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At least 73 records · Page 4

Optimal Complementarity Analysis of Potential Floating Solar Co-Located With Existing Hydropower Assets Across the Contiguous United States

The U.S. is expected to double its rate of renewable capacity from 2024 to 2030. However, the stochastic nature of renewable energy poses challenges to the operation and reliability of our power grid. The combined generation from renewable energy sources, with dispatchable sources (such as hydropower) operating as a hybrid energy plant, could mitigate this variability. In this paper, the complementarity analysis of selected U.S. reservoirs with existing hydropower assets (EHAs) and potential floating photovoltaics (FPVs) is conducted for the continuous U.S. (CONUS). The optimal FPV capacity for each site is determined by minimizing the variability of the combined output, while adhering to the FPV potential. Our results indicate that over 50% of the analyzed reservoirs achieve a stability coefficient exceeding 0.5, leading to a less-variable output after optimization. Finally, we analyze the complementary hydro-FPV hybrid reservoirs by considering both the Pearson correlation coefficient and the stability coefficient on daily, monthly, and yearly scales. Summaries are included of locations of theoretical FPVs co-located with hydropower plants that exhibit high complementarity based on the selected metrics.

13 - HYDRO ENERGY↗

Assessing the Reliability Benefits of Energy Storage as a Transmission Asset

Utilizing energy storage solutions to reduce the need for traditional transmission investments has been recognized by system planners and supported by federal policies in recent years. This work demonstrates the need for detailed reliability assessment for quantitative comparison of the reliability benefits of energy storage and traditional transmission investments. First, a mixed-integer linear programming expansion planning model considering candidate transmission lines and storage technologies is solved to find the least-cost investment decisions. Next, operations under the resulting system configuration are simulated in a probabilistic reliability assessment which accounts for weather-dependent forced outages. The outcome of this work, when applied to TPPs, is to further equalize the consideration of energy storage compared to traditional transmission assets by capturing the value of storage for system reliability.

co-optimization↗

ASSET (Automated Systemwide Strength Evaluation Tool) [SWR-24-03]

ASSET is a free and open-source tool built with Python and PSS®E, designed to automatically assess and analyze grid strength across large-scale power systems. It supports multiple system operating conditions and contingencies, and outputs results in a tabular format for easy interpretation.

Shah, Shahil [National Renewable Energy Laboratory↗

CHESS 2025: Post-survey report for 2025 NEON AOP Assignable Asset collection of East River and Washington Gulch, Almont and Upper Taylor watersheds at Crested Butte, CO

This report contains details of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) Research Support Services (RSS) Assignable Asset (AA) flights of the East River, Almont and Upper Taylor watersheds near Crested Butte, CO, June–July 2025. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) contracted the NEON AOP AA flights to observe watersheds of interest near Crested Butte with remotely sensed data including high resolution LiDAR, imaging spectroscopy, and high-resolution camera imagery. The report includes a summary of the acquired flight lines over the planned survey areas, results of calibration flights, and results of the acquired data. The report details how the AOP has met the contracted delivery requirements in terms of the data delivered, quality of the data, and describes issues that resulted in data degradation or data loss. CHESS Project Description: The Colorado Headwaters Ecological Spectroscopy Study (CHESS) comprised a multi-week airborne remote sensing and field observation campaign in the Upper Gunnison Basin, Colorado, conducted in June and July of 2025. Airborne remote sensing was conducted by the National Ecological Observatory Network Airborne Observation Platform (NEON AOP), concurrent with a field campaign run by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Watershed Function Science Focus Area (SFA), and NASA-JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) program. Between June 10 and July 18, 2025, the NEON AOP flight team collected high-resolution aerial imaging spectroscopy and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data over three domains: the Upper East River (CRBU), Almont Triangle (ALMO), and the Upper Taylor Basin (UPTA). In coordination with the flights, a field campaign acquired ground-truth observations, including observations of vegetation composition, foliar traits, forest demography, and subsurface properties in 18 core sampling areas within the domains. Additional surface water observations were taken at over 380 point locations. All CHESS campaign datasets can be found within the CHESS ESS-DIVE data portal: https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals/chess. Funding Acknowledgement: Field and remote-sensing data acquisition was performed under a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC24K1005). This work was also supported by the Watershed Function Science Focus Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

