A call to action for building energy system modelling in the age of decarbonization
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24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “Energy Systems”
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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Regional Hybrid Energy Systems Technoeconomic Analysis
This presentation summarizes the final outputs from a multi-year HFTO-funded project that evaluated the potential for hybridized nuclear power plants to economically produce hydrogen. The focus of this presentation is on the interactions between the electricity system modeling and hydrogen system optimization and the resulting figures of merit. This project partnered with Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Electric Power Research Institute, and Xcel Energy.
ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY,HYDROGEN↗
Multi-objective Decisions on Integrated Energy Systems Planning and Operation for Industrial Combined Heat and Power Supply
Unlike the power sector—which can transmit electricity over long distances via established grids—the industrial sector poses a unique challenge due to its geographically concentrated large-scale heat processes. Enhancing energy security in such industrial parks provides a dual benefit: reduced exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices and improved economic viability, largely driven by economies of scale in energy supply and distribution. This study presents a comprehensive technoeconomic analysis of a nuclear energy hub, employing a mechanism-focused approach to evaluate uncertainties in operational strategies and capacity optimization. Load profiles from three major energy intesive industries—chemical, refinery, and steelmaking—are examined, each presenting unique challenges and opportunities for nuclear energy integration. We adopt a multi-objective optimization framework, converting multiple objectives into a single objective function through the e-constraint method. The findings highlight clear trade-offs between system conditions and varying levels of energy independence. Overall, this analysis is granular enough to address industry-specific concerns yet sufficiently generalizable to provide actionable insights into the feasibility of nuclear-based clean heat solutions for the industrial sector.
25 - ENERGY STORAGE↗
Operational tests of a solar-energy system in Georgia
Seventy three page report describes one year performance of commercial solar-energy hot-water system. Silicone oil is heat-exchange fluid in tested system, designed to meet needs of family of four. Roll-bend heat exchanger is wrapped around hot-water storage tank. Oil circulates through exchanger and flat-plat solar collectors. Auxiliary energy, to maintain temperature in storage tank, is supplied by 4,500-watt resistance-heating element.
Source record↗
Barriers and opportunities for the deployment of CO2 electrolysis in net-zero emissions energy systems
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29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Integrated Neutronics Modeling for Inertial Fusion Energy Systems: Development and Application to LD-FIRST
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is proposing a new Laser Driven Fusion Integration Research and Science Test Facility (LD-FIRST) with the goal of providing an experimental testbed for future Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) systems. However, IFE systems require detailed and accurate multiphysics modeling to quantify material damage, thermal loading, and tritium breeding within complex chamber environments. This article presents the first step in an integrated multiphysics framework that couples meshed CAD-based geometry within Monte Carlo neutronic simulations to enable high-fidelity analysis of IFE chamber concepts, with future coupling to external codes. The neutronics workflow utilizes OpenMC and its third-party capability to use CAD-based geometries through DAGMC and tally on unstructured meshes with Libmesh to evaluate neutron transport behavior, geometric fidelity, and material performance under reactor-relevant conditions. The use of tailored tallies on unstructured meshes in this framework allows direct transfer without interpolating to CFD simulation tools. Two IFE chambers were evaluated, both conceived by LLNL: HYLIFE-II and Laser IFE (LIFE). This work produced high-fidelity conformal surface and volumetric meshes of the HYLIFE-II and LIFE chambers with mapped spatial insight into material damage, thermal loading, and tritium breeding. The HYLIFE-II model was built utilizing available resources and used as a test case to verify that the neutronics framework can handle complex geometries. The LIFE chamber CAD was provided by LLNL and was the main focus of this work. This work analyzes multiple ternary alloy breeding materials for the LIFE chamber, across different 6 Li enrichments to produce data relevant to the LD-FIRST project. This work also investigates the level of model fidelity for the LIFE chamber, and results show that inclusion of detailed first wall and coolant structures increased the predicted tritium breeding ratio (TBR) by ~30%, highlighting the sensitivity of tritium breeding and the need for a high-fidelity simulation framework for IFE chambers. These developments provide a scalable toolset for the design and optimization of next-generation IFE chambers, forming a solid foundation for future coupled multiphysics analysis.
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
Transactive energy systems for distributed blackstart and service recovery
Abstract Current transactive controls use marginal benefits and marginal costs to achieve an economic market efficiency during normal grid operations. However, the transactive mechanisms designed for normal economic operations cannot be applied directly for the contingencies because the grid operations during contingencies are often dictated by technical needs rather than purely economic criteria. For instance, one of the key technical requirements for the blackstart is to have at least one blackstart capable resource cleared which cannot be ensured by the transactive mechanism designed for normal economic operations because they work primarily based on the marginal benefit and marginal cost of the participants. This article presents one of the first attempts to develop a transactive mechanism to be used during grid contingencies. A distributed blackstart and service recovery is used as an example contingency to evaluate the performance of the proposed transactive mechanism. The performance of the proposed transactive mechanism is demonstrated for various use cases using a modified IEEE‐123 node test system. The simulation results demonstrated the proof of concept of applying a transactive mechanism to enable distributed blackstart and service recovery by engaging the mix of blackstart capable and non‐capable distributed energy resources.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Reducing digital risks and improving reliability in nuclear power integrated energy systems
Not Available
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
Parallel derivative-free optimization for simulation-based design of behind-the-meter energy systems
In this work, the integrated design and dispatch of behind-the-meter or distributed resources (e.g. stationary battery storage and solar PV generation) is considered. A simulation-based framework is employed, generating high-fidelity results with closed-loop predictive control at a fine resolution, at the expense of high computational cost (several minutes to a few hours per design point). To address this challenge, parallel derivative-free design methods are considered. Four methods are compared, including state-of-the-art surrogate-based methods (Radial-Basis Functions and Gaussian processes) and sampling strategies, an evolutionary-based method, and a simple sequential grid refinement method. As a case study, two types of design problem with increasing complexity are considered, namely, the design of behind-the-meter resources (three design variables) and the inclusion of grid capacity (four design variables). The second yields a constrained design problem for which violations can only be determined after solving the computationally expensive simulation. For the three-dimensional case, all methods present a good performance, achieving a solution within 1% of the optimum after the first iteration, with the sequential grid refinement exhibiting the fastest convergence and achieving the best final objective value. This indicates that the parallel evaluation of multiple sampling points may be more important than the choice of method for small decision spaces. For the four-dimensional constrained case, the Genetic Algorithm presents the best tradeoff between performance and computational effort, while the rough objective function terrain generated by constraint violation penalties reduces the performance of surrogate-based methods. Contour plots with flat regions indicate flexibility in the optimal design and highlight the importance of characterizing the solution space.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Energy system digitization in the era of AI: A three-layered approach toward carbon neutrality
Not Available
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Integrated Hydrogen Energy System Testing/Validation: Cooperative Research and Development Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-21-18272
Through the ARIES platform, this proposed project aims to bridge a gap and utilize the power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) and controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) experiments and create open-source interconnection and interoperability information that can aid in faster and cheaper installation and operation of grid forming fuel cell inverters.
