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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 1,063 records · Page 59
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Quantum sensing for emerging energy technologies

The ability to exploit quantum phenomena has enabled sensing technologies with detection limits below the classical limit. Sensors with applications in energy discovery, production, transportation, and consumption can be enhanced through quantum or hybrid quantum-classical sensors. Here, in this Review, we provide an overview of commercial and emerging quantum sensor platforms and their opportunity areas specific to advanced energy technologies. Key examples include: power grid-enhancing-technologies, where quantum magnetometers can detect powerline and transformer faults; electric vehicle-to-grid applications, where chip-scale atomic clocks can enable grid synchronization; and carbon capture and storage, where quantum gravimeters and single-photo LiDAR can detect microscopic leaks. Quantum sensor deployment requires further research into miniaturization and ruggedization for field deployment, cost-reduction, and workforce development. The maturation of clean energy technologies and quantum sensors provide opportunities for synergy, with the integration of quantum sensors into advanced energy technologies maximizing their security, reliability, and efficiency.

critical metals↗
DOE OSTI2025

Controlled environment agriculture: An opportunity to strengthen interagency research collaboration in the US government

Challenges facing food production and agricultural systems are increasingly interconnected with economic, security, health, and equity issues, among others. Threats such as extreme weather, economic volatility, and shrinking water resources and arable land, influence our ability to maintain a safe and resilient food supply. One promising solution to these threats is controlled environment agriculture (CEA). In many cases, CEA can drastically reduce the amount of water and land used in crop production while increasing productivity. Operations may be established in nearly any environment and harvests can take place year-round, supporting food system resiliency and sustainability. CEA sits at the nexus of a number of disciplines and industries, making it well suited for transdisciplinary and multi-institutional research coordination. Herein, authors from multiple US government agencies present CEA as a case study in improving cross-agency research collaboration. The federal government houses a range of scientific expertise and research capabilities, positioning scientists to lead national and global efforts in transdisciplinary, interagency approaches to complex challenges. Navigating cross-agency collaboration can be a challenge, especially coordinating across different scientific disciplines, geographic locations, and funding mechanisms. To enhance multiagency efforts, collaborators could prioritize (i) organizing personnel and resources, (ii) enhancing existing multiagency collaborations, and (iii) focusing on further opportunities for coordination. Adopting these approaches could enable federal researchers to reinforce and advance academic and industry efforts to address current CEA challenges while solidifying the United States as a leader in this arena.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Thermal Resilience of Buildings and Communities: A Multistakeholder Review of Metrics and Approaches

Increasing temperature-related hazards require a collective effort to assess and enhance the thermal resilience of buildings and communities to protect occupants’ safety and minimize property or infrastructure damage. However, limited coordination across stakeholders and lack of standardized procedures for resilience assessment undermine the effectiveness of extreme temperature mitigation and adaptation strategies across the building life cycle. This review examines the current literature on resilience metrics to address thermal stress and risk due to extreme indoor environments. Stakeholders of thermal resilience include architects and engineers, occupants, property owners, real estate developers, urban planners, and policymakers. Additionally, motivations for measuring thermal resilience are emphasized, such as safeguarding occupant health and survivability, protecting property, and ensuring business continuity during extreme weather events. This review provides actionable insights and identifies future research needs for enhancing resilience through tailored metrics for stakeholders during the planning, design, construction, operation, and retrofitting phases of buildings and communities.

building life cycle↗
DOE OSTI2025

NWChem

NWChem is a computational chemistry software package which includes quantum chemical and molecular dynamics functionality. It aims to be scalable both in its ability to treat large problems efficiently, and in its usage of available parallel computing resources.

