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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Cybersecurity Standards for Distributed Energy Resources: Gaps and Harmonization Strategy

This report examines cybersecurity standards for Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) in light of their rapid growth and increasing integration into energy systems. It identifies critical gaps in existing frameworks, including inadequate coverage of DER-specific challenges, complexities in implementing comprehensive standards, integration issues with legacy systems, adoption hurdles for newer standards, and a lack of harmonization across regulatory landscapes. The analysis highlights vulnerabilities such as data integrity risks, unauthorized device control, and denial-of-service attacks across various DER technologies like solar PV, wind turbines, energy storage systems, and hydrogen fuel cells. The report proposes a harmonization strategy to address these deficiencies by developing unified cybersecurity requirements, certification programs, and training resources while fostering collaboration among stakeholders such as government agencies, industry groups, DER operators, manufacturers, and research institutions. A phased roadmap is outlined to refine and implement these measures through pilot testing and widespread adoption. Ultimately, the report underscores the urgent need for coordinated efforts to enhance DER cybersecurity and ensure the reliable operation of future energy systems.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1980

Photovoltaic system costs using local labor and materials in developing countries

The use of photovoltaic (PV) technology in countries that do not presently have high technology industrial capacity was investigated. The relative cost of integrating indigenous labor (and manufacturing where available) into the balance of the system industry of seven countries (Egypt, Haiti, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, and the Phillipines) was determined. The results were then generalized to other countries, at most levels of development. The results of the study imply several conclusions: (1) the cost of installing and maintaining comparable photovoltaic systems in developing countries is less than in the United States; (2) skills and some materials are available in the seven subject countries that may be applied to constructing and maintaining PV systems; (3) there is an interest in foreign countries in photovoltaics; and (4) conversations with foreign nationals suggest that photovoltaics must be introduced in foreign markets as an appropriate technology with high technology components rather than as a high technology system.

Jacobson, E.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Enhancing climate-smart crop performance in arid agrivoltaics systems: effects of photovoltaic shading and soil amendments on tepary bean growth, yield, and associated soil microbiome

As climate change expands the world’s arid and semiarid regions, sustainable systems that integrate food and energy production are becoming increasingly critical. Agrivoltaics—co-locating crops with photovoltaic (PV) panels—offers a dual land-use strategy that mitigates environmental stress by shading crops, conserving soil moisture, and enhancing PV efficiency. While climate-smart crops like the tepary bean ( Phaseolus acutifolius ) are well adapted to heat and drought, little is known about how these crops and their associated soil microbiomes respond to the unique microclimates created by PV shading. This study evaluated tepary bean performance and plant–microbial interactions under PV-shade vs. no shade across three soil amendment treatments at two experimental sites. We assessed plant traits including germination, phenology, biomass, height, as well as yield and bean morphology, alongside shifts in soil microbial composition and functional potential. Plants grown under PV-shade were generally taller, with extended reproductive periods and higher yields: 42% of shaded plants produced beans compared to only 8% under full sun. Shaded plants also produced rounder, higher-quality beans, whereas non-shaded plants yielded flatter, less developed beans. Microbial community composition was more strongly influenced by amendment and site conditions than by shading alone. Key microbial taxa (e.g., Glomeromycetes, Desulfobacterota ) and predicted functions (e.g., denitrification, nitrogen-respiration, sulfate reduction) were associated with differences in plant performance. Finally, combining agrivoltaic systems with targeted soil amendments can enhance crop yield and soil microbial functionality—offering a promising strategy for sustainable agriculture in arid landscapes.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Session 3: Agrivoltaics Pathways [Slides]

This presentation was developed for a webinar series for the USAID's South Asia Group for Energy (SAGE) and South Asia Regional Energy Partnership (SAREP). The presentation includes insights into agrivoltaic site assessment planning, including what is needed for a farm assessment, solar panel system design from the agricultural perspective, variables that go into crop selection, and environmental impact, sustainability, and agritourism, technical parameters for developing an agrivoltaics project, including what makes up a PV feasibility study, understanding variables that go into technology and equipment selection, agrivoltaic installation and agricultural integration, and monitoring and maintenance throughout the life of the project, and agrivoltaic financial planning, risk mitigation, and debt equity issues.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1984

