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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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The "Solar Tool Capacity Building for Midwestern Tribes" project sought to overcome barriers hindering Tribal solar deployment by providing hands-on, tailored solar photovoltaic (PV) and storage modeling training for Tribal environmental professionals.
NREL is the only DOE national laboratory solely dedicated to advancing energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) technologies and applications. Since its inception, NREL has supported both the public and the private sectors in implementing EE and RE systems and strategies to lower energy use and to meet remaining energy needs with resources having minimal environmental impact. NREL is now a sought-after resource for EE, RE, and energy systems integration expertise. CU Boulder is a public university located in Boulder, Colorado, with over 30,000 students. CU is committed to environmental sustainability and is interested in partnering with NREL to explore opportunities for RE on campus and evaluate an RE microgrid. The goal of this project is to assess the technical and economic potential for RE generation at CU and evaluate how RE may be incorporated as part of a microgrid to increase energy resiliency on campus.
A microgrid is simply a typical power system that has distributed energy resources (DERs), like small diesel generators, with loads in the network. The resiliency offered by microgrids to retain service during system events makes them a suitable support for the electric grid during natural disasters. One key factor that differentiates microgrids from a typical distribution grid is its ability to disconnect itself in the event of a blackout and sustain its loads through DERs. Microgrid systems will reconnect to the main grid when the grid comes back up. The resiliency offered by microgrids to retain service during system events makes them a suitable support for the electric grid during natural disasters. This presentation discusses the typical key steps involved in microgrid planning, installation, operation in a interoperable and interconnectable fashion.
Through the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy to Communities (E2C) program, NREL, other national laboratory experts, and select organizations provide Expert Match - free, short-term technical assistance to address near-term clean energy challenges and questions. Expert Match is for community stakeholders who have decision-making power or influence in their community but need access to additional clean energy expertise to inform key upcoming decisions. This Expert Match request supported the Sravasti Abbey in Washington a preliminary assessment of distributed energy technology financial feasibility for their site. The outcome consists of low estimated savings from these technologies due to their already low energy consumption.
Shelter Island's Green Options Committee (GOC), an all-volunteer committee tasked with considering all environmental conservation issues, requested technical assistance under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded Energy Technology Innovation Partnership Project (ETIPP). The primary goals of this technical assistance project included: 1. Informing the GOC about energy use trends within the community as well as distributed solar, wind and storage opportunities; 2. Providing additional resources and technical feasibility information for geothermal, agrivoltaics and tidal energy; 3. Supporting the development of a community engagement plan; and 4. Supporting collaboration between the GOC and PSEG in order to find mutually beneficial follow-on projects. Assistance from NLR to help the GOC meet these overall project goals was provided through the following primary tasks: 1. Collaborate with the local utility in order to collect energy use data and inform the community on energy use patterns through a baseline assessment; 2. Technical analysis of distributed renewable and resiliency opportunities (solar, wind and storage) that best align with the community's energy priorities; 3. Provide high level feasibility support for future renewable energy scenarios that include agrivoltaic solutions, tidal energy, and geothermal projects on Shelter Island, and 4. Integrate all findings into a Community Outreach presentation to help the GOC engage with community stakeholders to build support and awareness of chosen resilience strategies.
Deck developed to assist Shelter Island in understanding the results of the geothermal ETIPP work.
Deck developed to assist Shelter Island in communicating to their stakeholders the results of the ETIPP work.
Distributed energy resources (DERs) offer flexibility and community benefits in both blue- and black-sky conditions. Outside of a power disruption, they can provide significant cost savings and reduce grid stress during times of high demand. During a disruption to the central grid, these technologies can meet critical energy needs through the use of battery storage. However, communities must consider many planning and design dimensions and tradeoffs to integrate energy systems that meet financial and resilience goals. This presentation, given at the 2026 State Energy Conference of North Carolina, defines resilience in an energy context, discusses strategies and best practices for planning resilient energy systems and sites, including resilience hubs and microgrids, highlights NLR tools and capabilities for helping communities in this space, and features successful case studies in North Carolina related to energy resilience.
Through an Expert Match technical assistance project, Ford County requested the National Laboratory of the Rockies evaluate solar PV, wind, and battery storage options at the Western State Bank Expo Center, assessing cost savings, on-site generation, and outage resilience. This slide deck presents the findings of this analysis.
Through the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy to Communities (E2C) program, NLR, other national laboratory experts, and select organizations provide Expert Match - free, short-term technical assistance to address near-term energy challenges and questions. Expert Match is for community stakeholders who have decision-making power or influence in their community but need access to additional energy expertise to inform key upcoming decisions. This Expert Match request supported Crow Creek in Girdwood, AK with a feasibility analysis for a microgrid to provide year-round power across the community.
