National Community Solar Partnership: Municipal Utility Collaborative
This fact sheet is for the National Community Solar Partnerships and describes one of the collaborative groups within it.
solar, solar energy, community solar, national com↗
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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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National Community Solar Partnership: Multifamily Affordable Housing Collaborative
This fact sheet is for the National Community Solar Partnerships and describes one of the collaborative groups within it.
solar, solar energy, community solar, national com↗
(C2C): Clean Energy to Communities Annual Highlights 2023
C2C provides support to communities at any stage of their clean energy transition through three distinct offerings: in-depth partnerships, peer-learning cohorts, and expert match. This 2023 annual highlights report looks at the program's accomplishments since it launched in January 2023.
annual highlights↗
Decarbonizing all-electric communities via carbon-responsive control of behind-the-meter resources
The progression of electrification in the building and transportation sectors brings new opportunities for energy decarbonization. With higher dependence on the grid power supply, the variation of the grid carbon emission intensity can be utilized to reduce the carbon emissions from the two sectors. Existing coordinated control methods for buildings with distributed energy resources (DERs) either consider electricity price or renewable energy generation as the input signal, or adopt optimization in the decision-making, which is difficult to implement in the real-world environment. This paper aims to propose and validate an easy-to-deploy rule-based carbon responsive control framework that facilitates coordination between all-electric buildings and electric vehicles (EVs). The signals of the grid carbon emission intensity and the local photovoltaics (PV) generation are used for shifting the controllable loads. Extensive simulations were conducted using a model of an all-electric mixed-use community in a cold climate to validate the control performance with metrics such as emissions, energy consumption, peak demand, and EV end-of-day state-of-charge (SOC). Our study identifies that 4.5% to 27.1% of annual emission reduction can be achieved with limited impact on energy costs, peak demand, and thermal comfort. Additionally, up to 32.7% of EV emission reduction can be obtained if the EV owners reduce the target SOC by less than 21.2%.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Predicting spring phenology in deciduous broadleaf forests: NEON phenology forecasting community challenge
Accurate models are important to predict how global climate change will continue to alter plant phenology and near-term ecological forecasts can be used to iteratively improve models and evaluate predictions that are made a priori. The Ecological Forecasting Initiative's National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Forecasting Challenge, is an open challenge to the community to forecast daily greenness values, measured through digital images collected by the PhenoCam Network at NEON sites before the data are collected. For the first round of the challenge, which is presented here, we forecasted canopy greenness throughout the spring at eight deciduous broadleaf sites to investigate when, where, and for what model type phenology forecast skill is highest. A total of 192,536 predictions were submitted, representing eighteen models, including a persistence and a day of year mean null models. We found that overall forecast skill was highest when forecasting earlier in the greenup curve compared to the end, for shorter lead times, for sites that greened up earlier, and when submitting forecasts during times other than near budburst. The models based on day of year historical mean had the highest predictive skill across the challenge period. In this first round of the challenge, by synthesizing across forecasts, we started to elucidate what factors affect the predictive skill of near-term phenology forecasts.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Carbon emission responsive building control: A case study with an all-electric residential community in a cold climate
In the United States, buildings account for 35% of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, making them important contributors to decarbonization. Carbon intensities in the power grid are time-varying and can fluctuate significantly within hours, so shifting building loads in response to the carbon intensities can reduce a building’s operational carbon emissions. This paper presents a rule-based carbon responsive control framework that controls the setpoints of thermostatically controlled loads responding to the grid’s carbon emission signals in real time. Based on this framework, four controllers are proposed with different combinations of carbon accounting methods and control rules. To evaluate their performance, we performed simulation studies using models of a 27-home, all-electric, net zero energy residential community located in Basalt, Colorado, United States. The carbon intensity data of four future years from the Cambium data set are adopted to account for the evolving resource mix in the power grid. Various performance metrics, including energy consumption, carbon emission, energy cost, and thermal discomfort, were used to evaluate the performance of the controllers. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to determine how the control thresholds and intervals affect the controllers’ performance. Simulation results indicate that the carbon responsive controllers can reduce the homes’ annual carbon emissions by 6.0% to 20.5%. However, the energy consumption increased by 0.9% to 6.7%, except in one scenario where it decreased by 2.2%. Compared to the baseline, the change in energy cost was between –2.9% and 3.4%, and thermal discomfort was also maintained within an acceptable range. The little impact on energy cost and thermal discomfort indicates there are no potential roadblocks for customer acceptance when rolling out the controllers in utility programs.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Polysaccharide utilization loci in Bacteroides determine population fitness and community-level interactions
Polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs) are co-regulated bacterial genes that sense nutrients and enable glycan digestion. Human gut microbiome members, notably Bacteroides, contain numerous PULs that enable glycan utilization and shape ecological dynamics. To investigate the role of PULs on fitness and inter-species interactions, we develop a CRISPR-based genome editing tool to study 23 PULs in Bacteroides uniformis (BU). BU PULs show distinct glycan-degrading functions and transcriptional coordination that enables the population to adapt upon loss of other PULs. Exploiting a BU mutant barcoding strategy, we demonstrate that in vitro fitness and BU colonization in the murine gut are enhanced by deletion of specific PULs and modulated by glycan availability. PULs mediate glycan-dependent interactions with butyrate producers that depend on the degradation mechanism and glycan utilization ability of the butyrate producer. Thus, PULs determine community dynamics and butyrate production and provide a selective advantage or disadvantage depending on the nutritional landscape.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
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↗
Initial plant community responses to hardwood control treatments in restoration of remnant longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) woodlands
Changes in land use over the past century have contributed to substantial losses of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) woodlands in the southeastern USA and replacement with higher density, mixed pine and hardwood stands that suppress understory development and limit application of prescribed fire. To increase understanding of limiting factors and identify potential approaches for restoring longleaf pine woodlands, we studied in this work initial availability of light and soil water and 2-year (2018–2019) plant community responses after controlling overstory hardwoods in five remnant longleaf pine woodlands having no evidence of previous agriculture at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC, USA. Seven hardwood control treatments and a non-treated check were compared in a randomized compete block experiment: cutting, cutting + shredding of logging residues, stem injection with imazapyr herbicide, cutting + basal spray with imazapyr herbicide, cutting + basal spray with triclopyr herbicide, cutting + directed foliar spray with a mixture of glyphosate and imazapyr herbicides, and cutting + broadcast foliar spray with the same herbicide mixture. In the year prior to hardwood cutting (2016), understory light availability averaged 23% of full sun. Throughout the year of treatment installation (2017), average soil water content (SWC) was below permanent wilting point (5.5% SWC) where overstory hardwoods were retained; whereas, it was above wilting point (7.5%) where they had been cut. Thus, combined effects of shade and root competition from overstory hardwoods probably limited cover of herbaceous species in the non-treated check. In the 2 years following treatment, hardwood survival averaged > 99%, 62%, 42% and < 1% for the non-treated check, cutting, shredding, and herbicide treatments, respectively. Relative to the non-treated check, herbaceous species richness was increased by shredding, stem injection, basal spray, or directed foliar treatments; herbaceous cover was increased by basal spray or directed foliar treatments; and woody cover was decreased by directed or broadcast foliar treatments. The directed foliar spray was the most effective treatment for achieving many of the desired understory characteristics of a longleaf pine woodland, including a diverse understory dominated by herbaceous vegetation capable of supporting periodic prescribed fires. Although the imazapyr basal spray treatment increased cover of remnant woodland indicator species, none of the treatments increased richness of this species group, suggesting that restoration of native species composition will be expedited by enrichment seedings or plantings.
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
How do the research and public communities view biofuel development?
Understanding how public and research view biofuel development, especially the unsynchronized views, can explain the gaps between the actual biofuel production and consumption and the government mandates in the US. Applying a comparative text mining technique, these views are explored using 9924 news articles and 57,849 research abstracts. It is found both the public and research communities respond actively to major policy and incentive programs and market conditions and the public has been closely following important research advances. However, research and practice should be coordinated to achieve economies of scale for regular and alternative biofuels. Priority is particularly needed for policy research to support legislation and enforcement and remove technical barriers to commercialization; meanwhile, greater attention is needed to prompt the commercialization of mature technologies. In addition, sentiment analysis shows positive public perceptions in general and negative perceptions primarily stemming from fraud in biofuel tax-credit programs with minor concerns on unintended negative impacts of biofuel development and policy implementation issues. This study contributes to methodology by using cutting-edge text-mining techniques to the largest and most up-to-date datasets of public news articles and research publication abstracts so as to compare public and academic views on biofuel development. As a result, this study also contributes to knowledge discovery by providing new perspectives on biofuel development, which will support policy design and identify future research directions.
