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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Community Planning for Solar: Conducting a Community Solar Survey

This guide is designed to assist community officials, volunteers, and regional planning agency staff in conducting a survey of residents to learn about attitudes and development preferences towards solar energy within the community. The guide will provide the key steps, timelines, distribution options, ethics, and considerations that should be made in developing a survey distribution strategy. The guide also contains an overview of various question types and response categories, with considerations for the type of data that are needed for the study. The guide concludes with recommendations for managing data and databases, data visualization, and reporting results. The appendix includes samples of materials used in a solar energy survey, from invitation letters to the survey. This document is intended to provide a practical guide for implementing a survey in communities that are proactively planning for solar development. The guide offers a practical “how-to” plan for conducting a survey. It may be advantageous to consult with an expert in survey development who will be familiar with any methods and techniques described in this guide, but this is not necessary. This guide offers basic considerations and examples of questions and analyses to help a community understand preferences of the community.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Exploring Multiscale Earth System and Human-Earth System Dynamics in the Puget Sound Region

With its mountain-to-coast hydroclimate, strong influence of Pacific Ocean weather systems and climate patterns, and unique land use history with strong rural-to-urban gradients, the Puget Sound region is a natural laboratory for studying a number of complex processes in, and interactions among, different Earth and human systems. A 1-year scoping study was initiated by the Earth and Environmental Systems Modeling program of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research. It was intended to elucidate and highlight the rich opportunities Puget Sound offers to advance our understanding of and ability to simulate Earth system changes and human-Earth system interactions. A literature review, multi-day community workshop, and external input were used to develop this scoping study report. The report first summarizes scientific understanding and knowledge gaps associated with major regional systems, including atmosphere and climate, the land surface, coastal and marine processes, and human systems, as well as how these systems are changing over time. It then highlights some of the most notable extreme events in the region, including heat waves, atmospheric rivers, droughts, and wildfires. Finally, key research opportunities for Earth and environmental systems modeling in, above, and around Puget Sound are highlighted.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Imputation of urban environmental sensor data using gated attention bidirectional long short-term memory (GA-BiLSTM): methods, performance, and implications

Urban environmental monitoring networks frequently encounter significant data gaps due to sensor malfunctions, environmental disturbances, and communication failures. Reliable approaches to address these gaps are essential for ensuring the continuity and quality of environmental data streams. In this study, we developed a gated attention bidirectional long short-term memory (GA-BiLSTM) model to impute missing data in a dense urban monitoring network. Using observations from the CROCUS network in Chicago, we evaluated GA-BiLSTM against widely used approaches (XGBoost and K-nearest neighbors) under scenarios of both short-term intermittent gaps and prolonged outages. GA-BiLSTM consistently outperformed comparative methods, particularly during extended outages of up to ten days, demonstrating its ability to capture spatiotemporal dependencies across sensor nodes. Beyond performance metrics, feature importance and spatial network analyses highlighted the unexpected but critical predictive role of peripheral rural nodes, underlining their strategic value for maintaining robust urban monitoring systems. These results emphasize that advanced imputation methods can substantially improve the reliability of environmental monitoring networks and support more resilient data infrastructures for urban sustainability.

Data imputation↗
DOE OSTI2022

Provider Perspectives: Identification and Follow-up of Infants who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Objective Without timely screening, diagnosis, and intervention, hearing loss can cause significant delays in a child's speech, language, social, and emotional development. In 2019, Texas had nearly twice the average rate of loss to follow-up (LFU) or loss to documentation (LTD; i.e., missing documentation of services received) among infants who did not pass their newborn hearing screening compared to the United States overall (51.1 vs. 27.5%). We aimed to identify factors contributing to LFU/LTD among infants who do not pass their newborn hearing screening in Texas. Study Design Data were collected through semistructured qualitative interviews with 56 providers along the hearing care continuum, including hospital newborn hearing screening program staff, audiologists, primary care physicians, and early intervention (EI) program staff located in three rural and urban public health regions in Texas. Following recording and transcription of the interviews, we used qualitative data analysis software to analyze themes using a conventional content analysis approach. Results Frequently cited barriers included problems with family access to care, difficulty contacting patients, problems with communication between providers and referrals, lack of knowledge among providers and parents, and problems using the online reporting system. Providers in rural areas more often mentioned problems with family access to care and contacting families compared to providers in urban areas. Conclusion These findings provide insight into strategies that public health professionals and health care providers can use to work together to help further increase the number of children identified early who may benefit from EI services. Key Points

