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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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Finding solutions to the plastic waste problem will require public-private partnerships, innovation in deconstruction and upcycling technologies, and the invention of new recyclable-by-design materials.
Electric vehicles are seen as one of the technological solutions to transition our transportation systems away from carbon, and cities offer unique opportunities to electrify transportation. To be equitable, however, this transition will not merely require technological innovations. Acknowledging socio-spatial inequalities and creating strategies to address them are critical - yet relatively underexplored - dimensions of the transportation transition. This paper integrates relevant literature into a micro-urban social typology (MUST) approach that uses agglomerative clustering techniques to examine, first, the factors and attributes defining transportation inequities within 36 U.S. cities, and, second, the implications of these inequities for policies that foster a more equitable transportation transition. By combining socio-spatial and transportation data, we identified five MUSTs: Wealthy, Urban Disadvantaged, Urban Renters, Middle-Class Homeowners, and Rural/Exurban. Rather than being tied to any particular indicator (e.g., homeownership), these MUSTs contain intersecting factors and features of inequities. We compare transportation and health outcomes across MUSTs, and the results suggest that user-centric strategies and public investments are necessary to foster true transportation equity. These must go beyond the electrification of private vehicles and should be tailored to the specific characteristics of each MUST. These could include electric carpooling for the rural/exurban MUST and electrification of transit for the urban disadvantaged and renter MUSTs. Our typology offers a critical next step toward informing transportation transition policies to target critical sociodemographic, economic, and techno-infrastructural factors.
DOE scientists, today, have access to high performance computing (HPC) facilities with very powerful systems that enable them to execute their computations faster, more efficiently, and at greater scales than ever before. To further their knowledge and produce new discoveries, scientists rely on workflows - sometimes very complex - that provide them with an easy way to automate, reproduce and verify their computations. However, historically, creating workflow submission environments in large HPC facilities has been cumbersome, requires expertise and many man-hours of effort due to the peculiarities, policies, and the restrictions that these systems present. In this paper we discuss the approach a large DOE facility (OLCF) is taking in order to provide containers as a service to its users. This capability is used to create Pegasus workflow management system submit nodes as a service (WSaaS) at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facilities (OLCF), targeting the Summit supercomputer. This deployment builds upon the Kubernetes/Openshift cluster (Slate) that exists within OLCF’s DMZ and its automation triggers. Additionally, we evaluate our approach’s overhead and effort to deploy the solution as compared to previous solutions, such as setting up a Pegasus submission environment on OLCF’s login nodes or submitting jobs remotely via the rvGAHP.
This report provides an assessment of Mexico's clean energy resource potential and pathways for rapidly deploying renewable energy technologies to enable Mexico to reach its goal of 35% renewable energy by 2024 within the current legal and regulatory framework. An appendix to the report includes the results of the 2024 Renewable Energy Integration Study, and technology chapters on wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, transport electrification, and green hydrogen, detailing current state, resource potential, and deployment opportunities and recommendations. Additional sections include transmission, a section on the challenges and solutions for the integration of variable generation resources, and a summary of benefits.
State and local permitting challenges could impede the ability of large-scale solar (LSS) to meet growing electricity demand in the United States. Here, we review research that explores LSS permitting and its impacts on the pace and scale of LSS project development. Research on LSS permitting is relatively scarce, such that we support our review with research in the context of wind permitting, where appropriate. Further, few studies attempt to rigorously quantify the effects of permitting on the pace and scale of LSS project development. The available evidence allows us to identify various hypotheses and identify gaps for further research. Our review suggests that differences in permitting policies, regulations, and ordinances explain relatively little variation in LSS permitting and development outcomes across jurisdictions, except where jurisdictions implement rules designed to impede LSS. The evidence suggests LSS permitting challenges largely accrue during the implementation of permitting processes. Recent research suggests that community opposition to project development is a key driver of LSS permitting challenges, given that project opponents often use permitting processes to translate opposition into legal action. We call on future researchers to more concretely describe the LSS permitting challenge and to identify the specific actors responsible for implementing solutions.