09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
Representation of Leaf-to-Canopy Radiative Transfer Processes Improves Simulation of Far-Red Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence in the Community Land Model Version 5
Recent advances in satellite observations of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provide a new opportunity to evaluate and constrain the simulation of terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP). Accurate representation of the processes driving SIF emission and the radiative transfer of SIF to remote sensing sensors is an essential prerequisite for the evaluation and data assimilation. Recently, SIF simulations have been incorporated into several land surface models, but the scaling of SIF from leaf-level to canopy level is usually not well-represented. In this work, we incorporate the simulation of far-red SIF observed at nadir into the Community Land Model version 5 (CLM5). An efficient and accurate method based on escape probability is developed to scale SIF from leaf-level to top-of-canopy while taking clumping and the radiative transfer processes into account. SIF simulated by CLM5 and a canopy-level model agreed well at sites except one in needle leaf forest (R2>0.91, root-mean-square error < 0.19W m -2 sr -1 um -1 ), and captured the day-to-day variation of tower-measured SIF at temperate forest sites (R 2 >0.68). At the global scale, simulated SIF generally captured the spatial and seasonal pat37 terns of satellite-observed SIF (R2 > 0.76 except for tropical forest). Factors including the fluorescence emission model, clumping, bidirectional effect, and canopy properties (leaf optical properties and leaf area index) had considerable impacts on SIF simulation, and the discrepancies between simulated and observed SIF varied with plant functional type. By improving the representation of radiative transfer for SIF simulation, our model allows better comparisons between simulated and observed SIF towards constraining and evaluating GPP simulations.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Severe, short-term sleep restriction reduces gut microbiota community richness but does not alter intestinal permeability in healthy young men
Sleep restriction alters gut microbiota composition and intestinal barrier function in rodents, but whether similar effects occur in humans is unclear. This study aimed to determine the effects of severe, short-term sleep restriction on gut microbiota composition and intestinal permeability in healthy adults. Fecal microbiota composition, measured by 16S rRNA sequencing, and intestinal permeability were measured in 19 healthy men (mean ± SD; BMI 24.4 ± 2.3 kg/m 2 , 20 ± 2 years) undergoing three consecutive nights of adequate sleep (AS; 7–9 h sleep/night) and restricted sleep (SR; 2 h sleep/night) in random order with controlled diet and physical activity. α-diversity measured by amplicon sequencing variant (ASV) richness was 21% lower during SR compared to AS (P = 0.03), but α-diversity measured by Shannon and Simpson indexes did not differ between conditions. Relative abundance of a single ASV within the family Ruminococcaceae was the only differentially abundant taxon (q = 0.20). No between-condition differences in intestinal permeability or β-diversity were observed. Findings indicated that severe, short-term sleep restriction reduced richness of the gut microbiota but otherwise minimally impacted community composition and did not affect intestinal permeability in healthy young men.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Multi-scenario Extreme Weather Simulator application to heat waves: Ko’olauloa community resilience hub
Heat waves are increasing in severity, duration, and frequency. The Multi-Scenario Extreme Weather Simulator (MEWS) models this using historical data, climate model outputs, and heat wave multipliers. In this study, MEWS is applied for planning of a community resilience hub in Hau'ula, Hawaii. The hub will have normal operations and resilience operations modes. Both these modes were modeled using EnergyPlus. The resilience operations mode includes cutting off air conditioning for many spaces to decrease power requirements during emergencies. Results were simulated for 300 future weather files generated by MEWS for 2020, 2040, 2060, and 2080. Shared socioeconomic pathways 2-4.5, 3-7.0 and 5-8.5 were used. The resilience operations mode results show two to six times increase of hours of exceedance beyond 32.2 °C from present conditions, depending on climate scenario and future year. The resulting decrease in thermal resilience enables an average decrease of energy use intensity of 26% with little sensitivity to climate change. The decreased thermal resilience predicted in the future is undesirable, but was not severe enough to require a more energy-intensive resilience mode. Instead, planning is needed to assure vulnerable individuals are given prioritized access to air-conditioned parts of the hub if worst-case heat waves occur.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Structured interactions drive abrupt transitions in the spatial organization of microbial communities
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Some of these mechanisms are species specific and enable cells to modulate their movement based on the ecological identity of neighboring species. Here, we introduce a model in which bacteria interact via local signals that either enhance or suppress the motility of neighboring cells depending on species type. Through large-scale simulations and a coarse-grained stochastic model, we demonstrate the emergence of a sharp transition driven by nucleation processes: increasing the density of motility-suppressing interactions drives the system from a fully mixed, motile phase to a state characterized by large, stationary bacterial clusters. Remarkably, in systems with a large number of interacting species, this transition can be triggered solely by altering the structure of the motility-regulation interaction matrix while maintaining species and interaction densities constant. In particular, we find that heterogeneous and modular interactions promote the transition more readily than homogeneous random ones. These findings add a dimension to the theory of motility-induced phase separation and contribute to the ongoing effort to understand microbial interactions, suggesting that structured, nonrandom ones may be key to reproducing commonly observed spatial patterns in microbial communities.
