period from 2025 to 2060, driven by accelerated energy system transformation. These findings provide valuable insights into how Saudi Arabia's energy policies can mitigate economic challenges, promote economic diversification, and contribute to global emission reductions, reinforcing the Kingdom's transition to a sustainable net-zero economy.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cleaner Cooking: Exploring Tools to Measure and Understand the Long-term Adoption and Environmental Significance of Cookstoves in India

About 40% of the world’s population, or roughly 3 billion people, rely on solid biomass fuels like coal, wood, dung, and crop residues to cook and meet their household energy needs. This outdated energy system has severe social, health, and environmental implications. Women are disproportionately affected as they predominantly bear the burden of cooking and collecting fuelwood, which exacerbates the “time poverty” trap that restricts them from participating in economic and educational activities. Exposure to indoor solid fuel combustion, also known as household air pollution, is responsible for 3-4 million premature deaths per year and is a leading risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, childhood pneumonia, stroke, ischemic heart disease, and lung cancer. Solid-fuel cooking contributes to 16% of global ambient air pollution, emitting CO 2 and other climate-forcing pollutants like carbon monoxide, black carbon, and methane.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Task 12 PV Sustainability - Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Residential PV and Battery Storage Systems

Using a life cycle assessment (LCA), the environmental impacts from generating 1 kWh of electricity for self-consumption via a photovoltaic-battery system are determined. The system includes a 10 kWp multicrystalline-silicon photovoltaic (PV) system (solar irradiation about 1350 kWh/m2/year and annual yield 1000 kWh/kWp), an iron phosphate lithium-ion (LiFePO4) battery, and other components such as the control system, battery housing, and two inverters (one for the PV system and one for the battery system). Three options for the AC-coupled system with changing battery capacities (5, 10, or 20 kWh nominal capacity) are investigated. The environmental impacts are assessed using the indicators greenhouse gas emissions and cumulative energy demand (separated into total and non-renewable cumulative energy demand). In addition, the four most important impact categories for PV electricity - respiratory inorganics (particulate matter), acidification, energy carrier resource use, and minerals and metals resource use - are assessed according to the environmental footprint (EF) method. Data are drawn from the DETEC data DQRv2:2018, recent literature, and product details provided by manufacturers. The results show larger environmental impacts of PV-battery systems with increasing battery capacity; for capacities of 5, 10, and 20 kWh, the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from 1 kWh of electricity generation for self-consumption via a PV-battery system are 80, 84, and 88 g CO 2- eq/kWh, respectively. The cumulative greenhouse gas emissions of PV electricity consumed directly or fed into the grid are 54 g CO 2 -eq/kWh. The corresponding total cumulative energy demands are 5.27, 5.40, and 5.50 MJ oil-eq/kWh, with non-renewable energy carriers contributing 1.16, 1.22, and 1.29 MJ oil-eq/kWh. In the investigated EF impact categories, we similarly observe a larger environmental burden with increasing battery capacity, except in the use of minerals and metals. Our sensitivity analyses show that using a nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM) lithium-ion battery, instead of an LiFePO 4 battery, leads to a comparable environmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and cumulative energy demand. However, the NCM battery increases the impact in the EF categories of acidification and respiratory inorganics by 7 and 10%, respectively, whereas energy carrier resource use decreases by 4% and minerals and metals resource use decrease by 1%. Using a copper indium selenium (CIS) PV panel instead of a multicrystalline-silicon decreases greenhouse gas emissions by 24%, non-renewable cumulative energy demand by 13%, and particulate matter emissions by 60% (the largest decrease). Furthermore, the calculated environmental impacts are sensitive to the assumed battery lifetime. A decrease from 5000 to 3000 charge cycles increases non-renewable cumulative energy demand by 24% and greenhouse gas emissions by 16%. Increasing from 5000 to 7000 charge cycles decreases the environmental impacts by 6% and 7% in terms of non-renewable cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions, respectively. A utility-scale battery system case study shows that using batteries to store PV electricity overproduction reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to using natural gas backup electricity generation.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

X-ray absorption spectroscopy of lanmodulin-derived peptides bound to rare earth elements