2018 NEON and 2025 CHESS Campaigns↗

plutus: An R package to calculate electricity investments and stranded assets from the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM)

plutus is an R package that post-processes outputs from the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to calculate the power sector capital investment costs and stranded asset costs associated with GCAM projections of electricity generation by technology. GCAM is a market equilibrium model used to examine the dynamics of the coupled human-Earth system and the response of this system to global change, including socioeconomics, technology, climate, and policy. GCAM tracks electricity generation by technology and vintage over 32 geopolitical regions throughout the lifetime of each generating technology. plutus extends GCAM functionality by (1) estimating the foregone economic value of prematurely retired power plants as a result of economic-induced retirements compared to scheduled lifetimes; and (2) estimating the new installations and capital investments driven by future changes in economic, energy, agriculture, and land-use systems in GCAM.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Storage Enabled Flexibility of Conventional Generation Assets (StorFlex)

The power systems have faced progressively more demanding operational requirements over the last two decades. Several factors contribute to these challenging operating conditions, including load growth, aging infrastructure, increasing penetrations of distributed energy resources (DERs), electrification of the economy, and policy initiatives such as decarbonization. The power system and its components must provide high operational flexibility to mitigate these challenges. For example, the proliferation of intermittent DERs such as wind and solar has increased the need for conventional generation assets like hydropower plants to respond to sudden load-generation imbalances. The higher flexibility requirements for hydropower plants cause more wear and tear, potentially shortening the useful lifespan of hydropower turbines. To reduce the need for hydropower plants to follow sudden changes in the dispatch signal, we investigate their combined operation with the energy storage systems (ESSs; “ESS-based hybridization”). Our analyses focuses on improving the lifespan of hydropower plants through ESS-based hybridization. Wear and tear on hydropower turbines (particularly Francis turbines) is modeled using a loss-of-life concept that is based on damage experienced by the turbine due to various cycles of operation. Then, we show that using ESSs to offset some of the high variation increases the remaining life of the hydropower plants. To demonstrate this, a few modeling tools were developed for this work: (1) a dynamic model for various components of the turbine and its governor; (2) a control strategy that assigns a slow-varying dispatch signal to a hydropower unit versus a fastmoving signal to ESS, such that the overall power request remains the same; and (3) models for the financial analysis to quantify the economic merits of such a framework. We used the models we developed to analyze the dispatch pattern of an actual hydropower plant with a power output of 50 MW and a head height of 152 m. This work showed that ESS-based hybridization could extend the life of the hydropower plant by 5% on average. This extension in life was then used to estimate the economic benefit in terms of cost deferrals associated with hydropower plant maintenance and replacement: on average, $3.6 million. Sensitivity analysis with respect to the size of ESS and cost of turbines was performed to show the variation in benefits over the range of turbine costs and ESS sizes. Crucially, stacking damage reduction and lifetime extension with other ESS value streams such as providing ancillary services could substantially increase the financial benefits of ESS-based hybridization. The higher costs associated with ESS of appropriate size would make more financial sense when multiple value streams are stacked and co-optimized to extract the maximum benefit. This dimension will be explored in future work.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Economically Viable Intermediate to Long Duration Hydrogen Energy Storage Solutions for Fossil Fueled Assets