08 HYDROGEN↗
Power Prediction of Airborne Wind Energy Systems Using Multivariate Machine Learning
Kites can be used to harvest wind energy at higher altitudes while using only a fraction of the material required for conventional wind turbines. In this work, we present the kite system of Kyushu University and demonstrate how experimental data can be used to train machine learning regression models. The system is designed for 7 kW traction power and comprises an inflatable wing with suspended kite control unit that is either tethered to a fixed ground anchor or to a towing vehicle to produce a controlled relative flow environment. A measurement unit was attached to the kite for data acquisition. To predict the generated tether force, we collected input–output samples from a set of well-designed experimental runs to act as our labeled training data in a supervised machine learning setting. We then identified a set of key input parameters which were found to be consistent with our sensitivity analysis using Pearson input–output correlation metrics. Finally, we designed and tested the accuracy of a neural network, among other multivariate regression models. The quality metrics of our models show great promise in accurately predicting the tether force for new input/feature combinations and potentially guide new designs for optimal power generation.
17 WIND ENERGY↗
Swing Contract-Based Valuation for Distributed Energy Resources in Transactive Energy Systems: A Reinforcement Learning Approach
With the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs) and power grids with high fractions of renewable energy, market constructs are evolving to allow DERs to participate in multiple possible markets, at different levels of grid hierarchy. The effective participation of DERs in market environments is aided by swing contract-based pricing mechanisms, whereby DERs have a two-part compensation structure – one for their reservation/commitment and another for performancedriven ex-post payment for their actual mobilization during dispatch. In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learningbased (Q-learning) approach that allows a rational DER agent to select the market it wants to participate in within a composite market environment where individual markets are coordinated by possibly different actors. The proposed Q-learning framework aids DERs in their self-valuation by implicitly maximizing their own payoff through market participation, assuming a swing contract-based compensation structure. We complement our work through simulation-based investigations where factors affecting the DER decision making process, such as parametric uncertainties in market (and grid) environments, are studied.
Naqvi, Syed Ahsan Raza↗
Transportation and operations aspects of space energy systems
A brief comparative analysis was made for three concepts of supplying large-scale electrical energy to Earth from space. The concepts were: (1) mining helium-3 on the Moon and returning it to Earth; (2) constructing solar power satellites in geosynchronous orbit from lunar materials (the energy is beamed by microwave to receivers on Earth); and (3) constructing power collection and beaming systems on the Moon itself and transmitting the energy to Earth by microwave. This analysis concerned mainly space transportation and operations, but each of the systems is briefly characterized to provide a basis for space transportation and operations analysis.
Woodcock, Gordon R.↗
Architecture Design and Validation for Autonomous Energy Systems
The architecture presentation discusses the requirement grid architecture design to integrate AES capabilities. Three NREL projects that cover control, communication, and operation architectures are discussed as reference AES implementations. Testing platforms and capabilities such as ADMS test bed are introduced to validate AES solutions and developed architectures.
architecture design↗
NREL CGI and PHIL Platform for Validation of Multi-Technology Energy Systems at Scale
The presentation is an update on National Renewable Energy Laboratory Flatirons Campus' capabilities around multi-megawatt grid simulation and power hardware-in-the-loop. Recent improvements in operational and dynamic range of existing 7MVA Controllable Grid Interface (CGI) are described together with improvements in site-wide automation and data acquisition systems. In later part of presentation, a second 19.9MVA CGI that is currently under development is introduced. Its features are described further explaining future site's capabilities.
acquisition↗
Designing resilient decentralized energy systems: The importance of modeling extreme events and long-duration power outages
Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires decarbonizing electricity while ensuring resilience of supply, since a warming planet will lead to greater extremes in weather and, plausibly, in power outages. Although it is well known that long-duration outages severely impact economies, such outages are usually not well characterized or modeled in grid infrastructure planning tools. Here, we bring together data and modeling techniques and show how they can be used to characterize and model long-duration outages. We illustrate how to integrate outages in planning tools for one promising mode of resilient energy supply—microgrids. Failing to treat these extremes in models can lead to microgrid designs (1) that do not realize their full value of resilience, since models do not see the benefits of protecting against extremes, and (2) that appear reliable on paper yet do not actually protect against extremes. Although utilities record power interruptions, lack of access to that data is hindering research on resilience; making datasets available publicly would substantially aid efforts to improve grid planning tools.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