A sustainable and robust supply chain of rare earth elements (REEs) is necessary to meet our consumer, national security and clean energy goals. However, current intra-REE separation technologies (e.g. solvent extraction) are costly and carry a heavy environmental burden. Therefore, the development of new aqueous based ligands that are selective for individual REEs will be integral in future REE production systems. To develop these ligands, an understanding of how ligand coordination structure relates to selectivity is imperative. We used X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to observe the local structure around four lanthanide (Ln) ions (La, Ce, Pr and Nd) complexed by water and several relevant chelating ligands [lanmodulin EF-hand 1 peptides (LanM1), ethyl­enedi­amine­tetra­acetic acid (EDTA), amino­tris­(methyl­ene­phospho­nic acid) (ATMP) and citric acid]. To collect these liquid-phase XAS spectra, we developed a new flow cell that prevents bubble interference and beam damage to the samples. In the X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), we observed energy shifts in the white line, white line broadening and differences in the white line intensity of different Ln–ligand complexes between ligands. In the extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), we distinguished differences in peak intensity and distance between coordinating ligands. Differences in the local coordination structure between Ln–LanM1 peptide complexes were more subtle compared with the other ligands (La–water, La–EDTA, La–ATMP and La–citric acid complexes). Further XANES and EXAFS studies, in combination with modelling and other techniques, could greatly improve our structural knowledge of how these aqueous ligands bind Ln ions and how they can be used to design more selective ligands for more efficient and sustainable REE separations.

EDTA↗
DOE OSTI2021

Microbe-Encapsulated Silica Gel Biosorbents for Selective Extraction of Scandium from Coal Byproducts

Establishing an inexpensive and environmentally friendly scandium (Sc) supply is critical for the development of clean energy technologies. However, refining Sc from Sc-bearing sources using current technologies poses economic and environmental challenges due to its low concentration relative to base metals and chemically similar lanthanides. In this work, we developed a biosorption-based flow-through process for extraction of Sc from low-grade feedstocks. A novel biosorbent material was synthesized by encapsulating Arthrobacter nicotianae, a bacterium that selectively adsorbs Sc, within a porous silica matrix. Through the use of several complementary microscopy techniques, we demonstrated a highly porous biosorbent structure with a high cell-loading density and a homogenous cell distribution. Batch adsorption assays revealed selective Sc adsorption over lanthanides and common based metals, with the exception of Fe(III), as evidenced by separation factors greater than 50. The MESG particles were packed into fixed-bed columns to enable adsorption under flow-through conditions, which demonstrated effective Sc extraction at flow rates up to 0.08 cm/s and high stability for reuse; greater than 95% of the adsorption capacity was maintained after 10 consecutive adsorption/desorption cycles. When applied to a lignite coal leachate, whose Fe content was depleted through pH-mediated precipitation, the MESG particles yielded Sc breakthrough at 30 bed volumes, whereas all other metals broke through after only a few bed volumes. Following desorption, an eluate with a 124-fold increase in Sc purity was achieved relative to the lignite leachate with Sc constituting 96.4% of the total REEs. This study established a rapid, facile, and scalable cell immobilization approach that enables the use of microbial biomass for Sc recovery from low-grade sources.

Dong, Ziye↗
DOE OSTI2023

Addressing Regulatory Burdens to Accessing Solar Among Municipal, Commercial and Institutional Customers Through Collaborative Partnerships (Final Technical Report)

The project focused on providing education to large energy customers, with a focus on local governments, to help them better understand and overcome barriers to solar energy adoption that currently exist (or could exist) in utility planning processes and/or within wholesale energy markets. The project team created accessible educational materials — ranging from reports to case studies to webinars — that could connect with stakeholders who rarely engage in these venues, have limited bandwidth to do so, and possess little previous knowledge of these issues. The project team focused on sharing lessons learned and best practices based on the experiences of other local governments and large energy users that have engaged on these issues, including the PJM Cities and Communities Coalition (PJMCCC). The project sought to better connect these customers and other stakeholders to deepen and expand opportunities for them to engage together on these issues, as well as build peer networks to facilitate the exchange of information. The project team held convenings of key partners — such as local governments, developers, regulators, utilities and large solar buyers — to discuss best practices, develop research products to broaden stakeholders’ knowledge base, and to foster these peer networks.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Unlocking Energy Efficiency: Debunking Myths on the Road to Decarbonization

