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The practical use of small-gage round wire for electrical wiring in manned air and space vehicle environments is discussed. The investigation consisted on a study of wire construction and candidate wire harness concepts, fabrication of small-gage wire harnesses, and verification of promising configurations by laboratory evaluation. The wire constructions selected for harness fabrication are described. Results of the laboratory evaluation are included.
For abstract, see N76-13141.
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The major nutritional components of the green algae (Scenedesmus obliquus) grown in a Constant Cell density Apparatus were determined. Suitable methodology to prepare proteins from which three major undesirable components of these cells (i.e., cell walls, nucleic acids, and pigments) were either removed or substantially reduced was developed. Results showed that processing of green algae to protein isolate enhances its potential nutritional and organoleptic acceptability as a diet component in a Controlled Ecological Life Support System.
Space Human Factors and Habitability (SHFH) Element within the Human Research Program (HRP), in collaboration with the Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP) Element, is conducting research regarding Net Habitable Volume (NHV), the internal volume within a spacecraft or habitat that is available to crew for required activities, as well as layout and accommodations within that volume. NASA is looking for innovative methods to unobtrusively collect NHV data without impacting crew time. Data required includes metrics such as location and orientation of crew, volume used to complete tasks, internal translation paths, flow of work, and task completion times. In less constrained environments methods for collecting such data exist yet many are obtrusive and require significant post‐processing. Example technologies used in terrestrial settings include infrared (IR) retro‐reflective marker based motion capture, GPS sensor tracking, inertial tracking, and multiple camera filmography. However due to constraints of space operations many such methods are infeasible, such as inertial tracking systems which typically rely upon a gravity vector to normalize sensor readings, and traditional IR systems which are large and require extensive calibration. However multiple technologies have not yet been applied to space operations for these explicit purposes. Two of these include 3‐Dimensional Radio Frequency Identification Real‐Time Localization Systems (3D RFID‐RTLS) and depth imaging systems which allow for 3D motion capture and volumetric scanning (such as those using IR‐depth cameras like the Microsoft Kinect or Light Detection and Ranging / Light‐Radar systems, referred to as LIDAR).
Space Human Factors and Habitability (SHFH) Element within the Human Research Program (HRP) and the Behavioral Health and Performance (BHP) Element are conducting research regarding Net Habitable Volume (NHV), the internal volume within a spacecraft or habitat that is available to crew for required activities, as well as layout and accommodations within the volume. NASA needs methods to unobtrusively collect NHV data without impacting crew time. Data required includes metrics such as location and orientation of crew, volume used to complete tasks, internal translation paths, flow of work, and task completion times. In less constrained environments methods exist yet many are obtrusive and require significant post-processing. Examplesused in terrestrial settings include infrared (IR) retro-reflective marker based motion capture, GPS sensor tracking, inertial tracking, and multi-camera methods Due to constraints of space operations many such methods are infeasible. Inertial tracking systems typically rely upon a gravity vector to normalize sensor readings,and traditional IR systems are large and require extensive calibration. However, multiple technologies have not been applied to space operations for these purposes. Two of these include: 3D Radio Frequency Identification Real-Time Localization Systems (3D RFID-RTLS) Depth imaging systems which allow for 3D motion capture and volumetric scanning (such as those using IR-depth cameras like the Microsoft Kinect or Light Detection and Ranging / Light-Radar systems, referred to as LIDAR)
Abstract not provided.
Presented at the 34th International Pittsburgh Coal Conference (Pittsburgh, PA)
Modern natural gas utilities face numerous challenges and competing priorities from various stakeholders. Policymakers, customers, and advocacy groups want to see gas utilities improve performance on safety, reliability, resilience, affordability, and environmental stewardship. State utility regulators — public utility commissions — are responsible for overseeing utility performance, ensuring that ratepayer funds are being spent in the public interest, and aligning utility goals with public goals. The use of new technologies is critical to enabling cost-effective performance on these attributes. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a widely used term among utilities and regulators, but the term means different things to different stakeholders, and it is often used to describe data analytics approaches that fall short of the formal definition of AI, which is: “…the ability of a machine to receive inputs and produce a behavior or reaction similar to that of an intelligent human being.” AI (and related tools, techniques, and technologies) can help utilities solve current and emerging challenges. By combining customer and system data with analytical tools and technologies, AI can augment human decision-makers by assisting in identifying problems and events before they occur, enabling resources to be more efficiently directed across utility infrastructure. The intended primary audience for this primer is state regulators, although utilities and other stakeholders might also find it useful and relevant to improve their awareness of AI. The objectives of this primer are to: (a) offer a set of broadly applicable definitions for AI and related terms, allowing regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders to speak the same language; (b) discuss how AI is currently being implemented in the gas utility sector; and (c) understand the challenges affecting AI solutions and how tools might be implemented in the future. This primer fits within NARUC’s goals of providing impartial information to improve the ability of public utility commissions to regulate in the public interest. As such, this primer does not seek to recommend AI over any other investment, nor does it endorse any particular vendor, product, or approach. It does seek to prepare state regulators to oversee AI investments by sharing information about the current landscape of commercially available tools. To these ends, the primer is organized as follows: Section I discusses the current environment in which natural gas utilities operate and how AI, when thoughtfully designed and implemented, can enable utilities to achieve performance goals; Section II offers definitions of AI and related terms within the data analytics discipline; Section III provides three current opportunities for which AI can offer solutions: replacing aging gas distribution infrastructure, preventing excavator damage to gas distribution infrastructure, and improving energy efficiency programs. This section discusses each problem statement in detail. Second, Section III includes a discussion of how costs and benefits of investments to solve each problem are measured. And third, this section offers real-world examples of utility implementation of AI solutions; Section IV discusses challenges with implementing AI, both from the perspective of utilities and regulators; Section V suggests areas in which AI could feasibly be implemented in the near future; Finally, Section VI offers concluding thoughts and areas for further research.