Flat-plate solar array progress and plans

The Flat-Plate Solar Array Project (FSA), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has achieved progress in a broad range of technical activities since that reported at the Fourth European Communities Conference. A particularly important analysis has been completed recently which confirms the adoption into practice by the U.S. Photovoltaic (PV Industry, of all the low-cost module technology elements proposed at the 16th Project Integration Meeting for a $2.80/Wp (1980 U.S. Dollars) design approach in the fall of 1980. This work presents along with a projection, using the same techniques, for what is believed to be a very credible ribbon-based module design for less that $0.55/Wp (1980 U.S. Dollars). Other areas to be reported upon include low-cost Si feedstock refinement; ribbon growth; process sequence development for cells; environmental isolation; engineering science investigations; and module testing progress.

Callaghan, W. T.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Reliability Analysis of Power Grids Considering Component Failures of Variable Energy Resources

This paper proposes an improved model for the reliability assessment of power systems considering component failures of variable energy resources (VER). The inherent intermittency of VER such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind farms, along with their susceptibility to component failures, present significant challenges to reliable system operation. These issues, combined with power grid operation and network constraints, complicate the reliable operation of VER-integrated power systems. Here, to address these concerns, this paper introduces a reliability assessment framework that considers VER input variability, its impact on component availability, and their resulting impact on overall system reliability. Stochastic models based on discrete Markov processes are developed to incorporate variable irradiance, wind speeds, and their effects on PV and wind component failure rates. A next-event and state transition-based approach is then developed to integrate the stochastic models into a mixed-timing sequential Monte Carlo simulation framework for composite reliability assessment. Case studies on the RTS-GMLC system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model in evaluating the reliability of VER-integrated systems.

Pandit, Dilip [Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-N↗
NASA NTRS1994

Advanced End-to-end Simulation for On-board Processing (AESOP)

Developers of data compression algorithms typically use their own software together with commercial packages to implement, evaluate and demonstrate their work. While convenient for an individual developer, this approach makes it difficult to build on or use another's work without intimate knowledge of each component. When several people or groups work on different parts of the same problem, the larger view can be lost. What's needed is a simple piece of software to stand in the gap and link together the efforts of different people, enabling them to build on each other's work, and providing a base for engineers and scientists to evaluate the parts as a cohesive whole and make design decisions. AESOP (Advanced End-to-end Simulation for On-board Processing) attempts to meet this need by providing a graphical interface to a developer-selected set of algorithms, interfacing with compiled code and standalone programs, as well as procedures written in the IDL and PV-Wave command languages. As a proof of concept, AESOP is outfitted with several data compression algorithms integrating previous work on different processors (AT&T DSP32C, TI TMS320C30, SPARC). The user can specify at run-time the processor on which individual parts of the compression should run. Compressed data is then fed through simulated transmission and uncompression to evaluate the effects of compression parameters, noise and error correction algorithms. The following sections describe AESOP in detail. Section 2 describes fundamental goals for usability. Section 3 describes the implementation. Sections 4 through 5 describe how to add new functionality to the system and present the existing data compression algorithms. Sections 6 and 7 discuss portability and future work.

Mazer, Alan S.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Economic Incentives for Agrivoltaics Systems with Commodity Crops in the Midwestern United States

