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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 OSTI2018

Alkali-Activated Cement Composites for High Temperature Goethermal Wells

Under the Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (DOE EERE) Geothermal Technologies Program (GTP), the scope of work at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) was aimed at developing and characterizing multifunctional high-temperature geothermal well cement composites. These materials are suitable for both conventional hydrothermal reservoirs at temperature of 300°C and enhanced geothermal system (EGS) environments at heating temperatures up to 600°C. The multifunctional cements were being developed with the following five advanced properties: 1) thermal shock (TS) resistance under 5 cycle heatingcooling water quenching tests, where one cycle involved heating at 500 or 600°C for 24 h and then quenching in 25°C water; 2) improved compressive toughness; 3) enhanced protection of carbon steel (CS) against brine-induced corrosion; 4) superior durability of the bond between the CS and cement surfaces; and 5) good resistance to pH 0.5 H 2 SO 4 solution at 90°C, compared to two conventional geothermal well cements (Class G modified with SiO 2 and calcium aluminum phosphate (CaP)). The latter cement was originally formulated and developed at BNL as a CO 2 - resistant cement under the previous GTP project. Unlike Class G, CaP is classified as a chemically bonded cement; namely, chemical reactions are responsible for strengthening the cement at an earlier curing stage.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

National Wind Technology Center-Characterization of Atmospheric Conditions

Data provided by the instrumentation located at the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) is compiled below for the purposes of characterizing the atmospheric operating conditions at the National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) wind site. Conditions are presented conditioned on month of the year to show seasonal variation, and based on characteristic quantities seen in the atmospheric flow including, bulk wind speed, direction, and atmospheric stability. All data reported and analyzed in the following document were collected from instrumentation mounted on the 135 m-tall masts erected at the NWTC near Boulder, Colorado. Each of the two met-masts (named M4 and M5) were sited specifically to measure the inflow wind to several of the utility-scale turbines at the NWTC. The construction, operation, and maintenance of the masts has been supported since their commissioning in 2011 by the Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Wind and Water Power Program. Data from the masts are publicly available for download or basic visualization, hosted on NREL's website (https://nwtc.nrel.gov/135mData). Data from the masts have been used in the past for a wide range of projects including wind turbine power performance measurements, high fidelity model development and validation, and atmospheric science research. An interactive visualization platform has been developed on NREL's Open Energy Information platform and can be used to reproduce many of the graphics included in the current work. This report describes in detail the atmospheric conditions recorded by M5, the inflow mast for the DOE-owned GE 1.5 MW wind turbine. The report focuses on data recorded from August 2012 to May 2018 and includes: an introduction to the wind climate at the NWTC; a physical description of the met masts; a review of installed instrumentation; and data collection, processing, and quality control methods. In addition to a concise description of the instrumentation from the met masts and the data channels they provide, this report characterizes the behavior of the atmospheric resource first in a cumulative sense, discussing mainly the distributions wind speeds, flow directions and thermodynamic properties at several heights along the towers. Periodicity in atmospheric conditions is then detailed through analysis of diurnal and annual cycles of the data streams. Periods of both low turbulence and extreme atmospheric events that are of interest in terms of wind turbine operation and wind energy research are detailed in the final chapter of this report. Low turbulence events are somewhat rare at the NWTC and are of interest from the perspective of validating the operation of new wind turbine and blade designs. Similarly, the NTWC is known for a relatively higher rate of occurrence of extreme weather events.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Analyzing the Impact of Future Weather Data on Energy Consumption in Weatherization Assistant