Obstetrics & Gynecology↗
DOE OSTI2025

Learning from Arctic Microgrids: Cost and Resiliency Projections for Renewable Energy Expansion with Hydrogen and Battery Storage

Electricity in rural Alaska is provided by more than 200 standalone microgrid systems powered predominantly by diesel generators. Incorporating renewable energy generation and storage to these systems can reduce their reliance on costly imported fuel and improve sustainability; however, uncertainty remains about optimal grid architectures to minimize cost, including how and when to incorporate long-duration energy storage. This study implements a novel, multi-pronged approach to assess the techno-economic feasibility of future energy pathways in the community of Kotzebue, which has already successfully deployed solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, and battery storage systems. Using real community load, resource, and generation data, we develop a series of comparison models using the HOMER Pro software tool to evaluate microgrid architectures to meet over 90% of the annual community electricity demand with renewable generation, considering both battery and hydrogen energy storage. We find that near-term planned capacity expansions in the community could enable over 50% renewable generation and reduce the total cost of energy. Additional build-outs to reach 75% renewable generation are shown to be competitive with current costs, but further capacity expansion is not currently economical. We additionally include a cost sensitivity analysis and a storage capacity sizing assessment that suggest hydrogen storage may be economically viable if battery costs increase, but large-scale seasonal storage via hydrogen is currently unlikely to be cost-effective nor practical for the region considered. While these findings are based on data and community priorities in Kotzebue, we expect this approach to be relevant to many communities in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions working to improve energy reliability, sustainability, and security.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Electric Grid, Distributed Generation, and Grid Interconnection

This fact sheet is part of the Community Planning for Solar toolkit designed to help Massachusetts municipalities and others proactively plan for solar development in their communities. This fact sheet will walk you through the electricity system, and help you understand how the grid is changing as distributed generation (DG) electricity sources become more common.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Renewable Energy Integration in Remote Alaska Communities

This guide was developed through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP) technical assistance (TA) projects for Nikolski and St. George. Both communities had wind turbine projects that failed due to integration and maintenance issues. Due to these failures, Nikolski and St. George sought help to investigate renewable energy alternatives and associated integration strategies, with a focus on technologies that could be easily maintained within the community. The primary objective of this guide was to interview subject matter experts and document lessons learned to address potential renewable energy and storage integration issues in remote Alaskan communities. This guide is intended to provide information to rural Alaskan communities considering renewables with the purpose of sharing best practices and case studies to facilitate the successful implementation of future renewable energy projects.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Development and Preliminary Analysis of a U.S. Geothermal Heat Pump Installation Database

This paper seeks to addresses the significant gap in the literature regarding the installation and adoption of geothermal heat pump (GHP) systems in the United States. While the "2021 U.S. Geothermal Power Production and District Heating Market Report" published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) focused on direct-use geothermal district heating systems, it did not include an analysis of GHP installations (Robins et al. 2021). To bridge this gap, NREL has compiled a novel database currently containing 70,470 records of GHP installations, primarily sourced from state well permits and small-scale studies. Our methodology emphasizes the collection, cleaning, and standardization of data, addressing challenges such as inconsistent reporting formats and privacy concerns. Despite limitations in data on capacity, costs, and performance, our preliminary geospatial analysis reveals insights into the distribution of GHP systems across urban and rural areas and climate zones. The paper highlights the importance of publicly accessible data for advancing GHP technology adoption with a discussion of existing data sources and their limitations, advocating for improved collaboration between NREL and industry stakeholders.

data collection↗
DOE OSTI2024

Global scale assessment of urban precipitation anomalies

Urbanization has accelerated dramatically across the world over the past decades. Urban influence on surface temperatures is now being considered as a correction term in climatological datasets. Although prior research has investigated urban influences on precipitation for specific cities or selected thunderstorm cases, a comprehensive examination of urban precipitation anomalies on a global scale remains limited. This research is a global analysis of urban precipitation anomalies for over one thousand cities worldwide. We find that more than 60% of the global cities and their downwind regions are receiving more precipitation than the surrounding rural areas. Moreover, the magnitude of these urban wet islands has nearly doubled in the past 20 y. Urban precipitation anomalies exhibit variations across different continents and climates, with cities in Africa, for example, exhibiting the largest urban annual and extreme precipitation anomalies. Cities are more prone to substantial urban precipitation anomalies under warm and humid climates compared to cold and dry climates. Cities with larger populations, pronounced urban heat island effects, and higher aerosol loads also show noticeable precipitation enhancements. This research maps global urban rainfall hotspots, establishing a foundation for the consideration of urban rainfall corrections in climatology datasets. This advancement holds promise for projecting extreme precipitation and fostering the development of more resilient cities in the future.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗
DOE OSTI2026

