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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 937 records · Page 52
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

A new database of building-space-specific internal loads and load schedules for performance based code compliance modeling of commercial buildings

Building-level loads and load profiles prescribed by current modeling rules save modelers time and avoid gaming during whole building performance modeling. However, recent studies show that they sometimes insufficiently capture the entire building performance due to the varied loads and load profiles for different space types. As a solution to this issue, this paper develops a database of building-space-specific loads and load profiles used in code compliance modeling. The existing sets of loads and load profiles are reviewed and the challenges behind using them for specific research topics are discussed. Then, the proposed method to develop the building-space-specific loads and load profiles is introduced. After that, the database for these building-space-specific loads and load profiles is presented. In addition, one case is studied to demonstrate the applications of these loads and load profiles. In this case study, three methods are used to develop building energy models: space-specific (using knowledge of the distribution and location of space types and applying the space-specific data in the developed database), building-level (assuming a lack of knowledge of the space types and using the building-level data in the developed database), and calculated-ratio (assuming knowledge of the distribution of space types but not their locations and calculating weighted average values based on the space-specific data in the developed database). Finally, the energy results simulated by using these three methods are compared, which show building-level methods can produce energy results up to 20% different than the space-specific methods. Finally, this paper discusses the application scope and maintenance of this new database.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Modeling fluid phase equilibria of carbon dioxide-methanol binary system

Accurate fluid phase equilibria modeling of carbon dioxide-methanol binary system is essential for numerous industrial applications. Prior modeling studies were limited in scope in terms of temperature and pressure ranges. In this study, the phase equilibria behavior of the binary system is modeled with cubic equations-of-state (EoS) including Peng-Robinson (PR) and Soave-Redlich-Kwong with various mixing rules, Predictive Soave-Redlich-Kwong, Cubic Plus Association, and Perturbed-Chain Statistical Associating Fluid Theory. Among them, the classical PR EoS and its variants yield the overall best results in representing the phase behavior at temperature above 330 K. Furthermore, PR incorrectly predicts two liquid phases when the CO 2 mole fraction exceeds ~ 0.4 at temperature lower than 330 K. Raoult’s law with the classical nonrandom two-liquid excess Gibbs energy model is recommended for the low temperature conditions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

AlphaBuilding - Synthetic Buildings Operation Dataset

This is a synthetic building operation dataset which includes HVAC, lighting, miscellaneous electric loads (MELs) system operating conditions, occupant counts, environmental parameters, end-use and whole-building energy consumptions at 10-minute intervals. The data is created with 1395 annual simulations using the U.S. DOE detailed medium-sized reference office building, and 30 years' historical weather data in three typical climates including Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago. Three energy efficiency levels of the building and systems are considered. Assumptions regarding occupant movements, occupants' diverse temperature preferences, lighting, and MELs are adopted to reflect realistic building operations. A semantic building metadata schema - BRICK, is used to store the building metadata. The dataset is saved in a 1.2 TB of compressed HDF5 file. This dataset can be used in various applications, including building energy and load shape benchmarking, energy model calibration, evaluation of occupant and weather variability and their influences on building performance, algorithm development and testing for thermal and energy load prediction, model predictive control, policy development for reinforcement learning based building controls.

AlphaBuilding↗
DOE OSTI2019

Improvements to PVWatts for Fixed and One-Axis Tracking Systems

This work presents improvements to the widely used NREL PVWatts photovoltaic system energy model to improve modeling accuracy for typical fixed and one axis system designs. These improvements allow users to more credibly and quickly evaluate competing system designs in early stage feasibility, and are shown to improve PVWatts' system performance prediction capabilities without major impact to ease of use.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Impact of Residential Mechanical Ventilation on Energy Cost and Humidity Control

The DOE Building America program has been conducting research leading to cost effective high performance homes since the early 1990's. Optimizing whole house mechanical ventilation as part of the program's systems engineered approach to constructing housing has been an important subject of the program's research. Ventilation in residential buildings is one component of an effective, comprehensive strategy for creation and maintenance of a comfortable and healthy indoor air environment. The study described in this white paper is based on building energy modeling with an important focus on the indoor humidity impacts of ventilation. The modeling tools used were EnergyPlus version 7.1 (E+) and EnergyGauge USA (EGUSA). Twelve U.S. cities and five climate zones were represented. A total of 864 simulations (2*2*3*3*12= 864) were run using two building archetypes, two building leakage rates, two building orientations, three ventilation systems, three ventilation rates, and twelve climates.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2014