This study supports the mission of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), which aims to increase the energy efficiency of dwellings and reduce their total residential expenditures. Specifically, we examine how projected future climate conditions may affect residential building energy performance by integrating future weather data into the National Energy Audit Tool (NEAT). Since WAP evaluates the cost-effectiveness of retrofit measures over lifespans of up to 30 years, accounting for evolving climate conditions is increasingly important. To reflect future household energy demands, this study replaces historically based Typical Meteorological Year (TMY3) weather inputs with Future Typical Meteorological Year (fTMY) datasets derived from global climate model (GCM) projections. A simulation-based framework was established to enable NEAT analysis under future weather conditions. This workflow involves converting EPW-format weather files into JSON inputs compatible with NEAT and generating degree-hour metrics needed for load calculations. The fTMY dataset used in this study was developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory through downscaling of six GCMs under different emission scenarios and covers the period from 2020 to 2100. In contrast, the TMY3 dataset is based on historical weather data from 1961 to 1990. Simulations were conducted for benchmark single-family prototype buildings across ASHRAE climate zones 1–7, which cover all regions of the U.S. except the subarctic Zone 8 in northern Alaska, evaluating both heating and cooling loads under TMY3 and fTMY conditions. Four foundation types were tested, while heating systems were standardized, as NEAT does not differentiate thermal energy load by HVAC system type in its load calculations. Results show that fTMY weather input consistently yield lower heating loads and higher cooling loads across most locations, aligning with expected climate warming trends. Notably, colder regions such as zones 6A, 6B, and 7 experience marked reductions in heating load, while warmer and transitional zones, such as 2A (Lufkin, TX) and 3C (San Francisco, CA), have substantial increases in cooling loads. Although this study does not directly assess the performance of retrofit measures under future climate conditions, it provides a critical foundation for doing so. By quantifying shifts in baseline (i.e., pre-retrofit case) energy loads between historical and future weather files, the study highlights the importance of integrating climate-responsive data into audit tools. These findings will inform future efforts to evaluate the long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of weatherization measures under changing climate conditions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS1985

Demonstration of relaxed static stability on a commercial transport

The application of relaxed static stability was studied under a program to determine ways of improving the energy efficiency in current and future transport aircraft. Pitch active control systems (PACs) were developed for application in the near term to current aircraft and in the next generation to advanced aircrft of the future. Analyses identified potential drag benefits of: (1) 2% for current transport aircraft with neutral stability; and (2) as much as 17% for next generation aircraft with high aspect ratio supercritical wings which must operate 10 to 15% statistically unstable to achieve optimum performance. Flight test evaluations of the near-term PACs were conducted to a 3% mean aerodynamic chord (MAC) negative static margin on a Lockheed L-1011 aircraft. The advanced PACs was demonstrated to a 20% MAC negative static margin on a piloted visual motion simulator at the NASA Langley Research Center. Test results for both systems showed flying qualities characteristics as good as current conventional aircraft.

Rising, J. J.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Demonstration of relaxed static stability on a commercial transport

Increasing jet aircraft fuel costs from 25 percent to nearly 60 percent of the aircraft direct operating costs have led to a heavy emphasis on the development of transport aircraft with significantly improved aerodynamic performance. The application of the concept of relaxed static stability (RSS) and the utilization of an active control stability augmentation system make it possible to design an aircraft with reduced aerodynamic trim drag due to a farther-aft cg balance. Reduced aerodynamic parasite drag and lower structural weight due to a smaller horizontal tail surface can also be obtained. The application of RSS has been studied under a NASA-sponsored program to determine ways of improving the energy efficiency in current and future transport aircraft. Attention is given to a near-term pitch active control system, an advanced pitch active control system, and an operational overview.

Rising, J. J.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Energy Systems Design

PRESTO, a COSMIC program, handles energy system specifications and predicts design efficiency of cogeneration systems. These systems allow a company to use excess energy produced to generate electricity. PRESTO is utilized by the Energy Systems Division of Thermo Electron Corporation in the custom design of cogeneration systems.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2011

NREL Research Participant Program

The mission of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is to lead the nation toward a clean energy future. To achieve this mission, NREL must gather and engage the finest talents for our energy programs. That's one reason NREL provides resources and opportunities for innovative research and thought leadership through our Research Participant Programs. Whether you choose to participate in energy efficiency and renewable energy research, our Energy Analysis or NREL's commercialization and deployment disciplines, you will find unique and impactful opportunities across the lab.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Thin Silicon Solar Cells: A Path to 35% Shockley-Queisser Limits

