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This factsheet describes a combined heat and power (CHP) demonstration project that reduces the energy costs and environmental impact of a plant while easing congestion on the constrained Northeast power grid.
This fact sheet describes the Bioenergy Technologies Office's biochemical conversion work and processes. BETO conducts collaborative research, development, and demonstration projects to improve several processing routes for the conversion of cellulosic biomass.
In an effort to help commercialize technologies for electric vehicles (EVs) through deployment and demonstration projects, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided funding to participating U.S. companies to cover part of the cost of purchasing new EVs. Within the medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicle segment, both Smith Electric Newton and and Navistar eStar vehicles qualified for such funding opportunities. In an effort to evaluate the performance characteristics of the new technologies deployed in these vehicles operating under real world conditions, data from Smith Electric and Navistar medium-duty EVs were collected, compiled, and analyzed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Fleet Test and Evaluation team over a period of 3 years. More than 430 Smith Newton EVs have provided data representing more than 150,000 days of operation. Similarly, data have been collected from more than 100 Navistar eStar EVs, resulting in a comparative total of more than 16,000 operating days. Combined, NREL has analyzed more than 6 million kilometers of driving and 4 million hours of charging data collected from commercially operating medium-duty electric vehicles in various configurations. In this paper, extensive duty-cycle statistical analyses are performed to examine and characterize common vehicle dynamics trends and relationships based on in-use field data. The results of these analyses statistically define the vehicle dynamic and kinematic requirements for each vehicle, aiding in the selection of representative chassis dynamometer test cycles and the development of custom drive cycles that emulate daily operation. In this paper, the methodology and accompanying results of the duty-cycle statistical analysis are presented and discussed. Results are presented in both graphical and tabular formats illustrating a number of key relationships between parameters observed within the data set that relate to medium duty EVs.
Single family homes in urban areas that are available for renovation by nonprofit developers are often in rough shape (1MM to 2MM nationally). Budgeting has historically focused on improving homes to meet basic housing standards. A rising interest in the long-term impact of homeownership has introduced the need to balance basic needs with home performance. This demonstration project aims to help nonprofit affordable housing developers become familiar with three Building America performance measures, the installation processes, and impacts and benefits of each. A story and a half home in North Minneapolis, MN was presented by Urban Homeworks our local nonprofit partner. The team helped them install three researched upgrade measures: exterior roof insulation or 'overcoat,' exterior foundation insulation, or 'excavationless', and a combined space and water heating HVAC system or 'combi'. To maximize efficiency of application and to address budget issues, the Team worked with Urban Homeworks to identify ways to use volunteers and construction training programs to install the measures. An open invitation to visit the job site was extended to other nonprofit developers and industry partners to encourage dialog about the systems during live installation.
Single family homes in urban areas that are available for renovation by nonprofit developers are often in rough shape (1MM to 2MM nationally). Budgeting has historically focused on improving homes to meet basic housing standards. A rising interest in the long-term impact of homeownership has introduced the need to balance basic needs with home performance. This demonstration project aims to help nonprofit affordable housing developers become familiar with three Building America performance measures, the installation processes, and impacts and benefits of each. A story and a half home in North Minneapolis, MN was presented by Urban Homeworks our local nonprofit partner. The team helped them install three researched upgrade measures: exterior roof insulation or 'overcoat,' exterior foundation insulation, or 'excavationless', and a combined space and water heating HVAC system or 'combi.'
Meet AMIE - the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy demonstration project. Led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and many industry partners, the AMIE project changes the way we think about generating, storing, and using electrical power. AMIE uses an integrated energy system that shares energy between a building and a vehicle. And, utilizing advanced manufacturing and rapid innovation, it only took one year from concept to launch.
This fact sheet is an overview of the Systems Integration subprogram at the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative. The Systems Integration subprogram enables the widespread deployment of safe, reliable, and cost-effective solar energy technologies by addressing the associated technical and non-technical challenges. These include timely and cost-effective interconnection procedures, optimal system planning, accurate prediction of solar resources, monitoring and control of solar power, maintaining grid reliability and stability, and many more. To address the challenges associated with interconnecting and integrating hundreds of gigawatts of solar power onto the electricity grid, the Systems Integration program funds research, development, and demonstration projects in four broad, interrelated focus areas: grid performance and reliability, dispatchability, power electronics, and communications.
Power utilities are increasingly rolling out “smart” grids with the ability to track consumer power usage in near real-time using smart meters that enable bidirectional communication. However, the true value of smart grids is unlocked only when the veritable explosion of data that will become available is ingested, processed, analyzed and translated into meaningful decisions. These include the ability to forecast electricity demand, respond to peak load events, and improve sustainable use of energy by consumers, and are made possible by energy informatics. Information and software system techniques for a smarter power grid include pattern mining and machine learning over complex events and integrated semantic information, distributed stream processing for low latency response,Cloud platforms for scalable operations and privacy policies to mitigate information leakage in an information rich environment. Such an informatics approach is being used in the DoE sponsored Los Angeles Smart Grid Demonstration Project, and the resulting software architecture will lead to an agile and adaptive Los Angeles Smart Grid.