Energy efficiency is widely recognized as the foundational and most critical strategy for decarbonizing the manufacturing sector. Misconceptions surrounding energy efficiency measures often hinder their widespread adoption. This article aims to debunk five common myths and provides data and resources to help implement efficiency projects faster and more effectively to achieve greater decarbonization. First, the article challenges the myth that organizations have exhausted all possible energy efficiency opportunities by achieving voluntary energy intensity goals or energy performance certification. Second, it also addresses the misconceptions that efficiency projects are capital-intensive, require many qualified specialists, and have long investment return periods. By presenting real-world case studies and referencing commonly found efficiency opportunities, the article illustrates that energy-savings opportunities are ubiquitous. Organizations can use various contracting mechanisms as well as financial and technical resources from utility companies and government programs to lessen their burden. The notion that efficiency measures can be implemented solely in proprietorship facilities is dispelled. This article emphasizes the importance of green leases and explains that aligning decarbonization goals between the lessor and lessee can help drive savings for both parties. Finally, using unbundled renewable energy certificates as the sole pathway to decarbonization is strongly discouraged. By debunking these prevalent myths, this article aims to foster a deeper understanding of energy efficiency’s potential as a cornerstone of decarbonization efforts and to embrace it as a critical pathway toward a sustainable future.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Protein engineering for critical metal recovery beyond REEs

Achieving decarbonization and electrification goals will require expanded production of critical minerals (CM), including Li, Co, Cu, rare earths, Ni, and graphite, whose supply chains are geopolitically vulnerable. Problematically, current extraction and separation processes pose severe environmental burdens that impede the development of a diversified domestic supply chain and undercut the environmental benefits of energy technologies [1, 2]. The development of efficient, economical, and environmentally sustainable processing technologies is thus important for meeting the CM demand of the emerging energy technology market. To this end, we have recently developed an all-aqueous protein-based process for rare earth element (REE) extraction and separation. To extend our protein-based approach to critical metals beyond REEs, the goal of this project was to develop a protein discovery and engineering pipeline to generate a panel of proteins that selectively bind target critical metals.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Microgrid energy scheduling under uncertain extreme weather: Adaptation from parallelized reinforcement learning agents

Microgrids are useful solutions for integrating renewable energy resources and providing seamless green electricity to minimize carbon footprint. In recent years, extreme weather events happened often worldwide and caused significant economic and societal losses. Such events bring uncertainties to the microgrid energy scheduling problems and increase the challenges of microgrid operation. Traditional optimization approaches suffer from the inaccuracy of the uncertain microgrid model and the unseen events. Existing reinforcement learning (RL) - based approaches are also hampered by the limited generalization and the increasing computational burden when stochastic formulations are required to accommodate the uncertainties. This paper proposes a new parallelized reinforcement learning (PRL) method based on the probabilistic events to handle the microgrid energy uncertainties. Specifically, several local learning agents are employed to interact with pertinent microgrid environments in a distributed manner and report outcomes to the global agent, which will optimize microgrid energy resources online during extreme events. The stochastic microgrid energy optimization problem is reformulated to include all possible scenarios with probabilities. The advantage estimate functions of learning agents are designed with a backward sweep to transfer the outcomes to the value function updating process. Two simulation studies, stochastic optimization and online testing, are performed to compare with several existing RL approaches. Results substantiate that the proposed PRL method can achieve up to 20% optimization performance improvement with 4 and 28 times less computation cost than Q-learning with experience replay and multi-agent Q-learning approaches, respectively.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Thermal Management for Planar Package Power Electronics (CRADA Final Report)

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and John Deere Electronic Solutions (JDES) collaborated to develop and evaluate computer models and simulations related to the thermal performance of semiconductor device packaging for an inverter of an off-road vehicle ("Semiconductor Packaging"). The objective of the research was for NREL and JDES to develop a two or three-dimensional computer-aided design model of the Semiconductor Packaging ("Computer Model") for thermal performance evaluation in a simulation. The project developed computer models of a Semiconductor Package of silicon-carbide semiconductor devices with appropriate thermal dissipation via one or more of the following thermal features: a double-sided planar cooling configuration, an air-cooled configuration, a liquid-cooled configuration for off-road inverter applications in a relevant simulated operating environment. It is noted that surface area and prototype product embodiment consisting of air-cooled and liquid-cooled configurations may and may not be in direct contact with power semiconductor chips. The idea was to explore and develop packaging and thermal management technology for power semiconductors that was most effective in the performance yet had least burden in overall product cost for a given application.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Foreign Entity of Concern Requirements in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), enacted July 4, 2025, makes billions of dollars in federal energy tax credits conditional on supply chain independence from China and other foreign entities of concern. The OBBB simultaneously creates powerful economic incentives to reshore energy supply chains to the United States and allied nations. Through such incentives, the OBBB elevates digital assurance and supply chain verification from voluntary best practices into critical capabilities for demonstrating tax credit eligibility. The OBBB uses tax credit eligibility requirements to simultaneously address national security concerns regarding foreign supply chain dependencies and incentivize domestic energy manufacturing. This brief details how organizations should operationalize these requirements through baseline compliance audits, interim documentation systems, supply chain diversification strategies, and long-term institutional integration of digital assurance capabilities that turn compliance burdens into competitive advantages

