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NASA NTRS2014

Autonomous Real Time Requirements Tracing

One of the more challenging aspects of software development is the ability to verify and validate the functional software requirements dictated by the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) and the Software Detail Design (SDD). Insuring the software has achieved the intended requirements is the responsibility of the Software Quality team and the Software Test team. The utilization of Timeliner-TLX(sup TM) Auto-Procedures for relocating ground operations positions to ISS automated on-board operations has begun the transition that would be required for manned deep space missions with minimal crew requirements. This transition also moves the auto-procedures from the procedure realm into the flight software arena and as such the operational requirements and testing will be more structured and rigorous. The autoprocedures would be required to meet NASA software standards as specified in the Software Safety Standard (NASASTD- 8719), the Software Engineering Requirements (NPR 7150), the Software Assurance Standard (NASA-STD-8739) and also the Human Rating Requirements (NPR-8705). The Autonomous Fluid Transfer System (AFTS) test-bed utilizes the Timeliner-TLX(sup TM) Language for development of autonomous command and control software. The Timeliner- TLX(sup TM) system has the unique feature of providing the current line of the statement in execution during real-time execution of the software. The feature of execution line number internal reporting unlocks the capability of monitoring the execution autonomously by use of a companion Timeliner-TLX(sup TM) sequence as the line number reporting is embedded inside the Timeliner-TLX(sup TM) execution engine. This negates I/O processing of this type data as the line number status of executing sequences is built-in as a function reference. This paper will outline the design and capabilities of the AFTS Autonomous Requirements Tracker, which traces and logs SRS requirements as they are being met during real-time execution of the targeted system. It is envisioned that real time requirements tracing will greatly assist the movement of autoprocedures to flight software enhancing the software assurance of auto-procedures and also their acceptance as reliable commanders

Plattsmier, George I.↗

NASA NTRS2022

Mars 2020 Entry, Descent, and Landing Software Implementation

On February 18th, 2021, the Mars 2020 project's Perseverance Rover successfully touched down on the Martian surface after nearly eight years of development. The Mars 2020 Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) System largely leveraged heritage from the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) EDL System while employing targeted technological advancements. The landing process is autonomously directed by a software behavior implemented in the rover's primary flight computer called the EDL Timeline that assumes control of the vehicle six days before atmospheric entry. In addition to performing the critical function of landing the rover on the Martian surface, the EDL timeline behavior must co-exist in a non-partitioned software and system environment with other high-level functions that accomplish the goals for the rest of the mission. Due to the criticality of EDL, the potential for loss of mission, and a need for complete system autonomy, the standard for how the EDL Timeline interacts with other functions in the system is highly constrained. This paper first walks through the basics of the EDL Timeline mechanics and how the behavior is designed to account for internal system variations and environmental unknowns. It then summarizes the interactions between the EDL timeline and other high-level system behaviors like spacecraft mode transitions and system fault protection, focusing on the complications that arise when passing spacecraft control between executive functions. Although the MSL-inherited EDL System is reliable and capable, targeted updates and a thorough verification and validation program were required for Mars 2020. This paper discusses changes made to close vulnerabilities discovered during both MSL and Mars 2020 development cycles, landing system capability enhancements that were enabling for Mars 2020's mission, and how these updates were integrated with the heritage system. It then describes how both analysis and testing campaigns were utilized to verify and validate all aspects of EDL and system behaviors that run during the six days before landing, as well as the operational workarounds that were needed to address problems found during the development and commissioning process. Finally, this paper imparts lessons learned from Mars 2020 EDL development, implementation, and operations, emphasizing how systems designed to conduct time-critical mission events with low margin of error can be improved in the future.

