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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 1,207 records · Page 67
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Survey and Gap Prioritization of U.S. Electric Vehicle Charge Management Deployments

The goal of this study was to survey and characterize the scope of current technical and programmatic knowledge pertaining to EV charge management technologies and practices in the US and relevant international jurisdictions. This characterization of existing field demonstrations and knowledge derived were used to determine gaps in the SCM demonstration landscape. Addressing these gaps through research and demonstration could increase confidence in the U.S. that load management and EV charge control could achieve overarching societal benefits. A survey of charge management deployments and input from stakeholders was completed to determine the state-of-the-art of smart charge management (SCM) where SCM is defined as controlling the amount of power exchanged between chargers and EVs to meet customers' charging needs while also responding to external power demand or pricing signals to provide load management, resilience, or other benefits to the customer and electric grid. The survey was the basis of the gap analysis in this report and determines which areas are well understood, with high confidence, and which areas need further investigation. Existing examples of EV charge management are characterized here to determine aspects that are ready for widespread deployment and have been demonstrated in the field. These include demonstration studies, pilots, programs, and EV-specific tariffs. In all, 110 examples of charge management were characterized. The data sources were public literature and utility filings as well as targeted interviews. In addition, 43 interviews with stakeholders were conducted with a consistent set of questions used in each interview. This study prioritized gaps in demonstrated SCM capabilities based on 1) Urgency of the particular use-case to offset traditional grid assets, 2) Impact, extensibility, and scaling of results across the entire spectrum of 3000+ utility service territories including projected technical and market potential for a given grid service, and 3) Value of federal funding in addressing the gap, including potential to leverage and/or add scope to existing field demonstrations funded by other non-federal funding mechanisms.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Flexible Transformers for Resilient and Adaptable Power Systems

This paper presents experience with grid ready flexible transformer unit, which is in service for two years without any difficulty. Transformer unit is capable of changing short circuit impedance on load and it is equipped with state-of-the-art monitoring system.

field validation↗
DOE OSTI2024

EMP Testing of NAE Magnetic Motor Starters

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) performed a high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) critical generation station component vulnerability test campaign with a focus on high-frequency, conducted early-time (E1) HEMP for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER). This report provides vulnerability test results to investigate component response and/or damage thresholds to reasonable HEMP threat levels that will help to inform site vulnerability assessments, mitigation planning, and modeling calibrations. This work details testing of North American Electric (NAE) magnetic motor starters to determine the effects of conducted HEMP environments. Motor starters are the control elements that provide power to motors throughout a generating plant; a starter going offline would cause loss of power to critical pumps and compressors, which could lead to component damage or unplanned plant outages. Additionally, failed starters would be unable to support plant startup. Six industrial motor starters were tested: two 2 horsepower (HP) starters with breaker disconnects and typical protection equipment, two 20 HP starters with breaker disconnects, and two 20 HP starters with fused disconnects. Each starter was placed in a circuit with a generator and inductive motor matching the starter rating. The conducted EMP insult was injected on the power cables passing through the motor starter, with separate tests for the generator and motor sides of the starter.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Options for Meeting Data Center Demand in Virginia: Focus on GETs and Reconductoring [Slides]

Data center demand growth in Virginia will need to met with many options - GETs and/or reconductoring have the potential to be part of the solution suite in the short-term and medium-term. Almost all GETs and reconductoring technologies have more favorable economics than transmission wires investments considering relatively low levels of existing wide-scale deployment. Deployment of GETs and/or reconductoring is not a one size fits all - requires detailed analysis. The complementary nature of GETs and/or reconductoring impacts have the potential to be synergistic (more congestion relief, more transfer capability, more cost savings - when implemented together).