Crystalline silicon technology is expected to remain the leading photovoltaic industry workhorse for decades. We present here the objectives and workplan of a recently launched project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Foundational Program to Advance Cell Efficiency II (FPACE II), which aims at leading crystalline silicon to an efficiency breakthrough. The project will tackle fundamental approach of materials design, defect engineering, device simulations and materials growth and characterization. Among the main novelties, the implementation of carrier selective contacts made of wide bandgap material or stack of materials is investigated for improved passivation, carrier extraction and carrier transport. Based on an initial selection of candidate materials, preliminary experiments are conducted to verify the suitability of their critical parameters as well as preservation of the silicon substrate surface and bulk properties. The target materials include III-V and metal-oxide materials.

Ding, Laura↗
DOE OSTI2011

Small Business Innovation Research Award Success Story: FuelCell Energy Inc.

This success story describes FuelCell Energy Inc., a small business that manufactures stationary fuel cells. In collaboration with Sustainable Innovations LLC, and with support from a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award from the U.S. Department of Energy's Fuel Cell Technologies Program, FuelCell Energy Inc. has developed a highly efficient solid state electrochemical hydrogen compressor.

DOE small business innovation research↗
DOE OSTI2023

Mobility Energy Productivity and Equity: E-Bike Impacts for Low-Income Essential Workers in Denver

New mobility technologies such as electrified and shared mobility, combined with polices and incentive programs, are emerging to help address sustainability and equity issues in transportation planning. However, it can be difficult to understand the impacts of novel mobility trends and emerging modes on energy-efficient access. This is owing to a lack of (1) open-source tools enabling rapid data collection, and (2) open-source metrics that consider multimodal, multiactivity access and mobility within the contexts of sustainability and equity. Here, this paper addresses the topic of improving evaluation of transportation modes and incentive programs by integrating an open-source platform for tracking human travel data—the Open Platform for Agile Trip Heuristics (OpenPATH)—with a mobility metric that quantifies the efficiency of a region’s transportation system: Mobility Energy Productivity (MEP). Integration is demonstrated in the context of pilot programs in Colorado, where low-income essential workers were provided with electric bikes (e-bikes). OpenPATH-informed MEP calculations showed that several locations in downtown Denver provided comparable time-, cost-, and energy-efficient access to opportunities using e-bikes compared with driving. Additionally, providing e-bikes to low-income essential workers was found to be meaningful, as they utilized e-bikes the most to commute, despite driving still being their most utilized mode and the mode with highest MEP scores in Denver. We show how data collected from open-source tools coupled with robust metrics such as MEP can help evaluate the impacts of emerging mobility options. This could support developing policies to incentivize novel modes to achieve greater levels of sustainable, equitable, and efficient access.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Energy Efficiency in Small Server Rooms: Field Surveys and Findings

Fifty-seven percent of US servers are housed in server closets, server rooms, and localized data centers, in what are commonly referred to as small server rooms, which comprise 99percent of all server spaces in the US. While many mid-tier and enterprise-class data centers are owned by large corporations that consider energy efficiency a goal to minimize business operating costs, small server rooms typically are not similarly motivated. They are characterized by decentralized ownership and management and come in many configurations, which creates a unique set of efficiency challenges. To develop energy efficiency strategies for these spaces, we surveyed 30 small server rooms across eight institutions, and selected four of them for detailed assessments. The four rooms had Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) values ranging from 1.5 to 2.1. Energy saving opportunities ranged from no- to low-cost measures such as raising cooling set points and better airflow management, to more involved but cost-effective measures including server consolidation and virtualization, and dedicated cooling with economizers. We found that inefficiencies mainly resulted from organizational rather than technical issues. Because of the inherent space and resource limitations, the most effective measure is to operate servers through energy-efficient cloud-based services or well-managed larger data centers, rather than server rooms. Backup power requirement, and IT and cooling efficiency should be evaluated to minimize energy waste in the server space. Utility programs are instrumental in raising awareness and spreading technical knowledge on server operation, and the implementation of energy efficiency measures in small server rooms.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2014