Impact of Residential Mechanical Ventilation on Energy Cost and Humidity Control

Optimizing whole house mechanical ventilation as part of the Building America program's systems engineered approach to constructing housing has been an important subject of the program's research. Ventilation in residential buildings is one component of an effective, comprehensive strategy for creation and maintenance of a comfortable and healthy indoor air environment. The study described in this report is based on building energy modeling with an important focus on the indoor humidity impacts of ventilation. The modeling tools used were EnergyPlus version 7.1 (E+) and EnergyGauge USA (EGUSA). Twelve U.S. cities and five climate zones were represented. A total of 864 simulations (2*2*3*3*12= 864) were run using two building archetypes, two building leakage rates, two building orientations, three ventilation systems, three ventilation rates, and twelve climates.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

diyepw: A Python package for Do-It-Yourself EnergyPlus weather file generation

diyepw allows for quick and easy generation of a set of EnergyPlus weather (EPW) files for a given location over a given historical period. The user can obtain weather files using an open-source, automated workflow by simply specifying the location of interest using the World Meteorological Organization weather station ID number, and specifying a year or set of years for which to generate EPW files. Building energy modelers can use these auto-generated weather files in building performance simulations to represent the actual observed weather conditions in the location(s) of interest, based on meteorological observations obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Integrated Surface Database. Because observed weather data are not available for every meteorological variable specified in the EPW format, diyepw starts with a widely-used set of typical meteorological year (TMY) files, using them as the template to generate new EPW files by substituting in the observed values of selected meteorological variables that are known to affect building energy performance. Its output is a weather file or group of weather files that conform to the data standards associated with the EPW format so they can be used with any building performance simulation software employing EnergyPlus as its simulation engine.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

CityBES v2021

City Buildings, Energy, and Sustainability (CityBES) is a web-based data and computing platform, focusing on energy modeling and analysis of a city's building stock to support district or city-scale building energy efficiency programs. CityBES uses an international open data standard, CityGML, to represent and exchange 3D city models. CityBES employs EnergyPlus to simulate building energy use and savings from energy efficient retrofits. Other CityBES features include energy benchmarking, district heating and cooling system modeling, rooftop PV analysis, building performance visualization, heat resilience modeling, as well as urban scale mapping of microclimate and heat vulnerability at census tract level. Different from other tools, CityBES uses integrated open and standard 3D city building data and models each individual building using EnergyPlus. CityBES can be used by urban planners, city energy managers, building owners, utilities, energy consultants and researchers.

Hong, Tianzhen↗
DOE OSTI2019

Influence of Gaussian disorder and exponential traps on charge carriers transport and recombination in single layer polymer light-emitting diodes based on PFO as emitting layer

In this paper, we study the transport and recombination mechanisms of charge carriers in a single layer PLED device based on PFO as emitting layer with considering Gaussian disorder, exponential distribution of traps, Poole–Frankel type field dependent hopping mobility and field independent effective transport hopping energy models. For this purpose, we use the one-dimensional and time-independent drift–diffusion model for simulation of electrical and optical characteristics of the PFO based PLED devices such as current density–luminance–voltage (J–L–V), recombination rate and singlet exciton density profile in steady-state and room temperature conditions. Also, we study the influence of the characteristic temperature and density of electron traps on the performance of devices at different voltages. Another topic is analyzing the current density–voltage characteristics of uni-polar devices (hole only or electron only) by using the well known expressions for trap-limited current and space charge-limited current and comparing them with simulation results.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Configurational entropy of hydrogen-disordered ice polymorphs

The configurational entropy of several H-disordered ice polymorphs is calculated by means of a thermodynamic integration along a path between a totally H-disordered state and one fulfilling the Bernal-Fowler ice rules. A Monte Carlo procedure based on a simple energy model is used, so that the employed thermodynamic path drives the system from high temperatures to the low-temperature limit. This method turns out to be precise enough to give reliable values for the configurational entropy s{sub th} of different ice phases in the thermodynamic limit (number of molecules N → ∞). The precision of the method is checked for the ice model on a two-dimensional square lattice. Results for the configurational entropy are given for H-disordered arrangements on several polymorphs, including ices Ih, Ic, II, III, IV, V, VI, and XII. The highest and lowest entropy values correspond to ices VI and XII, respectively, with a difference of 3.3% between them. The dependence of the entropy on the ice structures has been rationalized by comparing it with structural parameters of the various polymorphs, such as the mean ring size. A particularly good correlation has been found between the configurational entropy and the connective constant derived from self-avoiding walks on the ice networks.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

Parameter space for range of bare graviton mass in an FLRW universe based on dRGT massive gravity theory

We discuss the existence of graviton in a Friedmann–Lemaitre–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric of isotropic and homogeneous universe based on de Rham–Gabadadze–Tolley (dRGT) nonlinear massive gravity theory. We consider a similar FLRW fiducial metric in the formulation that lead to a Friedmann–Lemaitre equation similar to the case of cosmological constant based dark energy model. We show that these equations can be constructed by considering a constraint equation found from varying the corresponding action with respect to the fiducial metric. Under a specific choice of fiducial metric lapse function, we determine the range of present cosmological time bare graviton mass in a parameter space by considering the observed cosmological constant density parameter and the related Higuchi bound for the lower dressed graviton mass value. The existence of an indefinite condition in the corresponding parameter space is also discussed and analyzed, as well as the characteristics of the related bare graviton mass and the strong-coupling scale quantity.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Constraints on the dark matter and dark energy interactions from weak lensing bispectrum tomography

