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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.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

ECP Software Technology Capability Assessment Report V3.0

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) Software Technology (ST) focus area is responsible for (1) developing critical software capabilities that will enable the successful execution of ECP applications and (2) providing key components of a productive and sustainable exascale computing ecosystem that will position the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the broader high-performance computing (HPC) community with a firm foundation for future extreme-scale computing capabilities. This ECP ST Capability Assessment Report (CAR) provides an overview and assessment of current ECP ST capabilities and activities, giving stakeholders and the broader HPC community information that can be used to assess ECP ST progress and plan their own efforts accordingly. ECP ST leaders commit to updating this document on regular basis (every 6–12 months). Highlights from this version of the report are presented here. This version of the CAR contains the following updates relative to the previous revision: (1) This report highlights the progress with the Extreme-scale Scientific Software Stack (E4S) efforts. In particular, this report discusses how E4S continues to gain traction as a first-class entity in the HPC ecosystem, enabling new conversations with users, facilities, vendors, other US agencies, and international partners. (2) The several-page summaries of each ECP Level 4 project were updated to reflect recent progress and next steps (Section 4). Of particular note are the experiences of our teams on early-access systems for Frontier. (3) The E4S is described further. E4S is now updated via quarterly releases. E4S is the primary integration and delivery vehicle for ECP ST capabilities (Section 2.1.1). (4) The ECP ST software development kit (SDK) effort further refined its groupings (Section 2.1.2). The ECP ST focus area represents the key bridge between exascale systems and the scientists developing applications that will run on those platforms. ECP ST efforts contribute to approximately 70 software products (Section 2.1.3) in six technical areas (Table 1). Since publishing the previous revision of the CAR, the team has continued to evolve the product dictionary of official product names, which enables more rigorous mapping of ECP ST deliverables to stakeholders (Section 2.1.4).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Solar Pathways in Federal Energy Assistance Programs: Expanding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and U.S. Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) are federal programs to help low-income households reduce their energy costs. LIHEAP provides direct assistance to help households cover energy costs and stay connected to utility services, as well as weatherization and minor energy-related repairs, and WAP provides no-cost energy efficiency measures to reduce energy use and energy bills while also improving home comfort for income-qualified households. Across the U.S., states are implementing or considering solar energy as an eligible measure for LIHEAP and/or WAP funding, but the successful implementation pathways remain largely undocumented. This report fills that gap by analyzing states' LIHEAP and WAP annual plans, surveying administrators from LIHEAP grant recipients and WAP grantees about their challenges implementing solar or barriers to doing so, and conducting interviews and workshops with program administrators.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

The International Conference on Surface Plasmon Photonics 10

The International Conference on Surface Plasmon Photonics (SPP Conference) is widely regarded as the premier global conference in nanoscale photonics. The SPP10 meeting was held in the United States for the first time, at Rice University in Houston, Texas, on May 21-26, 2023. This conference was an outstanding venue for communicating research breakthroughs and accomplishments in the represented fields, as well as for visibility, networking, and recruiting, for students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty throughout the US and the world as they attended this conference. The SPP10 conference hosted sessions on fundamental science, innovations, and applications in modern photonics with high potential for commercialization. Plenary sessions, invited talks from leading scientists in the field, and contributed talks from the larger photonics community on highly multidisciplinary topics of Quantum Plasmonics and Photonics; Energy Harvesting and Plasmonic Chemistry; Active Photonics and Devices; Ultrafast and Nonlinear Phenomena; and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence. The meeting schedule includes 3 plenary speakers, 31 Invited talks and 58 contributed talks. There were three well attended poster sessions which included lively discussions. Lunch time in the University Colleges allowed unstructured time for additional networking and discussions. The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, both U.S. and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. The co-chairs of the conference were Prof. Naomi Halas and Prof. Peter Nordlander. The grant from DoE supported student’s and early career scientist’s registration and housing on campus.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Clear Sky Tampa Bay: Pre-Release Webinar

This deck discusses the development of the Clean Sky Toolkit during the second round of Solar Energy Innovation Network, tips and best practices to apply the Clear Sky Toolkit, and opportunities for involvement in energy resilience webinar and actives.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Merefa Community Microgrid: Conceptual Design and Sequence of Operations [Slides]

