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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 559 records · Page 31
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Exploring New Ways to Classify Industries for Energy Analysis and Modeling

As the US moves closer to embracing a net zero greenhouse gas emissions position, combustion processes outside the power sector are becoming urgent concerns. Industry is an important end user of energy and relies on fossil fuels used directly for process heating and as feedstocks for a diverse range of applications. Fuel and energy use by industry is heterogeneous, meaning that even a single product group can vary broadly in its production routes and associated energy usage. In the US, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) serves as the basis for data collection and reporting. In turn, data based on NAICS is the foundation of most US energy modeling. Thus, the effectiveness of NAICS at representing energy use is a limiting condition for plans to improve energy efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuels in industry. Facility-level data to build more detail into heterogeneous sectors is scarce. This work explores alternative classification schemes for industry based on energy use characteristics, and provides a validation of an approach to make facility-level energy use estimates based on publicly available data from the greenhouse gas reporting program. First, several approaches to industrial taxonomies and their usefulness for industrial energy modeling are summarized. Data from Industrial Assessment Centers is analyzed using unsupervised machine learning techniques to detect clusters. Cladistics, an approach from biology, is adapted to energy and process characteristics of industries. A cladogram is presented for evolutionary directions in the iron and steel sector. Cladograms are a promising tool for constructing scenarios and summarizing directions of sectoral innovation. Finally, validation is performed for facility-level energy estimates from the US EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. This validation assists in making this data source available for use in energy modeling. Together, this work explores alternative approaches for categorizing industries in a way that aids understanding energy use, and presenting pathways for the future.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Improving Energy Efficiency and Self-Sufficiency on the Pechanga Indian Reservation

This project will study the feasibility and identify the preferred options necessary to allow the Pechanga Tribal Utility, now renamed Pechanga Western Electric (“PWE”) to carefully and thoughtfully expand from providing electrical service to the Tribe’s commercial enterprises and government center loads to also providing electrical service to the Tribe’s over 300 residential loads and potential future non-tribal commercial loads on the reservation. As well as, explore an option under which PWE will acquire solar and battery storage systems for the residential community.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Solar Potential Analysis for the MISO Region

As part of the Minnesota Solar Pathways project, funded in part by the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, Clean Power Research completed a scenario-based analysis that estimates and optimizes the levelized cost of capacity for high renewables penetrations across the entirety of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region. The analysis concludes that it can be cheaper to overbuild solar + wind and curtail surplus than to store all generation. The analysis described in this report was preceded by an analysis completed in 2018 that used the same modeling framework to optimize generation resources located only in Minnesota.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Community Planning for Solar: Defining Realistic Solar Development Options

This guide is designed to aid in assessing community preferences for solar development and financing alternatives. To evaluate community preferences regarding solar, it is necessary to define the range of realistic options for solar development possible in a community, including potential future targets for solar capacity, the mixes of development possible based on the solar resources available, and potential community benefits and solar ownership structures. This guide can help community officials, volunteers, and regional planning agency staff in constructing a realistic suite of options for solar development, based on existing state and local laws, available solar resources and infrastructure, and economic and financial considerations.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

5 Easy Steps to SolarAPP+ Adoption

The Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus (SolarAPP+) software is an online platform that provides plan review and instantly issues permits for code-compliant residential photovoltaic (PV) systems. Here's how your jurisdiction can get started.

automated permitting↗
DOE OSTI2024

Advances on CHP District Energy and Microgrids Deployment: Simplified Tool for Rapidly Deploying Feasibility Analytics for the Non-Technical User (Final Technical Report)

Community energy systems have proven to have the potential to improve cost efficiency, resilience, and decarbonize. However, investing in community energy systems such as community microgrids or district energy systems is a complex decision due to the high initial investment and the uncertainties associated with the long development time and lifecycle of the project. Tools that make feasibility assessments accessible to non-technical users like investors, policymakers, and other stakeholders will result in more feasibility analyses completed, more candidate projects identified, and more community energy systems deployed. The pilot tool developed under this award is named Energy Fellow. Energy Fellow allows technical and non-technical users to complete feasibility analyses for district energy systems and community microgrids. This is the first software tool of its kind designed for non-technical users and available at no cost. Its scope was adjusted to a 25x25-mile region within the Houston area in Texas to make its development compatible with the funding available. However, the findings and models developed make this pilot tool easily scalable to the US. The lessons learned during the design, implementation, and testing stages have helped find trade-off solutions to software and hardware challenges related to implementing 3D models in online tools. Green software strategies has been successfully applied to the design and operations of the tool, and the team has researched the aspects of the (non-technical) user experience that will make commercial developments of this tool even more impactful.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Operational Probabilistic Tools for Solar Uncertainty (OPTSUN) (Final Project Report for DOE Solar Forecasting II Project)

