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This report summarizes the efforts undertaken by the Bioprocessing Separations Consortium since its inception in 2016. During this time, four critical challenges in biochemical and thermochemical processing were addressed.
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed SUCCESS, a process to convert uranium metal to uranium tetrachloride enabling production of these valuable compounds for actinide science, molten salt nuclear reactors, and energy research. Conventional methods are problematic due to the oxide reduction processes use rare reagents and generate significant amounts of waste and hydride conversion process using chlorine at high temperature is hazardous. This new method using inexpensive reagents chemically transform uranium metal into uranium halide compounds under mild conditions. The facile conversion to stable uranium tetrachloride could reduce the need to mine uranium for uses other than nuclear, by recycling the uranium without oxidation. The Laboratory is interested in supporting further scale-up efforts using a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) or by granting a license to a qualified entity
CinderBio’s vision is to harness three billion years of biology to transform many industrial practices into sustainable processes with superior performance. Environments such as volcanic hot springs have evolved extremophilic microbes and enzymes that are naturally heat and acid stable. CinderBio was founded based on technologies developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Our core technologies are the molecular tools and know how to efficiently express extremophilic genes in an extremophilic host such that they retain their natural heat and acid stability. During this project, we tested our enzymes at the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU), automated our fermentation and downstream processing, and built a comprehensive technoeconomic assessment (TEA) model for our manufacturing costs.
The costs that power interruptions impose on customers and society have emerged as essential considerations for decision making about power system reliability and resilience. There is well-established literature on the direct costs of localized and relatively short-duration power interruptions. However, far less is known about the costs of widespread and long-duration (WLD) power interruptions, especially the indirect costs and related economy-wide impacts of these events. As a result, utility planning activities generally incorporate these costs incompletely or not at all. This report proposes a new approach to estimating WLD power interruption costs to support utility resilience planning studies. Specifically, the paper describes a hybrid method that integrates: (1) empirical surveys of region- and sector-specific inherent and adaptive customer behaviors during and after power interruptions, and (2) computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling, which estimates the direct and indirect impacts of WLD power interruptions. The report provides both a rationale for the proposed hybrid approach and a roadmap outlining how it could be implemented.
The United States has a large, domestic source of lithium in geothermal fluids, especially at the Salton Sea region of southern California, where estimates of lithium pass-through at geothermal plants exceed 24,000 metric tons per year, based on 2019 geothermal plant operations. Lithium extraction from geothermal brines offers the potential to provide the United States with a secure, domestic supply of lithium to meet the increasing demands of electric vehicles, grid energy storage, portable electronics, and other end-use applications. Additionally, the use of direct extraction technologies allows for a more sustainable lithium supply relative to current evaporative brine and hardrock mining operations in terms of land use, water use, time to market with lithium products, and carbon intensity of operations. This report is part of an effort to assess geothermal brines as a source of commercial lithium supply for the United States. In this study, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reviews and summarizes public technoeconomic analyses of lithium extraction technologies. The work was coordinated with the Critical Minerals Institute at the Colorado School of Mines who focused on supply chain analysis of lithium.
We model the evolution of the U.S. electricity sector from 2020 through 2050 and find significant market potential (>125 GW) for diurnal energy storage across all 19 scenarios considered. Most of this storage has 4-6 hours of duration. We find that storage deployment is driven primarily by the combination of capacity value and energy time-shifting value, and that the combination of these value streams is needed for optimal storage deployment to be realized. We also find a strong correlation of PV penetration and storage market potential. Cost and performance metrics in this study focus on Li-ion batteries because the technology has more market maturity than other emerging technologies but results from this study can be generalized to any technologies that meet the cost and performance projections assumed.
Abstract not provided.