A conceptual design is described for a community microgrid in Ukraine. Microgrid resources include solar photovoltaics, battery energy storage, and conventional natural gas fueled reciprocating engine generators. The conceptual architecture was informed by the microgrid developer, NREL subject matter experts, and the application of REopt, an NREL-developed software tool created for identification of least-cost combination of resources for achieving cost savings, resilience, and renewable energy goals. The report includes conceptual architecture, estimates of key summary financial metrics, and sequence of operations.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Evaluacion del potencial solar fotovoltaico en Brownfields y embalses de Puerto Rico: analisis y modelaje [Assessing the Solar Photovoltaic Potential in Puerto Rican Brownfields and Reservoirs: Analysis and Modeling] [Slides]

Este estudio del Laboratorio Nacional de Energia Renovable (NREL, por sus siglas en ingles) evalua el potencial de desarrollo de energia solar fotovoltaica (FV) en zonas industriales abandonadas y embalses de Puerto Rico. La rehabilitacion de estos sitios ofrece importantes beneficios, como la ampliacion de la infraestructura energetica, el apoyo al saneamiento ambiental y el mejoramiento de la revitalizacion de las comunidades. El estudio identifica hasta 3.3 gigavatios (GW) de capacidad solar fotovoltaica, incluidos 213 megavatios (MW) en vertederos cerrados, 1-2.5 GW en sitios contaminados, 78 MW en plantas desmanteladas, 21-50 MW en derechos de paso de lineas de transmision y 636 MW en masas de agua para energia fotovoltaica flotante. Esta investigacion pone de relieve la importancia estrategica de las inversiones y el apoyo normativo para alcanzar el objetivo de Puerto Rico de un 100% de energia limpia para 2050.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Grid Resilience to Extreme Events (ResiliEX 2.0)

The Grid Resilience to Extreme Events (ResiliEX) 2.0 workshop, co-hosted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Seattle City Light, was held at the Seattle City Hall April 23–25, 2024. This is the second workshop of its kind, with the first one having occurred in Seattle in November 2022. Participants from the second workshop hailed from research organizations, utilities, professional associations, consultants, government organizations, and communities. The purpose of the workshop was to Connect scientists, energy professionals, and policy experts to build knowledge and partnerships Advance the understanding of the science of extreme events and application to the energy system Promote grid planning and engineering that addresses the increasingly complex interdependencies as society combats the climate crisis Understand the role of different decision-makers and policymakers in increasing and accelerating grid resilience Identify new approaches, processes, and structures that should be pursued to increase grid resilience to extreme events.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Implementation and Performance Evaluation of a Community-Scale Adobe Evaporative Cooling Chamber for Vegetable Preservation

The construction of evaporative coolers in remote areas can increase the longevity of vegetables, improving food security and the local economy of small farmers in remote, impoverished communities without access to electricity. This work presents a 1:1 scale prototype of an 8 m 3 (2.1 × 2.1 × 2.3 m) stabilized adobe evaporative cooler, with a design based on the appropriate technology framework, and it was built as a chamber using double adobe walls, filled with wet sand, to induce evaporative cooling. Furthermore, the paper presents the prototype’s performance evaluation. The tests were carried out in the dry and wet states, with different volumes of water. The results show good performance compared with other prototypes, although the optimum watering volume could not be determined because of the high climate variance (outside temperature and humidity) that prevented the repetition of the experiments in identical operating conditions. Stabilized adobe proved to be a good choice for use in the cooler, even when subject to moisture accumulation, indicating an estimated long lifetime for the cooler. The data obtained about the efficiency of evaporative cooling show that the cooler, as expected, has its best performance on the hottest and driest days, reducing the internal temperature (up to 13.24 °C) and managing to keep the internal humidity. The cost, efficiency, durability, and replicability make the proposed evaporative cooler a feasible solution for food preservation.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Observationally constrained analysis on the distribution of fine- and coarse-mode nitrate in global models