Mauka Energy FEVER Tool Dataset

Mauka Energy’s dataset, developed under the Forestry Electric Vehicle Energy Routing (FEVER) project and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Small Business Innovation Research program, is a high-resolution geospatial resource designed to support energy modeling for electric log trucks in complex forestry environments. The dataset integrates detailed spatial and road network data to enable accurate simulation of vehicle performance across varied terrain. At its core, the dataset incorporates lidar-derived elevation models, road alignments, and surface classifications from Oregon State University’s McDonald-Dunn Research Forest. These data capture fine-scale variations in slope, curvature, and surface conditions across forest road systems, allowing for vehicle-level analysis of energy consumption and recovery. The dataset also includes data collected on the surrounding public and private road networks in Benton County, Oregon, used in real-world haul routes. These connecting segments provide critical context for modeling transitions between forest operations and regional transportation infrastructure, incorporating attributes such as grade profiles, elevation change, and speed constraints. This combined dataset underpins the development of Mauka Energy’s rolldown tool, which quantifies energy use and regenerative braking potential on downhill and variable-grade segments. By leveraging high-resolution terrain and road data, the FEVER project enables more accurate assessment of electric vehicle feasibility and performance in forestry applications.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Clean Energy to Communities: Gap Region Outreach Project

The Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) program provides expertise and tools to local and regional governments, Tribes, community-based organizations, municipal utilities, and rural electric cooperatives to help them achieve their clean energy goals. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched C2C in 2022, following engagement with more than 150 stakeholders representing 95 communities in 40 states and 6 Tribes. The program offers three levels of support: expert match, peer-learning cohorts, and in-depth partnerships. In its first year, C2C worked with over 150 communities. To ensure broad participation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) examined regional representation. This analysis revealed that four regions are under-represented in program participation: Gulf South, Appalachia, Midwest, and Northern Plains. To help address these gaps, NREL led an effort to identify barriers faced by potential C2C participants from these regions and develop strategies to facilitate participation. This document summarizes findings from this effort and provides recommendations for program changes.

C2C↗
DOE OSTI2021

TROPOMI NO 2 in the United States: A Detailed Look at the Annual Averages, Weekly Cycles, Effects of Temperature, and Correlation With Surface NO 2 Concentrations

Abstract Observing the spatial heterogeneities of NO 2 air pollution is an important first step in quantifying NO X emissions and exposures. This study investigates the capabilities of the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) in observing the spatial and temporal patterns of NO 2 pollution in the continental United States. The unprecedented sensitivity of the sensor can differentiate the fine‐scale spatial heterogeneities in urban areas, such as emissions related to airport/shipping operations and high traffic, and the relatively small emission sources in rural areas, such as power plants and mining operations. We then examine NO 2 columns by day‐of‐the‐week and find that Saturday and Sunday concentrations are 16% and 24% lower respectively, than during weekdays. We also analyze the correlation of daily maximum 2‐m temperatures and NO 2 column amounts and find that NO 2 is larger on the hottest days (>32°C) as compared to warm days (26°C–32°C), which is in contrast to a general decrease in NO 2 with increasing temperature at moderate temperatures. Finally, we demonstrate that a linear regression fit of 2019 annual TROPOMI NO 2 data to annual surface‐level concentrations yields relatively strong correlation ( R 2 = 0.66). These new developments make TROPOMI NO 2 satellite data advantageous for policymakers and public health officials, who request information at high spatial resolution and short timescales, in order to assess, devise, and evaluate regulations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Community-Scale Solar Deployment in the Northwest Arctic

NANA Regional Corporation (NRC, or NANA) was formed as an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. Our lands cover 39,000 square miles of the Northwest Arctic region of Alaska. We partner closely with the Northwest Arctic Borough (NAB) and our 11 remote communities on numerous projects and activities, especially around clean energy initiatives that improve quality of life and help to reduce extremely high energy costs experienced by the communities in our region. Collectively, the regional partnership has developed numerous successful solar, wind, biomass, and energy storage, distribution upgrade, and efficiency projects. To further progress, we created the Northwest Arctic Energy Steering Committee to share and replicate these benefits across the region. NANA’s mission is to provide economic opportunities for our more than 13,500 Iñupiat shareholders and to protect and enhance NANA lands.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