29 - ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

High event rate analysis technique for the dual-axis duo-lateral position-sensitive silicon detectors of FAUST

The dual-axis duo-lateral (DADL) position-sensitive silicon detector was developed to obtain precise position and energy information for detected charged particles. The Forward Array Using Silicon Technology (FAUST) is currently equipped with 68 DADL detectors backed by CsI(Tl) scintillators for the study of charged particle correlations in heavy-ion collisions where precise position and energy information is essential. When conventional signal processing electronics were used for the DADL detectors, a position dependence of the measured energy as well as distortions in the calculated particle positions were observed. In previous work, waveforms from the detector after preamplification were studied to better understand the features that give rise to these distortions; therein, a waveform analysis technique was developed to improve the energy resolution and linearity in position reconstruction. However, the reading and writing of waveforms for an entire detector array limits data collection rates and adds significant burden in data storage and analysis speed. In this work, the integrators of a Struck SIS3316 ADC were utilized to process 228 Th source data to develop and optimize a new analysis method that captures the benefits of the waveform analysis technique while circumventing the waveform writing requirement. This integrator method – capable of 59 keV (FWHM) energy resolution – was used in the collection of 35 MeV/nucleon 28 Si + 12 C collision data using FAUST to investigate exotic decays of highly excited highly deformed nuclei. In this data, a position resolution of 0.4 mm (FWHM) was obtained for 25 MeV α-particles; for α-particles near this energy that originate from 8 Be ground state decays, a 8 Be ground state width of 30 keV (FWHM) was obtained. The impact of the energy-dependent DADL position resolution emergent from electronic noise on the quality of excited state measurement was modeled and compared to the experimental data.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

On the role of Battery Energy Storage Systems in the day-ahead Contingency-Constrained Unit Commitment problem under renewable penetration

The integration of variable Renewable Energy Sources (vRES) to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions has introduced significant challenges for power systems operations. These challenges include high levels of uncertainty due to the intermittence associated with vRES and therefore impose the need to devise a reliable and cost-effective day-ahead unit commitment and power and reserves scheduling for real-time operations. Also, this increasing penetration of vRES requires higher ramping capabilities from units originally designed for other purposes (e.g., base-load generation), which might be exacerbated during contingency states. Hence, in this work, we propose a methodology to address the day-ahead Contingency-Constrained Unit Commitment (CCUC) problem that leverages the participation of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) to address load-following and post-contingency management, therefore alleviating the ramping burden on conventional thermal generators. To do so, we formulate a three-level optimization problem that represents the decision-making process of obtaining the least-cost commitment, generation and reserves scheduling, while restricting the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) of the system imbalance at real-time operations to user-defined tolerance levels. In addition, we devise a computationally efficient solution approach for the proposed problem based on the Column-and Constraint Generation (CCG) algorithmic framework. Two numerical experiments are conducted to empirically illustrate the benefits of the proposed methodology. Key results indicate a reduction in real-time ramping needs and a better usage of the system resources, with a reduction in the overall system commitment levels and reserve scheduling costs when compared to a benchmark case in which storage is not available.

Moreira, Alexandre↗
DOE OSTI2021

Assessing the Relative Climate Impact of Carbon Utilization for Concrete, Chemical, and Mineral Production

Estimates show that 6.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) can be captured and utilized across three pathways, concrete, chemical, and minerals, by 2050. However, it is difficult to compare the climate benefit across these three carbon capture and utilization (CCU) pathways to determine the most effective use of captured CO2. The life cycle assessment methods to evaluate the climate benefit of CCU chemicals should additionally account for the change in material properties of concrete due to CO2 utilization. Furthermore, with most CO2 utilization technologies being in the early stages of research and development, the uncertainty and variability in process and inventory data present a significant challenge in evaluating the climate benefit. We present a stochastically determined climate return on investment (ROI) metric to rank and prioritize CO2 utilization across 20 concrete, chemical and mineral pathways based on the realized climate benefit. We show that two concrete pathways, which use CO2 during concrete mixing, and two chemical pathways, which produce formic acid through hydrogenation of CO2 and carbon monoxide through dry reforming of methane, generate the greatest climate ROI and are the only CCU pathways with a higher likelihood of generating a climate benefit than a climate burden.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