Coupled renewable-battery powerplants differ from the traditional concept of independent siting of electricity resources within transmission networks. Prior research on the value proposition and cost savings from coupling did not consider the geographic constraint of co-location. This paper fills the gap by assessing how pricing volatility differences between nodes within electricity markets impact the system value of coupled renewable-battery projects as compared to independent VRE and battery installations. We use wholesale power market prices from 2012–2019 across the seven main U.S. independent system operators (ISOs) with a linear optimization program to compare the electricity market value of coupled projects to the value of the same underlying sub-components, deployed separately. We find that additional value from adding a 4-hour battery sized to 50% of renewable-plant nameplate capacity is $\$10$/MWh across ISOs on average. The highest boost occurs in California ($\$15$/MWh), where the value of adding storage to solar rises over time in tandem with increased solar penetration in the region. If renewables and batteries are deployed independently, we estimate that $\$12.5$/MWh of additional value could be achieved because of more flexibility on battery siting and operation. The $\$12.5$/MWh coupling penalty is reduced to $\$1.6$/MWh when considering alternative approaches to integrating battery storage. This result implies that renewable-battery power plants will play an increasing role in electricity systems if they can be built for $\$2$–$\$13$/MWh less than independent projects of comparable size. However, the wide regional variation in coupling penalties, along with the importance of conditions captured in our sensitivity cases, suggests the tradeoff between coupling penalties and savings will vary by situation. Therefore, roles exist for independent and coupled projects from a system optimization perspective.
Ethanol has the achieved the greatest market share of all the alternative transportation fuels that have been researched, developed, and deployed in the US. There are multiple lessons to be learned from the history of ethanol adoption that can be applied to future fuels and products. Ethanol has replaced portions of gasoline in three main blend levels, with corresponding vehicles, equipment, benefits, and policies. The first is E10, which has replaced nearly all pure gasoline (E0) sold in the United States today (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2015). This was brought about through generations of policies that were motivated by multiple factors related to engine performance, energy security, health, air quality, and climate protection. Ethanol's high octane has been a consistent driver of the fuel because this enables higher performance engines. Early policies (1973-1979) were largely motivated by the desire to reduce dependence on petroleum sourced from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. Fuel policy in the 1980s was largely in pursuit of promoting octane number enhancers that could replace lead. Criteria pollutant reduction was the overarching goal of actions taken from 1990 to 2005. From 2005 to the present, fuel policy has been largely motivated by energy security and climate protection goals. These policies were usually technology-agnostic and promoted multiple fuels and additives during each period. However, ethanol is the only fuel identified that is cost effective with qualities that enabled it to prosper in the policy environments of all four of these periods.The second market for ethanol is via 85% ethanol (E85). This fuel has the advantage of a greater concentration of ethanol but the disadvantage of not being compatible with regular gasoline vehicles. Instead, it can only be used in flexible-fuel vehicle (FFVs), which can use every blend level from E0 to E85. Therefore, much of the effort to increase E85 consumption has been aimed at incentivizing automakers to manufacture FFVs, drivers to purchase FFVs, and fueling stations to equip themselves to sell E85.The third, and newest, market through which ethanol is consumed is 15% ethanol (E15), which builds upon the E10 market to increase ethanol consumption by common gasoline vehicles. Efforts to create the E15 market consisted largely of testing vehicles and refueling equipment for compatibility, creating waivers to allow the use of E15, placing requirements on E15 retailers, and incentivizing retailers to equip themselves to purchase E15.
This report summarizes a rigorous valuation analysis methodology used by the Distribution System Operator with Transactive (DSO+T) study to estimate the financial benefits and costs of adopting Transactive Energy coordination of distributed energy resources for key stakeholders (for example distribution system operators and customers). This was achieved by modeling the value exchanges between stakeholders and determining the annualized costs and revenues experienced by stakeholders, enabling the evaluation of overall impact on stakeholder’s annualized cash flow. Extensive work was conducted developing methods to estimate the operating costs of distribution system operators at a level of granularity that would allow the financial impact of implementing a transactive energy approach to be estimated. This work included developing parametric models for labor and software costs, distribution system capital and maintenance costs, growth rates, and factors to determine annualized costs of capital investments. Simulation results were used to calculate wholesale energy costs and revenues from retail sales. Valuation analysis methods were also developed for other stakeholders including customers, the transmission system operator, independent system operator, and generators. The resulting capability allows a complete mapping of the flow of financial value between stakeholders that can be directly integrated with the results of demand flexibility simulations. Example results are provided for a business-as-usual case and compared to a transactive energy case as well as to actual cost data.
