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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

IMoFi (Intelligent Model Fidelity): Physics-Based Data-Driven Grid Modeling to Accelerate Accurate PV Integration Updated Accomplishments

This report summarizes the work performed under a project funded by U.S. DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), including some updates from the previous report SAND2022-0215, to use grid edge measurements to calibrate distribution system models for improved planning and grid integration of solar PV. Several physics-based data-driven algorithms are developed to identify inaccuracies in models and to bring increased visibility into distribution system planning. This includes phase identification, secondary system topology and parameter estimation, meter-to-transformer pairing, medium-voltage reconfiguration detection, determination of regulator and capacitor settings, PV system detection, PV parameter and setting estimation, PV dynamic models, and improved load modeling. Each of the algorithms is tested using simulation data and demonstrated on real feeders with our utility partners. The final algorithms demonstrate the potential for future planning and operations of the electric power grid to be more automated and data-driven, with more granularity, higher accuracy, and more comprehensive visibility into the system.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Packages of Distributed Energy Technologies Demonstrating Demand Flexibility at Community Scale

The combination of increased electric load growth across all sectors, deferred electrical infrastructure investment, and other factors resulting in variable electric power supply, has created technical challenges to maintaining a resilient and reliable grid. Many federal, regional, and local efforts are in play to modernize the electric grid, including advancing building technologies and distributed energy resources (DERs) that are utilizing smarter controls to become responsive to both occupant and grid needs. This report reviews ten pilot projects demonstrating how groups of buildings combined with behind-the-meter (BTM) DERs such as electric vehicle (EV) charging, battery storage, flexible HVAC and domestic hot water systems, and photovoltaic systems can reliably and cost effectively provide grid services. Each of the ten pilot projects aim to deliver both energy efficiency and demand flexibility (DF) while supporting load growth. The ten demonstration teams are piloting flexible DER packages across diverse communities of residential and commercial buildings to address a variety of regional grid needs. The outcomes of these pilot projects will be used to inform future scaling through utility program development. This paper characterizes the ten teams, showcasing the decision-making process used by each group to develop their packages (Section 2), the grid services they plan to deliver (Section 3), the types of DER packages selected for deployment within building sectors (Section 4) and trends between building sector, DER types, and grid services In order to achieve community scale benefits, the pilot projects must utilize aggregated control mechanisms for coordinating buildings and DERs together. Several types of coordinated control architectures have evolved amongst the teams, influenced by use type, existing market conditions, and integration type. Three coordinated controls architectures have been characterized, highlighting their use cases, benefits, challenges, and tradeoffs in their design. These insights can aid utilities, control vendors, and developers in scaling community-level energy systems (Paul, 2024). Ultimately, the technology packages selected by the ten teams will be coordinated to provide power system services, also known as grid services. Insights from these demonstrations will be useful for grid operators, regulators, aggregators and other stakeholders as they look to deploy demand flexible resources as grid services in the future. The grid services that each team is targeting for demonstration are described in Section 3 and Section 4. Methods for evaluating the grid services have been described in the paper Metrics for Evaluating Grid Service Provision from Communities of Grid-interactive and Efficient Buildings and other DER (MacDonald, 2023). To identify technology packages for demonstration, Section 2 shows that project teams used a range of analysis approaches, including building energy modeling, AMI data analysis, cost-benefit frameworks, and utility pilot data. Some teams emphasized technical modeling to quantify grid impacts and demand reduction potential, while others prioritized economic evaluations, stakeholder input, or exploratory pilots to inform deployment decisions. This diversity reflects the need to tailor selection methods to project goals, available data, and organizational context. Section 5 discusses trends between the DER technologies deployed and the grid service provisions from each team. Residential buildings (multifamily and single family) lean towards technologies that enhance energy efficiency (e.g. weatherization upgrades, smart thermostats) and onsite power generation integration (e.g. solar PV). Commercial building demonstrations prioritize technologies that ensure operational reliability (e.g. battery storage) and centralized energy management systems and optimization solutions. Teams that are deploying controllable storage-based technologies are more likely to provide grid services that require a near real-time response. Teams incorporating load shifting technologies like smart thermostats with HEMs are likely to include energy markets participation and customer bill management offerings. Campus demonstrations are adopting diverse sets of DERs to emphasize renewable generation, paired with centralized control. This section also describes technologies that were considered during project planning but ultimately excluded from final deployment. These demonstrations reveal that effective DER package design should be tailored to building type, customer segment, and construction vintage. Multifamily buildings benefit from centralized HVAC upgrades and supervisory controls, while single-family homes are well-suited for individualized technologies like solar, storage, and smart home energy monitors. Commercial and campus settings prioritize EMIS integration and load optimization. New construction enables cost-effective integration of DER-ready infrastructure, whereas retrofits require deployments aligned with owner and tenant value streams. For utility program planners, early coordination with developers and building owners, paired with segmented and modular program offerings, can improve adoption, scalability, and grid impact.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