bacterial communities↗
Techno-Economic Analysis of a Microgrid System for Rural Communities in the United States
Access to running water has been a pressing issue in many developing countries across the globe, and also continues to be a problem in some rural areas in the United States. Today, more than two million Americans living in rural areas lack access to basic water supply and infrastructure. Rural communities tend to be located in environmentally fragile areas with poor economic conditions, making access to appropriate, low-cost technology for clean water supply and sanitation more challenging. In addition, many of the water resources located in these areas are being jeopardized by climate change in recent years. This research proposes a photovoltaic (PV)-battery microgrid system for powering water pumps in off-grid areas in an effort to identify economically and technologically feasible solution to the problems. Utilizing the HOMER Pro software, developed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the case of the Navajo Nation is examined by analyzing the effects of this region's air temperature on the life and performance of battery storage and the economics of the proposed microgrid system.
battery↗
A Secure and Adaptive Hierarchical Multi-Timescale Framework for Resilient Load Restoration Using a Community Microgrid
Distribution system integrated community microgrids (CMGs) can partake in restoring loads during extended duration outages. At such times, the CMGs are challenged with limited resource availability, absence of robust grid support, and heightened demand-supply uncertainty. Here, this paper proposes a secure and adaptive three-stage hierarchical multi-timescale framework for scheduling and real-time (RT) dispatch of CMGs with hybrid PV systems to address these challenges. The framework enables the CMG to dynamically expand its boundary to support the neighboring grid sections and is adaptive to the changing forecast error impacts. The first stage solves a stochastic extended duration scheduling (EDS) problem to obtain referral plans for optimal resource rationing. The intermediate near-real-time (NRT) scheduling stage updates the EDS schedule closer to the dispatch time using new obtained forecasts, followed by the RT dispatch stage. To make the decisions more secure and robust against forecast errors, a novel concept called delayed recourse is designed. The approach is evaluated via numerical simulations on a modified IEEE 123-bus system and validated using OpenDSS and hardware-in-loop simulations. The results show superior performance in maximizing load supply and continuous secure distribution network operation under different operating scenarios.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Habitat‐adapted microbial communities mediate Sphagnum peatmoss resilience to warming
Summary Sphagnum peatmosses are fundamental members of peatland ecosystems, where they contribute to the uptake and long‐term storage of atmospheric carbon. Warming threatens Sphagnum mosses and is known to alter the composition of their associated microbiome. Here, we use a microbiome transfer approach to test if microbiome thermal origin influences host plant thermotolerance. We leveraged an experimental whole‐ecosystem warming study to collect field‐grown Sphagnum , mechanically separate the associated microbiome and then transfer onto germ‐free laboratory Sphagnum for temperature experiments. Host and microbiome dynamics were assessed with growth analysis, Chl a fluorescence imaging, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and 16S rDNA profiling. Microbiomes originating from warming field conditions imparted enhanced thermotolerance and growth recovery at elevated temperatures. Metagenome and metatranscriptome analyses revealed that warming altered microbial community structure in a manner that induced the plant heat shock response, especially the HSP70 family and jasmonic acid production. The heat shock response was induced even without warming treatment in the laboratory, suggesting that the warm‐microbiome isolated from the field provided the host plant with thermal preconditioning. Our results demonstrate that microbes, which respond rapidly to temperature alterations, can play key roles in host plant growth response to rapidly changing environments.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Cross-Feedings, Competition, and Positive and Negative Synergies in a Four-Species Synthetic Community for Anaerobic Degradation of Cellulose to Methane
A synthetic community was designed using four microbial species that together performed distinct key metabolic processes in the anaerobic degradation of cellulose to methane and CO 2 . The microorganisms exhibited expected interactions, such as cross-feeding of acetate from a cellulolytic bacterium to an acetoclastic methanogen and competition of H 2 between a sulfate reducing bacterium and a hydrogenotrophic methanogen.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