A Mulit-State Model for Catalyzing the Home Energy Efficiency Market

The RePower Kitsap partnership sought to jump-start the market for energy efficiency upgrades in Kitsap County, an underserved market on Puget Sound in Washington State. The Washington State Department of Commerce partnered with Washington State University (WSU) Energy Program to supplement and extend existing utility incentives offered by Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and Cascade Natural Gas and to offer energy efficiency finance options through the Kitsap Credit Union and Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union (PSCCU). RePower Kitsap established a coordinated approach with a second Better Buildings Neighborhood Program project serving the two largest cities in the county – Bainbridge Island and Bremerton. These two projects shared both the “RePower” brand and implementation team (Conservation Services Group (CSG) and Earth Advantage).

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1979

University of Illinois nuclear pumped laser program

The development of nuclear pumped lasers with improved efficiency, energy storage capability, and UF6 volume pumping is reviewed. Results of nuclear pumped laser experiments using a TRIGA-type pulsed reactor are outlined.

Miley, G. H.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Energy Management Information System Powers NREL's Intelligent Campus

NREL's Intelligent Campus program leverages its own laboratory buildings as research instruments to study renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage, integration, and analysis with real, quantitative measurements. At the heart of NREL's Intelligent Campus program is its Energy Management Information System (EMIS), a family of tools and services used to manage building and campus energy use. NREL's EMIS includes capabilities, such as benchmarking and monthly utility tracking, interval meter analytics, equipment fault detection and diagnostics, condition-based monitoring, and supervisory control, enabling unprecedented energy management capabilities. The system serves as a demonstration project for other federal facilities interested in learning about its design, features, and benefits.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Energy Management Information System Powers NREL's Intelligent Campus

NREL's Intelligent Campus program leverages its own laboratory buildings as research instruments to study renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage, integration, and analysis with real, quantitative measurements. At the heart of NREL's Intelligent Campus program is its Energy Management Information System (EMIS), a family of tools and services used to manage building and campus energy use. NREL's EMIS includes capabilities, such as benchmarking and monthly utility tracking, interval meter analytics, equipment fault detection and diagnostics, condition-based monitoring, and supervisory control, enabling unprecedented energy management capabilities. The system serves as a demonstration project for other federal facilities interested in learning about its design, features, and benefits.

EMIS↗
DOE OSTI2013

Vehicle Technologies Program Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Report for Fiscal Year 2014

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has defined milestones for its Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) technology programs. This report provides estimates of the benefits that would accrue from achieving these milestones relative to a base case that represents a future in which there is no VTO-supported vehicle technology development. This was done by estimating fuel use, primary energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, including energy and GHG emissions from fuel production for the base case and the program “target” case. The target case represented the future with completely successful deployment of VTO technologies. Market penetrations of different vehicle types with and without VTO technologies were projected using market share models, and a stock and energy accounting model was used to make projections of energy consumption and GHG emissions for the base and target cases. The differences between the base case and the target case were attributed to VTO technologies. Improvements in fuel economy of various vehicle types were attributed to individual VTO technology areas, which included batteries and electric drives, advanced combustion engines, fuels and lubricants, materials (i.e., reducing vehicle mass, also called “lightweighting”), and for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, reduction in rolling and aerodynamic resistance.

Stephens, T. S.↗
NASA NTRS2008

NASA Earth Observations Informing Renewable Energy Management and Policy Decision Making

The NASA Applied Sciences Program partners with domestic and international governmental organizations, universities, and private entities to improve their decisions and assessments. These improvements are enabled by using the knowledge generated from research resulting from spacecraft observations and model predictions conducted by NASA and providing these as inputs to the decision support and scenario assessment tools used by partner organizations. The Program is divided into eight societal benefit areas, aligned in general with the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) themes. The Climate Application of the Applied Sciences Program has as one of its focuses, efforts to provide for improved decisions and assessments in the areas of renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency, and climate change impacts. The goals of the Applied Sciences Program are aligned with national initiatives such as the U.S. Climate Change Science and Technology Programs and with those of international organizations including the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS). Activities within the Program are funded principally through proposals submitted in response to annual solicitations and reviewed by peers.

Eckman, Richard S.↗