Abstract not provided.
Over the past 50 years, the Renewable Energy Program at Sandia has advanced research in the field with a focus on three key goals; 1) reduce the cost, 2) improve resilience and reliability and, 3) decrease the regulatory burden of renewable energy. Sandia’s expertise, coupled with the Village of Questa’s expanding renewable energy portfolio, presents the opportunity to deploy the Labs’ deep science and engineering capabilities towards the energy goals of KCEC and the Village of Questa. Preliminary research efforts by Sandia technical staff has broadly identified early opportunities for further research, development, and demonstration in the emerging renewable energy segment of agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics is an emerging and promising area of photovoltaics which entails land use considerations as well as concerns regarding landscape transformation, biodiversity, and ecosystem well-being. In recent years, agrivoltaics systems have been the subject of numerous studies due to their potential in the food-energy (and water) nexus. This document is a preliminary evaluation of the projects performance opportunities of agrivoltaics as a renewable energy technology strategy in the region of Questa, NM.
Applications of new technology, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, enabled the United States to significantly increase its production of oil and natural gas during the last decade—the “Shale Gas Revolution.” As natural gas began to dominate the market with abundant supply and low prices, coal production and consumption have declined. Concurrently, the competitiveness of renewable energy and energy storage has climbed sharply, and analysts expect to see continued reductions in fossil fuel use in the coming decades. Many of these changes have been driven by market forces (i.e., low-cost natural gas and renewables), but current and future policy decisions aimed at tackling climate change concerns and reducing greenhouse gas emissions will also shape the future of the energy sector. This transition to low-carbon fuels has created both opportunities for clean energy technologies and challenges for communities traditionally dependent on fossil fuel-related industries. The power sector’s ongoing shift away from coal has left many coal miners and coal-fired power plant employees unemployed and often unprepared for jobs in other industries, including growing clean energy fields. This primer focuses on the declining coal industry, impacts on communities and workers, opportunities to transition workers who have lost their jobs to clean energy and other related sectors (including hydrogen-oriented jobs), recruitment and training strategies, and available programs and actions to make the shift to a low-carbon economy in a fair, just, and equitable manner by engaging the resources of federal and state governments, as well as the private sector.
The US electric grid relies on conventional fossil fuel power plants for reliable and secure power, but these plants suffer from physical and financial strain due to the influx of inexpensive and variable solar and wind electricity. Conventional power plants need to generate electricity flexibly and on-demand to accommodate these renewable resources on the grid. Integrating a low-cost thermal energy storage (TES) gives fossil assets the ability to regulate their output efficiently and optimize the plant operation to maximize revenue in the wholesale electricity market. Element 16’s TES concept uses sulfur, a byproduct of the oil & gas industry, as the storage media that is 10 times cheaper than molten salt used in commercial two-tank TES technology. In this project, the team completed a detailed feasibility and technoeconomic study establishing the impact, cost and performance of molten sulfur TES system integrated with fossil assets.
Abstract not provided.
Abstract not provided.
Grid operators can address the inherently stochastic nature of renewables by solving a two-stage stochastic programming model that minimizes the cost of dispatch decisions while accounting for the complex grid dynamics. It is common to use a sample average approximation to estimate the expectation of the second stage costs in this model. However, the large sample count needed for numerical accuracy makes effective modeling large-scale electric grids computationally intractable. We introduce a control variate multi-fidelity estimator for the second-stage recourse that enables high quality dispatch decisions in real-time with a reduced computational burden. We obtain a hierarchy of model fidelities by linearizing the AC power flow system representation to DC power flow, and by relaxing transmission and voltage network constraints. We evaluate the performance of our proposed method on a synthetic grid with 73 buses against a deterministic baseline with persistence forecast and a high-fidelity reference. Our analysis shows a computational speed-up of 7.62x with a minimal loss in accuracy. The multi-fidelity method is well suited to fidelity combinations that use a simplified network topology in their lower fidelity model and is an attractive option for applications where accurate grid modeling needed on a limited computational budget.