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At least 73 records · Page 4

Photovoltaic refrigeration application: Assessment of the near-term market

This foreign and domestic market assessment was performed as part of the Tests and Applications Project being conducted by NASA-LeRC as part of the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Photovoltaic Program. One of the objectives of that program was to stimulate the demand for photovoltaic power systems so that appropriate markets would be developed in concert with the increasing photovoltaic production capacity. The refrigeration application represented a possible market for photovoltaics; hence, a brief survey of potential applications was conducted. Both refrigerators and refrigeration systems were considered in the assessment although the primary emphasis is on refrigerators of 9 cu ft of less. Three user sectors were examined: (1) government, (2) commercial/institutional, and (3) general public.

Rosenblum, L.↗

Sustainable Aviation Fuel State-of-Industry Report: Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids Pathway

Climate change is a pressing issue that requires immediate and decisive action to ensure a sustainable future. To reduce CO 2 emissions and speed up the transition to net-zero aviation, the Biden administration has launched the "Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) Grand Challenge" to scale up production of SAF. The challenge aims to achieve 20% reduction in aviation emissions by producing 3 billion gallons per year (BGPY) of SAF by 2030 and to meet 100% of aviation fuel demand by producing 35 BGPY of SAF by 2050. In this report, we provide an overview of the current state of the hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) SAF industry, guided by the perspectives of the interviewed experts. Currently, the HEFA pathway is the only commercially deployed method to produce significant amounts of SAF. As a result, SAF produced via the HEFA pathway is expected to make the largest contribution to achieving the 2030 production target and play a key role in boosting and establishing the SAF market. Announced SAF's total capacity, including alcohol-to-jet, FT, and power-to-liquid facilities, is expected to reach 2 BGPY by 2030 (1), with the expected from HEFA. Total HEFA capacity, including construction and planned projects, is expected to reach about 9 BGPY by 2030; if completely executed, this would contribute to renewable diesel (RD) and SAF. The production ratio of SAF and RD will depend on market conditions, incentives, and the capabilities of facilities. While some stakeholders believe that the 2030 goal may be achieved solely via HEFA, others believe that overly relying on HEFA may be detrimental to the development of other necessary pathways to meet 2050 goals. Our conclusion is that the HEFA pathway alone will not be sufficient to reach the 2030 target. It is crucial to implement additional pathways to reach the goal. This report conducts a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the HEFA SAF value chain. Our aim is to provide current status of the industry and to identify potential challenges that could hinder the commercial production and use of SAF produced through the HEFA pathway. We have had extensive discussions, consultations, and collaborative sessions with stakeholders in the HEFA SAF value chain, including HEFA feedstocks, potential volume of HEFA SAF, economic and sustainability metrics when compared to petroleum, and assessment of the HEFA SAF industry's ability to grow and contribute to achieving the "SAF Grand Challenge." Since the HEFA pathway produces both SAF and RD, this report compares both pathways: HEFA to SAF and HEFA to RD.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Identifying Barriers to Solar and Storage Hybrids: Modeled vs. empirical wholesale market value and net-value for co-located solar + storage projects [Slides]

Large-scale (1MW+) co-located solar and battery storage projects are expanding rapidly in the United States, but their realized contribution to the bulk power system remains poorly understood because public project-level operating data are limited. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates the wholesale market value of 280 operational photovoltaic-plus-storage (PV+S) projects across the seven ISOs/RTOs and 19 additional balancing authorities, representing roughly 95% of the U.S. PV+S fleet in 2024. We model optimized hourly dispatch under energy, capacity, and ancillary-service market opportunities and compare the resulting value with standalone PV value, project-specific levelized cost estimates, and empirical operating or revenue data where available.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Distributed Wind Market Report: 2023 Edition