Stehura, Aaron↗

DOE OSTI2016

Assessing Government and Industry Roles to Accelerate Commercialization of Advanced Reactors and Supporting Fuel Cycles

Recent growth in private sector interest and investment in advanced reactor designs signals a new period in the greater than six decade pursuit of commercial nuclear technology. This nuclear entrepreneurship is primarily centered in the North America; meanwhile, national programs in China, France, India, Russia, and South Korea also feature active efforts to design, construct, operate and export advanced reactors .The business case for most private ventures calls for an aggressive commercialization timeline-tied to expectations for returns on investment. Finally, strategic energy portfolio projections and utility resource planning point to the 2030 - 2050 window as the period of greatest need for dispatchable, energy intensive, low-carbon generation options to address retirement of baseload capacity, increased penetration of renewables and economy-scale decarbonization. However, lead times for commercialization range from 30 to 50 years based on more traditional government-centric timelines. Fuel development and fuel cycle infrastructure deployment represent parallel timelines that directly influence the timeline for commercialization of many advanced reactor concepts. While multi-decade development periods appear to be commonplace for new nuclear projects, such timelines were not always the norm-three separate countries set out to develop civilian commercial power from fundamental nuclear principles, in just over a decade, on average. The US led light-water reactor (LWR) development in the 1950's, the UK pioneered a gas-cooled reactor (GCR) concept in the same time period, and Canada forged the path to commercializing the heavy-water reactor (HWR) starting in the mid-1950's and into the mid-1960's. The necessary fuel cycle facilities to support the commercial reactor design also did not appear suddenly, but were a collaborative effort between government and private partners. In this paper, the efforts of these three governments and their private industry partnerships in reactor and fuel cycle development are explored, and a select sample of representative milestones for each is presented, with the roles that each group played. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

DOE OSTI2022

Small Hydropower Interconnections: Analysis of Interconnection Processes

Small hydropower projects have faced the challenge of navigating the process to interconnect their generation source to electricity distribution and transmission grids. Small hydropower developers have found interconnection procedures to be opaque and ultimately result in unexpected cost surprises and long timelines. Noting these challenges, the U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office enlisted Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to investigate the small hydropower interconnection landscape across the United States. After reviewing the status of small hydropower (“Small Hydropower Interconnections: Small Hydropower in the United States”) and the interconnection procedures across the United States (“Small Hydropower Interconnections: State Interconnection Processes”) in the first two white papers of this series, this paper uses recent data from small hydropower interconnection applications to benchmark the efficacy of the process. Using data from interconnection queues hosted by utilities, balancing authorities, independent system operators (ISOs), and regional transmission organizations (RTOs), this paper provides context for the costs, timelines, and types of upgrades required for small hydropower projects. Interconnection applications and study reports for small hydropower projects were analyzed to collect key pieces of information about the interconnection process, timeline, costs, and type of upgrades required for interconnection. Information sourced from the reports was entered into an Interconnection Benchmarking database (IBdb), which may be found in Appendix A.1. Information from this database was used to evaluate the performance and challenges associated with interconnecting small hydropower projects. This white paper presents a description of the sources contained in the interconnection database (Section 2.0), an analysis of the interconnection timeline (Section 3.0), an evaluation the cost of interconnection upgrades (Section 4.0), and a description of the types of infrastructure upgrades (Section 5.0). The final paper in this series (“Small Hydropower Interconnections: Best Practices”) will use the analysis described here to outline best practices for interconnection processes that will help overcome barriers to future small hydropower development.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2022

Non-Technical Barriers to Geothermal Development in California and Nevada

Geothermal project development in the United States may be subject to numerous permits, authorizations, and other regulatory requirements at the federal, state, and local level, which are necessary to address potential environmental and resource impacts at geothermal project sites. This report presents the findings of our study, including an analysis of federal, state, and local geothermal regulatory and permitting processes, case studies analyzing site-specific attributes that may impact project development at four selected geothermal project sites, an analysis of cost and timeline implications for geothermal project development, and the results of a qualitative study focused on inter-agency coordination and collaboration efforts between federal, state, and/or local agencies for geothermal projects located in California and Nevada. Our analysis found that development timelines may be impacted by multiple federal and state environmental review processes and duplicative permitting requirements as well as coordination efforts between numerous federal, state, and local agencies involved in issuing authorizations and permits necessary for project development. In addition, projects in California and Nevada may face site-specific environmental challenges due to the presence of sensitive resources (e.g., biological species and species habitat, cultural resources) that may result in project construction delays. Our study results also indicate that protracted geothermal development timelines caused by delays in acquiring necessary permits and environmental reviews may result in loss of generated electricity revenue and additional financing costs, which may increase economic uncertainty associated with project development. Through our qualitative analysis, we found that utilization of best practices, including tiering to existing environmental review documents and developing memoranda of understanding, which clearly delineate agency roles and responsibilities may reduce overall project timelines, costs, and uncertainties associated with geothermal project development in California and Nevada.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Data Analytics for Residential PV from Permit to Interconnect (Final Technical Report)

