Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Resource Reporting”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,477 records · Page 82

Water-Related Power Plant Curtailments: An Overview of Incidents and Contributing Factors

Water temperatures and water availability can affect the reliable operations of power plants in the United States. Data on water-related impacts on the energy sector are not consolidated and are reported by multiple agencies. This study provides an overview of historical incidents where water resources have affected power plant operations, discusses the various data sources providing information, and creates a publicly available and open access database that contains consolidated information about water-related power plant curtailment and shut-down incidents. Power plants can be affected by water resources if incoming water temperatures are too high, water discharge temperatures are too high, or if there is not enough water available to operate. Changes in climate have the potential to exacerbate uncertainty over water resource availability and temperature. Power plant impacts from water resources include curtailment of generation, plant shut-downs, and requests for regulatory variances. In addition, many power plants have developed adaptation approaches to reducing the potential risks of water-related issues by investing in new technologies or developing and implementing plans to undertake during droughts or heatwaves. This study identifies 42 incidents of water-related power plant issues from 2000-2015, drawing from a variety of different datasets. These incidents occur throughout the U.S., and affect coal and nuclear plants that use once-through, recirculating, and pond cooling systems. In addition, water temperature violations reported to the Environmental Protection Agency are also considered, with 35 temperature violations noted from 2012-2015. In addition to providing some background information on incidents, this effort has also created an open access database on the Open Energy Information platform that contains information about water-related power plant issues that can be updated by users.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

Soil Sample Report in Support of the Site 300 Hazardous Waste Facility Permit, Part V, Special Condition #16 a-f

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) issued a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Hazardous Waste Facility Permit (HWFP) to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Experimental Test Site 300 (Site 300) in August 2017. This soil sampling summary report is required as part of the HWFP, Part V, Special Condition #16 a-f. Soil sample results for Constituents of Concern (COC) were evaluated relative to established site-wide background levels that were developed by the LLNL Environmental Restoration Department (ERD) for site mitigation work pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

A Guide for Improved Resource Adequacy Assessments in Evolving Power Systems: Institutional and Technical Dimensions

This paper identifies and evaluates issues in traditional resource adequacy (RA) assessment practices, and how adjusting these practices may affect and depend on existing institutional arrangements for planning and procurement. The paper proposes a technical-institutional roadmap that would allow regulators in vertically-integrated jurisdictions and system planners and operators in restructured jurisdictions to revise RA practices across a range of components. First, we compile a critical review of current RA assessment practices based on (1) interviews with RA practitioners and (2) a review of recent technical literature. We find that (i) RA may need to expand beyond capacity adequacy to ensure energy adequacy – relevant for energy-limited resources such as storage – and potentially some form of ancillary service adequacy (e.g. enough ramping-up and ramping-down capability in the system); (ii) chronological hourly simulations for all hours in the year are the current best practice; (iii) metrics and models used do not reflect economic criteria in system operation and loss of load; and (iv) there is a need to improve representation of weather dependencies and weather data. Second, we review planning and RA reports for several private and public entities that plan generation and/or transmission infrastructure in the continental U.S. to look for existing practices involving resilience assessments. We find no systematic treatment of the costs of extreme weather and other hazards, the benefits of resilience, and resilience metrics in planning analyses and no systematic treatment of resilience metrics, methods, and outcomes for resource adequacy purposes. Third, we create a technical framework for probabilistic RA assessment and use it to study how key choices about how to model power system operations affect the values that are obtained for RA metrics. We find that (i) non-economic dispatch schemes that ignore economic objectives can lead to accurate RA assessments when coordinated with detailed operational strategies; (ii) multi-year data is critical to capture a wide variety of system conditions; (iii) not incorporating transmission limits into RA assessment could lead to substantial underestimation of traditional “expected value” RA metrics; and (iv) new RA metrics that capture event-specific shortfall characteristics should be used as supplements to traditional metrics. Finally, we examine RA assessments and use this information to propose a guide of evolving industry standards for resource adequacy assessments in resource planning and transmission planning. We report minimum, best, and frontier practices for temporal resolution of assessments, metrics and targets, weather data, load forecasting, characterization of variable renewable resources, characterization of transmission and market transactions, RA modeling and integration with planning processes, and capacity accreditation.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Further Characterization of CELSS Wastes: A Review of Solid Wastes Present to Support Potential Secondary Biomass Production