We estimate uncertainties of cosmological parameters for phenomenological interacting dark energy models using weak lensing convergence power spectrum and bispectrum. We focus on the bispectrum tomography and examine how well the weak lensing bispectrum with tomography can constrain the interactions between dark sectors, as well as other cosmological parameters. Employing the Fisher matrix analysis, we forecast parameter uncertainties derived from weak lensing bispectra with a two-bin tomography and place upper bounds on strength of the interactions between the dark sectors. The cosmic shear will be measured from upcoming weak lensing surveys with high sensitivity, thus it enables us to use the higher order correlation functions of weak lensing to constrain the interaction between dark sectors and will potentially provide more stringent results with other observations combined.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Building Energy Codes and Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings: How building energy codes can enable a more dynamic and energy-efficient built environment

This report considers the role of national model codes to promote grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) as part of the modernization of the U.S. electricity grid. It introduces GEBs, describes their ability to support a clean, resilient grid, and considers challenges and approaches for incorporating GEB measures into national model energy codes and standards. Desirable traits of GEB include being low energy, low peaking, and responsive to grid needs, and minimizing the curtailment of renewable energy resources. In addition, the future grid incurs a time and locational value on these types of building services. Accounting for these considerations in future code development requires a continuation and expansion of code-minimum energy efficiency requirements and inclusion of demand responsive and load flexibility measures while ensuring annual use and cost reductions. Also, efforts to include GEB measures in codes will be limited until they are fully developed into an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-approved standard. Then it would be straightforward to address GEB measures through points or packages and/or scoring requirements. Otherwise, the building code would have to describe each specific grid responsive strategy. This document reviews topics pertinent to considering codes in this context. Specifically, the study presents the status and direction of current building energy codes, the future smart grid, low-energy buildings, and grid-integrated buildings. The report concludes with recommendations for future code development activities to support low-energy, grid-interactive buildings in order to provide added value to building owners, the grid, and society.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2018

Forecasting Peak Electricity Demand for Los Angeles Considering Higher Air Temperatures due to Climate Change

We report that Los Angeles County (LAC) is a large urbanized region with 9.7 million residents (as of 2010) and aging infrastructure. Population forecasts indicate that LAC will become home to an additional 1.2-3.1 million residents through 2060. Additionally, climate forecasts based upon representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 indicate that average air temperatures will increase by 1-4 degrees C (2-7 degrees F) in the region. Both of these factors are expected to result in higher summertime peak electricity demand due to growth in the number of buildings, the percentage of installed air conditioners (ACs), and the additional cooling load on those air conditioners. In order to understand potential power reliability issues, and support infrastructure planning efforts, a long-term peak demand forecast was developed using hourly residential and commercial (R&C) building energy models. Peak hour electricity demand was estimated to increase from 9.5 to 12.8 GW for R&C sectors, to 13.0-17.3 GW (2-36%) and 14.7-19.2 GW (16-51%) by 2060 for the population forecasts from the California Department of Finance and the Southern California Association of Governments respectively. While marginal increases in ambient air temperature due to climate change accounted for only 4-8% of future increases in peak demand, differences in annual maximum temperatures within the 20-year periods affected results by 40-66% indicating a high sensitivity to heat waves. Population growth of at least 1 million people is anticipated to occur mostly in the northern cities of Palmdale, Lancaster, and Santa Clarita, bringing an additional 0.4-1 GW of peak demand in those regions. Building and AC efficiency are anticipated to improve as national and state efficiency standards increase, and as older, less efficient units are replaced; this could offset some of the projected increases in peak demand. Furthermore, development of shared wall, multi-family dwelling units could enable population growth of up to 3 million people without increasing peak demand.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Modeling crossed-beam energy transfer for inertial confinement fusion

We developed a numerical code that describes both the energy transfer occurring when two or more laser beams overlap in a weakly non-homogeneous plasma, and the beam energy losses associated with the electron-ion collisions. The numerical solutions are validated with both the exact analytical solutions in homogeneous plasmas, and with new approximate analytical solutions in non-homogeneous plasmas that include the aforementioned inverse bremsstrahlung effect. Comparisons with kinetic particle-in-cell simulations are satisfactory, provided the acoustic wave-breaking limit and the self-focusing regime are not reached. An application of the Cross-Beam Energy Transfer model is shown for a typical case of indirect-drive implosion in a gold hohlraum.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Evaluating long-term model-based scenarios of the energy system

Energy-economic models are used to provide science-based decision support in a variety of contexts. Analyses using these tools often involve defining a “reference” scenario, which serves as a counterfactual against which alternative scenarios are compared. Evaluating scenarios, including reference scenarios, is critical for establishing the credibility of the analyses these models support. We propose a framework for evaluating energy system scenarios which consists of three parts – a qualitative storyline, quantitative metrics, and evaluation criteria. We apply this framework to the reference scenario for GCAM-USA, a version of the global human-Earth system model GCAM (Global Change Assessment Model) with state-level detail in the United States, focusing on the evolution of the electric power sector. We develop new visual analytic tools to facilitate the evaluation of model outcomes in 51 sub-national regions, and demonstrate how scenario performance can be tracked and compared across four quantifications of the GCAM-USA reference scenario.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