The phototrophic purple nonsulfur bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris is known for its metabolic versatility and is of interest for various industrial and environmental applications. Despite decades of research on R. palustris growth under diverse conditions, patterns of R. palustris growth and carbon utilization with mixtures of carbon substrates remain largely unknown. R. palustris readily utilizes most short-chain organic acids but cannot readily use lactate as a sole carbon source. Here we investigated the influence of mixed-substrate utilization on phototrophic lactate consumption by R. palustris. We found that lactate was simultaneously utilized with a variety of other organic acids and glycerol in time frames that were insufficient for R. palustris growth on lactate alone. Thus, lactate utilization by R. palustris was expedited by its coutilization with additional substrates. Separately, experiments using carbon pairs that did not contain lactate revealed acetate-mediated inhibition of glycerol utilization in R. palustris. This inhibition was specific to the acetate-glycerol pair, as R. palustris simultaneously utilized acetate or glycerol when either was paired with succinate or lactate. Overall, our results demonstrate that (i) R. palustris commonly employs simultaneous mixed-substrate utilization, (ii) mixed-substrate utilization expands the spectrum of readily utilized organic acids in this species, and (iii) R. palustris has the capacity to exert carbon catabolite control in a substrate-specific manner. IMPORTANCE. Bacterial carbon source utilization is frequently assessed using cultures provided single carbon sources. However, the utilization of carbon mixtures by bacteria (i.e., mixed-substrate utilization) is of both fundamental and practical importance; it is central to bacterial physiology and ecology, and it influences the utility of bacteria as biotechnology. Here we investigated mixed-substrate utilization by the model organism Rhodopseudomonas palustris. Using mixtures of organic acids and glycerol, we show that R. palustris exhibits an expanded range of usable carbon substrates when provided substrates in mixtures. Specifically, coutilization enabled the prompt consumption of lactate, a substrate that is otherwise not readily used by R. palustris. Additionally, we found that R. palustris utilizes acetate and glycerol sequentially, revealing that this species has the capacity to use some substrates in a preferential order. These results provide insights into R. palustris physiology that will aid the use of R. palustris for industrial and commercial applications.
Electric utilities today must contain costs at a time when many need to modernize aging systems and all face major changes in technologies, customer preferences and competitive pressures.Most U.S. electric utility facilities are investor-owned, subject to rate and service regulation by state public utility commissions. Regulatory systems under which these utilities operate affect their performance and ability to meet these challenges. In this business environment, multiyear rate plans have some advantages over traditional rate regulation.The report focuses on key design issues and provides case studies of the multiyear rate plan approach, applicable to both vertically integrated and restructured states. Mark Newton Lowry and Matt Makos of Pacific Energy Group Research and Jeff Deason of Berkeley Lab authored the report; Lisa Schwartz, Berkeley Lab, was project manager and technical editor.The report is aimed primarily at state utility regulators and stakeholders in the state regulatory process. The multiyear rate approach also provides ideas on how to streamline oversight of public power utilities and rural electric cooperatives for their governing boards.Two key provisions of multiyear rate plans strengthen cost containment incentives and streamline regulation: 1. Reducing frequency of rate cases, typically to every four or five years 2. Using an attrition relief mechanism to escalate rates or revenue between rate cases to address cost pressures such as inflation and growth in number of customers, independently of the utility’s own cost Better utility performance can be achieved under well-designed multiyear rate plans while achieving lower regulatory costs. Benefits can be shared between utilities and their customers. But plans can be complex and involve significant changes in the regulatory system. Designing plans that stimulate utility performance without undue risk and share benefits fairly can be challenging.This report discusses the rationale for multiyear rate plans and their usefulness under modern business conditions. It then explains critical plan design issues and challenges and presents results from numerical research that considers the extra incentive power achieved under different plan provisions. Next, the report presents several case studies of utilities that have operated under formal multiyear rate plans or, for various reasons, have stayed out of rate cases for more than a decade. These studies consider the effect of multiyear rate plans and rate case frequency on utility cost, reliability and other performance dimensions.