Controlled ecological life support systems (CELSS) may one day play an essential role in extraterrestrial colonies. Key to the success of any CELSS will be the system's ability to approach a self-supporting status through recovery and reuse of basic resources. Primary CELSS solid wastes with potential to support secondary biomass production will be inedible plant biomass and metabolic human wastes. Solid waste production is summarized and reported as 765 g N per day per person, including 300 g C and 37 g N per day per person. One Resource Recovery configuration using the bioprocessing of solid wastes into a Tilapia feed stream is examined. Based on estimated conversion efficiencies, 12 g of protein per day per person is produced as a nutrition supplement. The unique tissue composition of crops produced at the Kennedy Space Center CELSS Program highlights the need to evaluate Resource Recovery components with data generated in the CELSS environment.

Muller, Matthew S.↗

Demand Response in Bangalore: Implications for Electricity System Operations

Recent Greening the Grid studies for India highlight the benefits of flexible resources for integrating variable renewable energy onto India’s electricity system. India’s ambitious renewable energy targets, which are particularly focused on renewable resource states such as Karnataka, will face fewer challenges when combined with new planning and operational strategies and technologies. This report explores one such strategy - demand response - by which the system operator shifts load throughout a day to minimize system wide production costs. To explore this strategy, we added demand response resources to Karnataka’s electricity system in a production cost model of India, using load shifting potential analyzed by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. We then investigated the impacts of increasing demand response capacity under several renewable resource scenarios. Our results show the addition of demand response enables fuel shifting from high-marginal-cost and emissions-intensive subcritical coal and diesel generation to zero-marginal-cost and emissions-free renewable generation. Accordingly, the value that demand response provides to the system increases as the renewable penetration increases. In addition to reducing production costs and emissions, demand response reduces the time that thermal generators spend at their minimum output levels, which typically represents a less efficient and costlier operational state. Agricultural load shifting provides greater value to the system than residential, commercial, or industrial loads. Agricultural demand response is more flexible than other sectors because it is not exposed to subdaily operational constraints and it can operate for more hours per day without impacting customer satisfaction. Further, the first increment of demand response that is added to a system provides the greatest value; further additions provide additional benefits but have a decreasing impact. The insights we discuss could be leveraged by system planners and operators in other jurisdictions, particularly those facing significant renewable energy penetrations, to develop their own demand response programs.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Communication and Social Science in the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) Assessment

Every two years, NASA conducts an in-depth assessment of the satellite Earth observation data needs of U.S. federal civilian agencies submitted through the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) survey. The SNWG assessment occurs at the nexus of science and people: in the 2022 assessment, over 100 scientists across NASA, NOAA, and USGS were organized to interview over 165 end users at 29 agencies about their unique satellite needs, brainstorm a range of solutions to meet those needs, and communicate back to agencies about resources available for meeting their needs. The innovative approaches to communication, organization, and team make-up that will be described in this talk are vital to the success of the SNWG assessment. As the first major step in evaluating a satellite need, the tri-agency assessment team interviews the agency SMEs who submitted the survey to understand how satellite data could help inform their decision-making process or enable them to fulfill their key responsibilities. In preparation, NASA utilizes social scientists to provide training to all assessment participants on how to hold a discovery-centered interview, including starting with a purpose, creating a welcoming space, exploring all aspects and edges of the need, and brainstorming possible solutions to meet the need. After the interviews, assessment participants propose and review solutions across all thematic areas, seeking those that will help multiple agencies. During the selection process, agencies expected to benefit from a new solution have an opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed activity and are invited to co-design the solution with NASA, should it be implemented. The organization of needs and solutions takes place in Asana, a workflow management tool adapted for the SNWG assessment, and the Report Generation Tool (RGT) enables assessment teams to collaboratively write reports that are returned to each agency with information on current and upcoming resources that help meet their needs.

