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Solar Leasing Summary, Houston Texas

A relatively new option for homeowners looking to add solar to their home is the solar lease. At present, the solar lease option can be found in California, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Hawaii, New York and Oregon. The most active companies currently offering solar leases are NRG Energy, Sungevity, Solar City and Sun Run. With the uncertainty and/or lack of subsidies the states participating in these programs have ebbed and flowed over the last few years. However, there is an expectation that in the current market solar leasing will make solar viable without the utility and federal subsidies. NRG Energy is currently testing this expectation in Houston, TX where currently no subsidies or incentives beyond the federal tax incentives, exist. Following is an explanation on the state of solar leasing in Houston, TX and explanation of the current financing options.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

The Intersection of National Security and Climate Change

On June 4, 2014, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory hosted a groundbreaking symposium in Seattle, Washington, that brought together 36 leaders from federal agencies, state and local governments, NGOs, business, and academia. The participants examined approaches and tools to help decision makers make informed choices about the climate and security risks they face. The following executive summary is based on the day’s discussions and examines the problem of climate change and its impact on national security, the responses to date, and future considerations.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Igiugig Site Visit Report

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) team conducted a site visit during January 23-25, 2019 with the Igiugig Village Council (IVC) and other stakeholders to assist the community of Igiugig in refining their long-term energy strategy. The agenda included a tour of the village, data collection, presentations, long-term visioning exercises, identification of energy scenarios, and a school presentation. Participants in the site visit activities spanned a range of local, regional, government, and industry participation. There were 24 attendees at the all-day community workshop on Thursday, January 24th, with participants from the IVC, NREL, Bristol Bay Native Association (BBNA), Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC), Lake and Peninsula Borough, Alaska Energy Authority, Intergrid, ORPC, Deer Stone Consulting, the Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference, and University of Alaska Fairbanks - Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Igiugig is a well-organized rural Alaskan community, with a leadership team that appears to have broad community support. The use of consensus-based decision making is one tangible example of how the leadership team actively invokes and promotes community-focused thinking. The NREL team observed anecdotal evidence of how this approach seems to be strengthening the community: active participation in the visioning exercise, a student hosted fund-raiser dinner at the school, a clean and organized landfill, and well-maintained roads and buildings. Igiugig has wind, solar, and river hydrokinetic resources readily available within the community. Wind has shown to be a promising resource in the region, and has been integrated into microgrids around the state, but the community has had mixed success with wind technologies: some devices failed quickly and others continue to operate. The economics of solar energy are improving in Alaska, and economical solar projects are being installed around the state. Considering that economic activity in Igiugig peaks during the summer sport fishing season, solar could prove to be a valuable supplement to the electrical system. Igiugig has been a test site for two different river hydrokinetic devices, and they have began a third project to operate ORPC's RivGen device, which is delivering valuable device performance data, operations and maintenance experience, and design refinement information. Already, this device has made over 7-million revolutions, and delivered over 8 MWh of power to the community. Igiugig's river resource is fairly unique because it is available year-round and has the potential to provide reliable base-load power for months at a time. A preliminary investigation of this diverse resource mix suggests that Igiugig could achieve very high levels (70% or more) of annual renewable generation contributions. A critical step in pursuing this path is identifying the mix of energy assets (generation and storage) that best meets the community's budget, needs, and goals. The assets that a community installs early in their grid-modernization initiative can constrain the options that are economical at later stages, which may lead to sub-optimal solutions. This is where technical and economic analysis of potential scenarios (i.e., distinct mixes of energy assets) can be useful in identifying the most promising pathways so that a community can make informed and strategic decisions about the assets they install. These analyses are most accurate and informative when they are based on actual technology performance and cost data. As the RivGen project continues to operate and generate this data, we will be better prepared to evaluate the technology's long-term viability and to identify research areas that would improve it. Igiugig's energy projects are at the cutting edge of two intersecting technology areas: 1) deploying an operational river hydrokinetic turbine, and 2) integrating renewable energy sources to achieve very high percent renewables. If these projects are successful, the lessons learned and technologies developed could be valuable for other microgrids around the world. Igiugig's unique resource mix make it an ideal location for this work, and the community's organizational strength make it an ideal partner in this ground-breaking work. Ongoing support for technical assistance to manage and address technical challenges along the way will maximize the probability of project success.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Best Practices in Integrated Resource Planning: A guide for planners developing the electricity resource mix of the future