Nitrate plays an important role in the Earth system and air quality. A key challenge in simulating the life cycle of nitrate aerosol in global models is to accurately represent mass size distribution of nitrate aerosol. In this study, we evaluate the performance of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 2 (E3SMv2) and the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2), along with Aerosol Comparisons between Observations and Models (AeroCom) phase III models, in simulating spatial distribution of fine-mode nitrate, the mass size distribution of fine- and coarse-mode nitrate, and the gas–aerosol partitioning between nitric acid gas and nitrate, using long-term ground-based observations and measurements from multiple aircraft campaigns. We find that most models underestimate the annual mean PM 2.5 (particulate matter with diameter less than 2.5 µm) nitrate surface concentration averaged over all sites. The observed nitrate PM 2.5 / PM 10 and PM 1 / PM 4 ratios are influenced by the relative contribution of fine sulfate or organic particles and coarse dust or sea salt particles. Overall, the ground-based observations give an annual mean surface nitrate PM 2.5 / PM 10 ratio of 0.7. Most models underestimate the annual mean PM 2.5 / PM 10 ratio in all regions. There are large spreads in the modeled nitrate PM 1 / PM 4 ratios, which span the full range from 0 to 1. Most models underestimate the surface molar ratio of nitrate to total inorganic nitrate averaged across all sites. Our study indicates the importance of gas–aerosol partition parameterization and the simulation of dust and sea salt in correctly simulating the mass size distribution of nitrate.

Nitrate↗
NASA NTRS2012

Hydroclimatic Controls over Global Variations in Phenology and Carbon Flux

The connection between phenological and hydroclimatological variations are quantified through joint analyses of global NDVI, LAI, and precipitation datasets. The global distributions of both NDVI and LAI in the warm season are strongly controlled by three quantities: mean annual precipitation, the standard deviation of annual precipitation, and Budyko's index of dryness. Upon demonstrating that these same basic (if biased) relationships are produced by a dynamic vegetation model (the dynamic vegetation and carbon storage components of the NCAR Community Land Model version 4 combined with the water and energy balance framework of the Catchment Land Surface Model of the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office), we use the model to perform a sensitivity study focusing on how phenology and carbon flux might respond to climatic change. The offline (decoupled from the atmosphere) simulations show us, for example, where on the globe a given small increment in precipitation mean or variability would have the greatest impact on carbon uptake. The analysis framework allows us in addition to quantify the degree to which climatic biases in a free-running GCM are manifested as biases in simulated phenology.

Koster, Randal↗
NASA NTRS2016

The X-Ray Surveyor Mission Concept Study: Forging the Path to NASA Astrophysics 2020 Decadal Survey Prioritization

The X-Ray Surveyor mission concept is unique among those being studied for prioritization in the NASA Astrophysics 2020 Decadal Survey. The X-Ray Surveyor mission will explore the high-energy Universe; providing essential and complimentary observations to the Astronomy Community. The NASA Astrophysics Roadmap (Enduring Quests, Daring Visions) describes the need for an X-Ray Observatory that is capable of addressing topics such as the origin and growth of the first supermassive black holes, galaxy evolution and growth of the cosmic structure, and the origin and evolution of the stars that make up our Universe. To address these scientifically compelling topics and more, an Observatory that exhibits leaps in capability over that of previous X-Ray Observatories in needed. This paper describes the current status of the X-Ray Surveyor Mission Concept Study and the path forward, which includes scientific investigations, technology development, and community participation.

X-Ray Surveyor↗
DOE OSTI2025

Graph-based Simulation Framework for Power Resilience Estimation and Enhancement

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events poses significant risks to power distribution systems, leading to widespread outages and severe economic and social consequences. This paper presents a novel simulation framework for assessing and enhancing the resilience of power distribution networks under such conditions. Resilience is estimated through Monte Carlo simulations, which simulate extreme weather scenarios and evaluate the impact on infrastructure fragility. Due to the proprietary nature of power network topology, a distribution network is synthesized using publicly available data. To generate the weather scenarios, an extreme weather generation method is developed. To enhance resilience, renewable resources such as solar panels and energy storage systems (batteries in this study) are incorporated. A customized Genetic Algorithm is proposed to determine the optimal locations and capacities for solar panels and battery installations, maximizing resilience while balancing cost constraints. Experiment results demonstrate that on a large-scale synthetic distribution network with more than 300,000 nodes and 300,000 edges, the proposed framework can efficiently evaluate the resilience, and enhance the resilience through the installations of distributed energy resources (DERs), providing utilities with valuable insights for community-level power system resilience estimation and enhancement.