The main objective of this research is to provide novel insights into the effects of permitting, inspection, and interconnection (PII) processes on PV system installations—and in particular, into the relationship between PII processes and adoption timelines. This research can then be used to clarify the potential effect of various process changes on reducing PII timelines, customer cancellation rates, and related costs nationwide. NREL completed this research by assembling a data set of distributed, largely residential rooftop solar systems less than 50 kilowatts in size from participating solar installers. NREL produced five publications describing the effects that PII processes can have on adoption timelines nationwide, in addition to publishing an interactive data viewer with five years of PII cycle time data. This tool can be used by stakeholders to identify potential adoption timelines by local government.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Non-Technical Barriers to Geothermal Development in California and Nevada [Slides]

This presentation presents the findings of our study, including an analysis of federal, state, and local geothermal regulatory and permitting processes, case studies analyzing site-specific attributes that may impact project development at four selected geothermal project sites, an analysis of cost and timeline implications for geothermal project development, and the results of a qualitative study focused on inter-agency coordination and collaboration efforts between federal, state, and/or local agencies for geothermal projects located in California and Nevada. Our analysis found that development timelines may be impacted by multiple federal and state environmental review processes and duplicative permitting requirements as well as coordination efforts between numerous federal, state, and local agencies involved in issuing authorizations and permits necessary for project development. In addition, projects in California and Nevada may face site-specific environmental challenges due to the presence of sensitive resources (e.g., biological species and species habitat, cultural resources) that may result in project construction delays. Our study results also indicate that protracted geothermal development timelines caused by delays in acquiring necessary permits and environmental reviews may result in loss of generated electricity revenue and additional financing costs, which may increase economic uncertainty associated with project development. Through our qualitative analysis, we found that utilization of best practices, including tiering to existing environmental review documents and developing memoranda of understanding, which clearly delineate agency roles and responsibilities may reduce overall project timelines, costs, and uncertainties associated with geothermal project development in California and Nevada.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS1991

Resource representation in COMPASS

A set of viewgraphs on resource representation in COMPASS is given. COMPASS is an incremental, interactive, non-chronological scheduler written in Ada with an X-windows user interface. Beginning with an empty schedule, activities are added to the schedule one at a time, taking into consideration the placement of the activities already on the timeline and the resources that have been reserved for them. The order that the activities are added to the timeline and their location on the timeline are controlled by selection and placement commands invoked by the user. The order that activities are added to the timeline and their location are independent. The COMPASS code library is a cost effective platform for the development of new scheduling applications. It can be effectively used off the shelf for compatible scheduling applications or it can be used as a parts library for the development of custom scheduling systems.

Fox, Barry R.↗

NASA NTRS1993

An intelligent planning and scheduling system for the HST servicing missions

A new, intelligent planning and scheduling system has been delivered to NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to provide support for the up-coming Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Missions. This new system is the Servicing Mission Planning and Replanning Tool (SM/PART). SM/PART is written in C and runs on a UNlX-based workstation (IBM RS/6000) under Motif. SM/PART effectively automates the complex task of building or rebuilding integrated timelines and command plans which are required by HST Servicing Mission personnel at their consoles during the missions. SM/PART is able to quickly build or rebuild timelines based on information stored in a Knowledge Base (KB) by using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool called the Planning And Resource Reasoning (PARR) shell. After a timeline has been built in the batch mode, it can be displayed and edited in an interactive mode with help from the PARR shell. Finally a detailed command plan is generated. The capability to quickly build or rebuild timelines and command plans provides an additional safety factor for the HST, Shuttle and Crew.

Johnson, Jay↗

NASA NTRS1996

Visualizing Time-Varying Phenomena In Numerical Simulations Of Unsteady Flows

Streamlines, contour lines, vector plots, and volume slices (cutting planes) are commonly used for flow visualization. These techniques are sometimes referred to as instantaneous flow visualization techniques because calculations are based on an instant of the flowfield in time. Although instantaneous flow visualization techniques are effective for depicting phenomena in steady flows,they sometimes do not adequately depict time-varying phenomena in unsteady flows. Streaklines and timelines are effective visualization techniques for depicting vortex shedding, vortex breakdown, and shock waves in unsteady flows. These techniques are examples of time-dependent flow visualization techniques, which are based on many instants of the flowfields in time. This paper describes the algorithms for computing streaklines and timelines. Using numerically simulated unsteady flows, streaklines and timelines are compared with streamlines, contour lines, and vector plots. It is shown that streaklines and timelines reveal vortex shedding and vortex breakdown more clearly than instantaneous flow visualization techniques.