DOE Zero Energy Ready Manufactured Housing: Subject Matter Expert Technical Assistance Summary

Manufactured homes offer American consumers an affordable option for decent single-family detached housing. For working-class American families in many U.S. markets, manufactured homes are the first step toward home ownership. They now make up 10% of all new homes constructed in the United States, with higher percentages in the south and in rural communities. To help encourage the production of homes that are more durable, healthy, efficient, and disaster resistant, the U.S. Department of Energy is bringing its building science research to the manufactured housing industry through DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Manufactured Home (ZER-MH) program, which provides technical assistance and voluntary guidelines to manufactured home builders. Homes built to these guidelines are better able to handle power outages and less likely to experience moisture issues, offering a better product option for American families. This higher quality is evidenced by energy modeling which shows homes manufactured to these voluntary guidelines will typically use half the energy of manufactured homes built to the current minimum requirements of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Manufactured Housing and Construction Safety Standard (MHCSS). These homes can also reduce critical energy demand during the busiest hours of the day, typically late afternoon and early evening in the summer when air conditioning demand is highest and mornings in the winter when furnaces and heaters are heating up. Reducing electricity demand during these peak periods when electricity rates are at their highest reduces costs for American families while freeing up capacity on overburdened energy distribution networks. Builders participating in the DOE ZER-MH program are eligible for a tax incentive via the 45L tax credit, which helps to offset the costs of ZER-MH upgrades, enabling builders to offer these certified homes at no additional cost. Together these factors enable manufactured homes to offer home buyers a housing option that is both affordable to finance and affordable to operate, with lower monthly mortgage payments and lower monthly energy bills.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Inappropriate antibiotic access practices at the community level in Eastern Ethiopia

Access to antibiotic medications is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal for good health and well-being. However, non-prescribed and informal sources are implicated as the most common causes of inappropriate antibiotic access practices, resulting in untargeted therapy, which leads to antibiotic resistance. Hence, knowing antibiotic access practices at the community level is essential to target misuse sources. In this study, 2256 household representatives were surveyed between July and September 2023 to examine their antibiotic access practices. Of 1245 household members who received antibiotics, 45.6% did so inappropriately. Non-prescribed antibiotic access was more common among urban residents and individuals not enrolled in health insurance schemes. This means of antibiotic access was also more common among individuals concerned about distance, drug availability, and healthcare convenience at public facilities. In addition, women and rural individuals were more likely to get antibiotics from unauthorized sources. Unrestricted antibiotic dispensing practices in urban areas enabled their non-prescribed access, while unlicensed providers prevailed with this access practice in rural areas. In this regard, personal behaviors and healthcare-related gaps such as the lack of health insurance, inconvenience, and drug unavailability have led community members to seek antibiotics from unofficial and non-prescribed sources. Targeting the identified behavioral and institutional factors can enhance antibiotic access through prescriptions, hence reducing antibiotic resistance.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Updated distribution maps of predominant Culex mosquitoes across the Americas

Abstract Background Estimates of the geographical distribution of Culex mosquitoes in the Americas have been limited to state and provincial levels in the United States and Canada and based on data from the 1980s. Since these estimates were made, there have been many more documented observations of mosquitoes and new methods have been developed for species distribution modeling. Moreover, mosquito distributions are affected by environmental conditions, which have changed since the 1980s. This calls for updated estimates of these distributions to understand the risk of emerging and re-emerging mosquito-borne diseases. Methods We used contemporary mosquito data, environmental drivers, and a machine learning ecological niche model to create updated estimates of the geographical range of seven predominant Culex species across North America and South America: Culex erraticus , Culex nigripalpus , Culex pipiens , Culex quinquefasciatus , Culex restuans , Culex salinarius , and Culex tarsalis . Results We found that Culex mosquito species differ in their geographical range. Each Culex species is sensitive to both natural and human-influenced environmental factors, especially climate and land cover type. Some prefer urban environments instead of rural ones, and some are limited to tropical or humid areas. Many are found throughout the Central Plains of the USA. Conclusions Our updated contemporary Culex distribution maps may be used to assess mosquito-borne disease risk. It is critical to understand the current geographical distributions of these important disease vectors and the key environmental predictors structuring their distributions not only to assess current risk, but also to understand how they will respond to climate change. Since the environmental predictors structuring the geographical distribution of mosquito species varied, we hypothesize that each species may have a different response to climate change. Graphical abstract