Smart cities depend on flexible and secure energy systems to ensure resilient power for critical infrastructure; however, recent weather-related events and cyberattacks have highlighted weaknesses in our energy systems, with the potential for widespread economic and security impacts. As stated by the Executive Office of the President, "the resilience of the US electric grid is a key part of the nation's defense against severe weather." To address the energy delivery security challenge, microgrids are rising as a viable solution that enhances the flexibility and resilience of the distribution grid and boosts the reliability of the local supply for the end-user. Traditionally, high capital investment has been a barrier to large-scale adoption of microgrid technology. Understanding the flexibility and resilience benefits of microgrids and accounting for the associated value streams can make the microgrid's proposition economically viable. In this chapter, microgrids' utility and their potential to serve as a flexible and resilient resource for the utility grid by providing capabilities such as peak shaving, demand response, and frequency regulation is presented. Moreover, other value streams, such as (1) their ability to island during a disaster and sustain critical loads which makes them a robust resilience solution for end-users, in the event of the utility grid outage and (2) microgrids also provide a flexible platform for integrating distributed energy resources in conjunction with storage and conventional generation technologies, strengthen microgrid's role in reducing the over-arching goal of emission reduction. Given the myriad of benefits associated with microgrids, we present strategies which can be employed for making microgrid itself resilient against physical and cyberthreats by employing hardware, software, and personnel training solutions to operate the microgrid before, during, and after a potential disaster. This chapter, thus, provides a holistic study of the microgrid as a resilience resource, for the utility grid, and a self-contained end-user for the end-user.
The purpose of the Sandia CIO Cloud Strategy is to establish the strategic direction for the adoption of cloud services and technologies as the prevailing IT solution for Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) will champion unified, site-wide adoption of cloud and will amplify business and mission impacts across the Labs. Sandia’s CIO Cloud Strategy aligns to the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy1 (Cloud Smart) and the Sandia Management and Operating Contract (Prime Contract).
This technical assistance through the Communities LEAP program aims to provide the Solutions' Collaborative with information and geospatial analysis of tree canopy coverage in Beacon Hill, Seattle as a high priority environmental justice community with the goal of exploring the benefits of trees to improve air quality and mitigate extreme heat. It further provides information on tree-planting programs in Seattle and King County.
This presentation covers the growing interest in utilizing nuclear power to satisfy the increasing energy demands of data centers in the United States, emphasizing the factors that accelerate reactor deployment. It addresses clean and reliable energy needs, highlights the importance of power supply redundancy for reliability, and discusses challenges and solutions related to cooling, waste heat reuse, and techno-economics. Additionally, it includes a strength, weakness, opportunities and threat analysis and emphasizes community engagement and collaboration for accelerating regulatory approvals and reactor deployment.
The U.S. Department of Energy, Hanford Field Office (HFO) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing HFO activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under HFO stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making. Fall Chinook salmon redds have been monitored at the Hanford Site annually since 1948, including aerial counts, to provide an index of relative abundance among spawning areas and years
DISCO is a Python-based NREL software tool for conducting scalable, repeatable distribution analyses. Although DISCO was originally developed to support photovoltaic impact analyses, it can also be used to understand the impact of other distributed energy resources and load changes on distribution systems. This presentation took place on April 9, 2024, and included NREL power grid researchers Sherin Ann Abraham and Shibani Ghosh.
Access to running water has been a pressing issue in many developing countries across the globe, and also continues to be a problem in some rural areas in the United States. Today, more than two million Americans living in rural areas lack access to basic water supply and infrastructure. Rural communities tend to be located in environmentally fragile areas with poor economic conditions, making access to appropriate, low-cost technology for clean water supply and sanitation more challenging. In addition, many of the water resources located in these areas are being jeopardized by climate change in recent years. This research proposes a photovoltaic (PV)-battery microgrid system for powering water pumps in off-grid areas in an effort to identify economically and technologically feasible solution to the problems. Utilizing the HOMER Pro software, developed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the case of the Navajo Nation is examined by analyzing the effects of this region's air temperature on the life and performance of battery storage and the economics of the proposed microgrid system.
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing many challenges for manufacturers, especially those that depend on workers whose jobs cannot be performed remotely. This has detrimentally impacted the energy management workforce, energy support system performance, as well as operations and supply chains.This article discusses four primary challenges for industrial energy management caused by the pandemic, strained budget for energy projects, increased energy intensity caused by low production rates and other safety practices, limited access to energy systems, and the lost knowledge and experience of senior staff. This article also proposes some potential solutions for these challenges that include implementing no- and low-cost energy conservation measures, adopting alternative financing options, improving shutdown procedures, reducing baseloads, creating an effective online energy-monitoring system, performing virtual energy assessments, building a robust EnMS, and attending online and in-person training events.
