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At least 1,207 records · Page 67
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Commercial PV Property Characterization: An Analysis of Solar Deployment Trends in Commercial Real Estate

The commercial rooftop solar energy market remains an under-developed sector. The market is estimated to contain 150 gigawatts of potential in the U.S. but it faces significant barriers to deployment to meet that potential, with an estimated 1.4 GW developed through 2017. This analysis focuses on of over 30,000 solar systems installed through 2017 and the properties on which they are located. The sample represents greater than 60% of the installed market at that time. The properties covered 20 states and almost 30 different types including industrial, warehouse, school/university, office, retail, and municipal/government and were compared to more than 2.4 million non-solar properties in the same geographies. The analysis finds overall commercial rooftop PV penetrations have only surpassed 1% recently across all property types with education properties (schools and universities) leading at over 6% penetration and with NJ and CA seeing the highest overall penetrations close to 2.5%. Also revealed were characteristics of those buildings, owners, and tenants and how solar penetrations change as those characteristics change. The research found clearly higher penetrations on owner-occupied larger (~9000 ft 2 ) buildings with fewer tenants indicating, potentially, areas for future customer acquisition for PV developers. Also investigated were differences of solar system characteristics on commercial buildings such as system installed prices, size, and percentages of third-party owned (TPO) systems. The research found a steady and substantial drop in installed prices over time, a drop in the percentage of TPO systems being installed, and a relatively steady trend of system size. This latter finding indicates that smaller systems remain difficult to develop.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Open V2X at ESIF: June 2015 - February 2017 (Final Report)

The University of Delaware (UD), and their industrial partners, have carried out testing, documentation, and standards development at ESIF. These activities are intended to help meet the objective of NREL's INTEGRATE program, to enable clean energy technologies to increase the hosting capacity of the grid, by providing grid services in a holistic manner using an open source, interoperable platform. In particular, the 'Open V2X at ESIF' project worked to facilitate standardization and interoperability for Electric Vehicle technologies, including battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles (hence EV) to provide grid services. This was done by interconnecting and testing EV and EVSE (charging station) hardware from different manufacturers, by developing standards and test protocols for standards, and by documenting new protocols to be proposed as standards. Contractor-supplied equipment used in the testing included Vehicle Smart Links (VSLs) installed in an EV and School Bus, single-phase and three-phase charging stations, and an optimizing aggregator (software running on a server, hence just 'Aggregator'). The Aggregator software was developed by U of Delaware and is now licensed to Nuvve Corp for commercial development, and licensed to NRG/EVgo for demonstrations. The Aggregator monitors capacity and operations of the EVs and EVSEs, dispatches them in response to requests, and reports their operations and metered power flow. In operation, as vehicles move, plug-in and unplug, the aggregator tracks the total capacity available within a defined jurisdiction or RTO (Regional Transmission Organization, synonym for ISO or TSO), and dispatches part or all of that capacity based on market or direct dispatch signals from a grid entity. The VSL is the data acquisition and control module in the resource itself (EVSE or EV), with rich communication between a single Optimizing Aggregator and many VSL (one in each resource). All requests and dispatch events are also logged by the aggregator to make the provision of grid power auditable. For these tests, the dispatch was typically a recorded signal, the VSL was in the EV or EVSE, and the recording of experimental performance was often carried out by the normal logging functions of the aggregator.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2019