Katrina Virts↗

Review of Enabling Technologies to Facilitate Secure Compute Customization

High performance computing environments are often used for a wide variety of workloads ranging from simulation, data transformation and analysis, and complex workflows to name just a few. These systems may process data for a variety of users, often requiring strong separation between job allocations. There are many challenges to establishing these secure enclaves within the shared infrastructure of high-performance computing (HPC) environments. The isolation mechanisms in the system software are the basic building blocks for enabling secure compute enclaves. There are a variety of approaches and the focus of this report is to review the different virtualization technologies that facilitate the creation of secure compute enclaves. The report reviews current operating system (OS) protection mechanisms and modern virtualization technologies to better understand the performance/isolation properties. We also examine the feasibility of running ``virtualized'' computing resources as non-privileged users, and providing controlled administrative permissions for standard users running within a virtualized context. Our examination includes technologies such as Linux containers (LXC [32], Docker [15]) and full virtualization (KVM [26], Xen [5]). We categorize these different approaches to virtualization into two broad groups: OS-level virtualization and system-level virtualization. The OS-level virtualization uses containers to allow a single OS kernel to be partitioned to create Virtual Environments (VE), e.g., LXC. The resources within the host's kernel are only virtualized in the sense of separate namespaces. In contrast, system-level virtualization uses hypervisors to manage multiple OS kernels and virtualize the physical resources (hardware) to create Virtual Machines (VM), e.g., Xen, KVM. This terminology of VE and VM, detailed in Section 2, is used throughout the report to distinguish between the two different approaches to providing virtualized execution environments. As part of our technology review we analyzed several current virtualization solutions to assess their vulnerabilities. This included a review of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) for Xen, KVM, LXC and Docker to gauge their susceptibility to different attacks. The complete details are provided in Section 5 on page 33. Based on this review we concluded that system-level virtualization solutions have many more vulnerabilities than OS level virtualization solutions. As such, security mechanisms like sVirt (Section 3.3) should be considered when using system-level virtualization solutions in order to protect the host against exploits. The majority of vulnerabilities related to KVM, LXC, and Docker are in specific regions of the system. Therefore, future "zero day attacks" are likely to be in the same regions, which suggests that protecting these areas can simplify the protection of the host and maintain the isolation between users. The evaluations of virtualization technologies done thus far are discussed in Section 4. This includes experiments with 'user' namespaces in VEs, which provides the ability to isolate user privileges and allow a user to run with different UIDs within the container while mapping them to non-privileged UIDs in the host. We have identified Linux namespaces as a promising mechanism to isolate shared resources, while maintaining good performance. In Section 4.1 we describe our tests with LXC as a non-root user and leveraging namespaces to control UID/GID mappings and support controlled sharing of parallel file-systems. We highlight several of these namespace capabilities in Section 6.2.3. The other evaluations that were performed during this initial phase of work provide baseline performance data for comparing VEs and VMs to purely native execution. In Section 4.2 we performed tests using the High-Performance Computing Conjugate Gradient (HPCCG) benchmark to establish baseline performance for a scientific application when run on the Native (host) machine in contrast with execution under Docker and KVM. Our tests verified prior studies showing roughly 2-4% overheads in application execution time & MFlops when running in hypervisor-base environments (VMs) as compared to near native performance with VEs. For more details, see Figures 4.5 (page 28), 4.6 (page 28), and 4.7 (page 29). Additionally, in Section 4.3 we include network measurements for TCP bandwidth performance over the 10GigE interface in our testbed. The Native and Docker based tests achieved >= ~9Gbits/sec, while the KVM configuration only achieved 2.5Gbits/sec (Table 4.6 on page 32). This may be a configuration issue with our KVM installation, and is a point for further testing as we refine the network settings in the testbed. The initial network tests were done using a bridged networking configuration. The report outline is as follows: - Section 1 introduces the report and clarifies the scope of the proj...