Apra, Edoardo [Pacific Northwest National Laborato↗
DOE OSTI2026

Phoenix Dust Storm (PHX-DUST) Scale: A Cooperatively Developed Dust Storm Scale for Phoenix, Arizona

Using extensive localized meteorological and air quality data for central Arizona from 2010 to 2023, we create a postevent dust storm scale for use by the primary stakeholders in central Arizona for the Phoenix metropolitan area called the Phoenix Dust Storm (PHX-DUST) scale. To ensure usability across a wide spectrum of users, a core concept was to “keep it simple.” The PHX-DUST scale is based on (i) maximum dust concentration for particulate matter (PM10) across the network in micrograms per cubic meter which determines category, e.g., “category 5 (the highest observed category)” and category 4; (ii) the number of network monitors achieving dust concentrations above a threshold of 500 μg m−3 (categorized as “widespread” or “isolated,” as measures of spatial extent); (iii) a duration parameter (which determines “long duration” or “short duration”); and (iv) a measure of wind speed over the affected area (maximum wind gust recorded over the network, which may not be the maximum wind of the storm). Using this index for the 189 dust storms impacting the Phoenix metropolitan area for the period 2010–23, the most severe dust storm occurred on 5 July 2011 and is classified as a “Category 5, Widespread, Long-Duration High-Gust” event. This initial attempt at defining the PHX-DUST scale holds valuable applications for research, education, and applied analyses. It demonstrates that a consortium of interested groups can effectively work to create products benefiting the weather community and general public. Here, the PHX-DUST scale can also serve as a foundational framework for application in other regions where dust storms pose a threat to the well-being of populations, infrastructure, and ecosystems.

Atmosphere↗
DOE OSTI2025

Electricity Rate Designs for Large Loads: Evolving Practices and Opportunities

Electricity demand from large load customers such as data centers is projected to grow significantly in the near term. While data centers play an important role in advancing technology innovation and economic growth in the United States, data center energy needs present challenges and opportunities for electricity supply and infrastructure. This technical brief serves as a foundation for the discussion of issues and sharing of perspectives among utilities, regulators, large load customers, and other stakeholders. As utilities and regulators explore rate structures to address growing data center electricity demand, several issues have emerged: -Fair allocation of electricity system costs to large-load customers without unfair shifting of costs to other customers -Appropriate mitigation of the financial risks associated with stranded assets from underutilized utility system investments -Mitigation of operational and resource adequacy risks if electricity demand exceeds supply -Appropriate risk-sharing in commercializing newer electricity technologies such as advanced geothermal, small modular reactors, and long duration energy storage -Accommodating the diverse needs of large-load customers, such as having the option to match electricity consumption with output from carbon-free resources or using onsite generation to provide system capacity The technical brief also identifies key design elements that aim to address these issues and uses leading examples from pending and approved rate structures, agreements, and special contracts to ground the elements in practice.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Direct Air Capture Case Studies: Sorbent System (Rev. 1)

In 2022, the National Energy Technology Laboratory published a techno-economic assessment (TEA) examining the performance and cost of a generic solid sorbent-based direct air capture (DAC) system, “Direct Air Capture Case Studies: Sorbent System”. Revision 1 of this report builds on the previous effort by updating assumptions to reflect the evolving industry and recent developments in the DAC research and development (R&D) portfolio. Revision 1 of the report also expands the case list to examine a variety of sorbent DAC system configurations. The objective of this series is to present transparent and independent TEAs that can serve as a guideline for sorbent DAC TEA development and highlight potential avenues for cost reductions that can inform R&D. The sorbent considered is not reflective of any one material type; rather, it represents an approximate average of reported material performance in the literature. The base cases presented in this series do not represent optimized systems due to the nascence of the technology and lack of publicly available information. The base cases serve as a reference for informative sensitivity analyses.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Unlocking the Bioeconomy via Refinery Integration: Workshop Report

On October 16-17, 2024, in Long Beach, California, the U.S. DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, NREL, PNNL, and LANL, convened experts from industry and academia to explore the potential for utilizing existing petroleum refinery infrastructure to expand the bioeconomy. Although refinery integration is not a new concept, recent trends have revitalized interest in this topic.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Assessment of ESM Readiness Level for Exascale HPC