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Optimization and Evaluation of Energy Savings for Connected and Autonomous Off-Road Vehicles

Off-road vehicles, such as wheel loaders, excavators, and harvesters, are extensively utilized across a wide range of industries, including construction, agriculture, and mining. These machines have become indispensable in supporting the day-to-day operational needs of a nation, playing a critical role in various sectors' infrastructure and productivity. However, despite their utility, off-road vehicles are significant consumers of fossil fuels, resulting in substantial emissions that contribute to environmental degradation. This highlights the pressing need for research and technological advancements aimed at improving their energy efficiency and reducing their carbon footprint. There are, however, two primary challenges that must be addressed to achieve these goals. First, off-road vehicles typically perform both driving and working tasks simultaneously, which introduces a high level of complexity into their overall dynamic systems. Analysis the interactions between these functions is challenging. Second, research into off-road vehicles is inherently interdisciplinary, demanding expertise across several domains such as fluid power systems, vehicle dynamics, control theory, optimization techniques, and real-world implementation. Recognizing these challenges, we proposed the project titled "Optimization and Evaluation of Energy Savings for Connected and Autonomous Off-Road Vehicles" as a comprehensive solution to enhance fuel efficiency while simultaneously improving productivity. This project specifically focuses on autonomous off-road vehicles, with particular attention to wheel loaders, and seeks to develop novel methods to optimize energy consumption without sacrificing operational performance. The project integrates real-time control algorithms, vehicle dynamics modeling, and co-optimization of powertrain system and vehicle system to achieve these goals. Our optimization strategy dynamically co-optimizes critical parameters at both the powertrain and vehicle levels, including vehicle speed, working tool movements, powertrain dynamics, and engine operations in real-time. To streamline this optimization process, we developed a vehicle model that captures the key dynamics while significantly enhancing computational efficiency. This allows the system to intelligently minimize fuel consumption, all while maintaining or even improving productivity through real-time calculations during various off-road operations. To validate the effectiveness of this energy optimization method, we introduced a state-of-the-art Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testbed. This reconfigurable testbed seamlessly integrates the actual engine with virtual models of the wheel loader's subsystems, allowing for accurate emulation of real-world operational loads and environments. By simulating these conditions, the HIL testbed enables us to evaluate the wheel loader’s performance under diverse working scenarios, ensuring the developed solution is applicable in real-world operations. This testbed proved to be instrumental in validating the optimization algorithms and demonstrating the system's practical effectiveness. During the evaluation and testing phase, we employed the HIL testbed to rigorously assess the energy savings and productivity improvements generated by the optimized system. The results were highly encouraging, revealing that the automated wheel loader achieved over 30% fuel savings compared to traditional, human-operated cycles, with comparable or even enhanced levels of productivity. The insights gained from this HIL-based testing provided critical validation of our approach and highlighted the potential for deploying these optimized autonomous technologies in real-world off-road vehicles.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Cybersecurity Considerations for Hydrogen Infrastructure in Airport Environments

This report explores key cybersecurity concerns and best practices within environments that serve as reference points for the development of hydrogen fueling infrastructure for aviation. This cybersecurity analysis leverages prior NREL studies: 1) hydrogen fueling station component validation to identify vulnerabilities and failure events documented in physical equipment, and 2) electric aircraft charging infrastructure analysis to explore primary cybersecurity vulnerabilities. It reviews the criticality of digitized technologies in sustaining hydrogen fuel production, storage, and fueling systems, noting cybersecurity concerns that are universal to power systems and industrial control systems in general. In considering cybersecurity vulnerabilities within a future landscape of hydrogen energy for aviation applications, a reference architecture was intended to reveal the points of connection between assets and the potential sensors that are vulnerable to manipulation in the event of compromised access or communication within a SCADA system. A generalized reference architecture can help stakeholders, engineers, or strategists understand connections, criticalities, and standard practices when it comes to designing and planning for new systems. There are several gaps to account for in assessing the future of hydrogen production, storage, and fueling for aviation. Engaging stakeholders, including aircraft manufacturers, electric utilities, site property owners, and local communities, will inform decision-making around site structure, operations, and resources for future hydrogen fueling infrastructure to understand operational needs and cybersecurity awareness. Cybersecurity mitigation strategy must consider physical attack vectors that emerge with the integration of hydrogen systems into existing airport security requirements. The cybersecurity risk assessment contained in this report is an entry point into potential future granular-level analyses to be conducted as part of hazard and risk assessments for safe aviation hydrogen infrastructure, determining how the scale of hydrogen fuel infrastructure for aviation impacts the volume of cyber attack vectors, and what, if any, are the vulnerabilities associated with different types of on-board hydrogen systems. In this nascent development phase, assessing how best to integrate cybersecurity practices into an evolving U.S. aviation landscape provides critical insights into building increased awareness and stakeholder engagement to support a cyber-resilient infrastructure.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2026