This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management of U.S. Department of Energy under Funding Opportunity Announcement Number DE-FOA-0002332 “Energy Storage for Fossil Power Generation”. The work aimed to explore and advance an innovative hydrogen energy storage system – the synergistically integrated hydrogen energy storage system (SIHES) – that has the following characteristics: • Compatible with existing or new coal and gas fuel electricity generation units, • best suited for intermediate to long duration energy storage, from 12 hours to weeks even months, and • capable of storing energy at the utility scale – hundreds of MWh to GWh energy storage with power output level in tens to hundreds of MW. Preliminary front-end engineering design (Pre-FEED) studies was carried out to develop and refine a site-specific SIHES as peaking power generation units (so named as HyPeaker) as the first market entry point, to demonstrate both the technical feasibility and the economic viability to integrate the HyPeaker “within the fence” of a fossil power plant. This specific site was TVA’s Johnsonville Combustion Turbine Plant. The HyPeaker was designed and engineered to integrate with a 60MW aeroderivative gas turbine unit already available at TVA’s Johnsonville site. This site-specific HyPeaker consists of an alkaline electrolyzer to produce hydrogen from CO 2 free electricity sources, an innovative low-cost high-pressure hydrogen storage system (Big-Ton) and the aero gas turbine to generate electricity using blend of hydrogen and natural gas. A holistic system level technoeconomic analysis tool specific to HyPeaker was developed to optimize the engineering design of the Johnsonville site-specific HyPeaker for cost and performance. The optimal design and specification of the Johnsonville site-specific HyPeaker are the following: • Alkaline electrolyzer: 3MW • Big-Ton storage vessel: 11,000kg H 2 at 3000psi. • 4-stage diaphragm hydrogen compressor: 55kg-H 2 /hr from 150psi to 3000psi. The HyPeaker is designed to provide sufficient hydrogen for 90% continuous operation of the HyPeaker. All major components have design life of 30 years. The capex of HyPeaker is estimated at $\$$7.1M. This included $\$$1.5M for the electrolyzer, $\$$5.6M for the storage vessel and compressor. The cost of aero gas turbine was included as it is already available at the site. Key findings are: • HyPeaker can be designed, manufactured, installed and integrated with the fossil power plants, with sub-systems and components commercially available on the market today, even when it is scaled up to an order of magnitude larger than the one at the Johnsonville site. HyPeaker is a technologically viable solution to cover a wide range of energy storage duration needs, from daily peaking operation to seasonal shifting for fossil fueled assets. • The cost advantage of SCCV based Big-Ton H 2 storage vessel made it possible to “oversize” the H 2 storage subsystem to achieve overall system level cost optimization. The benefits are two-fold. First, it allows to significantly reduce the capacity and cost of electrolyzer by spreading H 2 production over a much longer period of time when the fuel cost for electricity production is low. Second, it allows to balance the hydrogen production and usage shift over weeks to months to meet the peak demands. As such, the capital cost of HyPeaker system using the Big-Ton was less than half of the cost of a system with today’s steel tube based H 2 storage system. The HyPeaker has even better cost advantage Li-ion battery based energy storage system. The estimated capital cost of Li-Ion battery system would be at $\$$38M, under the same projected 20-year electricity generation profile of the Johnsonville site. This is over 5 times more expensive than the HyPeaker system. • Since industry scale energy storage systems do not have 100% energy conversion and storage efficiency, energy storage systems using fossil fuel generated electricity would increase the CO 2 emission. This is particularly the case for HyPeaker due to its low round trip efficiency. Therefore, a more sensible solution would be to the excessive or curtailed electricity from CO 2 emission free sources such as solar farms, wind farms or nuclear power plants, to produce hydrogen, and integrate them with the HyPeaker. Electricity from TVA’s nuclear power plants was used for the Johnsonville HyPeaker. • The economic viability of HyPeaker is expected to be further improved when global supply chains are taken into consideration. For the same Johnsonville site specific HyPeaker, the capex would be reduced to ~$\$$3.6M from ~$\$$7.1M, and the added LCOE is reduced to ~$\$$85/MWh. With the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the cost of domestically produced HyPeaker sub-systems would be at the level of today’s global suppliers. Since the peaking units generally operate at peak usage period, thereby demanding higher price, the projected $\$$85/MWh LCOE would be within the realm of financial viability for utility operators.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Distribution System Model Calibration for GMLC 3.3.3 "Incipient Failure Identification for Common Grid Asset Classes" - Project Summary

