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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Grid Value and Cost of Utility-Scale Wind and Solar: Potential Implications for Consumer Electricity Bills [Slides]

Wind and solar cost declines and wholesale power price fluctuations have once again brought the “hedge value” of renewable energy to front of mind. Meanwhile, recent research has found that cost savings are the most persuasive driver of broad support for renewable energy. Yet whether consumers directly benefit from the price hedge that wind and solar can provide depends on various factors, most notably the contractual and market structures under which these generators operate. Drawing upon a vast amount of plant-level empirical data, we quantify the net market value (“net value”) of wind and solar over time and explore various factors that determine the extent to which consumers can capture and benefit from that value. The focus is on elements that may directly impact consumer electricity bills.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Flexible Financial Credit Agreements: Tariff On-Bill Financing (TOBF)

Flexible Financial Credit Agreements is a broad term used to describe a suite of solar products with innovative features not currently offered in traditional solar financing programs. This brief focuses on the Tariff On-Bill Financing (TOBF) model, in which utilities use a tariff to enable customers to pay back the cost of a solar panel without credit or income level conditions.

Flexible Financial Credit Agreements↗
DOE OSTI2022

Optimizing DER Deployment for Climate, Health, Resilience, and Energy Bill Benefits Using the REopt Model

Climate change, public health, and resilience to power outages are of critical concern to local governments, federal agencies, and the private sector, and are increasingly motivating investments in distributed energy resources (DERs). However, designing a solar-plus-storage system to co-optimize for climate, health, resilience, and energy bill benefits requires complex trade-offs. To address this need, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has integrated climate and health impacts of grid-purchased electricity and on-site fuel consumption into the publicly-available REopt web tool and API - a techno-economic model that determines the cost-optimal DER system sizes and dispatch strategy. This presentation will provide an overview of the tool's methodology, datasets, and capabilities, including costing emissions into system sizing and dispatch and setting emissions reductions targets. Results of previous work will demonstrate the use of new emissions accounting capabilities by quantifying the impact of including climate and health costs on the optimal resilient microgrid configurations for a hospital, school, and warehouse across 14 U.S. cities.

climate↗
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 OSTI2026

Rewarding Grid-Friendly Behavior: Estimating the Potential Bill Reduction and Load Shifting Benefits of Dynamic Prices

Shifting electric load from times of peak demand can be a key strategy to slow price growth as reducing peak demand avoids the cost of upgrading generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. Utilities are releasing time-varying prices, such as time of use rates or dynamic prices, to incentivize grid-friendly load shifting. New dynamic price programs provide insight into the true cost of operating electricity grids and the potential economic benefits of load shifting. Program developers and device manufacturers need to understand the economic opportunities in terms of 1) the variation in prices across hours, days, and seasons; 2) the change in utility bills for customers who don’t shift load; and 3) the potential load shifted and economic value of different technologies if manufacturers or aggregators deploy price-responsive controls. This paper estimates possible impacts of dynamic price adoption and load shifting controls if customers paid the dynamic rate from one pilot program. Statistical analysis of historical prices identified annual and seasonal metrics as well as representative price curves for each circuit in the pilot. Simulations for residential technologies with price-responsive controls including unitary heat pump water heaters, central multifamily heat pump water heaters, heating & cooling + storage systems, and pool pumps estimated the potential impacts of highly dynamic prices both with and without load shifting controls. Results showed the potential to reduce electricity costs on representative days by 42-94% and reduce consumption during times of high electricity prices by 63-100% compared to baseline operation for those flex-friendly devices.

Grant, Peter↗
DOE OSTI2023

LA100 Equity Strategies. Chapter 5: Low-Income Energy Bill Equity and Affordability