Advancement of Earth System Models (ESMs) is becoming increasingly challenging due to a confluence of factors including increasing model complexity – to more fully represent the earth system, increasing spatial resolution - to achieve higher accuracy by resolving fine-scale dynamical to physical, biological, and chemical processes and their interaction, increasing ensemble size - to more accurately represent predictive uncertainty, and increased computing requirements – to enable more accurate and timely weather predictions and climate projections for societal benefit. The belief by many that computing will take care of itself is no longer valid given the disruptive changes in HPC that are driving up the cost of computing, increasing the difficulty of using emerging HPC effectively, and exposing limits in parallelism, portability and scalability of the ESM applications themselves.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hourly Load Profile Dataset for Electric Airport Ground Support Equipment in the United States

Currently, there are limited data on the magnitude and timing of electricity demand from electric ground support equipment (eGSE) across U.S. airports. To address this gap, this study presents a modeling approach for estimating hourly annual electricity demand from eGSE at the 50 largest U.S. commercial airports. These datasets, accessible at data.nrel.gov/submissions/279, provide critical insights into the potential grid impacts and electricity demand associated with eGSE adoption.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Spring 2025 Solar Industry Update [Slides]

Each quarter, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory conducts the Quarterly Solar Industry Update, a presentation of technical trends within the solar industry. Each presentation focuses on global and U.S. supply and demand, module and system price, investment trends and business models, and updates on U.S. government programs supporting the solar industry.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

The Implications of Advanced Manufacturing in a Connected Economy Moving Towards a Smart, Sustainable, and Productive Economy

This report intends to provide a comprehensive overview of information and communications technologies (ICT), which play increasingly vital roles in the United States (U.S.) and global economies and continue to evolve rapidly as both technological capabilities and needs grow in tandem. To underscore the importance of the sector, the U.S. Congress recently passed a $\$$20–$\$$50 billion federal program Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors Act (CHIPS Act) to spur the competitiveness of the U.S. semiconductor industry and encourage U.S. investment, often complemented by state-level incentives (Kessler 2022).

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Summer 2025 Solar Industry Update [Slides]

Each quarter, NREL conducts the Quarterly Solar Industry Update, a presentation of technical trends within the solar industry. Each presentation focuses on global and U.S. supply and demand, module and system price, investment trends and business models, and updates on U.S. government programs supporting the solar industry.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

SPARC - Plans for a New Critical Experiment Facility with a Horizontal Split Table

Several critical experiment facilities, sometimes referred to as zero power reactor facilities, have provided crucial data to aid understanding and validate nuclear-physics models since the beginning of nuclear technology. Indeed, the first man-made reactor, Chicago Pile-1, was essentially this type of reactor. However, there was a downturn in nuclear technology development toward the turn of the millennium, and the need for these specialized research facilities waned. Now there are few of these experimental facilities operational in the world and those that remain have relatively small critical assembly machines. The need for criticality safety benchmark experiments at intermediate neutron energy levels and the modern resurgence of interest in advanced reactors designs, many of which do not have historical precedents in terms of nuclear fuel composition, moderator, and coolant combinations, all combine to create a substantial need for a critical experiment facility with a large horizontal split-table (HST) machine. A HST machine is used to arrange two separate and subcritical parts of a core assembly, bring them together in a precise manner to achieve criticality using remote controls, and separate them to achieve a subcritical configuration again. A new effort was recently performed to develop user needs for a HST, assess candidate locations at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and develop a plan for deployment. This project is referred to as the System Physics Advanced Reactor Critical facility (SPARC). A few months after this assessment began, and shortly after as a viable pathway was emerging, a series of important presidential executive orders were issued to revitalize nuclear energy in the United States (U.S.). The relevance of SPARC to these executive orders was immediately apparent. The far-reaching potential of SPARC to these executive orders will reside in its ability to produce data which facilitates licensing of advanced nuclear reactor designs while reducing uncertainties to help increase energy production alongside new criticality safety data to enable more efficient nuclear fuel manufacture, transport, and storage.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Advanced Mooring Lines for Marine Energy Workshop – Summary Report