Aderholdt, Ferrol↗

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune CW-5 Marsh incubation chamber experiment

Critical military training and testing on lands along the nation’s coastal and estuarine shorelines are increasingly placed at risk because of encroachment pressures in surrounding areas, impairments due to other anthropogenic disturbances, and changes in climate and sea level. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) intends to enhance and sustain its training and testing assets and also optimize its stewardship of natural resources through the development and application of an ecosystem-based management approach on DoD installations. To accomplish this goal, particularly for installations in estuarine/coastal environments, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) launched the Defense Coastal/Estuarine Research Program (DCERP) as a 10-year effort at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune (MCBCL) in North Carolina. The results of the second 5 years of the program (DCERP2) are presented in the DCERP2 Final Report.There were four overarching objectives of DCERP2. The first objective was to understand the effects of climate change impacts, including warming temperatures, variability in the hydrological cycle, storm events, and sea level rise on the coastal ecosystems at MCBCL from observations and measurements made over the 10-year program. The second objective was to understand the carbon cycle of the coastal and terrestrial ecosystems at MCBCL through a highly integrated sampling program. The third objective was to develop models, tools, and indicators to evaluate current and projected future ecosystem state changes and translate scientific findings into actionable information for installation managers. The last objective was to recommend adaptive management strategies to sustain ecosystem natural resources within the context of an active military installation.A goal of CW-5 was to measure the influence of salt marshes on N, P, and C in tidal creek channels. Salt marsh sediment microbial communities and vegetation may affect N, P, and C in creek water overlying the marsh during high tide; these concentration changes would subsequently alter the flux of N, P, and C in the tidal creek channel during low tide. The objective of this research was to measure the rate of concentration change in N, P, and C in a volume of water isolated on the marsh during high tide. This rate of concentration change can be extrapolated across a salt marsh surface to estimate the mass export of N, P, and C back to the tidal creek channel at low tide. Analysis of these data is provided in the CW-5 chapter of the DCERP2 Final Research Report.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

AGGREGATE: dAta-driven modelinG preservinG contRollable dEr for outaGe mAnagemenT and rEsiliency (Report for Task 11 & 12: Components and Capabilities of the Resiliency Driven Outage Management and Feeder Restoration System (Deliverable D8))

This report provides progress update for the development of a outage management, feeder restoration, and restoration action feasibility check modules as part of the AGGREGATE project. Details for integration with controllability module, data driven situational awareness of network and distributed energy resources as well cyber security plan for these modules integrated with GE ADMS are also presented in the report. These three modules for outage management, feeder restoration, and restoration action feasibility check modules are developed in MATLAB and validated with a modified IEEE 123-node feeder. Results demonstrate ability of these new modules to improve the restoration process post-disaster to enhance the system resilience.

42 ENGINEERING↗

NASA FY 2000 Accountability Report

This Accountability Report consolidates reports required by various statutes and summarizes NASA's program accomplishments and its stewardship over budget and financial resources. It is a culmination of NASA's management process, which begins with mission definition and program planning, continues with the formulation and justification of budgets for the President and Congress, and ends with scientific and engineering program accomplishments. The report covers activities from October 1, 1999, through September 30, 2000. Achievements are highlighted in the Statement of the Administrator and summarized in the Report.