Impacts: The BES program supports basic research that underpins a broad range of energy technologies. Research in materials sciences and engineering leads to the development of materials that improve the efficiency, economy, environmental acceptability, and safety of energy generation, conversion, transmission, storage, and use. For example, advances in superconductivity have been introduced commercially in a number of demonstration projects around the country. Improvements in alloy design for high temperature applications are used in commercial furnaces and in green technologies such as lead-free solder. Research in chemistry has led to advances such as efficient combustion systems with reduced emissions of pollutants; new solar photoconversion processes; improved catalysts for the production of fuels and chemicals; and better separations and analytical methods for applications in energy processes, environmental remediation, and waste management. Research in geosciences results in advanced monitoring and measurement techniques for reservoir definition and an understanding of the fluid dynamics of complex fluids through porous and fractured subsurface rock. Research in the molecular and biochemical nature of photosynthesis aids the development of solar photo-energy conversion. The BES program also plays a major role in enabling the nanoscale revolution. The importance of nanoscience to future energy technologies is clearly reflected by the fact that all of the elementary steps of energy conversion (e.g., charge transfer, molecular rearrangement, and chemical reactions) take place on the nanoscale. The development of new nanoscale materials, as well as the methods to characterize, manipulate, and assemble them, create an entirely new paradigm for developing new and revolutionary energy technologies.
Off-cycle technologies represent an important pathway to achieve real-world fuel savings, through which OEMs can potentially receive credit toward CAFE compliance. DOE national labs such as NREL are well positioned to provide objective input on these technologies using large, national data sets in conjunction with OEM- and technology-specific testing. This project demonstrates an approach that combines vehicle testing (dynamometer and on-road) with powertrain modeling and simulation over large, representative datasets to quantify real-world fuel economy. The approach can be applied to specific off-cycle technologies (engine encapsulation, start/stop, connected vehicle, etc.) in A/B comparisons to support calculation of realistic real-world impacts. Future work will focus on testing-based A/B technology comparisons that demonstrate the significance of this approach.
We describe and demonstrate a prototype software architecture to support data-driven demand response optimization (DR) in the USC campus microgrid, as part of the Los Angeles Smart Grid Demonstration Project. The architecture includes a semantic information repository that integrates diverse data sources to support DR, demand forecasting using scalable machine-learned models, and detection of load curtailment opportunities by matching complex event patterns.
The survival of Florida’s biodiversity and economy is dependent on finding ways to balance farm economics with proper management of water and other natural resources. Taking on this challenge of maximizing the delivery of ecosystems services from agricultural production systems is the mandate of the Hendry County Sustainable Biofuels Center. Given that sea level rise is the overarching, long-term threat to the south Florida and its ecosystems, the most valuable ecosystems services for the state of Florida are those that mitigate climate change. Biofuels are put forward as one approach to forestalling climate change, but its value as an industry in providing this and other ecosystem services is unproven. The Sustainable Biofuels Center has developed a set of programs to both document and enhance the ecosystems services values of the evolving Florida biofuels industry. The Center engages in agricultural systems evaluation, sustainability indexing and sustainability research. Methods employed for documenting ecosystems services and costs include Life Cycle Assessment, Emergy Analysis, and optimization of cost-benefit functions. Radically new farming and economic compensation systems must be created and implemented if we are to achieve a successful agricultural business model built upon balanced revenue streams from these varied services. Accordingly, the Center also supports field research and demonstration projects to document the capacity for innovative farming systems to deliver ecosystems services such as water storage. To help promote the inclusion of ecosystems services considerations in farm operations, the program includes curriculum development at both the K-12 and college level, as well as programs to bring diverse stakeholders in to collaborative visioning process. Lastly, since county governments are often the level where new industry seek entry to the landscape, the Center is also developing metrics and tools through which economic development officers can evaluate business developer requests for tax breaks, land use changes and various other permissions and incentives against the economic and ecological benefits as well as any natural resource costs. Solving the underlying problem requires that agricultural lands provide society with a more balanced set of values in the form of food, energy, and ecosystem services through proper water, nutrient, and soil management. County-level programs can help realize that vision.