The annual Distributed Wind Market Report provides stakeholders with market statistics and analysis along with insights into market trends and characteristics for wind technologies used as distributed energy resources. This report presents the distributed wind market from 2003 through 2022. Installed capacity, deployment trends, customer types, incentives, policies, installed costs, performance, and the future outlook for the distributed wind market are the key topics included in the report.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Storing Affordability: Battery Storage as an Asset to Reduce Data Center Cost Shifts

This report examines how battery energy storage systems (BESS) can help utilities accommodate large load growth while protecting affordability for existing ratepayers. Rapid growth in electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centers is straining the U.S. grid. Furthermore, many new data centers are entering rural markets, which could offer economic benefits but may also pose implementation challenges for smaller utilities. At the same time, retail electricity prices are increasing faster than inflation, elevating customer affordability as a key challenge. While data centers have not been the primary driver of increases in residential prices to date, they have pushed wholesale energy and capacity prices higher in several markets. Fundamental utility cost-allocation principles show that data center growth can be rate-positive for existing customers only if new peak demand grows faster than the costs a utility must incur to serve it. Several factors, including a utility’s degree of wholesale market exposure, forecast uncertainty and stranded-asset risk, and tariff design can determine the outcome of load growth on retail rates. Energy storage can make several affordability contributions in the face of this landscape of uncertainty and market volatility, including deferral of higher-cost grid investments through improved utilization of existing assets and flexibility of new large loads, insulation from volatile wholesale prices through peak shaving, and reliability support to address grid risks stemming from the behavior of AI data center loads. Different potential BESS deployment pathways—utility-scale front-of-the-meter systems, aggregated small-scale storage installations, and data center-sited behind-the-meter storage—are compared against each other and against conventional capacity alternatives. This framework is intended as a conceptual resource to utilities, particularly smaller public utilities with rural service territories, who may be considering the role that energy storage can play in insulating existing ratepayers from data center cost shifts.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Influence of Hybridization on the Capacity Value of PV and Battery Resources

Utility-scale systems that combine solar photovoltaic and battery (PV+battery) technologies are growing in popularity on the U.S. bulk power system. The business case for PV+battery systems depends on both their ability to reduce costs and their ability to generate value synergies associated with the provision of energy, capacity, and ancillary services. Capacity value can constitute a significant portion of the value PV+battery hybrids provide to the grid (e.g., through avoided or deferred capacity) and receive through revenues. Throughout this report, we define capacity value as the monetary value of a plant's contribution towards the planning reserve margin, which ultimately depends on market rules and structures. PV+battery hybrids do not always fit into current market structures because of the interactions between the PV and battery components. Unique considerations for the capacity value of PV+battery hybrids include the disparate nature of participation models for PV and battery technologies in existing market rules and the potential influence of a shared interconnection capacity; limitations imposed by a shared inverter; limited ability to charge the battery in advance of capacity events if charging must be sourced from the coupled PV; and challenges or uncertainties associated with co-optimizing the operations of the PV and battery components. Grid operators are currently considering how market structures can be modified to optimally determine the capacity value provided by PV+battery systems, and the rules of how they are integrated into markets are still being written. As with any resource, poorly designed rules could increase the cost of energy and reduce system reliability, while well-designed rules could allow markets to receive the full benefits hybrid systems can offer without overcompensating them for the services they provide. Well-designed rules for PV+battery systems must consider the unique aspects listed above, while leveraging the commonalities with existing resource types. In this report, we summarize the technical capability and market rules that influence the capacity value of PV+battery systems. We further discuss the potential tradeoffs between computational complexity and accuracy for the various ways in which grid operators can credit PV+battery systems for capacity. Finally, we describe markets for capacity, survey current wholesale market rules applying to PV+battery systems, and provide a snapshot of the current regulatory landscape for PV+battery systems.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Hydrogen Storage for Load-Following and Clean Power: Duct-firing of Hydrogen to Improve the Capacity Factor of NGCC Plants (Final Report, Phase II Pre-Front End Engineering Design Study)