Most states today require regulated electric utilities to file an IRP every 1 to 5 years, and some utilities voluntarily prepare these plans. Planning needs have changed in recent years due to emerging load growth, plant retirements, rising costs, and more extreme weather events – among other factors. In response, Synapse Energy Economics and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory produced a joint report, Best Practices in Integrated Resource Planning: A guide for planners developing the electricity resource mix of the future. The guide offers best planning practices for electricity systems undergoing a major transition, but also contains a wealth of practical guidance to develop technically sophisticated, clearer, more effective, and state-of-the-art electric utility resource plans. The guide is for resource planning professionals and stakeholders involved in resource planning processes. This diverse group includes utility personnel tasked with conducting resource planning and making investment decisions, state regulatory commissions that develop planning guidance and oversee the resource planning process, and stakeholders that represent a wide range of interests—utility consumer advocates, environmental groups, industrial customers, local governments, independent power producers, and many other

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Estimating Household Travel Energy Consumption in Conjunction with a Travel Demand Forecasting Model

This paper presents a methodology for the calculation of the consumption of household travel energy at the level of the traffic analysis zone (TAZ) in conjunction with information that is readily available from a standard four-step travel demand model system. This methodology embeds two algorithms. The first provides a means of allocating non-home-based trips to residential zones that are the source of such trips, whereas the second provides a mechanism for incorporating the effects of household vehicle fleet composition on fuel consumption. The methodology is applied to the greater Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan region in the United States and is found to offer a robust mechanism for calculating the footprint of household travel energy at the level of the individual TAZ; this mechanism makes possible the study of variations in the energy footprint across space. The travel energy footprint is strongly correlated with the density of the built environment, although socioeconomic differences across TAZs also likely contribute to differences in travel energy footprints. The TAZ-level calculator of the footprint of household travel energy can be used to analyze alternative futures and relate differences in the energy footprint to differences in a number of contributing factors and thus enables the design of urban form, formulation of policy interventions, and implementation of awareness campaigns that may produce more-sustainable patterns of energy consumption.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

The Finer Details: Climate Modeling

If you want to know whether you will need sunscreen or an umbrella for tomorrow's picnic, you can simply read the local weather report. However, if you are calculating the impact of gas combustion on global temperatures, or anticipating next year's rainfall levels to set water conservation policy, you must conduct a more comprehensive investigation. Such complex matters require long-range modeling techniques that predict broad trends in climate development rather than day-to-day details. Climate models are built from equations that calculate the progression of weather-related conditions over time. Based on the laws of physics, climate model equations have been developed to predict a number of environmental factors, for example: 1. Amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth. 2. Varying proportions of gases that make up the air. 3. Temperature at the Earth's surface. 4. Circulation of ocean and wind currents. 5. Development of cloud cover. Numerical modeling of the climate can improve our understanding of both the past and, the future. A model can confirm the accuracy of environmental measurements taken. in, the past and can even fill in gaps in those records. In addition, by quantifying the relationship between different aspects of climate, scientists can estimate how a future change in one aspect may alter the rest of the world. For example, could an increase in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean somehow set off a drought on the other side of the world? A computer simulation could lead to an answer for this and other questions. Quantifying the chaotic, nonlinear activities that shape our climate is no easy matter. You cannot run these simulations on your desktop computer and expect results by the time you have finished checking your morning e-mail. Efficient and accurate climate modeling requires powerful computers that can process billions of mathematical calculations in a single second. The NCCS exists to provide this degree of vast computing capability.

Source record↗

Beyond an Elevator Speech: Define Your Story to Find Success - 13581

Diversify or die has been a familiar industry chant, growing louder over the past five years. As companies seek opportunities in new markets, succinctly communicating who they are and what they do to people they've never met becomes common practice. Large and small, most companies lack a clear, concise story and communication tools to articulate what makes them unique amongst the competition. As a result business is lost with prospects and needs of current customers may never be identified. These, along with a common set of core challenges can be overcome by definition, standardization, on-going education and consistent / accurate communication at the brand level. (author)

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Energy Futures Synthesis for West-Wide Section 368 Energy Corridors

To comply with Section 368(a) of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct), the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service designated 6,000 miles of energy corridors on public and national forest lands in the western United States in 2009. The corridors, commonly referred to as 'West-wide' or 'Section 368' energy corridors, are intended as preferred locations for future siting of electric transmission and distribution lines and for oil, gas, and hydrogen pipelines. In response to a lawsuit filed by several organizations over the corridor designations, the BLM, Forest Service, and the U.S. Department of Energy entered into a Settlement Agreement, directing the formation of the Section 368 Interagency Workgroup to periodically review the energy corridors on a regional basis. In conducting the reviews, the Workgroup identifies new, relevant, existing, publicly available information to make recommendations for revisions, deletions, and additions to the Section 368 energy corridors. This report synthesizes information in available contemporary transmission, pipeline, and energy future studies to inform the regional reviews by providing a snapshot of what the western energy and transmission system will look like generally 10-15 years in the future. After an overview of the western grid implications, the analysis narrows to Region 2 and Region 3 of the BLM Section 368 energy corridors and focuses on the implications of potential developments in the oil, natural gas, and electricity markets in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and portions of Arizona and Nevada that could inform the current regional review. This analysis will help inform the Workgroup on potential development within existing corridors and the need for new corridors that have not yet been designated.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Groundwater Potability Determination Report for Sylvan Grove, Kansas

The Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) operated a grain storage facility from 1954 to 1966 at the northeastern edge of Sylvan Grove, Kansas (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). During this time, commercial grain fumigants containing carbon tetrachloride were in common use to preserve grain in storage. The CCC/USDA is in the process of preparing a Corrective Action Study (CAS) to address carbon tetrachloride contamination in groundwater on the portion of the site that it formerly leased and operated. As stated in the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) Bureau of Environmental Remediation (BER) policy BER-RS-045 (KDHE 2016), Considerations for Groundwater Potability and Use Determinations (hereafter referred to as “Potability Determination Guidance”), the KDHE considers all groundwater to be a potential source of potable water. This report, however, substantiates that groundwater resources in the Cretaceous Dakota Formation—more specifically, that localized portions of water bearing strata affected by operations at the former CCC/USDA site—are non-potable. The purpose of this report, therefore, is to provide additional information to support the KDHE’s decision-making process with regard to the disposition and closure of the Sylvan Grove site. Per the Potability Determination Guidance the results of this potability evaluation will play a role in selecting the site remedial action objectives and the overall proposed path for long-term management. This report presents the data and analyses of the potability study and the results of the potability determination, which will be taken into consideration during the development of cleanup goals for the CAS or for any other future remedial or long-term management action agreed to by the CCC/USDA and KDHE. The Potability Determination Guidance provides a framework to evaluate groundwater potability by outlining: The set of threshold criteria under which KDHE will consider an aquifer to be non-potable; The data and information necessary to evaluate potability; and, Considerations for long-term management of aquifers that are deemed non potable. According to the guidance, the KDHE may determine that groundwater is non-potable due to natural conditions such as water quality or quantity characteristics. As suggested in the guidance, this report will discuss the initial potability threshold screening for entering the evaluation process (Section 2); justify the work plan that was covered by the site investigation planning (also in Section 2); and present the relevant data and evaluation results (Sections 3-6).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Navigating Urban Mobility: Evaluating Infrastructure Strategies for Enhanced Energy-Efficient Access for Micromobility

Cities and communities continue to expand pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure as part of their sustainable mobility and post-pandemic recovery plans. However, the emergence of micro-mobility (e.g., electric bicycles) has created new challenges for urban transport planning. As the popularity of micro-mobility modes has grown, so have safety concerns due to rising injuries, thus challenging many cities to come up with regulatory measures that enable efficient access while minimizing negative impacts from micro-mobility. Leveraging the Open-Source Tool (Mobility Energy Productivity metric), powered by an open-source dataset (OpenStreetMap), and enhanced through the incorporation of perceived discomfort (level-of-traffic stress), this research study focuses on evaluating the accessibility implications of infrastructure planning and regulatory measures for micro-mobility. Five scenarios pertaining to level of traffic stress, sidewalk access, traffic calming, and bike lane coverage were tested in the Denver-Aurora region in Colorado. Maximum improvements in energy-efficient access are realized when allowing sidewalks for micro-mobility use. Cities and planning agencies could leverage this information to assess sidewalk use policies for micro-mobility, while ensuring pedestrian safety and ADA access. Results indicate that expansion of bicycle lane coverage yields 11% accessibility benefits for micro-mobility compared to implementing traffic calming measures yielding 3% accessibility improvements. Further, it was observed most of the population in the Denver-Aurora region is experiencing lower accessibility in-part due to presence of a high-stress connections in the network. Although not generalizable, the use of open-source data and access calculation methodology, make this analysis reproducible and transferable to other locations.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Use of the Tool to Support Renewable Energy Auctions Processes (RE Data Explorer)