2016 accomplishments and primary areas of focus for the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Environmental Management and EM sites are presented. For DOE EM, these include Focusing on the Field, Teaming with Cleanup Partners, Developing New Technology, and Maximizing Cleanup Dollars. Major 2016 achievements are highlighted for EM, Richland Operations Office, Office of River Protection, Savannah River Site, Oak Ridge, Idaho, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Los Alamos, Portsmouth, Paducah, West Valley Demonstration Project, and the Nevada National Security Site,
Recently, zero net energy (ZNE) buildings have moved from state-of-the-art small project demonstrations to a more widely adopted approach across the country among various building types and sizes. States such as California set policy goals of all new residential construction to be NZE by 2020 and all commercial buildings to be NZE by 2030. However, the market for designing, constructing, and operating ZNE buildings is still relatively small. We bring together distinguished experts to share their thoughts on making ZNE buildings more widespread and mainstream from a broad perspective, including governments, utilities, energy-efficiency research institutes, and building owners. This conversation also presents the benefits of ZNE and ways to achieve that goal in the design and operation of buildings. The following is a roundtable conducted by ASHRAE Journal and Bing Liu with Charles Eley, Smita Gupta, Cathy Higgins, Jessica Iplikci, Jon McHugh, Michael Rosenberg, and Paul Torcellini.
Hay producers have long been aware of the risks of storing this combustible material. Images of barn fires caused by tight stacks of high-moisture bales are always in the back of their minds. So, as cellulosic biofuel demonstration projects were conducted over the past decade, great care was taken to develop biomass storage procedures to avoid spontaneous combustion. Additionally, this effort was highly successful because, to our knowledge, no fires in herbaceous feedstocks (such as corn stover or switchgrass) have been attributed to spontaneous combustion. However, fire remains a significant risk for facilities that handle and store biomass. Nearly every company with large volumes of corn stover or switchgrass in storage has experienced a major fire. Lastly, these fires are especially troubling because the most common ignition sources—lightning and arson—are essentially unavoidable.
Coastal and Great Lakes states account for nearly 80% of U.S. electricity demand, and the winds off the shores of these coastal load centers have a technical resource potential twice as large as the nation’s current electricity use. With the costs of offshore wind energy falling globally and the first U.S. offshore wind farm operational off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island since 2016, offshore wind has the potential to contribute significantly to a clean, affordable, and secure national energy mix. To support the development of a world-class offshore wind industry, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been supporting a broad portfolio of offshore wind research, development, and demonstration projects since 2011 and released a new National Offshore Wind Strategy jointly with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) in 2016.
Over the years of commercial nuclear power plant operations in the United States (U.S.), many fuel assemblies have lost the capability to perform all of their desired functions. These assemblies have lost the capability to be handled, stored, or transported to meet regulations resulting in them being classified as damaged fuel. The causes of these failed assemblies are diverse and plant-specific. The majority of these failed assemblies are contained in a damaged fuel can that will be used in conjunction with a storage and/or transportation system. The storage and transportation systems have a limit on how many slots can be filled with damaged fuel cans. A damaged fuel can is generally a stainless steel container that confines damaged SNF and is closed on its end by screened openings. These screened openings allow gaseous and liquid media to escape but minimize the dispersal of gross particulate material. Out of an abundance of caution a few reactors have loaded high burnup fuel into damaged fuel cans. Damaged fuel is not licensed for storage or transport in the U.S., because the regulations for storage and transport do not specify exactly how to classify damaged fuel. Instead the regulations license/certify packages that specify approved contents. Damaged fuel must be included in the approved contents to be a viable option. In many cases damaged SNF is encapsulated in a damaged fuel can to ensure it can confine gross fuel particles, debris, and or damaged assemblies to a known volume within a loaded cask. This damaged fuel can may then be utilized in the same way as an assembly in a storage and transportation design system. Some storage cask systems utilize top and bottom plugs to confine debris in damaged fuel. The most recent domestic documentation on damaged SNF was performed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and used data from U.S. reactors concluding in June 30th 2013 to produce Form GC-859, “Nuclear Fuel Data Survey”. Based on this form there were 136,821 boiling water reactor (BWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies and 104,647 pressurized water reactor (PWR) SNF assemblies for a total of 241,468 SNF assemblies in the U.S. Out of these 241,468 SNF assemblies, 4,521 assemblies were classified as failed. Some assemblies were also disassembled and the fuel rods or pieces of fuel rods were combined together to make a consolidated assembly. A consolidated assembly may include damaged fuel, or it could have been consolidated as part of a demonstration project. The GC-859 data includes 2,550 consolidated assemblies containing between 0 and 264 whole fuel rods. These consolidated assemblies could be placed in single assembly canisters and stored in the spent fuel pool. For dry storage and transportation, a single assembly canister is generally placed in a damaged fuel can. In addition to the consolidated assemblies, 2,391 uncanistered fuel rod pieces exist, which were removed from 494 assemblies.
This case study summarizes a demonstration project evaluating the implementation of LED recessed downlight luminaires in the guest rooms at the Hilton Columbus Downtown hotel in Columbus, Ohio. It provides an overview of the lighting design goals and results.