Wang, Xuesong [Wayne State Univ., Detroit, MI (Uni↗
DOE OSTI2020

Report of the Atmosphere to Electrons Land-Based Mesoscale-to-Microscale Coupling Project (FY2020)

The overall goal of the Mesoscale-to-Microscale Coupling (MMC) project is to improve coupling between mesoscale and microscale simulations via improved guidance and new strategies for setting up simulations and for the development of new tools that can be used across the community. Including the mesoscale forcing is critical to modeling the full energy transfer across scales in the atmosphere. The project-specific objectives include: 1) To apply rigorous verification and validation (V&V) techniques to the new modeling tools that are developed as part of the project to ensure the accuracy of our codes and results and to develop estimates of the relative uncertainty. 2) To improve computational performance of the coupled MMC models through the development of methods that can be used to reduce turbulence spin-up time and hence the size of computational domains. 3) To improve representation of the surface layer in microscale models to enhance simulations of hub-height wind speed. 4) To develop guidance for the community describing the best ways to couple mesoscale and microscale models, including specific spatial scales at which the handoff to the microscale model should occur. 5) To prepare documentation and a suite of software tools that can be used across the community. And 6) To transition MMC research to the offshore environment. Major progress was made in each of these areas during FY20. The land-based portion of the project is reported herein, while the offshore portion will be reported separately. The team continued to advance the MMC tools and methodologies as well as to document their performance in journal papers and conference presentations, although several planned conferences were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Storage Futures Study: Storage Technology Modeling Input Data Report

The Storage Futures Study (SFS) is a multiyear research project to explore the role and impact of energy storage in the evolving electricity sector of the United States. The SFS is designed to examine the potential impact of energy storage technology advancement on the deployment of utility-scale storage and the adoption of distributed storage, and the implications for future power system infrastructure investment and operations. This specific report synthesizes current and projected cost performance assumptions along with location availability for storage technologies through 2050 that will be used in scenario analysis for the SFS at both the bulk power and distribution system scales. For comparison and context, this report also presents a synthesis of current cost and performance characteristics of energy storage technologies for storage durations ranging from minutes to months and including mechanical, thermal, and electrochemical storage technologies for the electricity sector. This information is intended to cover a broad range of storage technologies that are currently receiving significant attention from the investment community as well as in the media. In the report, we emphasize that energy storage technologies must be described in terms of both their power (kilowatts [kW]) capacity and energy (kilowatt-hours [kWh]) capacity to assess their costs and potential use cases.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Drivers and energy justice implications of renewable energy project siting in the United States

The rapid expansion of solar and wind energy projects is raising questions of energy justice. Some scholars argue that solar and wind project development could burden under-resourced communities with negative impacts such as environmental harm and reduced access to resources. Conversely, other scholars argue that project development could be a boon to under-resourced communities, providing local economic and cultural benefits. Here, we analyze the drivers of solar and wind project siting patterns in the United States and explore their potential energy justice implications. We find that siting patterns are driven primarily by technoeconomic factors, especially resource quality and access to open undeveloped spaces. These technoeconomic factors channel projects into sparsely populated rural areas and, to a lesser extent, areas with lower income levels. Here, we avoid simplifying assumptions about the broad justice implications of these siting patterns and explore our results from multiple perspectives.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Climate warming enhances biodiversity and stability of grassland soil phosphorus-cycling microbial communities