Distribution system model calibration is a key enabling task for incipient failure identification within the distribution system. This report summarizes the work and publications by Sandia National Laboratories on the GMLC project titled “Incipient Failure Identification for Common Grid Asset Classes”. This project was a joint effort between Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The included work covers distribution system topology identification, transformer groupings, phase identification, regulator and tap position estimation, and the open-source release and implementation of the developed algorithms.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

CORE-CM in The Greater Green River and Wind River Basins: Transforming and Advancing a National Coal Asset (Final Report)

The following document summarizes project results from “CORE-CM in the Greater Green River and Wind River Basins: Transforming and Advancing a National Coal Asset”. This project is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (“NETL”) Carbon Ore, Rare Earth Elements, and Critical Minerals (CORE-CM) Initiative. This report concludes that the Greater Green River and Wind River Basins (GGRB-WRB) Area-of-Interest (AOI 9) is the ideal region for continued research and development in progressing the broader CORE-CM goals outlined by the DOE. Based upon the extensive analyses of technical, social, and community criteria, this report illustrates that the GGRB-WRB hosts numerous potential CORE-CM feedstocks (both coal- and non-coal based), diverse opportunities for utilizing existing industrial waste streams, ample infrastructure and industry to support new CORE-CM-focused technologies, and a highly motivated, well educated, and adaptable workforce to further develop the regional and national CORE-CM supply chain. Additionally, some potential solutions for technological gaps suggest that the GGRB-WRB's diverse resources can play a significant role in achieving the national goal of critical materials independence. With full community participation, meaningful involvement of regional Tribal Nations, and building upon the stakeholder engagement demonstrated here, the GGRB-WRB region presents a unique opportunity for advancing the CORE-CM Initiative. This project was designed to bring together coal-based communities and stakeholders from across the GGRB-WRB to advance new industries for CORE-CM resources. The University of Wyoming (UWyo) School of Energy Resources (SER) led a project team of experts from the Colorado Geological Survey (CGS), Colorado School of Mines (CSM), Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), and local community colleges. Input from basinal, regional, and national experts bolstered the coalition in order to advance the mission of DOE’s CORE-CM initiative and develop the domestic CORE-CM supply chain. Phase I of this project was designed to address the goal of developing and catalyzing economic growth, job creation, and technology innovation in the GGRB-WRB of Wyoming and Colorado, by increasing the supply of CORE-CM to manufacturers of non-fuel Carbon Based Products (CBP) and products reliant upon CM. The GGRB-WRB CORE-CM project worked toward providing benefit through several avenues of performance and research. • Develop a coalition team to achieve project objectives • Complete detailed assessments, including State-of-the-Art (SOTA) Data acquisition of potential CORE-CM materials across the AOI, and meaningfully contributes to DOE’s CORE-CM goals nationally. • Strategic planning for regional economic growth, job creation, and associated technology innovation around coal materials, including plans to maximize the development of potential CORE-CM resources and technology by creating regional public-private partnerships. • Define regional economic growth potential around existing strengths, energy infrastructure, business and industry, including planning for the leveraging of highly trained workforces, existing and novel coal technologies, and energy infrastructure in development of CORE-CM supply chains. • Develop a preliminary strategic plan for increasing the supply of CORE-CM materials to manufacturers of non-fuel Carbon Based Products (CBP) and products reliant upon CM, focusing on regional strengths that result in an emerging diversified CORE-CM economy. • Assemble a committed network of stakeholders and communities that learn about, accept, and grow new energy technologies within coal regions. Additionally, the project team significantly contributed to the CORE-CM Initiative’s national goals, through cross-regional scoping, collaborating with CORE-CM projects in other AOIs, and including parallel regional project experts. In addition to active inclusion and meaningful engagement and contribution to DOE-led working groups, the project team focused on engaging with regional communities including Tribal Nations, economic development groups, and regional government organizations. The project’s CORE-CM development and commercialization plan identified diverse CORECM feedstocks, potential routes towards integration with existing industries, methods for supply-chain development that leverage existing infrastructure and businesses considering the regional economy, identified entry barriers for incorporating traditional and new technologies in those supply chains, recognized opportunities for public-private partnerships to develop technology innovation centers, identified diverse workforces, and conducted stakeholder outreach and education to build a community of understanding on CORE-CM potential in the GGRB-WRB region. Detailed task descriptions can be found in each chapter.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Vulcan Test Platform: Demonstrating the Data Center as a Flexible Grid Asset