Increasing levels of solar PV can challenge system operations and may require novel methods to operate the power system reliably and efficiently. Power system operating plans generally use deterministic forecasts, in which the variable energy resources are represented by the expected value for each interval of the decision horizon. Probabilistic forecasts are relatively new but have the potential to address the shortfalls of deterministic forecasts. However, understanding how best to use such forecasts is still a key gap in industry and was the focus of this project. The project had three workstreams. In a forecasting workstream, improvements were made to baseline probabilistic forecasts using a number of new approaches such as machine learning methods and improved input data. In a design workstream, advanced simulation tools used these forecasts to investigate newly proposed reserve determination methods. Lastly, in a demonstration workstream a scheduling management platform (SMP) was developed to leverage probabilistic forecasts in a modular and customizable manner. In order to study the benefits that could be accrued, the project team collaborated with three utility partners (Duke Energy, Southern Company and Hawaiian Electric) to deliver improved probabilistic forecasts for each region and to model each region in case studies using advanced production cost modeling tools. Different methods to determine operating reserve requirements from probabilistic forecasts were developed, simulated, and tested across each region. The benefits of using these newly proposed methods varied by utility, but, in general, using probabilistic forecasts as well as historical data to set the reserve requirements seems to improve reliability related results, with less risk of reserve or supply shortfalls. The cost implications were not always straightforward; in some cases the new methods could show a reduction in expected operating costs, but often the increase in reserves associated with better risk mitigation using probabilistic forecasts could result in an increase in operating costs in the simulations. The SMP tool was developed to process probabilistic forecasts from their initial receipt through to scheduling decisions. This open-source tool consists of several modules for scenario development, reserve requirements calculation, and visualization. The SMP tool was demonstrated to a wide range of operators and stakeholders at all three utilities and further improved based on their feedback. The tool will be available on www.epri.com/optsun. The proposed probabilistic information-based reserve determination approaches have the potential to be implemented by different regions to ensure an economic and reliable power system operation on power systems integrating increasing levels of variable renewable resources. The innovative yet practical methods developed in this project demonstrated tangible benefits from using probabilistic forecasts beyond just study-based assessments to include three unique balancing areas. The demonstrated benefits across the multiple utility environments, are expected to provide system operators in all regions the confidence required and a platform to adopt the new forecasting and operating methods.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Prairie State Generating Company Site: Storage Field Development Plan

This Storage Field Development plan presents the Storage Complex characterization results, construction, monitoring, operational plans, and costs associated with the proposed Prairie State Energy Campus - Carbon Capture and Storage (PSEC-CCS) project in Washington County, Illinois, near Marissa. The proposed storage complex, known as the St. Peter-Everton Storage Complex, comprises the St. Peter Sandstone and Everton sandstone reservoirs, with the Maquoketa Shale serving as the primary confining unit and the Knox Group as lower confining unit. The lowermost Underground Source of Drinking Water (USDW) identified for the site is the Pennsylvanian section.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
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 OSTI2022

Assessing Community Preferences Regarding Solar Development

Preparing a plan regarding solar development in your community requires bringing together people from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, who often have strong feelings and preferences about the amount and location of local solar PV projects developed in their community. The planning process should be designed in an inclusive way, where meaningful community engagement is prioritized. With a topic such as solar development, which can elicit strong reactions among community members, proactive community engagement that is perceived as fair will likely lead to more favorable outcomes. Whether your community hosts large tracts of forest, brownfields, residential neighborhoods, and/or large buildings and parking lots, there are a variety of ways community members might envision growth of solar energy. The engagement process can help clarify how and where solar is preferred, so that local government can respond to future solar development requests or to initiate solar projects that are preferred by the community.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Methods for Representing Flexible, Energy-Constrained Technologies in Utility Planning Tools