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Hot‐Swappable, Fault‐Tolerant, Modular Power Converter System for Solar Photovoltaic Plants

The performance metrics of the state-of-the-art commercial solar inverters, such as system cost, operation and maintenance (O&M) cost, service life, reliability, maintainability, and power density are much lower than the target metrics needed to achieve SunShot’s 2030 levelized cost of energy (LCOE) goals. To overcome the shortcomings of the existing solar inverters, this project proposed a novel Hot-Swappable, Fault-Tolerant, Modular Power Converter (HSFT-MPC) concept for solar photovoltaic (PV) plants and proved the concept through the design, fabrication, and laboratory test validation of a single-phase HSFT-MPC prototype. The HSFT-MPC has the following distinct advantages over the state-of-the-art: 1) elimination of harmonic/ electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter in the inverter stage due to the novel topology, 2) lower system cost and higher power density due to the modular design, elimination of harmonic/EMI filter, and lower cooling requirement, 3) higher efficiency due to lower switching frequencies, 4) higher reliability and longer (50 years) service life due to simpler cooling and fault tolerance capability, 5) easier installation, lower O&M cost, and improved maintainability due to the modular design and hot-swappable power electronic building blocks (PEBBs), and 6) improved manufacturability due to the modular design. This project developed a single-phase HSFT-MPC prototype with 25kW nominal output power, 2.4kV, 60Hz nominal AC output, lower than 5% AC output voltage total harmonic distortion, over 5 kW/L inverter power density, and 99.4% inverter peak efficiency, being tolerant to failure of single and multiple PEBBs, and capable of hot swapping of the failed PEBB(s). The HSFT-MPC enables uninterruptable operation of the solar PV plant when failure of single or multiple PEBBs or PV modules occurs. Compared with the existing solar inverters in the market, the HSFT-MPC is expected to reduce the inverter failure-caused downtime and energy losses of solar PV plants by more than 60% and 50%, respectively. Project findings have been presented at major conferences in the field and published in peer-reviewed papers, which added new knowledge to the field of power electronics for solar PV systems. A minicourse on Solar PV Systems was developed for outreach activities. The minicourse will help attract young individuals to the renewable energy profession which has a significant talent shortage. The HSFT-MPC is expected to overcome all of the shortcomings of the state-of-the-art solar inverters in terms of cost, efficiency, service life, reliability, maintainability, and manufacturability targets needed to achieve SunShot’s 2030 LCOE goals. Therefore, the proposed HSFT-MPC concept has the great potential to disrupt the current solar inverter market. This project created a pathway towards industry adoption of the HSFT-MPC to help achieve 50-year service life solar PV systems. Since the solar PV plants using the HSFT-MPC will feature with higher reliability, longer service life, and easier maintenance, they are particularly useful for the rural areas with underserved populations that demand reliable and affordable clean electricity. The outcomes of the project have the strong potential to address national needs in the field of renewable energy to reduce CO 2 emissions from the electricity sector, reduce imports of energy from foreign sources, and improve energy security, efficiency, and sustainability. Since electricity is used in almost all of society’s sectors, the outcomes of the project will benefit various sectors of society and economy.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Unseen Winds: Harnessing High-Altitude Winds in the Southeast USA

This project aims to identify potential sites in the United States for further testing and development of airborne wind energy systems (AWES). Through industry questionnaires and interviews with AWES companies, the study assesses existing test sites' capabilities and gaps, leading to a three-tiered test site strategy: short-duration prototype demonstrations, long-duration technical assessments and power validations, and airspace interaction and deconfliction studies. Notably, the southeastern United States presents significant potential for AWES due to its lack of traditional wind turbines, which is attributed to low wind speeds at lower altitudes. However, wind conditions improve significantly at higher altitudes, making this region a promising candidate for AWES deployment. The project considers factors such as wind resources, infrastructure proximity, social acceptance, and environmental impacts to recommend sites that can support the unique needs of AWES manufacturers and facilitate their commercialization. Early findings suggest rural communities with low grid resiliency could benefit economically and technologically from hosting AWES test sites, especially with operator training centers and potential for long-term skilled employment in future disaster relief and other applications.

17 WIND ENERGY↗