Renewable energy auctions are now a common competitive approach to procure low-cost renewable power around the world. Ensuring a successful auction process increasingly depends on the capabilities of auction designers and participants to identify actionable and defensible insights from large data sets (on renewable energy resources and complementary data) to both attract potential investors and address stakeholder concerns. The Renewable Energy (RE) Data Explorer is a user-friendly geospatial analysis tool for analyzing renewable energy potential and informing decisions. Developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), RE Data Explorer performs visualization and analysis of renewable energy potential that can be customized for different scenarios. RE Data Explorer can support prospecting, integrated planning, policymaking, and other decision-making activities to accelerate renewable energy deployment. The broader RE Explorer website provides guidance and information to link the RE Data Explorer geospatial analysis tool to key decision areas. This document provides information on how the RE Data Explorer can be used to support renewable energy auction processes.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Cost and Performance Requirements for Flexible Advanced Nuclear Plants in Future U.S. Power Markets

Advanced reactor developers are at various stages of commercializing new products and must design for future market environments that will exist when their plants are available. It is therefore critical to have a clear understanding about what plants will need to cost to be attractive investments, and what performance characteristics will create the most value for plant owners. This study is among the first to model the substantial contribution that flexible advanced reactors can make towards reliable, responsive, affordable, and clean future energy systems by supplying clean dispatchable generating capacity. Advanced reactor technologies could make a major contribution to lowering the overall system cost while reducing emissions and improving the performance of future energy systems. Depending on specific market conditions, it may also be beneficial to co-locate thermal energy storage systems (ESS).

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Reliability-Informed Economic and Energy Evaluation for Design for Remanufacturing: A Case Study on a Hydraulic Manifold

Design for Remanufacturing (DfRem) is an attractive approach for sustainable product development. Evaluation of DfRem strategies, from both economic and environmental perspectives, at an early design stage can allow the designers to make informed decisions when choosing the best design option. Studying the long-term implications of a particular design scenario requires quantifying the benefits of remanufacturing for multiple life cycles while considering the reliability of the product. In addition to comparing designs on a one-to-one basis, we find that including reliability provides a different insight into comparing design strategies. We present a reliability-informed cost and energy analysis framework that accounts for product reliability for multiple remanufacturing cycles within a certain warranty policy. The variation of reuse rate over successive remanufacturing cycles is formulated using a branched power-law model which provides probabilistic scenarios of reusing or replacing with new units. To demonstrate the utility of this framework, we use the case study of a hydraulic manifold, which is a component of a transmission used in some agricultural equipment, and use real-world field reliability data to quantify the transmission’s reliability. Three design improvement changes are proposed for the manifold and we quantify the costs and energy consumption associated with each of the design changes for multiple remanufacturing cycles.

design for remanufacturing↗

Sustainability at BPA 2013

THIS IS THE THIRD YEAR BPA has reported on sustainability program accomplishments. The report provides an opportunity to review progress made on sustainability initiatives, evaluate how far we have come and how much we can improve. The program has demonstrated maturation as the concepts of sustainability and resource conservation are communicated and understood. The sustainability program started as an employee-driven “grass roots” effort in 2010. Sustainability is becoming a consideration in how work is performed. The establishment of several policies supporting sustainability efforts proves the positive progress being made. In 2009, BPA became a founder and member of The Climate Registry, a nonprofit collaboration that sets standards to calculate, verify and report greenhouse gas emissions. This year, BPA completed and published our Greenhouse Gas inventory for the years of 2009, 2010 and 2011. The 2012 inventory is currently in the process of third-party verification and scheduled for public release in January 2014. These inventories provide a concrete measure of the progress we are making.

sustainability, resource conservation, climate reg↗

Canadian Regulatory Framework for Waste Management and Decommissioning - 19373

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) licences, monitors and inspects all nuclear facilities and activities in Canada, including radioactive waste management and decommissioning, in order to assure the protection of the health, safety and security of persons and the environment. This paper will discuss the Canadian regulatory framework as it applies to all radioactive waste management and decommissioning of nuclear facilities. The Government of Canada's Radioactive Waste Policy Framework specifies that the Government of Canada is responsible for developing policy and for regulating and overseeing radioactive waste producers and owners and that, in accordance with the 'polluter pays' principle, waste owners are responsible for the funding, organization, management and operation of the facilities required to safely manage their wastes over the short- and long-terms. The CNSC's regulatory approach for radioactive waste stems from the Nuclear Safety and Control Act (NSCA) and identifies the need for long-term management of radioactive and hazardous waste arising from licensed activities and indicates that, when making regulatory decisions about the management of radioactive waste, the CNSC will seek to achieve its objectives by considering certain key principles in the context of the facts and circumstances of each case. These principles cover the concepts of waste minimization in all phases of a facility's life cycle, hazard assessment, future impacts of the waste, and transborder effects. As a facility life cycle regulator, all nuclear facilities are required to keep decommissioning plans up to date throughout the life cycle of a licensed activity. In addition, the CNSC requires that all licensees implement financial guarantees to cover the cost of decommissioning work resulting from the licensed activities. A preliminary decommissioning plan must be filed with the CNSC as early as possible in the life cycle of the activity or facility and must be reviewed and updated at a minimum every five years. Under the CNSC's non-prescriptive approach to regulation, the applicant proposes a waste management or decommissioning approach, supported by scientifically defensible benchmarks. The CNSC then assesses the proposal against existing regulatory requirements to ensure the health, safety and security of the public and the protection of the environment. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Actionable knowledge for ecological intensification of agriculture