GTI Energy (GTI) and team members Southern Company Services (SCS), Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) performed a Phase II Pre-Feed Study under contract DE-FE0032008 for Hydrogen Storage for Load-Following and Clean Power. The configuration of the proposed system consists of subsystems for on-site H 2 production, on-site H 2 storage (up to 54 MWth in commercial vessels) and H 2 combustion in a duct burner in a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) integrated with an existing fossil asset. Here, the firing rate of the duct burner is varied to let the plant respond to fluctuations of electrical load and H 2 production is relatively constant by storing H 2 . The proposed system is an improvement over alternate low carbon dispatchable power options. Technoeconomic analyses show H 2 produced with GTI’s patented Compact Hydrogen Generator (CHG) with inherent carbon capture will be lower cost (Levelized Cost of Hydrogen, LCOH) relative to hydrogen produced with a Steam Methane Reformer (SMR) with an amine system for carbon capture. This lower cost hydrogen enables our integrated system to deliver electricity (Levelized Cost of Electricity, LCOE) at 17.4% lower cost relative to a SMR sourced H 2 -fired HRSG (with an amine system for carbon capture) – Steam Turbine Generator (STG). Our analysis using EPRI’s US REGEN macroeconomic model shows our system will have significant demand in the power market and therefore require significant capacity expansion (CHG plants built to deliver hydrogen) to deliver low cost, low carbon power. In Phase II, our Team has completed a detailed system definition including the development of process models, definition of battery limits, Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs), Piping and Instrumentation Drawings (P&IDs), and a plant layout. A preliminary design for the key components of the CHG was developed including component lists & specifications. An evaluation of environmental and permitting considerations was completed and included the development of an Environmental Information Volume (EIV). The duct burners, which are flexible and can burn hydrogen and/or natural gas, were defined and initial CFD analyses were completed.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

Quantifying the Solar Energy Resource for Puerto Rico

After Hurricane Maria, multiple U.S. Department of Energy laboratories studied the state of the electric grid in Puerto Rico and analyzed grid resilience and grid integration of renewable energy. As part of the work done at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, researchers created new solar resource data, conducted a technical potential and supply curve analysis, and studied the interannual variability of the solar resource. A new methodology was developed to downscale solar resource data from the National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB) from a 4-km x 4-km spatial and 30-minute temporal resolution to a 2 km x 2 km and 5-minute resolution. This methodology primarily used simple physical principles to develop high-resolution cloud properties which were then used to compute solar radiation. The high-resolution datasets were validated against ground measurements and the error metrics were found to be similar to the original lower resolution dataset. Using 20 years of downscaled data from the NSRDB multi-year capacity factors for photovoltaics (PV) were developed for both single-axis tracking and fixed latitude-tilt configurations. Use of the multi-year data provides the ability to understand variability in capacity factors due to variability in weather over a long period of time. For Puerto Rico the coastal regions were found to have significant higher capacity factors than inland. Using land-use and terrain information a technical potential analysis was conducted for Puerto Rico. This analysis restricted single PV plant development to a maximum of 100 MW nameplate capacity. The nameplate capacity for each municipality were then determined. Based on our assumptions, 56 of the 78 total municipalities of Puerto Rico contain some level of solar capacity. Most of the interior municipalities did not have any capacity because of the geographic exclusions used in this study. The lowest capacity for a PV plant observed in a municipality was 10 MW. The maximum capacity within a county was 2,000 MW. Further a supply curve analysis was conducted by taking the results of the technical potential and quantifying system and transmission costs. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) was calculated for each theoretical PV plant site, and the levelized cost of transmission was added to the LCOE to produce a total cost estimate for each site. The results of the supply curve analysis allow for a relative comparison of the cost for integrating new PV capacity into the grid. This analysis indicates that cheaper total LCOE sites tend to be larger in capacity. The total capacity in this study was found to be far beyond the maximum peak load for the island. However, this study does not consider the economic and market potential for development. The cumulative capacity presented in this study assumes that the best locations are developed first and ignores the complex decision paths for new power plant development. Therefore, this analysis can only be treated as illustrative. Finally this study investigates the impact of inter-annual variability of resource using a variety of metrices including probability of exceedance and variation in capacity factor and LCOE. This study demonstrates that the capacity factor or LCOE could vary by over 10% year to year. This clearly indicates the risks involved in using any particular year of data and clearly points to the use of multi-year data to reduce some of the risks related to variability in weather.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Optimizing Air Transportation Service to Metroplex Airports: Analysis Using the Airline Schedule Optimization Model (ASOM) - Par 2