Homoclinic tangles in the DIII-D divertor tokamak

A new approach was developed for the calculation of homoclinic tangles of the primary unperturbed separatrix in divertor tokamaks. This new approach is different than calculating tangles by following single trajectories in phase space [M. V. Berry, Topics in Nonlinear Dynamics (Ed. S. Jorna), Am. Inst. Phys. Conf. Proc. 46, 16-120 (1978)] or calculating the trajectories asymptotically in canonical time [R. K. W. Roeder, B. I. Rapoport, and T. E. Evans, Phys. Plasmas 10, 3796 (2003)]. The approach is to consider an equilibrium manifold as a whole and to calculate how the entire manifold evolves in phase space in time under the influence of perturbations. When the forward moving and the backward moving manifolds meet in a poloidal plane and intersect, they form tangles to preserve the topological invariance of the Hamiltonian system. This approach was applied to the DIII-D tokamak. The low mn, the high mn, the peeling-ballooning modes, and topological noise and field error perturbations were considered. The results of the peeling-ballooning modes were analyzed. It was found that the perturbations create very complicated structures in phase space [A. Punjabi and A. Boozer, Phys. Lett A 378, 2410-2416 (2014); A. Punjabi, Phys. Plasmas 21, 122516 (2014)]. The structure of tangles gives a possible cause for generation of radial electric fields in divertor tokamaks, and the possible consequent drifts, currents, shears, and curvature effects from the resulting complicated electric fields can possibly indicate a path to L to H mode transition [F. Wagner F et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1408 (1982)] in divertor tokamaks. During the present period, four (4) refereed paper were published; six (6) contributed papers were presented at the EPS Conference on Plasma Physics and published in the EPS conference proceedings; six (6) contributed poster papers, co-authored with HU undergraduate students, were presented at APS/DPP Annual Meetings; three contributed papers were presented at HU School of Science Annual Research Symposia; four (4) invited talks were given; one talk, co-authored by Dr. Allen Boozer and the PI, was given by Dr. Boozer at the 20th International Stellarator-Heliotron Workshop 2015, in Greifswald, Germany; and four (4) graduate students and nine (9) undergraduate students were mentored and provided research experience in fusion science. For the renewal period, it is planned to work on four (4) new problems. These are: Homoclinic tangles of the separatrices of the DIII-D and the simple map, magnetic topology and homoclinic tangles of separatrices in divertor tokamaks, resonant stellarator divertors, and nonresonant stellarator divertors.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Improving Fission Products at CARIBU: Near Field Detection (Q4/FY19 Quarterly Progress Report)

We have been having ongoing discussions about the analysis and the text of the 95 Zr manuscript with our collaborators at Texas A&M University (TAMU). K. Kolos has travelled to Texas to discuss, once again, some details of our GEANT4 simulation used to determine the gas-counter efficiency. In that process, we discovered that there was a slight disagreement (~0.5%) between our results and the results obtained with the EGS code used by the TAMU group. We are currently working to determine and magnitude and source of the discrepancy. This has taken a considerable amount of time and, unfortunately, has hindered us from sending out the paper to all of our collaborators. We also recently found out that Benjamin Schroeder, the Texas A&M student supported by the CENTUAR Center of Excellence who joined our project earlier this year, has decided to leave graduate school after obtaining his Master Thesis. Although this is a loss for our team, we do not foresee this to cause a major disruption in the project. Our TAMU collaborators are still committed to the success of these measurements.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Report on activities for grant "High Energy Density Science Applications of Laser Wakefield Accelerators"

The overall aim of this proposal was to make use of the unique properties of laser wakefield accelerated electrons and associated secondary photon sources for High Energy Density Science studies. In the reduced 1 year funding schedule for this project, four new students were trained in the physics of laser wakefield acceleration, including attending a winter school on plasma accelerators and participation in experiments on large scale laser-plasma experimental facilities. Investigations of the X-rays produced by laser wakefield acceleration for HEDP applications and trapping mechanisms were investigated experimentally and theoretically and submitted for publication.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Production of Radiohalogens: Bromine and Astatine for Imaging and Therapy (Final Report)

The UAB team focused our efforts on Project 1: Production and Characterization of 76,77 Br and has completed all milestones. We have conducted irradiations using novel cobalt selenide targets prepared in house and by our collaborators at UWisc. A distillation apparatus for the purification of the produced radiobromine has been constructed and radiobromine is in routine production at UAB. The gas target route is under final optimization for routine production. A chemistry graduate student, Samuel Ferran, led the project for both the gas and solid target experiments this work will be included in his thesis project. Two manuscripts are in preparation based on this work. Additionally, an undergraduate student Retta El Sayed assisted with this project and is now enrolled in graduate school. Monthly collaborative meetings took place as well as several in person team meetings with all participating sites.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗
DOE OSTI2020

Preliminary Assessment of Potential for Wind Energy Technology on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation

Wind energy can provide renewable and sustainable electricity to Native American reservations, including rural homes, and power schools and businesses on reservations. It can also provide tribes with a source of income and economic development. The purpose of this paper is to determine the potential for deploying community and utility-scale wind renewable technologies on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa tribal lands. Ideal areas for wind technology development were investigated based on annual wind resources, terrain, land usage, and other factors such as culturally sensitive sites. The result is a preliminary assessment of wind energy potential on Turtle Mountain lands, which can be used to justify further investigation and investment into determining the feasibility of future wind technology projects.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Partnership and Pipeline Office Overview [Slides]

Partnerships ensure a strong Laboratory and support our missions. Partnerships are critical to our success as a Laboratory: community relations, colleges and universities and technical communities, regional and national economic development through industrial partners, DOE Laboratories, and other federal agencies. The Laboratory has many tools to build and enhance partnerships. The Community Programs Office in our Northern New Mexico Region has K-12 educational programs, supports teacher professional development and retention in regional elementary, middle and high schools, and provides community college engagement. The Partnerships and Pipeline Office works with the National Security Education Center (NSEC) which has broad university engagement including New Mexico universities. The Feynman Center for Innovation is involved in 'tech transfer' to innovation asset stewardship. The External Assignments Office shares LANL's technical expertise. The Student and Postdoc Program Offices build our workforce of the future.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

W.A. Parish Post-Combustion CO 2 Capture and Sequestration Demonstration Project (Final Technical Report)

The Petra Nova Project (Project) is a commercial scale post-combustion carbon capture project developed by a joint venture between NRG Energy, Inc. (NRG) and JX Nippon Oil Exploration (EOR) Limited (JX). The Project is designed to separate and capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from an existing coal-fired unit’s flue gas slipstream at NRG’s W.A. Parish Electric Generating Station (WAP) located southwest of Houston, Texas. The captured CO2 is dried, compressed, and transported via an 81-mile pipeline to the West Ranch oilfield (West Ranch) in Jackson County, Texas, where it is injected to boost oil production. The Project, which is partially funded by a grant (Grant) from the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) under the Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) Round 3, uses the Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery advanced amine-based CO 2 absorption technology (KM-CDR Process®), which was jointly developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) and the Kansai Electric Power Co. Inc., to treat and capture at least ninety percent (90%) of the CO 2 from a 240-megawatt equivalent (MWe) flue gas slipstream off of Unit 8 at WAP. When operating at full capacity, the Project captures approximately 5,200 short tons of CO 2 per day, which would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere, representing the largest commercial scale deployment of post-combustion CO2 capture technology at a coal power plant to date. Under the Grant, the Project was managed in 3 phases: (1) Phase 1: Project Definition / Front End Engineering Design (FEED) (2) Phase 2: Detailed Engineering, Procurement & Construction (3) Phase 3: Demonstration and Monitoring. On December 29, 2016, commercial operation of the Project was achieved, ending Phase 2 and starting Phase 3, a 3-year demonstration period running from January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2019. The key objectives of Phase 3 were to (a) demonstrate the specific advanced technologies constructed during Phase 2 and (b) monitor the injected CO 2 at West Ranch to demonstrate technologies and protocols for monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA). As of the end of Phase 3, Petra Nova captured 3,904,978 short tons of CO 2 (3,542,537 metric tons) that was transported to West Ranch. To support the DOE obligation to monitor, verify, and account for the sequestered CO 2 at West Ranch, Petra Nova contracted with the Bureau of Economic Geology (in the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin) to (a) design a monitoring program, (b) draft an MVA Plan for DOE review and approval, and (c) working with Petra Nova and the operator of West Ranch to manage and report on the MVA activity. This report discussed the technical aspects of the project during each of the 3 phases of the project as identified above.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2020

Validation of pooling strategies of clinical COVID-19 samples for more efficient diagnostic testing

Pooling of COVID-19 clinical samples can offer significant reduction in reagents, time, and labor needed to test large numbers of clinical samples. Especially for testing asymptomatic and return-towork/ school cases, where the prevalence of COVID-19 may be relatively low, large groups of clinical samples can be classified as negative with a single test, with no need to test every sample individually. LANL has performed validation for two different pooling strategies to assess diagnostic assay sensitivity in pooled samples compared to the clinical positive sample alone. (1) Pooling study - Determine diagnostic assay sensitivity in pooled samples with ratios of 1:5, 1:10, 1:20, and 1:30 positive to negative clinical samples. (2) Reloading study - Determine diagnostic assay sensitivity in reloading of multiple clinical samples through a Qiagen column in 5x, 10, and 20x sample volumes (1 positive plus 4, 9, and 19 negative samples).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Collaboration with USACyS for Signals Manipulation