Lane, David A.↗

NASA NTRS2014

The Cassini Solstice Mission: Streamlining Operations by Sequencing with PIEs

The Cassini Solstice Mission (CSM) is the second extended mission phase of the highly successful Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Conducted at a much-reduced funding level, operations for the CSM have been streamlined and simplified significantly. Integration of the science timeline, which involves allocating observation time in a balanced manner to each of the five different science disciplines (with representatives from the twelve different science instruments), has long been a labor-intensive endeavor. Lessons learned from the prime mission (2004-2008) and first extended mission (Equinox mission, 2008-2010) were utilized to design a new process involving PIEs (Pre-Integrated Events) to ensure the highest priority observations for each discipline could be accomplished despite reduced work force and overall simplification of processes. Discipline-level PIE lists were managed by the Science Planning team and graphically mapped to aid timeline deconfliction meetings prior to assigning discrete segments of time to the various disciplines. Periapse segments are generally discipline-focused, with the exception of a handful of PIEs. In addition to all PIEs being documented in a spreadsheet, allocated out-of-discipline PIEs were entered into the Cassini Information Management System (CIMS) well in advance of timeline integration. The disciplines were then free to work the rest of the timeline internally, without the need for frequent interaction, debate, and negotiation with representatives from other disciplines. As a result, the number of integration meetings has been cut back extensively, freeing up workforce. The sequence implementation process was streamlined as well, combining two previous processes (and teams) into one. The new Sequence Implementation Process (SIP) schedules 22 weeks to build each 10-week-long sequence, and only 3 sequence processes overlap. This differs significantly from prime mission during which 5-week-long sequences were built in 24 weeks, with 6 overlapping processes.

Vandermey, Nancy↗

NASA NTRS2016

Integrated Mecical Model (IMM) 4.0 Verification and Validation (VV) Testing (HRP IWS 2016)

Timeline, partial treatment, and alternate medications were added to the IMM to improve the fidelity of this model to enhance decision support capabilities. Using standard design reference missions, IMM VV testing compared outputs from the current operational IMM (v3) with those from the model with added functionalities (v4). These new capabilities were examined in a comparative, stepwise approach as follows: a) comparison of the current operational IMM v3 with the enhanced functionality of timeline alone (IMM 4.T), b) comparison of IMM 4.T with the timeline and partial treatment (IMM 4.TPT), and c) comparison of IMM 4.TPT with timeline, partial treatment and alternative medication (IMM 4.0).

risk assessment↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessment of Crew Time for Maintenance and Repairs Activities for Lunar Surface Missions

NASA is currently evaluating different methods to predict how much time crewmembers will spend conducting repair and maintenance activities on future space missions. As mission scope and spacecraft architectures change, it will be necessary to understand how crew repair and maintenance timelines are impacted by mission operations and technology changes. Past work has been done using historical ISS data to accurately predict crew habitation and operation timelines, resulting in the development of NASA’s Exploration Crew Time Model (ECTM). However, understanding crew maintenance and repair requirements has posed a unique challenge due to the complexity of available datasets, the probabilistic nature of sub-system failures, and the impacts of reliability growth on failure rates. This paper presents a methodology to collect and condition empirical repair and maintenance time data from available data sets, to extrapolate from that data to estimate projected maintenance and repair times for a lunar Surface Habitat, and to assess how uncertainty in repair time could impact utilization time on the lunar surface. NASA International Space Station (ISS) maintenance and crew time data are logged into two central databases, the Maintenance Data Collection (MDC) and the Operations Planning Timeline Integration System (OPTimIS) respectively. Separately, each of these two datasets capture only portions of the complete set of data required to generate an accurate assessment of crew time spent on maintenance activities at a sub-system level. MDC provides a detailed catalog of failure events and an overview of the failure’s required maintenance and OPTimIS provides a description of crew activities and crew time durations dedicated to maintenance. To create a more useful crew time estimate for maintenance timelines, the authors developed a methodology to capture relevant data from each set and combine and utilize that data by linking crew time requirements to specific components. The authors compare the failure logs in the MDC to crew activity logs pulled from OPTimIS and then process the data to estimate required repair times for each failure event. Data is also classified by the outcome of each repair event, whether the failed component was replaced or whether it was repaired in place. The entire maintenance activity dataset is then categorized based on the class of failed component to allow for a statistically significant sample size for each class and to provide accurate crew time estimates for any components lacking relevant data. This resultant component repair time data can be used in the future to generate Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) estimates and confidence intervals for each class of component based on a probabilistic distribution of documented maintenance events. These improved MTTR values can then be applied to candidate element sub-system architectures, along with component Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) data to generate distributions for potential required system crew repair time estimates for a given mission. Repair time distributions can then be used to develop more accurate crew schedules and to assess potential available utilization time.