High-Fidelity Analysis of EV Integration on Real Utility Feeders in Colorado

Residential electric vehicle (EV) charging has the potential to alter long-held assumptions on load characteristics impacting distribution grid planning, operations, and design standards. This study identifies analysis and control methods to increase the affordability of residential EV charging both for Xcel Energy and their customers. The project also provides solutions for more reliable grid interconnection that can support a reliable utility business model prepared for increasing EV charging load in the coming years. For this project, we referenced Level 2 alternating current (AC) onboard charging profiles for various vehicle models and high-fidelity charging data collected at the experimental setup established at the EV Research Infrastructure Laboratory at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Next, we developed EV adoption models for 2030 and 2040 for the Boulder and Aurora regions in Colorado. Moreover, we evaluated different smart charging control algorithms and compared their performance. We developed time-of-use (TOU)-based and grid-aware active EV charging control methods and integrated them within the study region to understand field impacts. Diving deeper, we selected 10 feeders in Boulder and Aurora for high-fidelity grid modeling down to the house level. We executed detailed grid analysis comparing the smart charge management (SCM) algorithms we developed. Finally, we created a novel tool, Electric Vehicle Infrastructure--Distribution System Integration Tool (EVI-DiST), to integrate all the approaches in a single software environment to provide easy integration, fast simulation, and detailed evaluation capability for utility engineers and other stakeholders.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Adaptive Control Algorithm to Adjust Settings in Photovoltaic Inverters for Electric Grid Cybersecurity (DERAC) v0.1

Volt-VAR and Volt-Watt functionality in photovoltaic (PV) smart inverters provide mechanisms to ensure system voltage magnitudes and power factors remain within acceptable limits. However, these control functions can become unstable, introducing oscillations in system voltages when not appropriately configured or maliciously altered during a cyberattack. In the event that Volt-VAR and Volt-Watt control functions in a portion of PV smart inverters in a distribution grid are unstable, the proposed adaptation scheme utilizes the remaining and stably-behaving PV smart inverters and other Distributed Energy Resources to mitigate the effect of the instability in real-time. The adaptation mechanism is entirely decentralized, model-free, communication-free, and requires virtually no external configuration. This repository provides code to simulate the algorithm in experiments on the IEEE 37 node test feeder.