The LA100 Equity Strategies project synthesizes community guidance with robust research, modeling, and analysis to identify strategy options that can increase equitable outcomes in Los Angeles' clean energy transition. Grounded in the analysis of past and ongoing energy inequities and engagement with underserved communities, the project presents community-guided strategies that aim to operationalize recognition and procedural justice. Building on the community-identified problems and solutions, and the analysis of the 11 strategies described in Chapter 3, this chapter continues to focus on the solution space through the lens of recognition and procedural justice. It centers the role of community engagement in energy utility planning and project development with a specific focus on how the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) can engage and work equitably with Los Angeles communities to cocreate a clean and just energy future for LA. LA100 Equity Strategies is rooted in the crucial role community engagement plays in restructuring the energy systems of cities, states, and nations. Scholarship on wind, solar, and other transitional energy technologies and projects has documented that such engagement is commonly used as a top-down mechanism for adapting social practices to fit new technological innovations. Yet, understanding how the clean energy transition - with related changes in technologies, infrastructures, practices, and costs - will fit equitably into the existing socio-political context is a challenge that requires substantive collaboration with local communities. Any form of community engagement opens up government officials and utilities to opposition from their public. Meaningful engagement methods turn such dissent into a strength, embracing critical feedback - particularly from communities historically excluded from decision-making - as contributing to more grounded design and effective implementation. Leveraging this collaborative model to further rectify past and ongoing inequities in the social, cultural, and institutional scaffolding of LA, this chapter presents options and methods to support LADWP in launching a just and equitable clean energy transition. We approach community engagement as a critical process linking recognition, procedural, and distributional justice, outlining how LADWP could learn from past engagement, coordinate such knowledge organization-wide, and use engagement as a key tool for achieving energy justice and equity.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Multi-facility analysis using metered power data to quantify MRI energy use and utility bill costs across scanner operating modes

This study quantifies the energy consumption of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners across discrete operating modes during routine clinical workflows, based solely on electrical power measurements. Although previous studies have investigated MRI energy consumption within single hospitals or specific clinical settings, this research provides a broader and more systematic analysis. Researchers analyzed electrical power data and applied a previously developed semi-automatic method for identifying MRI operating modes using load duration curves for 20 MRI scanners across four different U.S. healthcare facilities, encompassing outpatient, inpatient, and mixed-use clinical settings. A key innovation is the inclusion of localized hourly utility rates to estimate costs, a parameter absent in prior literature. Key findings indicate significant variability in energy and cost profiles between weekdays and weekends. Scanner characteristics, including magnet strength, manufacturer, vintage, location, and clinical setting, influenced average daily energy consumption and power thresholds for operating modes. Notably, the clinical setting of a scanner predominantly determines its energy use. For example, the scanners in outpatient facilities consumed more energy. The breakdown of energy usage and costs by operating modes showed scanners spend between 61% and 93% of their time in nonproductive modes, with one outlier spending 34%. Average daily energy use for the scanners in the study ranged from 160 to 1069 kWh, with energy costs ranging from $\$$9 to $\$$149. This study uses an existing framework to quantify MRI energy behavior, leading to insights that can enable improved performance and cost savings across different healthcare environments.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Different Damp-Heat-Induced Series Resistance Degradation Behaviors in Fielded Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Modules Due to Difference in Bill of Materials

This case study investigates mono-crystalline silicon modules from underperforming portions of a utility-scale photovoltaic power plant. Field-collected I-V curves and electroluminescence imaging suggested that increased series resistance was a primary factor driving module degradation. Selected modules were removed from the field for further analysis, including incremental damp heat accelerated testing, which confirmed a progression in series resistance degradation. Two distinct cell degradation behaviors became apparent during the investigation. Cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy (with elemental analysis) and scanning spreading resistance microscopy identified key differences between the two degradation mechanisms, primarily grid finger width and contact resistance. Additionally, the study highlights the reliability implications of retest requirements in International Electrotechnical Commission 61215 for material changes and how they may have mitigated the degradation observed at this site.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Stabilizing the Grid and Reducing Utility Bills Through Price-Responsive Controls for Heat Pump Water Heaters