Explosive data center demand is outpacing grid infrastructure development. AI workloads and hyperscale cloud growth are creating unprecedented power requirements, while traditional grid expansion faces multi-year development timelines, regulatory hurdles, and decarbonization challenges. Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners recognized this impending crisis years ago and founded Verrus to develop an innovative solution: data centers that function as grid assets rather than passive loads. The Verrus approach integrates proprietary grid-aware controls with battery energy storage systems (BESS) in a medium-voltage architecture that delivers three critical capabilities: Fast-responding demand flexibility that can service requests from the utility within 10 seconds, Uninterrupted transition to islanded operation during grid disturbances, Continuous uptime assurance while maintaining all customer service level commitments Through Verrus' strategic partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), we validated these capabilities on Vulcan, a 70 MW utility-scale test platform powered by NREL's ARIES Virtual Emulation Environment. This deployment-ready technology has successfully demonstrated that Verrus data centers can deliver meaningful grid services while maintaining mission-critical reliability. This technical report outlines the design, methodology, and results of this emulated deployment, demonstrating that data centers can play a pivotal role in enhancing grid flexibility and reliability, without sacrificing service level guarantees.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Tracking and Protecting High-Value/High-Visibility Assets

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL’s) Independent Oversight (IO) office led an assessment to evaluate PNNL’s approach to tracking and protecting high-value/high-visibility assets. The approach used by the assessment team included a review of requirements (including records), staff interviews, on-site and virtual walkthroughs of lab spaces, review of data, and the development of three separate workflows to capture PNNL’s current practices in the areas of controlled substances, select toxins, and precious metals. Summary results are provided within the report, including all findings and opportunities for improvement (OFIs).

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Watching for light: An enterprise roadmap for trustworthy laser threat warning (LTW) to protect national assets

Comprehensive space force protection must include effective and trustworthy laser threat warning (LTW). Effective LTW will detect and characterize threats to space assets and thus enhance space deterrence. LTW must be trustworthy: able to categorize threats and non-threats by being both sensitive to true events and resistant to false alarms. Outside of the laboratory, the statistics and even the roles of lasers become unclear. In the chain of events leading to an attack, the laser may be the last link to be understood. Human situational awareness and informal reasoning must blend statistics with circumstantial evidence to visualize these chains before they are clear. This paper sets out an industrial model for an enterprise that will routinely produce trustworthy LTW. By incorporating psychology and economics, this enterprise can overcome the difficulties and perils of cooperation in networked defense and intelligence. This roadmap suggests how the enterprise can incentivize distracted actors with different goals to share what they know and coordinate what they do.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) Puerto Rico Plant Database Extension

This dataset is an extension and subset of the Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) Plant Database, 2025, released by Oak Ridge National Laboratory through HydroSource covering hydropower plants in Puerto Rico. The extension enhanced EHA to support modeling performed under the Department of Energy Hydropower Office's SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Fourth Assessment (9505). Included is a spatial dataset containing the location of the powerhouse and plant characteristics and a spatial dataset containing the location of the point-of-diversion and plant characteristics. Enhancements made in this dataset from EHA include updating plant’s spatial locations to explicitly represent the location of the powerhouse; identifying a plant’s point-of-diversion (source of water) spatial location; adding additional plants not included in the 2025 EHA, and revising attributes with updated information.

