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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 811 records · Page 45
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

LA100 Equity Strategies. Chapter 9: Equitable Community Solar Access and Benefits

The LA100 Equity Strategies project integrates community guidance with robust research, modeling, and analysis to identify strategy options that can increase equitable outcomes in Los Angeles' clean energy transition. This chapter focuses on community solar as a means to provide equitable access to local solar and storage benefits in Los Angeles. Specifically, NREL identified potential community solar sites that could host 30 kilowatts (kW)1 of solar or more and evaluated economic and equity metrics under various program design options. Analysis included a Baseline scenario (business-as-usual) and an Equity scenario, which modeled program enhancements to increase access and benefits to low-income customers. Both scenarios modeled the economics of solar and storage under the LADWP Feed-in Tariff (FiT) program (LADWP 2023b) and the LADWP Feed-in-Tariff Plus Pilot program (LADWP 2023d) compared to a community solar financial model. This research was guided by input from the community engagement process, and associated equity strategies are presented in alignment with that guidance.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Software defined grid energy storage

Today, consumer battery installations are isolated, physical devices. Virtual power plants (VPPs) allow consumer devices to aggregate for grid services, but they are are vertically integrated, vendor controlled systems (e.g., Tesla’s VPP). Consumer batteries are therefore unable to participate in energy markets or other grid services outside what their vendor provides. We describe a software system that provides software control of multiple, networked battery energy storage systems in the electric grid. The system introduces two new ideas that enable flexible and dependable management of energy storage. The first is a virtual battery, which can either partition a battery or aggregate multiple batteries. The second is a reservation-based API which allows asynchronous control of batteries to meet contractual guarantees in a safe and dependable manner. Virtual batteries and a reservation-based API address the unique challenges of achieving high and efficient utilization of energy storage systems, including heterogeneity of battery systems such as varying C-rates, participation in energy markets, utility bill management systems, community resource sharing, and reliability. Using a testbed comprised of sonnen Inc. storage units installed in several homes and a lab, we demonstrate that virtualized batteries can seamlessly replace physical batteries, flexibly manage energy storage resources, isolate multiple clients using a shared battery, and create new energy storage applications.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Multi-package development at Fermilab with Spack

The Spack package manager has been widely adopted in the supercomputing community as a means of providing consistently built on-demand software for the platform of interest. Members of the high-energy and nuclear physics (HENP) community, in turn, have recognized Spack’s strengths, used it for their own projects, and even become active Spack developers to better support HENP needs. Code development in a Spack context, however, can be challenging as the provision of external software via Spack must integrate with the developed packages’ build systems. Spack’s own development features can be used for this task, but they tend to be inefficient and cumbersome. We present a solution pursued at Fermilab called MPD (multi-package development). MPD aims to facilitate the development of multiple Spack-based packages in concert without the overhead of Spack’s own development facilities. In addition, MPD allows physicists to create multiple development projects with an interface that insulates users from the many commands required to use Spack well.

Knoepfel, Kyle James [Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2020

DER Planning with Resilience Analysis Using REopt Lite: A Behind-the-Meter Techno-Economic Analysis Tool

REopt Lite is a techno-economic decision support model for behind-the-meter energy systems design and dispatch modeling. REopt Lite is used to optimize energy systems for buildings, campuses, communities, and microgrids. It is based on a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimization model. It is a fully automated and streamlined energy modeling tool that can be used off-the-shelf for a wide variety of distributed generation integration analyses and at the same time is architected to be extensible for user-specific customizations for advanced users and subject matter experts. It is publicly available as a webtool as well as has an Application Programming Interface (API). The API functionality enables programmatic access to the model facilitating smooth integration with other distribution systems modeling tools, and automated multiple scenarios/sensitivity studies.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Recent Advances in Assessing Environmental Effects of Marine Renewable Energy Around the World

Marine renewable energy (MRE) is increasingly of interest to coastal nations as a source of renewable energy that can support climate change mitigation goals as well as provide secure locally-produced energy for coastal and island communities. MRE extracts power from tidal streams, waves, ocean currents, run of rivers, and gradients in the ocean, with specialized devices developed and tested for each energy resource. Alongside development of MRE technologies and systems, first in Europe and then in North America, Australia, Asia, and other regions, it has been universally recognized that there is also a need to examine potential effects on marine animals, habitats, ecosystem processes, local communities and other sea users, to ensure that the MRE industry can be developed in a responsible and sustainable manner. This paper looks at the status of assessment and monitoring for potential environmental effects associated with MRE projects around the world. Over 80 projects were identified worldwide as having been tested, demonstrated, or commercially deployed with associated environmental monitoring. Five of the projects that represent tidal stream, wave, and run of river projects are examined in more detail to determine the types of data and information collected for those projects, the outputs of the monitoring campaigns, and the actions taken as a result of the data collection and analysis. Recommendations are provided for standardization of the monitoring approaches, instruments, and analysis methods at MRE project sites worldwide.