Savannah River National Laboratory has been investing into cybersecurity capabilities since 2019. Cybersecurity has been a rapidly growing area for the CSRA in general and has included the consolidation of Cyber and Electronic Warfare units at Fort Gordon. This consolidation has been driven by the convergence of cyberwarfare and electronic warfare as the technologies underpinning Army Cyber Command’s vision of Information Warfare. This convergence, investment by SRNL into cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, and the desire for collaboration between the Army and SRNL has resulted in an opportunity for SRNL to develop R&D capabilities in electronic warfare that will complement SRNL’s cybersecurity efforts. Discussions between SRNL and the U.S. Army Cyber School (USACyS) has identified a general gap in ICS training lab capability in which both entities could contribute to solve. It is proposed to design and architecture that meets this need.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Strategies for seeking a job at a national lab [Slides]

Understanding the job market from the hiring side can help you develop better strategies for seeking a job. National laboratories represent a substantial source of jobs in the U.S. in engineering and science. High school, college, and graduate student internship positions are all available, but you can be more successful in finding one of these positions if you use a targeted search. Likewise, reaching out to individual researchers and/or knowing how to respond to job ads can increase your chances of getting an interview for a permanent job or positions, such as postdoc and postbac appointments, that can lead to permanent jobs. In my career as a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I have hired people into all of these job categories, as well as served on many hiring committees for all levels of appointments. I will offer Polonius*-type advice for jobseekers and discuss the hiring process and how you can optimize your own job search.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Foundations of an Electric Mobility Strategy for the City of Mexicali

The Foundations of an Electric Mobility Strategy for the city of Mexicali aligns with numerous energy, environmental, and transport plans and will help Mexicali meet multiple related goals. Mexicali’s energy mix, with 28% renewables, already enables plugin electric vehicles (PEVs) to reduce the mass of greenhouse gases (GHGs) per km driven 2/3 below that of their conventional counterparts. This GHG benefit will increase should Mexicali take steps to further increase their share of renewables in their electricity supply. Beyond increasing renewables, Mexicali could possibly deploy PEVs so that electric load is added in the right location (depending on further analysis of substations and feeders) and at the right time (between 21:00 and 11:00) in order to minimize grid upgrade costs. There are a handful of charge timing control mechanisms –at various stages of development– that Mexicali could implement. Transport electrification can facilitate mass transit by powering buses, trains, and small vehicles that get people from their homes or work to the transit stations and vice versa. Mexicali could utilize fleets as early PEV adopters in order to gain acceptance and add electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Recommended prioritization of different types of fleets are suggested in this report: transit buses, school buses, airport ground support equipment (GSE), refuse trucks, taxis, shuttle buses, campus vehicles, delivery trucks, utility trucks, and finally semitrailers. There are a handful of policy options that Mexicali could use to incentivize fleets to purchase PEVs, including mandates, economic incentives, energy performance contracts, waivers to access restrictions, electricity discounts, and EVSE requirements in building codes. Mexicali’s taxi fleet was an early adopter of PEVs and had experienced some challenges—mostly related to the insufficient range of the taxis due to hot weather. In this report, we strategize ways to extend the range of the current electric taxis, including ways to make charging more convenient to the drivers, and more suggestions for appropriate vehicles to purchase in the future. This report also includes the groundwork of geotracking Mexicali’s taxi fleet so that more detailed recommendations can be made in the future. Once fleets have increased PEV acceptance and EVSE installations, the market will be ready to expand to private vehicle owners. In order to do this, more EVSE needs to be installed in the right locations. This mobility strategy lays out general local areas where EVSE could be well utilized, based on traffic patterns, land use, and demographic data. Mexicali could approach businesses within these areas that would likely make suitable hosts, based on how well they can profit from the additional business that EVSE would bring. Mexicali could then adopt a series of purchase incentives (including sales tax waivers or access to high-occupancy vehicles [HOV] lanes) that would encourage private vehicle owners to purchase PEVs. Purchase incentives run the risk of creating equity issues, which can be countered by promoting electrification in mass transit, creating more HOV lanes that have PEV exemptions, and installing EVSEs in underserved communities. Private PEV ownership will require a set of experts that Mexicali can help train, including PEV repair technicians, EVSE installation electricians, and first responders.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Sedimentary Geothermal Resources in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Texas