Broman, Daniel P [Pacific Northwest National Labor↗

Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) Hawaii Plant Database Extension

This dataset is an extension and subset of the Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) Plant Database, 2025, released by Oak Ridge National Laboratory through HydroSource covering hydropower plants in Hawaii. The extension enhanced EHA to support modeling performed under the Department of Energy Hydropower Office's SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Fourth Assessment (9505). Included is a spatial dataset containing the location of the powerhouse and plant characteristics and a spatial dataset containing the location of the point-of-diversion and plant characteristics. Enhancements made in this dataset from EHA include updating plant’s spatial locations to explicitly represent the location of the powerhouse; identifying a plant’s point-of-diversion (source of water) spatial location; adding Intertie Region as and attributes, and revising the County, Pt_Own, OwType, and Dam_Own attributes with updated information.

Broman, Daniel P [Pacific Northwest National Labor↗

Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) Alaska Plant Database Extension

This dataset is an extension and subset of the Existing Hydropower Assets (EHA) Plant Database, 2025, released by Oak Ridge National Laboratory through HydroSource covering hydropower plants in Alaska. The extension enhanced EHA to support modeling performed under the Department of Energy Hydropower Office's SECURE Water Act Section 9505 Fourth Assessment (9505). Included is a spatial dataset containing the location of the powerhouse and plant characteristics and a spatial dataset containing the location of the point-of-diversion and plant characteristics. Enhancements made in this dataset from EHA include updating plant’s spatial locations to explicitly represent the location of the powerhouse; identifying a plant’s point-of-diversion (source of water) spatial location; adding State of Alaska Plant ID, Intertie Region, and Alaska Energy Region as attributes, and revising the County, Pt_Own, OwType, and Dam_Own attributes with updated information.

Broman, Daniel P [Pacific Northwest National Labor↗

Transforming Windows from Energy Liabilities to Zero-Energy Assets: Next-Generation Solutions for Buildings

Windows have traditionally contributed to a building's HVAC load, but they can also become a source of net energy gain or even operate as zero-energy components. For heating applications, highly insulating windows can harness more solar heat than the energy lost through them, transforming windows from energy liabilities to assets. Dynamic glazings provide further benefits by regulating solar heat gain, reducing cooling loads in summer and heating demands in winter. This simulation study focuses on developing the next generation of zero-energy windows (ZEW) for residential new construction. Through annual energy simulations across climate zones 1-8, ZEW performance benchmarks were established based on current code-level buildings, and we've identified the regions where meeting ZEW standards are most achievable. This work evaluates both static and dynamic window technologies, assessing their effects on annual energy use and cost. Key findings demonstrate that ZEW performance is achievable across diverse climate zones, with specific regional requirements. Most climate zones from 3-8 can achieve ZEW with specific configurations, while some warm climates (1-2) appear challenging for ZEW implementation. Climate zones 4-6 consistently allow for zero energy window implementation, offering multiple pathways through either static or dynamic window technologies. Colder climate zones (7-8) ZEW products allow for higher SHGC values while requiring low U-values.

Yu, Lili↗

1.4.2.402 - Water Risk for the Bulk Power System: Asset to Grid Impacts

Utilities and stakeholders need a standardized mechanism for evaluating how future climate and hydrologic conditions translate to water-related risks for power grid assets and systems to support planning decisions. Yet, no such mechanism exists. To address this need, our goals are to: (1) Develop and execute a state-of-the-art multi-model framework to assess future climate-water impacts and risks to the grid, including sensitivities to varying hydrologic drivers and infrastructure scenarios. (2) Create a standardized interactive visualization platform, using data from the climate-water risk assessments, that enables stakeholders to evaluate climate-water impacts, risks, and adaptation measures for power systems.

bulk power system↗