Energy resiliency has been thrust to the forefront by recent severe weather events and natural disasters. Billions of dollars are lost each year due to power outages. This article highlights the unique value renewable energy hybrid systems (REHS), comprised of solar, energy storage, and generators, provide in increasing resiliency. We present a methodology to quantify the amount and value of resiliency provided by REHS, and ways to monetize this resiliency value through insurance premium discounts. A case study of buildings in New York City demonstrates how implementing REHS in place of traditional backup diesel generators can double the amount of outage survivability, with an added value of $781,200. For a Superstorm Sandy type event, results indicate that insurance premium reductions could support up to 4% of the capital cost of REHS, and the potential exists to prevent up to $2.5 billion in business interruption losses with increased REHS deployment.
This paper presents a framework that expands the URBANopt(TM) modeling platform to include 3D-printed concrete wall assemblies and assess energy efficiency and backup power trade-offs in new housing developments. Applied to a planned mixed-use neighborhood in Oil City, Pennsylvania, the workflow integrates building energy and distributed energy resource (DER) modeling to evaluate envelope and equipment upgrades alongside DER operations. Results show that advanced 3D-printed envelopes combined with efficient systems and onsite photovoltaics (PV) and storage reduce energy use intensity and sustain critical loads during outages. The framework supports planning for emerging construction technologies by quantifying key trade-offs between energy efficiency and backup power performance.
Aviation is experiencing an influx of electrified aircraft in the advanced air mobility (AAM) space. The goal of Airports as Energy Nodes (ÆNodes) is to evaluate the impact of AAM and other advanced aircraft adoption growth on the electrical system of existing small to medium hub regional airports to better prepare them for the future while also enhancing resiliency and helping surrounding communities. AAM small passenger air service encompasses vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), general aviation (GA) and flight training, and nine to thirty passenger conventional aircraft for regional air mobility (RAM) applications all of which include electrical, hybrid, or hydrogen powered varieties. Some challenges that ÆNodes is trying to address include how to utilize existing airport infrastructure to meet the energy needs of AAM growth in a way that is robust to aid in the growth of AAM while also leveraging any airport-hosted energy assets for the surrounding community in emergency situations.
Strategy support to determine the best approach to deploy solar technologies and commercially viable heat pump projects across their existing Rural Energy Partners solar project development support channel.
Time Warner Cable (TWC), now Charter Communications (CC), partnered with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to assess the technical and economic potential for solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, and ground-source heat-pump systems at 696 TWC facilities. NREL identified 306 sites where adding a renewable energy system would provide cost savings over the project life-cycle. In general, the top sites have some combination of high electricity rates ($0.16-$0.29/kWh), significant state incentives, and favorable net-metering policies. If all projects were implemented via third-party power purchase agreements, TWC/CC would save $37 million over 25 years and meet 10.5% of their energy consumption with renewable energy. This paper describes the portfolio screening methodology used to identify and prioritize renewable energy opportunities across the TWC sites, as well as a summary of the potential cost savings that may be realized by implementing these projects. This may provide a template for other companies interested in identifying and prioritizing renewable energy opportunities across a large number of geographically dispersed sites. Following this initial portfolio analysis, NREL will be conducting in-depth analysis of project development opportunities at ten sites and evaluating off-grid solutions that may enable carbon emission reduction and grid independence at select facilities.
This presentation from the ASTSWMO-EPA RE-Power Workshop held March 21-22, 2017, covers the topics of Renewables and Feasibility Considerations; and Resources Available for RE-Powering.
This paper presents the first publicly available comprehensive survey of the magnitude of demand charges for commercial customers across the United States -- a key predictor of the financial performance of behind-the-meter battery storage systems. Notably, the analysis estimates that there are nearly 5 million commercial customers in the United States who can subscribe to retail electricity tariffs that have demand charges in excess of $15 per kilowatt (kW), over a quarter of the 18 million commercial customers in total in the United States. While the economic viability of installing battery energy storage must be determined on a case-by-case basis, high demand charges are often cited as a critical factor in battery project economics. Increasing use of demand charges in utility tariffs and anticipated future declines in storage costs will only serve to unlock additional markets and strengthen existing ones.
This paper describes a methodology to quantify the economic and resiliency benefit provided by renewable energy (RE) in a hybrid RE-storage-diesel microgrid. We present a case study to show how this methodology is applied to a multi-use/ multi-function telecommunications facility in southern California. In the case study, we first identify photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage system (BESS) technologies that minimize the lifecycle cost of energy at the site under normal, grid-connected operation. We then evaluate how those technologies could be incorporated alongside existing diesel generators in a microgrid to increase resiliency at the site, where resiliency is quantified in terms of the amount of time that the microgrid can sustain the critical load during a grid outage. We find that adding PV and BESS to the existing backup diesel generators with a fixed fuel supply extends the amount of time the site could survive an outage by 1.8 days, from 1.7 days for the existing diesel-only backup system to 3.5 days for the PV/diesel/BESS hybrid system. Furthermore, even after diesel fuel supplies are exhausted, the site can continue to operate critical loads during daytime hours using just the PV/BESS when there is sufficient solar resource. We find that the site can save approximately 100,000 dollars in energy costs over the 25-year lifecycle while doubling the amount of time they can survive an outage. Here, the methodology presented here provides a template for increasing resiliency at telecomm sites by implementing renewable energy solutions, which provide additional benefits of carbon emission reduction and energy cost savings.