The objectives of this project were to (1) perform a literature review of sedimentary geothermal resources, (2) identify data sources and develop data-collection methodologies that characterize selected resources, (3) screen sedimentary basins and formations for sedimentary geothermal potential, and (4) evaluate the technical feasibility of one or more selected locations. Numerous publications have characterized geothermal resources within sedimentary basins. A literature search reviewed publications describing resources located in Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. The most attractive resources have high temperature gradients, low drilling costs, and reservoir permeabilities greater than 10 millidarcies (mD). Prospects in Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah exhibit attractive characteristics and were chosen for further analysis. Sedimentary resources in Nevada and Utah are most attractive, followed by tested resources in Texas and untested resources in Colorado. The identified resources in Wyoming and Louisiana had lower geothermal gradients and were not evaluated. Reservoir modeling and techno-economic analysis were performed at Marys River Basin–North in Nevada. Geothermal energy production at this location is expected to have a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) ranging between 10 and 20 cents/kWh. Additional work may result in lower LCOE estimates at this location and at other attractive prospects in these three regions. The Great Basin carbonate and alluvial aquifer system of eastern Nevada and western Utah includes a lower carbonate aquifer unit, which has the potential for hosting both conduction- and convection-dominated geothermal systems. Mapping has identified lateral thickness variability expressed as a roughly 120–150-km-wide central corridor, which hosts the thickest and most continuous formations and extends from near Las Vegas north to the Idaho border. Purchase and analysis of privately held legacy seismic data could potentially compensate for the lack of sufficient data documenting measured depth to the lower carbonate aquifer unit. Multiple orogenies, extension episodes, and intrusive events have deformed and displaced the target formations of the lower carbonate aquifer unit. This structural complexity and potential for dipping reservoirs emphasizes the need for detailed geological, geophysical, and reservoir modeling. Heat flow within three Colorado sedimentary basins reviewed as part of this study was calculated in targeted studies by the Colorado Geologic Survey and Colorado School of Mines. These calculations are based on bottom-hole temperature data sets with significant limitations and some variability but produce values consistently higher than the global continental average of 65 mW/m2 for all three basins. Heat flow in the Raton Basin is the highest; however, permeability measurements from specific sedimentary formations with high heat flow have not been obtained. Promising formations for sedimentary geothermal systems were found in all three regions studied—Nevada-Utah, Colorado, and Texas. The next steps for developing sedimentary geothermal resources vary due to differences in available data and resource uncertainties. Additional scopes of work are recommended for identified basins in these three regions.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Safeguards by Design Projects (FY2020 Final Report)

This University Engagement project challenged engineering students at universities, that do not have Bachelor degrees in nuclear engineering but do have research reactors and some nuclear engineering coursework, to incorporate Safeguards by Design concepts into their Senior Capstone Design Project. This University Engagement project was part of the U. S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, Office of International Nuclear Safeguards, Next Generation Safeguards Initiative, Human Capital Development: University Engagement Program. This program exposed university students with Mechanical Engineering majors and Nuclear Engineering minors to the concepts of international nuclear safeguards. FY20, three teams at the University of Rhode Island and one team at the University of Texas - Austin participated in researching, designing, building, and testing projects to support international nuclear safeguards measurements or verification. The projects involved engaging in activities at the university’s research reactors. All the projects engaged students with prototyping a design and/or tool for application at the Universities’ reactor. At the end of the course, most of the students expressed the experience was a positive and they learned more about international nuclear safeguards and applying requirements than they had previously encountered. This school year the projects were further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both universities cancelled in class room classes, and limited direct student/professor interactions. Furthermore, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) greatly restricted travel, therefore making it impossible to visit the students at the end of the semester for the review of their design projects. The final design and review meeting for the projects happened via the internet. Additionally, while the teams planned to build prototypes this did not happen since there was a social distancing ban on students meeting in person.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