This report summarizes the outcomes of the virtual Advanced Mooring Lines for Marine Energy Workshop. The workshop convened experts from industry, academia, and national laboratories to identify key challenges associated with the deployment of synthetic mooring lines for marine energy applications. Discussions focused on four technical areas—materials, failure and degradation, testing, and modeling. Despite the significant promise of leveraging synthetic mooring systems for marine energy applications, discussion highlighted broader research and development needed to address the lack of validated long-term performance data, insufficient structural health monitoring frameworks, limited large-scale testing capabilities, and gaps in predictive modeling. Overall, the workshop emphasized the importance of coordinated research and development efforts to advance reliable, durable, and cost-effective synthetic mooring solutions for marine energy applications.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2026

Project Phase 1 Report: Reducing Data Center Peak Cooling Demand and Energy Costs With Cold Underground Thermal Energy Storage (Cold UTES)

Cold Underground Thermal Energy Storage (Cold UTES) is an ultra-long duration grid energy storage technology. With Cold-UTES, low-cost grid power is converted to cold thermal energy and stored in the native subsurface rock at the point of use. Cold UTES is one approach within the general category of engineered geothermal systems. Cold UTES for peak-hour cooling of data centers (DCs) was studied for deployment in Maricopa County, Arizona and Loudoun County, Virgina using thermal storage capacities from 4 GWh-th to over 1,000 GWh-th (>1 Terawatt-hour). The two sites have different power and transmission systems, available grid energy resources, daily and seasonal load profiles, weather conditions, and grid regulatory requirements. The study results indicate high value for both locations and because of this, likely indicates value across most of the US and the world. The basis of the study was a 1,000 MW-e hourly electric use of DC computing and auxiliary loads, which was modeled as 1 GW-th of thermal load to a dry cooled heat rejection system - i.e. a cooling system that does not consume water. The electric power required for cooling the DC varies as the air temperature changes. In cold weather only the dry-coolers are used, with an electrical load for cooling load as low as 10 MW-e. In hot summer hours, chillers and dry- coolers are required, which raises the electrical load for cooling load to as much as 300 MW-e. The continuous and peak cooling electrical loads result in a grid interconnection requirement of no less than 1,300 MW-e. From both a grid and thermal design modeling perspective the 1.3 GW-e could either be a single facility or result from the total load at multiple sites.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

One Man’s Pirate is Another Man’s . . . Nuclear Terrorist? Evaluating the Act of Piracy Against Floating Nuclear Power Plants on the High Seas

The lack of international consensus about whether a floating nuclear power plant is a facility or vessel presents an ambiguity about a pirate's status if they board a floating nuclear power plant, As piracy continues to be a concern for maritime security, the deployment of floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) on the high seas raises questions about laws on piracy.

Fialkoff, Marc [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Exploring the environmental drivers of human blastomycosis cases in the Midwestern United States

Blastomycosis is a fungal infection endemic to the eastern United States (US) and Canada caused by the inhalation of the fungi Blastomyces spp. Currently, the environmental drivers of disease dynamics are poorly understood. The goal of our work was to explore what environmental conditions are associated with the annual presence of blastomycosis cases, and therefore are potentially explanatory of the ecological niche of Blastomyces. We examined the relationships between reported cases of blastomycosis in three Midwestern US states (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) from 2007–2017 in relation to eleven hypothesized environmental conditions, including climate, stream and soil mineral content, and land cover variables. Then, we fit logistic regression models to explore the relationships between the environmental variables and yearly blastomycosis case occurrence. Mean soil moisture, stream sediment mercury content, percent of water within the county, and woody wetlands land cover were all positively associated with the presence of annual cases, with woody wetlands having the most consistent signal across the three states. We also found significant differences in the likelihood of case presence between US states that were not explained by the variables in our model, suggesting state-level differences in case reporting and disease awareness. Our results provide a perspective on potential biological hypotheses to further test regarding environmental controls on the life cycle and ecological niche of Blastomyces.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