The electricity grid is facing increasing challenges in cost-effectively balancing supply and demand. These challenges are exacerbated by increased penetration of photovoltaics, which causes mid-day overproduction, and electrification of gas appliances, which increases peak-period electricity demand. Decarbonization requires shifting building loads from fossil-intensive high-cost times to renewable-intensive low-cost times while maintaining quality of service to occupants. Utilities and ISO’s are investigating new ways of incentivizing this load shifting. One promising method is the use of Highly Dynamic Prices (HDPs). HDPs feature continuously changing prices that reflect real-time grid generation and distribution costs and capacity constraints, and thus incentivize consumers to shift their loads. California’s CPUC CalFUSE proposal and Hawaii’s recent changes demonstrate that electricity tariffs are moving towards this model. For this to work however, loads must have the capability to respond to these prices. Heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) are an ideal device for this purpose because their storage tanks decouple delivery of domestic hot water from electricity consumption. The storage enables control strategies that consume midday solar power to increase the energy stored in the tank, then provide evening peak domestic hot water services using the stored energy. Berkeley Lab's CalFlexHub project is pioneering price-driven load flexibility by developing and deploying cost-minimizing controls for many flexible loads - including HPWHs - in response to HDP. Control development is based on simulations using the Flexible Heat Pump Water Heater Performance Predictor which captures the control decisions of the on-board controller in a residential, integrated HPWH . The price-responsive controls a) shift load in ways that consume additional midday solar power to help stabilize the grid and reduce overall emissions, b) ensure that occupants receive equal or better hot water delivery service, and c) minimize the operating cost for each home in the fleet. On the grid level, the resulting shift will reduce utility operating costs and emissions, and can avoid expensive system capacity expansions. The control approach is customized to each home based on typical hot water consumption patterns. HPWH controllers, whether on the device or remotely, will receive a schedule of CTA-2045-B signals or set temperature adjustments customized to the current HDP price schedule and home. Simulation results for a fleet of 148 HPWHs on a summer day in Berkeley, California show cost savings of 29% and high price electricity consumption reductions of 80%, while maintaining full quality of service.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Role of On-Site Generation in Carbon Emissions and Utility Bill Savings under Different Electric Grid Scenarios

Energy-efficient and sustainable technologies are necessary to lower energy and carbon footprints. Many technologies are being pursued to meet the increasing energy demand in buildings. An attractive option is efficient utilization of available energy resources, including renewables, to support current and future building energy needs while targeting grid resiliency, energy, and environmental security at an affordable cost via on-site cogeneration-based approaches. This must include energy-efficient technologies with lower greenhouse gas emissions and optimized cost, performance, and reliability. This paper presents the economic and environmental benefits associated with power technologies such as thermionics and solid oxide fuel cells. Hybrid configurations consisting of heat pumps, power systems, and renewable photovoltaics in cogeneration and trigeneration modes of operation are presented. The role of such technologies in lowering CO2 emissions while improving energy resiliency and serving the needs of underprivileged communities is discussed. The key barriers of affordability and potential solutions for large-scale implementation of these promising technologies are reviewed. Case studies demonstrating the influence of power rating, electrical efficiency, design configuration, carbon dioxide intensity of the grid, and fuel on annual greenhouse gas emissions are presented for residential and commercial buildings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS2012

Phytoremediation of Indoor Air: NASA, Bill Wolverton, and the Development of an Industry

It was during this period of the early 1970's and 1980's when the issues associated with Sick Building Syndrome were gaining attention that the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) became an unlikely leader in identifying biological solutions to the problem of poor indoor air quality. NASA had been supporting work using biological systems for atmospheric regeneration since the 1950's, with the emphasis on using photosynthetic systems for the removal of carbon dioxide and regeneration of oxygen as part of a life support system. The then Soviet Union was conducting tests using algae systems in the BIO-1 program (1964-1968) to regenerate the air at the Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Krasnoyarsk (Later renamed the Institute of Biophysics). These tests were expanded to include the use of higher plants in the BIOS-2 testing in the 1970's, and humans during BIO-3 in the 1980'SI3. Within NASA, large scale testing of bioregenerative life support systems was conducted in the Biomass Production Chamber (BPC) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida as part of the Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) Breadboard project.

Stutte, Gary W.↗
NASA NTRS2017

BILL-E: Robotic Platform for Locomotion and Manipulation of Lightweight Space Structures

We describe a robotic platform for traversing and manipulating a modular 3D lattice structure. The robot is designed to operate within a specifically structured environment, which enables low numbers of degrees of freedom (DOF) compared to robots performing comparable tasks in an unstructured environment. This allows for simple controls, as well as low mass and cost. This approach, designing the robot relative to the local environment in which it operates, results in a type of robot we call a "relative robot." We describe a bipedal robot that can locomote across a periodic lattice structure, as well as being able to handle, manipulate, and transport building block parts that compose the lattice structure. Based on a general inchworm design, the robot has added functionality for traveling over and operating on a host structure.

Aeronautics↗