Control Room of the Future Testbed Workshop – After-Action Report

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity is supporting a one-year, multi-laboratory effort to define the needs and requirements for a Control Room of the Future testbed, or CROFT. The effort responds to increasing grid complexity driven by large new loads, dynamic generation resources, and the growing adoption of advanced technologies and tools, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). To support safe, secure, and effective grid modernization, CROFT will focus on how emerging technologies and tools can be rigorously evaluated in realistic operational settings, with attention to human-machine interaction, cognitive load, and workforce readiness. The project team includes Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, National Laboratory of the Rockies, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. As part of the scoping effort, the team conducted two industry-focused workshops: one at DTECH on February 5, 2026, informed by prior industry interviews, and a second on May 4, 2026, adjacent to IEEE T&D. These engagements brought together utilities, vendors, consultants, national laboratories, academia, and government stakeholders to identify and prioritize use cases, barriers, validation needs, data-sharing constraints, and near- and longer-term requirements. This feedback will directly inform CROFT’s architecture and research focus areas, ensuring the testbed is grounded in real-world operational needs and designed to evaluate emerging technologies and tools in realistic control-room environments.

artificial intelligence↗
DOE OSTI2020

Robust Learning with Implicit Residual Networks

In this effort, we propose a new deep architecture utilizing residual blocks inspired by implicit discretization schemes. As opposed to the standard feed-forward networks, the outputs of the proposed implicit residual blocks are defined as the fixed points of the appropriately chosen nonlinear transformations. We show that this choice leads to the improved stability of both forward and backward propagations, has a favorable impact on the generalization power, and allows for control the robustness of the network with only a few hyperparameters. In addition, the proposed reformulation of ResNet does not introduce new parameters and can potentially lead to a reduction in the number of required layers due to improved forward stability. Finally, we derive the memory-efficient training algorithm, propose a stochastic regularization technique, and provide numerical results in support of our findings.

Reshniak, Viktor↗
DOE OSTI2022

Effectively using multifidelity optimization for wind turbine design

Abstract. Wind turbines are complex multidisciplinary systems that are challenging to design because of the tightly coupled interactions between different subsystems. Computational modeling attempts to resolve these couplings so we can efficiently explore new wind turbine systems early in the design process. Low-fidelity models are computationally efficient but make assumptions and simplifications that limit the accuracy of design studies, whereas high-fidelity models capture more of the actual physics but with increased computational cost. This paper details the use of multifidelity methods for optimizing wind turbine designs by using information from both low- and high-fidelity models to find an optimal solution at reduced cost. Specifically, a trust-region approach is used with a novel corrective function built from a nonlinear surrogate model. We find that for a diverse set of design problems – with examples given in rotor blade geometry design, wind turbine controller design, and wind power plant layout optimization – the multifidelity method finds the optimal design using 38 %–58 % of the computational cost of the high-fidelity-only optimization. The success of the multifidelity method in disparate applications suggests that it could be more broadly applied to other wind energy or otherwise generic applications.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Evaluation of AC Microgrid Controllers

The evaluation of microgrid controllers is a critical component in de-risking the installation of microgrids in the field. This presentation discusses the evaluation of microgrid controllers in a lab setup.