Declining costs of photovoltaic (PV) technology and rising market and policy incentives are leading to the growing deployment of PV on cropland in the US Midwest, leading to concerns about the displacement of food and feed crop production. Agrivoltaic (AV) technology enables the dual use of land by co-locating PV energy and crop production, potentially reducing land-use competition with crop production. We develop a benefit-cost analysis framework to compare the net economic returns from AV to those with stand-alone PV and crop production on a representative field and show conditions under which AV can be more profitable for both a solar developer and a farmer. We integrate it with a crop and solar energy model to simulate the performance of various field designs and space and height configurations in AV systems to accommodate soybean production with conventional farm equipment under representative conditions in the US Midwest. We find that an AV system with soybean production is less profitable than PV alone for a solar developer due to the high capital costs of raising panel height, and less profitable for a farmer than leasing land for PV due to its adverse effects of shading on crop yield. We discuss the changes in technology and market prices of solar energy and soybeans that are necessary to make the AV system profitable for solar developers and farmers. We show that AV can worsen rather than mitigate the conflict between food crops and solar energy production in the Midwest.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Parallel derivative-free optimization for simulation-based design of behind-the-meter energy systems

In this work, the integrated design and dispatch of behind-the-meter or distributed resources (e.g. stationary battery storage and solar PV generation) is considered. A simulation-based framework is employed, generating high-fidelity results with closed-loop predictive control at a fine resolution, at the expense of high computational cost (several minutes to a few hours per design point). To address this challenge, parallel derivative-free design methods are considered. Four methods are compared, including state-of-the-art surrogate-based methods (Radial-Basis Functions and Gaussian processes) and sampling strategies, an evolutionary-based method, and a simple sequential grid refinement method. As a case study, two types of design problem with increasing complexity are considered, namely, the design of behind-the-meter resources (three design variables) and the inclusion of grid capacity (four design variables). The second yields a constrained design problem for which violations can only be determined after solving the computationally expensive simulation. For the three-dimensional case, all methods present a good performance, achieving a solution within 1% of the optimum after the first iteration, with the sequential grid refinement exhibiting the fastest convergence and achieving the best final objective value. This indicates that the parallel evaluation of multiple sampling points may be more important than the choice of method for small decision spaces. For the four-dimensional constrained case, the Genetic Algorithm presents the best tradeoff between performance and computational effort, while the rough objective function terrain generated by constraint violation penalties reduces the performance of surrogate-based methods. Contour plots with flat regions indicate flexibility in the optimal design and highlight the importance of characterizing the solution space.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

BETTER Together

The Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) and Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) platforms are both developed by the Department of Energy and work better together. SEED is a database to manage building characteristics and performance data from a variety of sources. BETTER provides simple energy efficiency measure analyses based on high level data about the building or portfolio of buildings. A demonstration of each platform and their integration will be provided. The inputs for BETTER are building type, floor area, location, utility data, and whether PV shall be included in the analysis. The BETTER analysis can be manually set up through the web application or data can be uploaded with a BuildingSync XML file either directly or through the API. SEED can be the source of this data and the data can be sent to BETTER through the SEED application after the BETTER API token has been entered. The benefit of utilizing SEED is that it has connections to many other sources of data such as ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, Audit Template, and Salesforce. Therefore, it is likely that a user of SEED will already have the required inputs for BETTER in SEED already and can create BETTER analyses across their whole portfolio in a couple mouse clicks. This is a major time savings and enables decision makers an easy path to identify buildings that should undergo more detailed audits or retrofit pathways.

ASHRAE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hybridization Assessment of Trybrid Pumped Storage Hydropower System—Part 1: A Case Study of Corral Summit