Ecological intensification of agriculture ( EI ) aims to conserve and promote biodiversity and the sustainable use of associated ecosystem services to support resource‐efficient production. In many cases EI requires fundamental changes in farm and landscape management as well as the organizations and institutions that support agriculture. Ecologists can facilitate EI by engaging with stakeholders and, in the process, by generating “actionable knowledge” (that is, knowledge that specifically supports stakeholder decision making and consequent actions). Using three case studies as examples, we propose four principles whereby science can improve the delivery of actionable knowledge for EI : (1) biodiversity conservation helps to ensure the delivery of ecosystem services, (2) management of ecosystem services benefits from a landscape‐scale approach, (3) ecosystem service trade‐offs and synergies need to be articulated, and (4) EI is associated with complex social dynamics involving farmers, governments, researchers, and related institutions. These principles have the potential to enhance adoption of EI , but institutional and policy challenges remain.

Geertsema, Willemien↗

PWR loading pattern optimization with reinforcement learning

The core loading pattern optimization problem belongs to the class of combinatorial optimization problem and has been studied since the dawn of commercial nuclear energy industry. It is characterized by multiple objectives and constraints, with a very high number of candidate patterns, which makes it impossible to solve explicitly. Stochastic optimization methodologies including Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing are used by different nuclear utilities and vendors to perform fuel cycle reload design. Nevertheless, hand-designed solutions continue to be the prevalent method in the industry. To improve the state-of-the-art core reload patterns, we aim to create a method as scalable as possible, that agrees with the designer's goal of performance and safety. To help in this task Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), in particular Proximal Policy Optimization is leveraged. DRL has recently experienced a strong impetus from its successes applied to games, sometimes even reaching 'super-human' performances. This paper lays out the foundation of this method and proposes to study the behavior of several hyper-parameters that influence the DRL algorithm. The algorithm is highly dependent on multiple factors such as an exploration/exploitation trade-off that manifests through different parameters such as the number of loading patterns seen and the number of samples collected before a policy update, but also the shape of the objective function derived for the core design. Experimental results also demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in finding high-quality solutions from scratch within a reasonable amount of time. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Advanced Small Modular Reactor Economics Status Report

This report describes the data collection work performed for an advanced small modular reactor (AdvSMR) economics analysis activity at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The methodology development and analytical results are described in separate, stand-alone documents as listed in the references. The economics analysis effort for the AdvSMR program combines the technical and fuel cycle aspects of advanced (non-light water reactor [LWR]) reactors with the market and production aspects of SMRs. This requires the collection, analysis, and synthesis of multiple unrelated and potentially high-uncertainty data sets from a wide range of data sources. Further, the nature of both economic and nuclear technology analysis requires at least a minor attempt at prediction and prognostication, and the far-term horizon for deployment of advanced nuclear systems introduces more uncertainty. Energy market uncertainty, especially the electricity market, is the result of the integration of commodity prices, demand fluctuation, and generation competition, as easily seen in deregulated markets. Depending on current or projected values for any of these factors, the economic attractiveness of any power plant construction project can change yearly or quarterly. For long-lead construction projects such as nuclear power plants, this uncertainty generates an implied and inherent risk for potential nuclear power plant owners and operators. The uncertainty in nuclear reactor and fuel cycle costs is in some respects better understood and quantified than the energy market uncertainty. The LWR-based fuel cycle has a long commercial history to use as its basis for cost estimation, and the current activities in LWR construction provide a reliable baseline for estimates for similar efforts. However, for advanced systems, the estimates and their associated uncertainties are based on forward-looking assumptions for performance after the system has been built and has achieved commercial operation. Advanced fuel materials and fabrication costs have large uncertainties based on complexities of operation, such as contact-handled fuel fabrication versus remote handling, or commodity availability. Thus, this analytical work makes a good faith effort to quantify uncertainties and provide qualifiers, caveats, and explanations for the sources of these uncertainties. The overall result is that this work assembles the necessary information and establishes the foundation for future analyses using more precise data as nuclear technology advances.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