The air transportation system is a significant driver of the U.S. economy, providing safe, affordable, and rapid transportation. During the past three decades airspace and airport capacity has not grown in step with demand for air transportation; the failure to increase capacity at the same rate as the growth in demand results in unreliable service and systemic delay. This report describes the results of an analysis of airline strategic decision-making that affects geographic access, economic access, and airline finances, extending the analysis of these factors using historic data (from Part 1 of the report). The Airline Schedule Optimization Model (ASOM) was used to evaluate how exogenous factors (passenger demand, airline operating costs, and airport capacity limits) affect geographic access (markets-served, scheduled flights, aircraft size), economic access (airfares), airline finances (profit), and air transportation efficiency (aircraft size). This analysis captures the impact of the implementation of airport capacity limits, as well as the effect of increased hedged fuel prices, which serve as a proxy for increased costs per flight that might occur if auctions or congestion pricing are imposed; also incorporated are demand elasticity curves based on historical data that provide information about how passenger demand is affected by airfare changes.

Donoue, George↗

Revenue Analysis of Stationary and Transportable Battery Storage for Power Systems: A Market Participant Perspective

The power system faces a growing need for increased transmission capacity and reliability with the rising integration of renewable energy resources. To tackle this challenge, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) prove effective in enhancing grid capacity and relieving transmission congestion. This paper focuses on the PJM market, conducting a thorough revenue analysis to identify and characterize highly profitable nodes for BESS market participants. A comparison between stationary and transportable BESSs reveals that the transportable BESSs can generate higher potential revenue in energy and regulation markets. Based on these findings, we propose an optimal placement algorithm to support market participants in selecting strategic sites for BESS installation, validated with real PJM market data. This paper provides valuable insights for navigating market-based power system participants and promoting the effective integration of BESSs.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

The Role and Substitution of Cobalt in the Cobalt‐Lean/Free Nickel‐Based Layered Transition Metal Oxides for Lithium Ion Batteries

Here, the Nickel-based layered transition metal oxide cathode represented by NCM (LiNi x Co y Mn z O 2 , x+y+z=1) and NCA (LiNi x Co y Al z O 2 , x+y+z=1) is widely used in the electric vehicle market due to its specific capacity and high working potential, in which Cobalt (Co) plays a huge role in improving the structural stability during the cycle. However, the limited supply of Co, due to its scarcity and the influence of geopolitics, poses a significant constraint on the further advancement of the Nickel-based layered transition metal oxide cathode in the field of energy storage. In this paper, the mechanism of Co in the Nickel-based layered transition metal oxides is reviewed, including its critical role for structural stability such as the inhibition of cationic mixing and the release of lattice oxygen et al. Subsequently, it outlines various strategies to enhance the performance of Co-lean/free materials, such as ion doping, including single-ion doping and multi-ion co-doping, and various surface coating strategies, so as to eliminate the adverse effects of Co loss on materials. Ultimately, this paper offers a glimpse into the promising future of Cobalt-free strategies for high performance of Nickel-based layered transition metal oxides.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Customer premise service study for 30/20 GHz satellite system