This report and policy brief focus on the more recent changes and evolutions in grid services, products, and market opportunities regulated electric utilities are offering to their customers, both traditional end-use electric customers as well as third-party party businesses. Drawing on a database of more than 50 recent examples, the most prevalent and significant evolutions are occurring in: residential retail rate design shifts toward voluntary and default time-of-use (TOU); changes to distributed generation (DG) compensation methodologies; utilization of customer and non-utility assets as non-wires alternatives (NWAs); and utility investments in electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure. Important and related themes emerge from this assessment of recent trends suggesting regulators and policymakers should formulate clear and consistent policy goals around the following two issues: 1. Opportunities increasing competition to serve the electricity needs of retail customers. Reforms that drive increases in NWAs and DG pit utility investments against customer investments and may erode the exclusivity of the utility franchise. In contrast, reforms to DG compensation, that may reduce the financial benefits of a customer’s investment, may maintain or strengthen the firmness of the utility franchise boundaries. 2.Opportunities driving greater innovation within and outside the electric industry. Electric utilities are innovating by developing novel NWA opportunities that can provide financial support for the broader adoption of DERs. There are also electric utility efforts to enable broader innovation in other industries, where utility investment in EV charging infrastructure could promote greater EV ownership and enable utility control of these resources to provide grid services.
Innovation is essential for future power systems to be safe and secure, clean and sustainable, affordable and equitable, and reliable and resilient, according to a recent National Academies report. But state regulatory reforms are needed to encourage adoption of new technologies to support evolution of the nation’s power systems.1 Berkeley Lab's report, The Role of Innovation in the Electric Utility Sector, provides consumer, labor, utility, third-party provider, and clean technology consultant perspectives on this theme. To achieve state targets for clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions, some state regulatory utility commissions are exploring new approaches to spur innovation: -For utilities, regulatory and marketing flexibility, increased funding for demonstration projects, and performance-based ratemaking including multi-year rate plans -For third parties, ways to provide utility customers with innovative products and services directly Among the questions the report addresses: 1. How are consumer advocate views evolving with respect to innovative regulatory and ratemaking approaches? 2. How can utility decarbonization and grid modernization initiatives provide opportunities for local communities and workers to receive tangible benefits and facilitate community support for siting electricity infrastructure? 3. How are electric utilities partnering with technology companies to provide innovative energy management services and sustainable energy solutions for utility customers? 4. What regulatory innovations are public utility commissions exploring to enable third-party providers to participate in the transition to a modern electric system? 5. What regulatory changes are needed to enable innovative solutions from utilities and third parties at the necessary speed and scale to meet state decarbonization goals? The report is the 13th in the Future Electric Utility Regulation series, which taps leading thinkers to tackle complex regulatory issues for electricity. 1 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. The Future of Electric Power in the United States. The National Academies Press.
Investments in energy efficiency and distributed generation reduce electric utility retail sales. Since electric utilities have historically collected a large portion of revenues from volumetric energy rates (¢/kWh), such reductions in sales can impact the utility’s ability to sufficiently recover non-production costs. Regulatory mechanisms that “decouple” utility revenues from sales were implemented to help make the utility indifferent to energy efficiency and distributed generation by ensuring the utility is able to collect an allowed level of revenue each year regardless of its sales. However, noticeable and consistent surcharges over time may create the perception of an incorrectly designed or implemented decoupling mechanism. To date, there are limited quantitative analyses of the rate adjustments due to decoupling mechanisms implemented among U.S. electric utilities (see Morgan, 2013). Given the recent rapid increase in distributed energy resource (DER) adoption in some states and utility service territories, consumers may be facing more prevalent and ongoing decoupling surcharges. This, in turn, may undermine stakeholder support for implementation of decoupling mechanisms and the associated utility support for energy efficiency and DERs. To determine the size of retail rate adjustments associated with decoupling mechanisms and whether they have a tendency towards bill surcharges or credits, we analyzed a large dataset of historical annual decoupling rate adjustments for 21 electric utilities in 11 states between 2005 and 2017. We found that decoupling mechanisms adjusted rates, both up and down, between rate cases, and the majority of those adjustments (54 percent) are small (within a range of -1 to 1 percent). However, we also found that 64 percent of the rate adjustment observations in our sample showed a positive rate adjustment. Importantly, once a surcharge is applied there is an 86 percent chance that there will be a surcharge in the next year as well. While our analysis did not seek to understand the root causes for such results, some possible factors include the accuracy of revenue requirement forecasts, emerging structural changes in customer use and production of energy, misaligned financial motivation, and other factors that influence sales (e.g., economic recession).