Source record↗

Web-Enhanced Instruction and Learning: Findings of a Short- and Long-Term Impact Study and Teacher Use of NASA Web Resources

Over a three-year period, researchers and educators from the Pennsylvania State University (PSU), University Park, Pennsylvania, and the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC), Edwards, California, worked together to analyze, develop, implement and evaluate materials and tools that enable teachers to use NASA Web resources effectively for teaching science, mathematics, technology and geography. Two conference publications and one technical paper have already been published as part of this educational research series on Web-based instruction and learning. This technical paper, Web-Enhanced Instruction and Learning: Findings of a Short- and Long-Term Impact Study, is the culminating report in this educational research series and is based on the final report submitted to NASA. This report describes the broad spectrum of data gathered from teachers about their experiences using NASA Web resources in the classroom. It also describes participating teachers responses and feedback about the use of the NASA Web-Enhanced Learning Environment Strategies reflection tool on their teaching practices. The reflection tool was designed to help teachers merge the vast array of NASA resources with the best teaching methods, taking into consideration grade levels, subject areas and teaching preferences. The teachers described their attitudes toward technology and innovation in the classroom and their experiences and perceptions as they attempted to integrate Web resources into science, mathematics, technology and geography instruction.

McCarthy, Marianne C.↗

Microgrid Controller and Advanced Distribution Management System Survey Report

A microgrid controller, which serves as the heart of a microgrid, is responsible for optimally managing the distributed energy resources, energy storage systems, and responsive demand and for ensuring the microgrid is being operated in an efficient, reliable, and resilient way. As the market for microgrids has blossomed in recently years, many vendors have released their own microgrid controllers to meet the various needs of different microgrid clients. However, due to the absence of a recognized standard for such controllers, vendor-supported microgrid controllers have a range of functionalities that are significantly different from each other in many respects. As a result the current state of the industry has been difficult to assess. To remedy this situation the authors conducted a survey of the functions of microgrid controllers developed by vendors and national laboratories. This report presents a clear indication of the state of the microgrid-controller industry based on analysis of the survey results. The results demonstrate that US Department of Energy funded research in microgrid controllers is unique and not competing with that of industry.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

TRANSENSOR: Transformer Real-time Assessment INtelligent System with Embedded Network of Sensors and Optical Readout. Final Report

Utilities across the world are wrestling with evolving market dynamics, population growth and climate change. Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) such as solar photovoltaics, distributed generators and energy storage systems are becoming important parts of the U.S. energy mix. These factors are driving an increasing need for low-cost grid asset monitoring. Aside from being costly, traditional utility monitoring systems are not sufficiently robust and do not provide real-time visibility into the condition of grid assets such as transformers. Lack of accurate real-time measurements on performance has resulted in the use of lagging indicators, such as oil sample analysis. To address this need, an innovative embedded optical sensing technology, Transformer Real-time Assessment Intelligent System (TRANSENSOR) was developed, validated and demonstrated in this project. To date, TRANSENSOR has focused on transformers but is extendable to other grid assets. In addition to the technology being embedded into new transformers during manufacturing, a retrofit configuration that can be installed on existing transformers in the field was also developed. It is anticipated that the ability to retrofit existing transformers will help accelerate adoption of the underlying TRANSENSOR technology. Phase 1 of the project focused on laboratory development and qualification of the technology. Following iterations and exploration of relevant optical sensing modalities and multiplexed configurations of interest for the transformer environment, an effective candidate configuration was agreed upon, down-selected and custom-designed for embedding into General Electric (GE) network transformers. Two new GE 500 kilovolt ampere (kVA), 27 kilovolt (kV) distribution network transformers were built with embedded fiber-optic (FO) sensors and successfully qualified per industry standards at GE’s Shreveport, Louisiana facility during Phase 1 of the project. Following the successful completion of Phase 1, the team proceeded to Phase 2, which focused on a field demonstration of the technology. Over Phase 2, the first new GE transformer built with embedded fiber-optic sensors was installed in an above-ground cage and connected to the grid at Con Edison’s Astoria facility. A second transformer equipped with TRANSENSOR was installed in an underground vault. Additionally, an older (1982 year model) GE transformer in an above-ground cage was retrofitted with fiber- optic sensors and reconnected to the grid at ConEd’s facility. Analysis of data acquired from the sensors showed interesting correlations with transformer loading. Additionally, key events such as transformer low-voltage network connection, primary-side energizing, and a pressure loss event from an oil sampling were detected by the TRANSENSOR system. Online data processing/feature extraction algorithms for the second transformer in the underground vault detected key features and event alerts that were transmitted through a wireless 4G connection. The remote deployment concept showed promising results with data collection running for a total of 8 months across the three (3) GE transformers instrumented for the Phase 2 field demonstration. This sets the stage well for further development and commercialization.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Report for the ASCR Workshop on Basic Research Needs in Quantum Computing and Networking - 2023