Crew Time↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessment of Crew Time for Maintenance and Repair Activities for Lunar Surface Missions

NASA is currently evaluating different methods to predict how much time crewmembers will spend conducting repair and maintenance activities on future space missions. As mission scope and spacecraft architectures change, understanding how crew repair and maintenance timelines are impacted by mission operations and technology changes is vital for future mission planning. Past work has been done using historical International Space Station (ISS) data to accurately predict crew habitation and operation timelines, resulting in the development of NASA’s Exploration Crew Time Model (ECTM). However, understanding crew maintenance and repair requirements has posed a unique challenge due to the complexity of available datasets, the probabilistic nature of sub-system failures, and the impacts of reliability growth on failure rates. This paper presents a methodology to collect and condition empirical repair and maintenance time data from available datasets, to extrapolate from that data to estimate projected maintenance and repair times for a lunar Surface Habitat (SH), and to assess how uncertainty in repair time could impact utilization time on the lunar surface. NASA ISS maintenance and crew time data are logged into two central databases: the Maintenance Data Collection (MDC) and the Operations Planning Timeline Integration System (OPTimIS). Separately, each of these two datasets capture only portions of the complete set of data required to generate an accurate assessment of crew time spent on maintenance activities at a sub-system level. To create a more useful crew time estimate for maintenance timelines, the authors developed a methodology to capture relevant data from each set and combine and utilize that data by linking crew time requirements to specific components. The authors compare the failure logs in the MDC to crew activity logs pulled from OPTimIS and then process the data to estimate required repair time for each failure and repair event. The entire maintenance activity dataset is then categorized based on the class of failed component to ensure a significant sample size for each class and accurate crew time estimates for any components lacking relevant data. This resultant component repair time data can be used in the future to generate Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) estimates and confidence intervals for each class of component based on a probabilistic distribution of documented maintenance events. These improved MTTR values can then be applied to candidate element sub-system architectures, along with component Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) data to generate distributions for potential required system crew repair time estimates for a given mission. The authors applied these modeling methods to a case study of a crewed mission to the planned SH and produced expected corrective maintenance crew time distributions. The results produced an expected corrective maintenance crew time at over 24 hours per mission, and a maintenance crew time distribution that reflects the importance of planning for sufficient maintenance requirements each mission. Repair time distributions can then be used to develop more accurate crew schedules and to assess potential available utilization time.

Crew Time↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Decision Support System for Extravehicular Operations Under Significant Communication Latency