AC microgrids↗
DOE OSTI2021

Modeling and Simulation of Inrush Currents in Harmonic Domain

Modeling and simulation capabilities are critical to the stability analysis and evaluation of power distribution systems, with respect to the emphasis on resiliency, microgrids, and distributed energy resources. In this paper, a computational method in the harmonic domain is proposed for the periodic steady-state analysis of the nonlinear inrush current phenomenon. The efficient inrush calculation facilitates the predictions of current amplitudes for the power system operation and control. To demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency, simulation results in the harmonic domain are compared with results from PSCAD in an electromagnetic timescale, as well as the authors’ previous works in the frequency-domain. Impacts of the settings of both offset flux and interested harmonic order are discussed. In addition, within the proposed harmonic-domain method, a general approach that utilizes the discrete Fourier transform to obtain the response of a nonlinear device from a stimulus represented in the frequency-domain is utilized. This method can also be extended to perform the transient analysis in future, using trapezoidal rule for the integration.

Xie, Jing↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Modeling Tool to Analyze the Performance of Industrial Cooling Towers

Energy efficiency and energy savings have become an important factor as industries look for ways to save energy and minimize their energy consumption while reducing their carbon footprint. Cooling towers are utilized significantly in industries for either serving chillers or process cooling. Depending on the size of the cooling tower, it can use a surprising amount of energy and water, which is why it is crucial to make sure that the facility has optimized their cooling tower.A modeling tool has been developed to perform a thorough analysis of a cooling tower and its various operations to ensure that the facility has optimized its cooling tower. This model analyzes an annual base case in comparison with the revised case of a cooling tower operation. This modeling tool simulates 8,760 hourly calculations for fan power for various fan controls, water consumption, and pumping energy consumption and demand based on the user’s location and its corresponding Typical Meteorological Year 3 (TMY3) weather data. This model is capable to simulate up to five cooling tower cells as one large tower utilizing one pump or parallel pumping. The successful validated cooling tower model should assist industry to save energy at their facility through their cooling tower, whether they use it for process cooling or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) applications. The entering/leaving water temperatures based on a monthly operating schedule or a wet-bulb temperature schedule will be used as inputs, and the model can calculate savings in energy for various conditions including variable-frequency drive (VFD) on the fan/pump, drift eliminators, number of cycles of concentration, reduced water flow rate, etc.

Hooper, Josh↗
DOE OSTI2021

Large-Scale Adoption of Self Synchronized Universal Droop Controller-Based Inverters to Enable Ancillary Services for Different Modes of Distribution System Operations

This poster presents the results of using the self-synchronized universal droop controller to enable solar power to provide ancillary services so that the use of solar power can be increased. A 300-node system using the IEEE 123 bus test feeder are modeled on a real time power system simulator with the results presented.

Arce, Laura↗
DOE OSTI2021

Irrigation system

A gravity irrigation system includes a distribution piping having apertures to distribute water to a field, and a valve located upstream of the distribution piping. The valve limits a pressure of the water being delivered to the distribution piping. The system also includes a sump to receive the water at a lowest elevation of the field, a depth sensor disposed within the sump, and a return pump disposed at least partially within the sump to move the water to an elevated portion of the field. The system also includes a motor to drive the return pump, and a power source coupled to a variable frequency drive that powers the motor and controls a motor speed proportionately to an indication of the depth sensor. The system also includes a transfer piping to bring the water from the return pump to a check valve and to the distribution piping.

Henry, Christopher G.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Modular medium voltage fast chargers

Certain embodiments involve a modular medium voltage fast charger. The modular medium voltage fast charger can include: (1) a predictive power factor correction (“PFC”) controller (or predictive controller) for series-interleaved multi-cell three-level boost (“SIMCB”) converters, (2) an active neutral point clamped (“NPC”) dual active bridge (“DAB”) modulation scheme to achieve soft switching, (3) an auxiliary capacitor to reduce NPC DAB turn-off voltages, (4) a comprehensive and scalable protection circuit, and (5) a high-isolation pulse transformer with a bobbin for reducing coupling capacitance of the pulse transformer.

Lukic, Srdjan↗