Utilities have conducted IRP for decades to consider both supply- and demand-side resources to meet bulk power system needs. More recently, an increasing number of states are requiring regulated utilities to file plans that identify distribution system needs, including DERs that can avoid or defer certain types of traditional utility investments cost-effectively. Price-based demand response (DR) is an underutilized resource that could substantially contribute to load flexibility. We find that evaluation of price-based DR as a solution to meet identified electricity system needs is uncommon at both planning processes. Where price-based DR is considered as a solution, methodologies are often deficient in the characterization and treatment of this resource. Based on our analysis of utility filings and state requirements, this brief provides recommendations for improving consideration of price-based DR in the context of long-term planning for bulk power and distribution systems.
This paper reviews energy storage technologies as a possible solution to address power outages and mitigate the impacts, enhancing vulnerable communities’ resilience to climate change. More frequent and severe extreme weather events are one of the main consequences of climate change. These events, coupled with the nation’s aging and frail energy infrastructure, are causing many communities throughout the United States to experience more frequent and longer power outages, resulting in economic, health, and social impacts. Impacts from power outages are not equally felt across communities, with disproportionate impacts across communities representing a matter of energy justice. From an energy justice standpoint, programs and policies that facilitate energy storage technologies should be intentionally designed to include distributive, procedural, recognition, and restorative justice.
Although Tribal land represents more than 5% of the solar photovoltaic technical potential in the United States, this resource is largely untapped due to a range of barriers, including complex project economics, Tribal technical and human resource capacity, project funding and financing obstacles, and regulatory challenges. To identify and better understand the regulatory barriers, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association (MTERA) engaged Tribes, utilities, and regulators. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the 3-year effort seeks to address regulatory challenges or barriers that affect Tribal solar projects differently - specifically or disproportionately because they are located on Tribal lands. This paper, largely excerpted from a comprehensive (draft) guidebook released by NREL and MTERA, provides an overview of 13 key regulatory barriers identified through this research, as well as potential short- and long-term solutions. In addition, the paper points to potential pathways for addressing key barriers through case studies highlighting successful Tribal solar projects along with considerations for stakeholders working with Tribes. These resources can support stakeholders in creating meaningful relationships and pursuing workable solar projects.
High impact low probability (HILP) events such as hurricanes, heat waves, and floods have instigated widespread power outages and blackouts around the globe in the past decade. With the increasing challenges concerning the threats to the power distribution systems and the growing need to mitigate the impacts of the HILP events, resilience has become a crucial requirement for the power grid infrastructures. Numerous efforts have been made to define, measure, and characterize the resilience of power distribution systems. This study thoroughly reviews the state-of-the-art methods on the existing resilience evaluation framework and metrics. Here, the desirable characteristics of resilience metrics are highlighted, and the challenges associated with formulating, developing, and calculating such metrics are discussed. Next, we detail the state-of-the-art literature on planning solutions to ensure distribution system resilience. This paper aims to extract a deep insight into this challenging and critical research area and envision future opportunities that can guide the power distribution system operators/planners to formulate more effective mitigation strategies to enhance the resilience of power distribution systems.
It has been known that the yield of lignin monomers during lignin depolymerization is limited by the irreversible condensations of lignin in the fractionation and/or depolymerization process. In this study, we report a new oxidative catalytic fractionation (OCF) process with a simple and effective one-pot but two-step approach to depolymerize lignin to lignin-derived chemicals (LDCs) using polyoxometalate (POM) as the only catalyst. First, the POM effectively catalyzed the methoxylation of the active a-OH groups of lignin in a methanol and water mixture at low temperature (100 °C), and 96% of the stabilized lignin in the lignocellulose sawdust was extracted to the solution simultaneously. Then the lignin solution was heated to an elevated temperature (140 °C) in the same solvent. As a result, 74.0 wt % of the lignin (based on the weight of the Klason lignin in the wood) was converted to LDCs, including 45.9 wt % aromatic monomers.