This report is a part of the deliverables for technical assistance provided to Cat Creek Energy for the Coral Summit Trybrid (Triple Hybrid-Pumped Storage Hydropower, Battery Energy Storage System, and photovoltaic solar energy) energy project. This report explores the operational benefits and challenges of hybridizing an open loop PSH (200MW) located at Mackay, Custer County, Idaho with solar PV (Ground mount 300MW and floating 40MW) and battery (720MWhr). This document reports two activities performed as a part of the hybridization assessment task 1) optimal resource allocation and energy management strategy, and 2) power quality and reliability assessment. From optimal resource allocation and energy management strategy (activity 1), the following key findings can be observed: • Conventional PSH (CPSH) with two reversible pump turbines and separate penstocks can provide required flexibility equivalent to that from two ternary PSH with separate penstock. With single unit CPSH, upper reservoir head cannot be maintained accurately, the variation of water level is rapid and pump mode flexibility is not available. These disadvantages can be overcome by single unit TPSH. However, using two CPSH units with separate penstocks also overcome these disadvantages with the formation of the hydraulic short circuit between two conventional units. • Flooding of the lower reservoir is a severe concern when considering continuous operation for black start. This limits the duration of continuous operation from PSH alone to around 50 hours. Due to the complementary PV and battery action, the duration of continuous operation and smooth power output can be extended. • An optimization problem is framed that maximizes the power output on an hourly basis while minimizing constraint violations and respecting seasonal variations of solar PV and load profiles . Two value streams, arbitrage and baseload generation are served by this profile. It was uncovered that for smooth power output during regular operation, PV curtailment will be required, or the battery capacity needs to be increased above 90MW to accommodate additional PV. From power quality and reliability assessment (activity 2) the following takeaway points can be observed: • The Trybrid, when integrated at the Lost River bus, and limited to 250MW in generation mode and -150MW in the pump mode, causes no violation of voltage or flow.

13 - HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

BIL GRID-READY WIND: Reliable and Economical Grid Services Design, Implementation, and Demonstration at the Great Pathfinder Wind Power Plant

The GRID-READY WIND project aimed to demonstrate the ability of utility-scale wind power plants (WPPs) to deliver traditional and emerging grid services (GSs) in both grid-following (GFL) and grid-forming (GFM) modes through a centralized control framework, supplemented by local control adjustments at the wind turbine generator as needed. Throughout the project, the team offered recommendations on how the grid services demonstrated with WPPs could be applied to other inverter-based resources (IBRs), such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and battery energy storage systems (BESS), while considering the unique dynamics of these resources arising from their energy generation characteristics. The project sought to enhance the confidence of system operators (SOs) and planners in utilizing WPPs, alongside other IBRs such as PV plants and BESS, to provide essential grid services over extended periods under diverse operating conditions, thereby supporting their integration into the bulk power system.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

PV Degradation Modeling: Applying Geospatial Workflows with "PVDeg"

Accurate degradation modeling is essential for predicting photovoltaic (PV) module performance, estimating longevity and informing design decisions. With degradation rates varying significantly by location, geospatial analysis is critical for PV and broader applications, such as agrivoltaics, weathering and environmental data analysis. This work presents PVDeg, an open-source tool designed for geospatial degradation analysis. PVDeg integrates meteorological data from global sources, including the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) and Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS), with degradation models. The toolkit enables users to customize geospatial workflows by integrating weather data, material parameters, and user-defined Python functions. It facilitates accelerated downloads of NSRDB and PVGIS datasets and optimizes geospatial point selection to preserve data density in regions of interest. Additionally, PVDeg provides a local database for storage and spatial queries, supporting large-scale analyses without the need for high-performance computing (HPC) resources. PVDeg provides a foundational workflow that extends its utility beyond PV applications, enabling researchers to analyze geospatial processes across discipline.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

The "PVLib" of Degradation: PVDeg

The Photovoltaic (PV) industry constantly aims for lower costs through higher-efficiency cells, improved module designs, and improvements in durability. This leads to the use of new materials, designs, and manufacturing processes, and not always with a sufficient amount of durability testing. To help drive down costs there is a desire to create modules that will last for up to 50 years of service life. To accomplish this, every degradation mode and mechanism must be identified and either eliminated or otherwise mitigated. This involves the extrapolation of laboratory results to the field conditions. There is a need to organize the existing degradation data into an accessible format and to provide industry relevant tools for extrapolation from laboratory to field conditions. While the basic equations used to model degradation are sometimes very simple, the full analysis involves calculations are cumbersome but ubiquitous for many degradation processes. A simplified, modeling framework to accomplish these repetitive processes will facilitate the analysis to help researchers keep up with the rapid pace of technological changes. In this talk, we will describe our progress creating the open-source tool PVDeg. This tool can be used to search for and analyze degradation information and extrapolate PV module performance and durability to field exposure. PVDeg simplifies many of the common foundational computational operations for obtaining meteorological data and using it to generate a model of the PV deployment. This prediction tool repository also contains various degradation models as well as a library of material parameters suitable for estimating the durability assessment of materials and components. We use an integration pipeline approach that allows us to leverage weather data from the National Solar Radiation Database, and other weather sources, to perform geospatial degradation analysis in the US and worldwide. We hope to become a repository that can be used for weathering and degradation analysis for various applications beyond the PV industry. During the talk, we will provide the PVPMC attendees the opportunity to interact with the tool via a Google Collab tutorial they can run on their phones or laptops.