marine renewable energy, environmental effects, ri↗
DOE OSTI2025

2024 Stor4Build Annual Meeting: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities in Thermal Energy Storage for Buildings

In late August 2024, Stor4Build brought nearly 80 stakeholders from the thermal energy storage industry to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), including researchers, startups, electric utilities, nonprofits, implementers, state energy efficiency offices, and original equipment manufacturers. During the two-day Stor4Build Annual Meeting, participants engaged in vital discussions about the current challenges and opportunities for scaling thermal energy storage solutions in buildings. The event featured panel discussions led by leading technology experts and industry practitioners, as well as updates on Stor4Build–funded projects from national laboratories, highlighting advancements in the thermal energy storage field crucial to achieving the consortium’s mission.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Grid Value Proposition of Marine Energy

Marine energy technologies convert the energy of ocean waves, and tidal, river, and ocean currents into electricity and other forms of usable energy. The marine energy resource potential in the United States is significant and geographically diverse, with a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy estimating that the nation’s annual marine energy potential is approximately 2,300 TWh/year across the 50 states, or greater than 57 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2019. However, the marine energy industry still faces hurdles to commercialization. While high costs relative to wind and solar remain a key challenge, other hurdles relate to marine energy’s value streams not being well characterized and not captured by traditional energy comparison metrics like the levelized cost of energy. To address this challenge, this project undertakes several types of analyses to identify and illustrate value propositions for marine energy resources. It provides a fresh framework for considering electric system benefits based on unique marine energy attributes, and provides analyses illustrating and quantifying those benefits. The authors find many opportunities for the deployment of marine energy technologies both in the near term and within typical utility planning timeframes (i.e. up to 20 years). From a resource and technology perspective, marine energy resources can deliver distinct and valuable benefits to different configurations of the grid, whether the bulk system, isolated distribution systems, or remote communities, islands, and microgrids. Marine energy resources can be valuable in increasing technology diversity in a generation portfolio, providing energy where it is otherwise difficult to come by, supporting local resiliency, complementing and being complemented by other resources including solar, wind, and energy storage, and avoiding land constraints.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2022

Understanding Costs Associated with Wind Energy Opposition and Stakeholder Engagement

Wind energy social science research historically focused on the social acceptance of wind energy development. Research in this field is robust, and scholars have identified drivers influencing attitudes and acceptance. The criteria defining the opposition of wind energy, and their costs, although related, are less well understood. This gap in research includes the costs of delayed and failed projects to communities and developers. The International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 28 - The Social Science of Wind Energy Acceptance outlined a work package to help answer that question. The first deliverable for IEA Wind Task 28, Work Package 2, was an annotated bibliography that identified key pieces of literature that quantify the costs of opposition to wind projects. Although there is a robust wind social acceptance literature, our efforts highlighted that there has been little research directly quantifying the cost of opposition, engagement, delays, and failures. To directly summarize the appropriate literature and provide context for potential future work, the literature review ranged from directly relevant articles to works providing context and valuable information for our research objective in the future. This associated deliverable, a briefing document summarizing the outcomes of our literature search, is meant to guide future research on opposition to wind energy for IEA Task 28 and beyond.

opposition↗
DOE OSTI2025

Multi-package development at Fermilab with Spack

The Spack package manager has been widely adopted in the supercomputing community as a means of providing consistently-built on-demand software for the platform of interest. Members of the high-energy and nuclear physics (HENP) community, in turn, have recognized Spack’s strengths, used it for their own projects, and even become active Spack developers to better support HENP needs. Code development in a Spack context, however, can be challenging as the provision of external software via Spack must integrate with the developed packages’ build systems. Spack’s own development features can be used for this task, but they tend to be inefficient and cumbersome. \medskip We present a solution pursued at Fermilab called MPD (multi-package development). MPD aims to facilitate the development of multiple Spack-based packages in concert without the overhead of Spack’s own development facilities. In addition, MPD allows physicists to create multiple development projects with an interface that insulates users from the many commands required to use Spack well.