Capacity expansion models are widely used by power system researchers, planners, and policy analysts to evaluate alternative power system investment scenarios. With the increasing deployment of wind and solar in the US, there has been much focus on improving the representations of variable generation (VG) technologies within capacity expansion models. Models that capture the variable net-load profiles and larger reserve requirements associated with high penetration VG systems represent an improvement to classic capacity expansion models, but fall short of capturing the complexities associated with storage technologies, such as battery energy storage (BES) and concentrating solar power with thermal energy storage (CSP with TES). While difficult to model in a capacity expansion setting, these technologies are potentially competitive sources of flexibility with the intriguing characteristics of being able to absorb VG that would otherwise be curtailed and directly contribute to renewable energy goals, respectively. In this paper we present methods for accurately representing these technologies in a large-scale capacity expansion model with high electrical and geospatial resolution. VG modeling techniques, including novel methods for capturing curtailment due to unit commitment and other hourly dispatch phenomena, are also reviewed. Modeling for a region in the southwestern United States demonstrates the economic relevance of being able to explicitly trade off the costs and capabilities of energy-constrained technologies, especially BES, against other resources in the near-term, in time to make plans for the coming decade

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Least-Cost Storage Mix for Low-Carbon Operations

As communities plan for high- or ultrahigh-renewable power systems, they face diverse options for energy storage. Each energy storage technology has a unique power capacity and discharge duration, and each community has a unique load, generation mix, and weather pattern. Determining the optimal storage portfolio across these parameters could save planners significant costs when building out high-renewable power systems.

analysis↗
DOE OSTI2025

Synergies and trade-offs between storage, transmission, and sector coupling in high renewable energy systems

Energy storage, transmission, and sector coupling are some prominent flexibility solutions to support variable renewable energy (VRE) integration. However, investment cost uncertainties and public acceptance could hamper the deployment of these flexibility solutions. This raises questions about the development and cost-effectiveness of future energy systems, especially on how the dependence on local and cross-border solutions of flexibility would evolve if the uptake of these solutions is restricted. In this context, this paper identifies the synergies among flexibility options under restrictions on transmission expansion or increased costs of energy storage. It contributes to determining whether investments in energy storage and/or transmission expansion offer the least-cost transition and investigates the impact of sector coupling on these solutions. A long-term energy system planning and optimisation model towards 2050 is developed using the open-source energy system optimisation tool Balmorel, and a case study of the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea and the North Sea is established. Five cases with restrictions imposed on transmission expansion and higher energy storage technology costs are analysed at different levels of sector coupling. The results highlight the importance of transmission expansion at all levels of sector coupling. As the level of sector coupling increases, uncertainties around the cost of energy storage drive the least-cost pathways. Optimal investment solutions are found to have a mix of transmission and energy storage in capacity expansion at all levels of sector coupling.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Solar Finance and Ownership Options

Communities facing specific solar project development opportunities or proactively planning their solar development strategies will need to have a basic understanding of solar financing and ownership options. How solar is financed and owned has large implications on how the solar project impacts local economic benefits, risk, and capital needs. This fact sheet provides a brief introduction to these considerations for local officials and community constituents to familiarize them with how local benefits and risks contrast across the basic ownership structures available.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Security constrained optimal power shutoff for wildfire risk mitigation

Abstract Electric grid faults are increasingly the source of ignition for major wildfires. To reduce the likelihood of such ignitions in high risk situations, utilities use preemptive de‐energization of power lines, commonly referred to as Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). Besides raising challenging trade‐offs between power outages and wildfire safety, PSPS removes redundancy from the network at a time when component faults are likely to happen. This may leave the network particularly vulnerable to unexpected line faults that may occur while the PSPS is in place. Previous works have not explicitly considered the impacts of these outages. To address this gap, the Security Constrained Optimal Power Shutoff problem is proposed which uses post‐contingency security constraints to model the impact of unexpected line faults when planning a PSPS. This model enables, for the first time, the exploration of a wide range of trade‐offs between both wildfire risk and pre‐ and post‐contingency load shedding when designing PSPS plans, providing useful insights for utilities and policy makers considering different approaches to PSPS. The efficacy of the model is demonstrated using the EPRI 39‐bus system as a case study. The results highlight the potential risks of not considering security constraints when planning PSPS and show that incorporating security constraints into the PSPS design process improves the resilience of current PSPS plans.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