Satellite systems in which the space segment operates in the 30/20 GHz frequency band are defined and compared as to their potential for providing various types of communications services to customer premises and the economic and technical feasibility of doing so. Technical tasks performed include: market postulation, definition of the ground segment, definition of the space segment, definition of the integrated satellite system, service costs for satellite systems, sensitivity analysis, and critical technology. Based on an analysis of market data, a sufficiently large market for services is projected so as to make the system economically viable. A large market, and hence a high capacity satellite system, is found to be necessary to minimize service costs, i.e., economy of scale is found to hold. The wide bandwidth expected to be available in the 30/20 GHz band, along with frequency reuse which further increases the effective system bandwidth, makes possible the high capacity system. Extensive ground networking is required in most systems to both connect users into the system and to interconnect Earth stations to provide spatial diversity. Earth station spatial diversity is found to be a cost effective means of compensating the large fading encountered in the 30/20 GHz operating band.

Milton, R. T.↗

The possibilities for mobile and fixed services up to the 20/30 GHz frequency bands

Satellite Communications and broadcasting is presently in a period of considerable change. In the fixed service there is strong competition from terrestrial fiber optic systems which have virtually arrested the growth of the traditional satellite market for long distance high capacity communications. The satellite has however made considerable progress in areas where it has unique advantages; for example, in point to multipoint (broadcasting), multipoint to point (data collection) and generally in small terminal system applications where flexibility of deployment coupled with ease of installation are of importance. In the mobile service, in addition to the already established geostationary systems, there are numerous proposals for HEO, MEO and LEO systems. There are also several new frequency allocations as a result of the WARC 92 to be taken into account. At one extreme there are researchers working on Ka band 20/30 GHz mobile systems and there are other groups who foresee no future above the L-band frequency allocations. Amongst all these inputs it is difficult to see the direction in which development activities both for satellites and for earth segment should be focused. However, as an aid to understanding, this paper seeks to find some underlying relationships and to clarify some of the variables.

Hughes, Clifford D.↗

Historical Pattern Analysis of Global Geothermal Power Capacity Development

Between 1913 and 1958, Italy was the only country with an operational geothermal power plant until New Zealand installed its first plant in 1958. At present, 24 countries are involved in the geothermal power market, and they have a combined installed capacity of 16,127 GW. This study analyzes the historical patterns of geothermal power capacity in the world and in individual countries to investigate the ideal global geothermal development pattern by examining the annual cumulative capacity (ACC) and the annual capacity addition (ACA) graphs of the historical development of geothermal power capacity in 24 countries. First, the global patterns are analyzed using these graphs in five periods (1945-1957, 1958-1976, 1977-1991, 1992-2002, and 2003-2020) that are marked by a series of characteristics of ACA peaks separated by two major troughs. Then, five characteristic patterns are developed in five periods globally. These patterns correspond to the early-stage linear, the first acceleration, the first steady-state linear, the second acceleration, and the second steady-state linear developments. A positive relationship exists between global patterns and the 5-year shifted oil-price curve: two major factors influenced global development: 1) increasing oil prices and increasing awareness of global climate change, and 2) global development of geothermal power. Last, we investigate these patterns in each country. The top ten countries, which comprise 93.3% of the world's total installed capacity are separated into five groups based on the availability and characteristics of patterns globally developed in five periods. Group-1 (the United States) has an installed capacity of 3,794 MW, Group-2 (Mexico and Philippines) 963-1935 MW, Group-3 (New Zealand, Italy, Iceland, and Japan) 601-1,037 MW, and Group-4 (Indonesia, Kenya, and Turkiye) 944-2,356 MW. The remaining 14 countries (6.7%), which are called Group 5, are still in an immature stage and have installed capacities of 7-262 MW and are not involved in pattern analysis. Overall, geothermal power in the world is in its third stage of development, which had its peak development after 1977. A fourth development peak may be expected to occur after this through business-as-usual cases. The biggest barrier to the development of the global geothermal power market is the risk associated with exploration and drilling. If risk mitigation systems and funds are employed, the growth of geothermal power production projects could accelerate.

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