Employing quantum mechanical resources in computing and networking opens the door to new computation and communication models and potential disruptive advantages over classical counterparts. However, quantifying and realizing such advantages face extensive scientific and engineering challenges. Investments by the Department of Energy (DOE) have driven progress toward addressing such challenges. Quantum algorithms have been recently developed, in some cases offering asymptotic exponential advantages in speed or accuracy, for fundamental scientific problems such as simulating physical systems, solving systems of linear equations, or solving differential equations. Empirical demonstrations on nascent quantum hardware suggest better performance than classical analogs on specialized computational tasks favorable to the quantum computing systems. However, demonstration of an end-to-end, substantial and rigorously quantifiable quantum performance advantage over classical analogs remains a grand challenge, especially for problems of practical value. The definition of requirements for quantum technologies to exhibit scalable, rigorous, and transformative performance advantages for practical applications also remains an outstanding open question, namely, what will be required to ultimately demonstrate practical quantum advantage?

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Defining the Minimal Set of Microbial Genes Required for Valorization of Lignin Biomass (Final Report)

Project Goals: Lignin is the second most abundant biopolymer on earth and represents a critically underutilized biomass resource for hydrocarbon feedstocks. Despite substantial effort, there is still no efficient process to convert lignin to useable carbon-based platform chemicals and materials. The goal of this project is identify a minimal set of microbial enzymes necessary for lignin breakdown and sufficient for the synthesis of valuable chemical intermediates from lignin isolated as a byproduct of lignocellulosic ethanol production. These genes will be then used to engineer functional whole cell biocatalysts for tunable lignin metabolism. To date, although a number of enzymes have been associated with lignin degradation, most have been tested in isolation (as individual enzymes) and on drastically different substrates -- often dyes that are not related to lignin. In contrast, lignin utilization in nature likely occurs by microbial consortia with multiple enzymes acting synergistically. We propose to examine two separate stages of lignin breakdown carried out by the microbes that do it best: (1) early breakdown of native polymeric lignin into soluble fragments by a set of sequenced wood-rotting fungal species, and (2) downstream metabolism of these soluble lignin fragments to useful chemical intermediates by a panel of sequenced soil saprophytes. Our approach involves testing sets of genes that will be assayed combinatorially in the context of a heterologous expression host. The resulting engineered strains will be systematically assayed using soluble lignin fragments, synthetic defined polymeric lignin, and finally lignin directly sourced from lignocellulosic processing streams. In addition to resulting in a functional whole cell biocatalyst for lignin utilization, we anticipate that this approach will allow us to address key unanswered questions about lignin metabolism in nature, including: (1) Why does the Trametes versicolor genome contain 25 different class II peroxidases? (2) What is the role of laccases in lignin metabolism? Why do some aggressive lignin degraders have many laccases (e.g. >7 in T. versicolor) while others have none (e.g. P. chrysosporium)? (3) How is peroxide provided in a controlled manner to drive peroxidase activity without causing the enzyme inhibition that is so often observed in vitro? (4) What strategies do microbial lignin degraders use to avoid the problem of repolymerization during active lignin degradation? and (5) Can microbial lignin metabolism be diverted for high level production of defined aromatics? A final critical question is whether combining key minimal sets of enzymes from a wide range of organisms will result in engineered strains capable of highly efficient, streamlined pathways for lignin utilization that can be tuned for a specific carbon output. This effort will leverage DOE investments in microbial genome sequencing, and secure a critical channel for lignin biomass utilization that will also help to render lignocellulosic a viable feedstock for the production of renewable liquid biofuels.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Report for the ASCR Workshop on Basic Research Needs in Quantum Computing and Networking - 2023