Arnold, Daniel↗
DOE OSTI2023

Optimizing mixed cool thermal storage systems across a connected community

A high level of electric demand flexibility must be integrated into our building infrastructure to enable greater renewable energy penetration in the grid. In the U.S., 9% of electricity generated is used to cool buildings in a periodic manner, making this end-use an ideal target for active management through cool thermal energy storage (CTES) technologies. Historic uses for CTES are designed around central chilled water plants, but these systems cool less than 25% of U.S. commercial floorspace. Emerging technologies are under development to serve the many smaller distributed cooling systems, such as rooftop units (RTUs), and have the potential to add CTES to an additional 66% of cooled commercial floorspace. However, these unitary thermal storage systems (UTSS) lack the modeling and analysis tools to evaluate them in the future interactive grid context. Here, this study develops the modeling and optimization tools necessary to simultaneously examine central and distributed ice storage systems within the multi-building, connected community context. An integrated simulation-optimization workflow is created to allow for rapid customized analysis. Results demonstrate the energy and flexibility tradeoffs of various implementations.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Smart Charge Management and Vehicle Grid Integration Deep Dive

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Electric Vehicles at Scale Laboratory Consortium (EVs@Scale Lab Consortium) is accelerating research to support the establishment of a secure and scalable national network of charging infrastructure. Critical to this effort is an understanding of the potential grid impacts of EV charging and possible smart charge management (SCM) or vehicle-grid integration (VGI) capabilities that could mitigate these impacts. The EVs@Scale SCM/VGI Pillar is analyzing the impacts of EV charging and developing and demonstrating the capabilities of both SCM and VGI with many different vehicle use cases and grid scenarios. This deep dive discussion of the project encompasses the progress and future plans for the analysis components of the FUSE (Flexible charging to Unify the grid and transportation Sectors for Evs at scale) project.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Implementing multi-settlement decentralized electricity market design for transactive communities with imperfect communication

Recent advances in information and communication technologies and smart metering, provides strategic opportunities for ``prosumers" to reform their conventional energy practices towards more consumer-centric economies. From an operational perspective, managing power distribution networks is becoming more difficult with such active grid-edge systems providing limited to no visibility or control. Transactive Energy (TE) has been emerging as a key enabler towards effectively and efficiently integrating prosumers into competitive electricity markets. This work presents a transactive implementation of community-centric markets. A co-simulation framework is developed for evaluating the proposed market structure with high-fidelity models. Case studies on the IEEE-123 node test system demonstrate that community-centric transactive markets can enable communities of prosumers to operate collaboratively as grid-edge systems. The potential benefits of implementing community-centric TE systems are also illustrated.

Mukherjee, Monish↗
DOE OSTI2026

Power Lane County Electric Grid Handbook

In 2024, Lane Couty was selected to participate in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy to Community program. Through the program, National Laboratory researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the National Laboratory of the Rockies provide three years of technical assistance to Lane County and their project partners: the Center for Rural Livelihoods, Springfield Utility Board, and Emerald People’s Utility District. The project, named Power Lane County, aims to improve local electric system affordability, reliability and resilience in the face of natural hazards and potentially rising loads. The Power Lane County Electric Grid Handbook establishes a foundational understanding of the energy landscape and electric grid in Lane County to inform community engagement, education, and analysis in future project phases. This document synthesizes public data and utility and stakeholder engagement, including utility interviews to give the reader a comprehensive view of the challenges facing Lane County's electric system and the opportunities to address them

Electricity↗
DOE OSTI2020

Grid Integration of Small-Scale Photovoltaic Systems in Secondary Distribution Network—A Review

The relative share of renewable energy, specifically the solar photovoltaic (PV), is increasing exponentially in the world electric energy sector. This is a cumulative result of reduction in the cost of solar panels, improvement in the panel efficiency, and advancement in the associated power electronics. Among different types of PV plants, installation of small-scale rooftop PV is growing rapidly due to direct end-user benefits and lucrative governmental incentives. There are various standards developed in regards to grid integration of PVs and other distributed generations (DGs). Different power converter topologies are developed to interface the PV panel with the utility grid. To keep up with the stringent regulations imposed by the standards, various control strategies and grid synchronization methods have been developed. This review article amalgamates and summarizes all of the aforementioned aspects of a grid-integrated PV system including various standards, power stage architectures, grid synchronization methods, operation under extreme events, and control methodologies, pertaining to small-scale PV plants. This article will help freshman researchers to gain some familiarity with the topic and introduce them to some of the key issues encountered in this field.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