Within the next few decades, humanity hopes to perform extravehicular activities (EVAs) on the surface of Mars; however, several technical and operational challenges must first be overcome. Foremost among these challenges is managing a significant two-way communication latency between Earth and Mars. Current and historical paradigms of EVA operations have required near-real-time communication between the crewmember(s) performing an EVA and an Earth-based mission control. Next-generation operational paradigms for supporting deep space exploration will necessitate a distributed decision authority system, including delayed Earth-based mission control, the on-planet extravehicular crewmember(s), and intermediate mission support from intravehicular crewmember(s) within real-time communication range. This latter group is of particular interest: they must provide operations support without the plentiful resources available to mission control on Earth. For this purpose, NASA is developing the Personalized EVA Informatics and Decision Support (PersEIDS) software platform. PersEIDS is designed to bolster operator situational awareness and offload operator workload by automating the tracking and projection of consumables usage over an EVA timeline, providing real-time probabilistic safety assessments of an EVA timeline given consumables constraints, and recommending alternative EVA timeline(s) when the active timeline is not expected to be completed under consumables limits. The PersEIDS concept of operations, use cases, and models will be presented. A limited version of PersEIDS was demonstrated during a three-day-long study where each day a roughly four-hour-long simulated Martian EVA was performed in virtual reality at the NASA Johnson Space Center. The first day was a control trial without PersEIDS support; the second and third days represented different levels of decision support provided by PersEIDS to the intravehicular crewmember acting as mission control. With PersEIDS support, the IV crewmember was able to manage the mission to completion faster and with more remaining consumables; however, additional testing is required to understand confounding factors, e.g. training bias.

Mars↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Crew Autonomy Through Self-Scheduling: Operational Characterization

NASA’s future long-duration exploration missions (LDEMs) will encounter increasing communication transmission delays as they move farther from Earth-based ground stations. This necessitates a new approach, as crews can no longer rely on real-time support from ground planners and must self-schedule their own operational timelines effectively and efficiently. To enable this transition, our team has developed Playbook, a mission planning and scheduling tool. Our research focuses on quantifying scheduling performance using Playbook to inform the design and development of future features to streamline timeline creation. We also aim to propose standards and guidelines for autonomous crews in LDEMs. In the past year, we have focused on further validating and quantifying the effects of countermeasure aids on self-scheduling performance. There are two software aids in Playbook (self-scheduling platform): Suggested Fixes, which propose an edit to resolve violations within a timeline, and No-Go Zones, which highlight where activities should not be scheduled on a timeline. We have made significant progress in HERA Campaign 7 (C7) data collection, increasing the number of days crew must self-schedule from 4 to 8. As a result, almost 20% of the mission is self-scheduled by the analog astronauts. We have also started data collection on a controlled lab experiment designed to quantify performance effects due to the countermeasures. We expect to present the preliminary results from both efforts. Finally, we have conducted an exploratory analysis of NASA’s HERA Campaign 6 (C6), investigating the mission-level impacts of self-scheduling. We derived basic patterns and descriptive statistics to better characterize crew autonomy through self-scheduling. We also assessed if there are any individual indicators of preference for self-scheduling, such as experience or predilection for autonomy. Preliminary analysis indicates that the HERA C6 crew self-scheduled one out of four flexible activities, indicating unprompted adoption of self-scheduling as a concept of operation for crew autonomy.

analog↗

DOE OSTI2020

Challenges in the post-licensing stage of U.S. hydropower development: Current status and some potential solutions

The issuance of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license is an important milestone in the development process of new U.S. hydropower projects. The complexity and uncertain timeline of the licensing process have been often cited as a key deterrent to new hydropower installations in the United States. However, very little attention has been paid to post-licensing timelines and attrition rates. This article explores the challenges faced by developers in bringing their FERC-licensed hydropower projects to the construction stage. Post-licensing activities to be completed before starting construction include obtaining additional permitting from other federal or state agencies, completing the technical design, securing financing, and in most cases, negotiating a power purchase agreement. For the set of projects that obtained a FERC license between 2007 and 2018, we assembled a dataset—combining information from FERC dockets and responses from a questionnaire to developers—to calculate attrition rates and development timelines and to examine the reasons for delays and cancellations.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2022

Solar Automated Permit Processing Software for Distributed PV (Cooperative Research and Development Final Report, CRADA Number CRD-19-00825)

NREL and its project partners built and commercialized the novel Solar Automated Permitting Processing Plus (SolarAPP+) software platform that delivers instant residential rooftop solar permits. The tool provides installers with a standard portal for entering permit information for residential solar systems across all Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs) using SolarAPP+, thereby providing a streamlined plan review form, transparency into permitting timelines, and required specifications. The project has proven to reduce permitting timelines from as many as 20 business days to zero, delivering solar projects faster in the four participating AHJs using the platform. Streamlining permitting timelines, all else equal, results in consumers installing their systems and reducing their electricity bills faster. The continued expansion of SolarAPP+ features and adoption nationwide will expand the benefits of the SolarAPP+ beyond the current user base.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