Knoepfel, Kyle [Fermilab] (ORCID:000000031433889X)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership (C-MAP) [Slides]

This informational webinar, held on Nov. 11, 2024, covered the structure, technical focus, and eligibility criteria for the first Request for Proposals (RFP) released by the Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership (C-MAP). Eligible communities are invited to propose a community-based microgrid development or improvement project for funding and/or technical assistance. C-MAP is a program led by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity with management and coordination by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. C-MAP will bring together many of the organizations that are working to understand, improve, and implement advanced microgrid energy systems in underserved and Indigenous communities in remote areas, facilitating a new forum for engagement and collaboration. Wraparound services from regional organizations will support the participating communities in microgrid operations as it relates to advancing their energy goals.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP) [Slides]

These slides describe the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP). They include the ETIPP goals, partner network, technical assistance types, project timeline, and quotations by some communities selected for ETIPP in FY21.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Solar Resource and Infrastructure Assessment for the Town of Blandford

This report is a solar resource and infrastructure assessment for the town of Blandford, Massachusetts. The assessment was funded through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Solar Energy Innovation Network (NREL SEIN) Solar in Rural Communities Program, as part of a project to develop a Community-Informed Proactive Solar Siting and Financing Model. As a first step, the project lead organization, UMass Clean Energy Extension prepared an assessment of existing infrastructure, resources, and potential solar development opportunities in participating municipalities, including Blandford. This assessment was designed to describe relevant bylaws and infrastructure within the town, identify the types of solar facilities that could be developed, and quantify the total space available for each type of facility. In this report, we reviewed existing electricity grid infrastructure, and the potential to interconnect additional solar facilities. At the present time, most distribution lines providing electricity to Blandford are over-saturated with authorized and proposed solar projects, and cannot accommodate additional solar projects to interconnect to the grid. We can expect significant upgrades to these circuits, if any of the in-process projects are to proceed, which might then free up additional capacity for new projects. There is one circuit which serves a section of North Blandford Road that is not over-saturated; for the immediate future, this is the most cost-effective location for new large-scale projects to be sited. Meanwhile, most three-phase lines could likely accommodate additional small-to-medium scale projects (under 200 kW), and most single-phase lines could likely accommodate additional projects under 50 kW in size. This description represents the local grid infrastructure as it is - planning for future scenarios of development could include recommendations for areas of grid infrastructure improvement to allow siting of distributed generation in preferred locations. Future scenarios may also include the addition energy storage and other "non-wires alternatives."

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

A conceptual framework for residential energy security in the context of clean energy transitions

Energy security is a crucial aspect of human well-being. As climate change impacts become more evident, countries are constructing equitable, resilient, and sustainable clean energy transition policies to reduce emissions while ensuring energy security. Climate policies globally highlight the importance of national energy security. Furthermore, adequate and affordable access to household energy is also critical to the continued prioritization of climate mitigation. However, past energy security discussions within the broader climate research and policymaking community primarily focused on national-level energy supply as a critical metric of energy security. Less research has explored the potential implications of energy transitions for residential energy security, often focusing on a single dimension of residential energy security. Thus, we conduct a review of journal articles and governmental plans to develop a conceptual framework of residential energy security and facilitate communication among researchers and policymakers. The framework is designed around four foundational pillars, five metrics measuring residential energy security, and seven drivers influencing the metrics. Additionally, we provide policy examples to show how this framework can be applied to inform decision-making. Thus, this paper makes important contributions to the literature by (a) creating a framework to better understand the concept of energy security at the household level for future research and policy-relevant communications, (b) identifying gaps in the current literature, and (c) highlighting instances where aspects of residential energy security are discussed in policies and governmental plans, which help serve as guiding examples for future applications of our framework in the policymaking processes.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2025

R&D Effort of Geologic Hydrogen Production at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL)