EVs@Scale FUSE Project Review

This project will analyze and demonstrate SCM and VGI approaches to reduce grid impacts from EVs@Scale as a result of the charging needs of the LD, MD, and HD on-road electrified fleet.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling of Microgrid for Critical Data Center Applications

As part of continuing efforts to develop support, understanding, and infrastructure of data center integration onto the electric grid, our work aims to model and analyze the behavior of data center loads in a microgrid power system. Our model consists of renewable energy sources, batteries, and a nuclear reactor-steam Rankine cycle to power data center loads. The simulation studies investigate the electrical behavior of the microgrid system to assess its ability in supporting large data center electrical demands.

14 - SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Exploring the Future Energy Value of Long-Duration Energy Storage

Long-duration energy storage is commonly viewed as a key technology for providing flexibility to the grid and broader energy systems over a multidecadal time frame. However, prior work has typically used present-day grid infrastructures to characterize the relationship between the duration and arbitrage value of storage in electricity markets. This study leverages established National Renewable Energy Laboratory grid planning and operations tools, analysis, and data to execute a price-taker model of an energy storage system for several 8760 h price series representative of current and future contiguous United States grid infrastructures with varying shares of variable renewable energy (VRE). We find that the total value of energy storage typically increases with VRE shares, but any increase in the relative value of longer storage durations over time depends on the region and grid mix. Some regions see incremental value increasing notably, up to 20–40 h in 2050, while others do not. The negative effect of lower roundtrip efficiency on value is also found to be scenario-dependent, with the energy value in higher VRE scenarios being less sensitive to roundtrip efficiency and more supportive of longer storage durations. Long-duration storage value and deployment potential are a function of evolving electricity sector infrastructure, markets, and policy, making it critical to consistently revisit potential long-duration storage contributions to the grid.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Understanding the Value of Energy Storage for Power System Reliability and Resilience Applications

Abstract Purpose of Review The need for energy storage in the electrical grid has grown in recent years in response to a reduced reliance on fossil fuel baseload power, added intermittent renewable investment, and expanded adoption of distributed energy resources. While the methods and models for valuing storage use cases have advanced significantly in recent years, the value of enhanced resilience remains an open research question. Recent Findings The findings of the recent research indicate that energy storage provides significant value to the grid, with median benefit values for specific use cases ranging from under $10/kW-year for voltage support to roughly $100/kW-year for capacity and frequency regulation services. While the value of lost load is used widely to estimate the benefits of mitigating short-duration outages, reaching as high as $719/kilowatt-year, there is no consensus when it comes to monetizing the value of improving grid resilience. Summary This paper presents a use case taxonomy for energy storage and uses the taxonomy to conduct a meta-analysis of an extensive set of energy storage valuation studies. It reviews several approaches for monetizing reliability and resiliency services and presents a proposed approach for valuing resiliency for energy storage investments.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Focus on monitoring and control of complex supply systems

The ongoing rapid transformation of our energy supply challenges the operation and stability of electric power grids and other supply networks. This focus issue comprises new ideas and concepts in the monitoring and control of complex networks to address these challenges.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Distributed control of electric power grids

A method for determining power output levels of a plurality of nodes in an electric power system includes receiving, at a first node of the plurality of nodes, voltage information and multipliers of all neighboring nodes of the first node within the electric power system, determining, by the first node, a local power generation and a local voltage using the voltage information and the multipliers of the neighboring nodes and distributing the local power generation and the local voltage to the neighboring nodes, determining, by the first node, an estimated voltage of each of the neighboring nodes and distributing the estimated voltage to each of the neighboring nodes, and updating, by the first node, a local multiplier using the voltage information received from the neighboring nodes and the estimated voltage of each of the neighboring nodes determined by the node.