This report focuses on ways current methods and practices that establish the value to electric utility systems of distributed energy resource (DER) investments can be enhanced to determine the value of demand flexibility in grid-interactive efficient buildings that can provide grid services. The report introduces key valuation concepts that are applicable to demand flexibility that these buildings can provide and links to other documents that describe these concepts and their implementation in more detail.The scope of this report is limited to the valuation of economic benefits to the utility system. These are the foundational values on which other benefits (and costs) can be built. Establishing the economic value to the grid of demand flexibility provides the information needed to design programs, market rules, and rates that align the economic interest of utility customers with building owners and occupants. By nature, DERs directly impact customers and provide societal benefits external to the utility system. Jurisdictions can use utility system benefits and costs as the foundation of their economic analysis but align their primary cost-effectiveness metric with all applicable policy objectives, which may include customer and societal (non-utility system) impacts.This report suggests enhancements to current methods and practices that state and local policymakers, public utility commissions, state energy offices, utilities, state utility consumer representatives, and other stakeholders might support. These enhancements can improve the consistency and robustness of economic valuation of demand flexibility for grid services. The report concludes with a discussion of considerations for prioritizing implementation of these improvements.
Administered by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), the Utility Program has fostered collaboration among federal agencies and their serving utilities for more than 25 years. The Utility Program supports agencies using Utility Energy Service Contracts (UESCs), a well-developed, effective contracting vehicle that enable the latest approaches to cost-effective energy management at federal sites. Federal agencies have successfully used UESCs to award over 2,000 energy and water efficiency and renewable energy projects, investing approximately $\$$2.8 billion in furthering the Federal Government's efforts to reduce energy intensity. Authorized by 42 U.S. Code section 8256 (10 U.S. Code section 2913 for the Department of Defense), a UESC is a limited-source acquisition between a federal agency and an eligible serving utility for energy management services that generate savings from the implementation of energy- and water -conservation measures (collectively referred to as ECMs), with 42 U.S. Code section 8287 (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, Part 241), providing the term of a UESC, which may extend up to 25 years. Through a UESC, the utility partner assesses designs, and implements the desired ECMs - which can range from lighting retrofits and renewable energy systems, to combined heat and power plants or other technologies and strategies, and may provide financing for the project. The agency may use any combination of appropriations and third-party financing to pay for the project, providing useful flexibility. There is no limit to the project size, big or small, that can be implemented using a UESC. To assist agencies implementing a UESC, FEMP has developed a Utility Energy Service Contract Guide and this companion guidance document to help agencies and their utility partners better understand the best practices for to ensure UESCs continue to perform and generate savings throughout their performance period. These best practices utilize a combination of effective project management, communication, documentation, and a detailed Performance Assurance Plan. This plan is a project specific set of actionable protocols that define important tasks and responsibilities throughout the contract term and reflects the site conditions, complexities, agency capabilities, and operating and maintaining planned ECMs.
Multinational corporations are increasingly purchasing renewable energy (RE) to fulfill international commitments, reduce supply chain emissions, limit environmental impact, and secure stable and affordable electricity. The potential scale of global corporate RE purchasing has been estimated to be nearly 100 GW and growing; however, many markets still lack supportive enabling environments for corporations to access RE through on-site project development or private sector transactions. Even where allowed by law, on-site generation may be insufficient due to space and technical constraints, introducing additional challenges. Utility green pricing and utility green tariff programs backed by renewable energy certificates (RECs), referred to as utility green procurement programs (GPPs) in this report, offer powerful market-based solutions to utilities, regulators, and policymakers to provide corporate and other consumers with RE product options while generating revenue to support RE development. As RE markets expand around the globe, GPPs have proven to be effective mechanisms in market regimes, ranging from fully integrated state-owned utilities to broadly liberalized power markets. GPPs utilize RECs, which are a type of energy attribute certificate and closely resemble guarantees of origin, to track and ultimately monetize RE attributes that corporations and other buyers must procure to demonstrate progress against their RE commitments and make public claims of RE use. Time-tested and transparent REC accounting mechanisms provide market confidence, while at the same time offering flexibility to utilities, regulators, and customers for a range of applications. RECs are used in all types of electricity market structures, as indicated in Figure 1, but REC-based program designs and supporting components differ depending on the type of market. Liberalized markets allow for customers to contract directly with generators for electricity and RECs, while traditionally regulated markets with vertically integrated utility structures may have greater restrictions on generation asset ownership and electricity sales. RE markets can be further defined as being either mandatory or voluntary. Mandatory markets require suppliers to deliver specified amounts of RE to grid customers, such as under a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), while voluntary markets involve no legal mandates, but demand is driven by self-imposed customer goals.