Employing quantum mechanical resources in computing and networking opens the door to new computation and communication models and potential disruptive advantages over classical counterparts. However, quantifying and realizing such advantages face extensive scientific and engineering challenges. Investments by the Department of Energy (DOE) have driven progress toward addressing such challenges. Quantum algorithms have been recently developed, in some cases offering asymptotic exponential advantages in speed or accuracy, for fundamental scientific problems such as simulating physical systems, solving systems of linear equations, or solving differential equations. Empirical demonstrations on nascent quantum hardware suggest better performance than classical analogs on specialized computational tasks favorable to the quantum computing systems. However, demonstration of an end-to-end, substantial and rigorously quantifiable quantum performance advantage over classical analogs remains a grand challenge, especially for problems of practical value. The definition of requirements for quantum technologies to exhibit scalable, rigorous, and transformative performance advantages for practical applications also remains an outstanding open question, namely, what will be required to ultimately demonstrate practical quantum advantage?

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Master Services Agreement - Flexible Feeder/Distribution System Support: Cooperative Research and Development (Final Report)

PGE will engage NREL on a broad range of projects related to the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) into the utility's operations. This portfolio of work could include projects focused on DER adoption models, advanced distribution management system (ADMS) and distributed energy management system (DERMS) design, DER dispatch strategy development, and DER valuation framework development. Additional topics could include long-term energy planning, renewable energy, energy efficiency and demand-side management. As well as technology evaluations and design guidance for building retrofits and new construction projects, energy and energy infrastructure planning, policies, and markets (and their analysis), energy storage, energy security and resilience (including energy system-related cybersecurity), transportation and mobility, technology integration analysis. Additionally, other assistance as requested by PGE consistent with NREL’s expertise.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

PACT Center: Perovskite PV Accelerator for Commercializing Technologies (Final Technical Report)

The Perovskite PV Accelerator for Commercializing Technologies (PACT) center was established in July 2021 as a national resource to accelerate the commercialization of perovskite photovoltaic (PV) technology in the United States. Since its inception, PACT has been led by Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) in partnership with the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), formerly known as NREL. From FY20-FY23, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), CFV Labs, Black & Veatch (B&V), and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) were part of the project team. LANL brought expertise in perovskite PV device designs and processing, CFV Labs (now GroundWork Renewables) provided initial indoor and outdoor measurement hardware technology, B&V led the initial effort on perovskite PV bankability, and EPRI worked on reviewing testing standards, identifying commercialization gaps, and helping to run PACT’s Industry Advisory Board, a group including representatives from commercial testing labs, independent engineering firms, insurance companies, state regulators, and electric utilities. To source perovskite PV module samples, PACT contracted with the University of North Carolina (UNC), the University of Toledo, the University of Washington, and SLAC/Stanford University to provide a steady stream of research-grade perovskite mini modules, enabling protocol development in advance of commercial module availability. The project period ran from July 1, 2021, through December 31, 2025, including a No Cost Extension. Starting in FY25, the project was continued as a Core Capability in the Lab Call portfolio and continues at a reduced budget with only Sandia and NLR as funded recipients. Notably, starting in FY25 PACT expanded its scope beyond MHP modules to accept all emerging PV mini module technologies for testing, including organic PV (OPV) and all-thin-film tandems, with the aim of supporting commercialization across the broader emerging PV ecosystem. With this change in scope the program was renamed the PV Accelerator for Commercializing Technologies, dropping perovskite from the name.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