Ghosh, Soumyadip↗
DOE OSTI2026

Change Agent: Energy Storage as a Driver of Regulatory Evolution

Purpose of Review Dividing the electric grid into the functions of generation, transmission, anddistribution enabled the drawing of jurisdictional lines and the application of the U.S.Constitution’s federalist system to energy regulation. Energy storage technologies,which can be placed throughout the grid to increase flexibility, can provide serviceacross all three of those functions. But the jurisdictional boundaries that have beendrawn around those functions have created barriers that restrict energy storagetechnologies from achieving their full potential. This review analyzes regulatory changes made to reduce barriers to storage deployment and their broader impacts on energy regulation in the U.S. Recent Findings Major energy regulations promulgated at the state and federal levels have generally focused on liberalizing the U.S. electric system through deregulation and increased competition. Paradoxically, however, these efforts have erected strict regulatory barriers that prevent energy storage technologies from providing service across multiple functions. A new wave of regulations in recent years has endeavored to reduce and remove those barriers. Summary Energy regulations adopted in recent years to reduce barriers to energy storage functionality in recent years have had deep and far-reaching impacts on U.S. electric regulation. These impacts go beyond storage and affect all energy technologies. This paper traces the development of energy regulation in U.S., the functional barriers that they created that impede energy storage functionality, recent efforts to remove those barriers, and the broader effects of those efforts. It concludes with a brief discussion of remaining barriers that prevent energy storage from reaching their full potential on the U.S. electric grid.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Integrating Resilience Planning in Distribution System Planning

Electric utilities, regulators, and stakeholders face increasing risks of severe storms, freezes, floods, and heat waves damaging grid infrastructure and causing power outages—and increasing risks of utility equipment igniting wildfires. At the same time, customer electricity rates have risen substantially in recent years, due in part to replacing aging infrastructure and improving resilience to natural hazards and physical threats. To address these challenges, utilities are beginning to move beyond traditional, siloed planning processes to balance resilience with other fundamental grid objectives such as affordability, reliability, safety, and serving new loads. This study presents a framework for states and utilities that want to advance integration of resilience and distribution planning processes to improve planning efficiency, better prioritize cost-effective grid expenditures, and balance planning objectives. The framework includes 7 key integration points between these planning processes: -Strategy process -Data -Threat assessments -Solution identification and prioritization -Optimization opportunities -Consideration of other grid needs -Metrics Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reviewed utility distribution system plans and interviewed subject matter experts to identify emerging practices for each of the 7 integration points. This report presents these practices, which can be used as a guide toward more holistic planning and cohesive investment strategies. It also includes 3 case studies to provide practical examples of how utilities apply such integrated planning processes: two pole hardening programs and one microgrid planning effort. The report concludes by identifying opportunities for future research.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

An Uncertainty Management Framework for Integrated Gas-Electric Energy Systems

In many parts of the world, electric power systems have seen a significant shift toward generation from renewable energy and natural gas. Because of their ability to flexibly adjust power generation in real time, gas-fired power plants are frequently seen as the perfect partner for variable renewable generation. However, this reliance on gas generation increases interdependence and propagates uncertainty between power grids and gas pipelines and brings coordination and uncertainty management challenges. To address these issues, we propose an uncertainty management framework for uncertain, but bounded gas consumption by gas-fired power plants. The admissible ranges are computed based on a joint optimization problem for the combined gas and electricity networks, which involves chance-constrained scheduling for the electric grid and a novel robust optimization formulation for the natural-gas network. This formulation ensures feasibility of the integrated system with a high probability, while providing a tractable numerical formulation. A key advance with respect to existing methods is that our method is based on a physically accurate, validated model for transient gas pipeline flows. Our case study benchmarks our proposed formulation against methods that ignore how reserve activation impacts the fuel use of gas power plants and only consider predetermined gas consumption. Here, the results demonstrate the importance of considering uncertainty to avoid operating constraint violations and curtailment of gas to the generators.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