durability↗
NASA NTRS2007

Exploration of CIGAS Alloy System for Thin-Film Photovoltaics on Novel Lightweight and Flexible Substrates

Thin-film photovoltaics (TFPV) on lightweight and flexible substrates offer the potential for very high solar array specific power (W/kg). ITN Energy Systems, Inc. (ITN) is developing flexible TFPV blanket technology that has potential for specific power greater than 2000 W/kg (including space coatings) that could result in solar array specific power between 150 and 500 W/kg, depending on array size, when mated with mechanical support structures specifically designed to take advantage of the lightweight and flexible substrates.(1) This level of specific power would far exceed the current state of the art for spacecraft PV power generation, and meet the needs for future spacecraft missions.(2) Furthermore the high specific power would also enable unmanned aircraft applications and balloon or high-altitude airship (HAA) applications, in addition to modular and quick deploying tents for surface assets or lunar base power, as a result of the high power density (W/sq m) and ability to be integrated into the balloon, HAA or tent fabric. ITN plans to achieve the high specific power by developing single-junction and two-terminal monolithic tandem-junction PV cells using thin-films of high-efficiency and radiation resistant CuInSe2 (CIS) partnered with bandgap-tunable CIS-alloys with Ga (CIGS) or Al (CIAS) on novel lightweight and flexible substrates. Of the various thin-film technologies, single-junction and radiation resistant CIS and associated alloys with gallium, aluminum and sulfur have achieved the highest levels of TFPV device performance, with the best efficiency reaching 19.5% under AM1.5 illumination conditions and on thick glass substrates.(3) Thus, it is anticipated that single- and tandem-junction devices with flexible substrates and based on CIS and related alloys will achieve the highest levels of thin-film space and HAA solar array performance.

Woods, Lawrence M.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Power System

A grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) power system is connected directly to the utility distribution grid. Facility power can be obtained from the utility system as normal. The PV system is synchronized with the utility system to provide power for the facility, and excess power is provided to the utility. Operating costs of a PV power system are low compared to conventional power technologies. This method can displace the highest-cost electricity during times of peak demand in most climatic regions, and thus reduce grid loading. Net metering is often used, in which independent power producers such as PV power systems are connected to the utility grid via the customers main service panels and meters. When the PV power system is generating more power than required at that location, the excess power is provided to the utility grid. The customer pays the net of the power purchased when the on-site power demand is greater than the onsite power production, and the excess power is returned to the utility grid. Power generated by the PV system reduces utility demand, and the surplus power aids the community. Modern PV panels are readily available, reliable, efficient, and economical, with a life expectancy of at least 25 years. Modern electronics have been the enabling technology behind grid-tied power systems, making them safe, reliable, efficient, and economical with a life expectancy equal to the modern PV panels. The grid-tied PV power system was successfully designed and developed, and this served to validate the basic principles developed, and the theoretical work that was performed. Grid-tied PV power systems are reliable, maintenance- free, long-life power systems, and are of significant value to NASA and the community. Of particular value are the analytical tools and capabilities that have been successfully developed. Performance predictions can be made confidently for grid-tied PV systems of various scales. The work was done under the NASA Hybrid Power Management (HPM) Program, which is the integration of diverse power devices in an optimal configuration for space and terrestrial applications.

Eichenberg, Dennis J.↗