Geologic hydrogen (geoH2) is an emerging technology with massive current market interest and distinct potential to change the paradigm of hydrogen production. Two major subsurface processes influence the amount of geoH2 that are available for energy extraction: 1) geochemical reactions of H2O and Fe2+-bearing rocks which can produce hydrogen in the subsurface environment, where 2) various active microbial communities consume hydrogen as an energy source before the hydrogen reaches the surface. The net gain of hydrogen from these two competing processes dictates the production rate of geoH2. A recent study (Templeton et al., 2024) suggested that for most natural geoH2 systems, five orders of magnitude of production rate enhancement are needed to make geoH2 production economical in the near term. Effective enhancement of the production rate requires an in-depth understanding of the two geoH2 processes, in order to promote the H2-generating geochemical processes and suppress the H2-consuming microbial processes. However, current significant knowledge gaps in these two processes hinders the efforts to formulate strategies to enhance geoH2 production. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory with the core mission of leading research, innovation, and strategic partnership to deliver solutions for a clean energy based economy. NREL's extensive research portfolio in hydrogen, bioenergy, geothermal, industrial decarbonization, and energy analysis makes us well positioned to conduct interdisciplinary research and facilitate technology deployment in the geoH2 space. In this presentation, we will discuss ongoing geoH2 research and engagement efforts at NREL, including: 1) geochemical investigation to understand the reaction mechanisms and production rate and potential of different source minerals and rocks, 2) microbiological investigation to understand methanogenesis and acetogenesis in the subsurface geoH2 environment, and identify effective inhibitors for these microbial processes, and 3) preliminary analysis for geoH2 production in the State of Minnesota, where abundant Fe-rich rocks for stimulated geoH2 production and ample opportunity to utilize geoH2 in transforming iron and steel industries are currently available.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2024

Residential Home Repairs, Energy Efficiency, and Electrification in the Hill District of Pittsburgh [Slides]

Through Communities LEAP, a community coalition focused on the Hill District neighborhood of Pittsburgh is working with a technical assistance provider network led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The coalition includes community organizations, nonprofits, the city government, and the utility. Technical assistance provides analysis and information to support Hill District stakeholders in their goals to create informed residential energy efficiency and renewable energy transition strategies. This report summarizes the insights from stakeholder engagement with organizations that provide home repair services, weatherization, and residential energy efficiency in the Hill District as well as from a building analysis to characterize Hill District housing stock and the potential costs and benefits of energy efficiency and electrification measures.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Solar Resource and Infrastructure Assessment for the Town of Westhampton

This report is a solar resource and infrastructure assessment for the town of Westhampton, Massachusetts. The assessment was funded through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Solar Energy Innovation Network (NREL SEIN) Solar in Rural Communities Program, as part of a project to develop a Community-Informed Proactive Solar Siting and Financing Model. As a first step, the project lead organization, UMass Clean Energy Extension prepared an assessment of existing infrastructure, resources, and potential solar development opportunities in participating municipalities, including Westhampton. This assessment was designed to describe relevant bylaws and infrastructure within the town, identify the types of solar facilities that could be developed, and quantify the total space available for each type of facility. In this report, we reviewed existing electricity grid infrastructure, and the potential to interconnect additional solar facilities. At the present time, both distribution lines providing electricity to Westhampton are oversaturated with authorized and proposed solar projects, and cannot accommodate additional solar projects to interconnect to the grid. Future upgrades could potentially free up additional capacity for new, large projects. Meanwhile, most three-phase lines could likely accommodate additional small-to-medium scale projects (under 200 kW), and most single-phase lines could likely accommodate additional projects under 50 kW in size. This description represents the local grid infrastructure as it is - planning for future scenarios of development could include recommendations for areas of grid infrastructure improvement to allow siting of distributed generation in locations preferred by the community. Future scenarios may also include the addition energy storage and other "non-wires alternatives."

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Solar Resource and Infrastructure Assessment for the Town of Wendell

This report is a solar resource and infrastructure assessment for the town of Wendell, Massachusetts. The assessment was funded through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Solar Energy Innovation Network (NREL SEIN) Solar in Rural Communities Program, as part of a project to develop a Community-Informed Proactive Solar Siting and Financing Model. As a first step, the project lead organization, UMass Clean Energy Extension prepared an assessment of existing infrastructure, resources, and potential solar development opportunities in participating municipalities, including Wendell. This assessment was designed to describe relevant bylaws and infrastructure within the town, identify the types of solar facilities that could be developed, and quantify the total space available for each type of facility. In this report, we reviewed existing electricity grid infrastructure, and the potential to interconnect additional solar facilities. At the present time, both distribution lines providing electricity to Wendell are over-saturated with authorized and proposed solar projects, and cannot accommodate additional solar projects to interconnect to the grid. It appears that National Grid is planning an upgrade to the Wendell Depot substation, which might then allow in-process projects are to proceed, and potentially free up additional capacity for new, large projects. Meanwhile, most three-phase lines could likely accommodate additional small-to-medium scale projects (under 200 kW), and most single-phase lines could likely accommodate additional projects under 50 kW in size. This description represents the local grid infrastructure as it is - planning for future scenarios of development could include recommendations for areas of grid infrastructure improvement to allow siting of distributed generation in locations preferred by the community. Future scenarios may also include the addition energy storage and other "non-wires alternatives."

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