Abstract Climate warming poses significant challenges to global phosphorus sustainability, an essential component of Earth biogeochemistry cycling and water-food-energy nexus. Despite the crucial role of polyphosphate-accumulating organism as key functional microbial agents in phosphorus cycling, the impacts of global climate warming on polyphosphate accumulating organism communities remain largely enigmatic. This study investigates the effects of climate warming on the taxonomic, network, and functional profiles of soil bacterial polyphosphate-accumulating organisms, leveraging fluorescence-activated cell sorting and single-cell Raman spectroscopy. Climate warming enhances both taxonomic and functional biodiversity of polyphosphate-accumulating organisms via biotic interactions and environmental filtering, with observed functionality-biodiversity relationships supporting the functional redundancy theory. Furthermore, polyphosphate-accumulating organism network complexity and stability rise under warming with strengthened positive relationships, supporting stress gradient hypothesis and the belief that complexity begets stability. Finally, polyphosphate-accumulating organisms are significantly correlated to key ecosystem functioning in carbon and phosphorus cycling under warming. Our study suggests that preserving polyphosphate-accumulating organism communities is crucial for maintaining soil ecosystem functioning and sustainable phosphorus management in a warming world and opens avenues for predicting the responses of other functional microbial groups to climate change, beneficially or maliciously.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗
DOE OSTI2023

Characterizing Current THD’s Dependency on Solar Irradiance and Supraharmonics Profiling for a Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Power Plant

The rapidly increasing distributed energy resources (DERs) in power systems are now getting interconnected to set community grid structures, where power quality will be a major concern. The grid-to-grid (G2G) bidirectional power transfer among the distribution microgrid will not be considered commercially feasible unless the upstream harmonics are under the limits. The aggregation of such harmonics, measured as total harmonic distortion (THD), is feared to be beyond tolerable limits with the progression of rooftop grid-tied PV-like installations. Hence, this THD needs to be characterized with DER generation end variables. In this work, the photovoltaic (PV) DERs’ dependency on environment variables such as irradiance was profiled in the context of generating and injecting harmonics into the grid. A mathematical model of a grid-tied three-phase PV DER was developed as part of this correlation characterization, matching the fundamental unit structure of a 1.4 MW solar canopy located on the Florida International University (FIU) Miami campus. To determine the qualitative association with produced THD patterns, the model was evaluated with various irradiance settings. A real-time digital simulation (RTDS) platform was used to verify it. Following this confirmation, sets of data from power quality meters at the point of common coupling and FIU field sensors were utilized to validate further the correlation model. The results showed that the grid current’s THD exhibited a high correlation with the irradiance profile and its variation over time. The early morning and late afternoon periods of the day, associated with a low irradiance, constantly had higher harmonics generated from the PV DER. The midday THD was rather rational with partial shadings, hence a geolocation-dependent factor. These findings were verified by an RTDS and validated by real field data. In quantifying the THD injected by a single DER at a high-frequency (2–150 kHz) supraharmonics (SH) level, a 3% peak increment in magnitude was observed from the high-fixed to the low-fixed irradiance profile. The correlation characteristics depicted that the hybrid microgrid suffered from a daytime-dependent harmonic insertion from the grid-tied DER. This is a global problem unless specific measures are taken to mitigate the harmonics. The electrically notorious higher-frequency SH was found to increase proportionally. The G2G power transfer can be limited because of the higher THD in the early morning and late afternoon, which will also worsen because the numbers of grid-tied PV DERs (i.e., rooftop solar and industrial solar) are likely to increase rapidly soon. The community grid structure can thus have a controlled harmonics filtration setup purposefully designed to address the findings of this work, which also fall within the scope of our future research.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Implementing multi-settlement decentralized electricity market design for transactive communities with imperfect communication

Recent advances in information and communication technologies and smart metering, provides strategic opportunities for ``prosumers" to reform their conventional energy practices towards more consumer-centric economies. From an operational perspective, managing power distribution networks is becoming more difficult with such active grid-edge systems providing limited to no visibility or control. Transactive Energy (TE) has been emerging as a key enabler towards effectively and efficiently integrating prosumers into competitive electricity markets. This work presents a transactive implementation of community-centric markets. A co-simulation framework is developed for evaluating the proposed market structure with high-fidelity models. Case studies on the IEEE-123 node test system demonstrate that community-centric transactive markets can enable communities of prosumers to operate collaboratively as grid-edge systems. The potential benefits of implementing community-centric TE systems are also illustrated.

Mukherjee, Monish↗