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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 goals of the project are to: 1) Demonstrate the feasibility of significant thermal storage for dish Stirling systems to leverage their existing high performance to greater capacity, 2) Demonstrate key components of a latent storage and transport system enabling on-dish storage with low exergy losses, and 3) Provide a technology path to a 25kWe system with 6 hours of storage.
Attached to this cover letter is a high-level feasibility study evaluating the placement of a Modular Pumped Hydro (MPH) energy storage facility coupled with a solar PV array within the Village of Chama, NM. Originally, the intent was to evaluate co-locating a MPH facility with the new water treatment facility at Chama. However because the new water treatment facility is located at a relatively flat location with no elevation change nearby, this approach was abandoned. Instead, two other locations within the Chama community were identified. MPH pumps water from one reservoir to another reservoir located at higher elevation when energy is provided to the MPH facility, and then releases the water downhill to produce energy when desired. Any energy storage facility, independent of technology, must have access to a consistent energy production source. The reservoir surface areas associated with MPH allow solar PV panels to be co-located with the MPH facility. The study illustrates that a baseline Modular Pumped Hydro design coupled with a solar PV array is feasible to locate within the Village of Chama, NM. MPH was selected for energy storage review because of its superior performance, longevity, minimum cost to operate & maintain, potential to interface with existing or new water systems, and complementary solar siting. The volume and elevation values were selected as part of a single baseline design based on possible locations in Chama, ease of scalability to evaluate different sites, and the resulting energy storage capacity (approximately 720 kWh) could meet a significant demand of the Chama population (17% of total residences) each night of the year on average using a renewable source of energy. If a MPH facility as analyzed in this study or similar one is built, it is recommended incorporating some form of education display at the eventual MPH location to serve as public outreach to the many people who visit the Village of Chama each year. In addition, the facility described in this report can also provide unique educational opportunities for students in K through 12 to learn about energy and water interactions.
The project objectives are to (1) Demonstrate the feasibility of significant thermal storage for dish Stirling systems to leverage their existing high performance to greater capacity; (2) Demonstrate key components of a latent storage and transport system enabling on-dish storage with low exergy losses; and (3) Provide a technology path to a 25kW e system with 6 hours of storage.
This U.S. DRIVE electrochemical energy storage roadmap describes ongoing and planned efforts to develop electrochemical energy storage technologies for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The Energy Storage activity comprises a number of research areas (including advanced materials research, cell level research, battery development, and enabling R&D which includes analysis, testing and other activities) for advanced energy storage technologies (batteries and ultra-capacitors).
There is an increasing world-wide interest in compact light sources based on Inverse Compton Scattering. Development of these types of light sources includes leveraging the investment in accelerator technology first developed at DOE National Laboratories. Although these types of light sources cannot replace the larger user-supported synchrotron facilities, they offer attractive alternatives for many x-ray science applications. Fundamental research at the SLAC National Laboratory in the 1990’s led to the idea of using laser-electron storage rings as a mechanism to generate x-rays with many properties of the larger synchrotron light facilities. This research led to a commercial spin-off of this technology. The SBIR project goal is to understand and improve the performance of the electron storage ring system of the commercially available Compact Light Source. The knowledge gained from studying a low-energy electron storage ring may also benefit other Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS) source development. Better electron storage ring performance is one of the key technologies necessary to extend the utility and breadth of applications of the CLS or related ICS sources. This grant includes a subcontract with SLAC for technical personnel and resources for modeling, feedback development, and related accelerator physics studies.
The document summarized the technical progress associated with OSU’s involvement in the Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence. OSU focused on the development of microscale enhancement technologies for improving heat and mass transfer in automotive hydrogen storage systems. OSU’s key contributions included the development of an extremely compact microchannel combustion system for discharging hydrogen storage systems and a thermal management system for adsorption based hydrogen storage using microchannel cooling (the Modular Adsorption Tank Insert or MATI).
Power systems of the future are likely to require additional flexibility. This has been well studied from an operational perspective, but has been more difficult to incorporate into capacity expansion models (CEMs) that study investment decisions on the decadal scale. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the necessary input data, including cost and resource projections, for flexibility options like demand response and storage are significantly uncertain. Second, it is computationally difficult to represent both investment and operational decisions in detail, the latter being necessary to properly value system flexibility, in CEMs for realistically sized systems. In this work, we extend a particular CEM, NREL's Resource Planning Model (RPM), to address the latter issue by better representing variable generation impacts on operations, and then adding two flexible technologies to RPM's suite of investment decisions: interruptible load and utility-scale storage. This work does not develop full suites of input data for these technologies, but is rather methodological and exploratory in nature. We thus exercise these new investment decisions in the context of exploring price points and value streams needed for significant deployment in the Western Interconnection by 2030. Our study of interruptible load finds significant variation by location, year, and overall system conditions. Some locations find no system need for interruptible load even with low costs, while others build the most expensive resources offered. System needs can include planning reserve capacity needs to ensure resource adequacy, but there are also particular cases in which spinning reserve requirements drive deployment. Utility-scale storage is found to require deep cost reductions to achieve wide deployment and is found to be more valuable in some locations with greater renewable deployment. Differences between more solar- and wind-reliant regions are also found: Storage technologies with lower energy capacities are deployed to support solar deployment, and higher energy capacity technologies support wind. Finally, we identify potential future research and areas of improvement to build on this initial analysis.
Alkali-silica reaction (ASR) is a deleterious chemical process that may occur in cement-based materials such as mortars and concretes, where the hydroxyl ions in the highly alkaline pore solution attack the siloxane groups in the siliceous minerals in the aggregates. The reaction produces a cross-linked alkali-silica gel. The ASR gel swells in the presence of water. Expansion of the gel results in cracking when the swelling-induced stress exceeds the fracture toughness of the concrete. As the ASR continues, cracks may grow and eventually coalesce, which results in reduced service life and a decrease safety of concrete structures. Since concrete is widely used as a critical structural component in dry cask storage of used nuclear fuels, ASR damage poses a significant threat to the sustainability of long term dry cask storage systems. Therefore, techniques for effectively detecting, managing and mitigating ASR damage are needed. Currently, there are no nondestructive methods to accurately detect ASR damage in existing concrete structures. The only current way of accurately assessing ASR damage is to drill a core from an existing structure, and conduct microscopy on this drilled cylindrical core. Clearly, such a practice is not applicable to dry cask storage systems. To meet these needs, this research is aimed at developing (1) a suite of nonlinear ultrasonic quantitative nondestructive evaluation (QNDE) techniques to characterize ASR damage, and (2) a physics-based model for ASR damage evolution using the QNDE data. Outcomes of this research will provide a nondestructive diagnostic tool to evaluate the extent of the ASR damage, and a prognostic tool to estimate the future reliability and safety of the concrete structures in dry cask storage systems
Resilient PV, which is solar paired with storage ('solar-plus-storage'), provides value both during normal grid operation and power outages as opposed to traditional solar PV, which functions only when the electric grid is operating. During normal grid operations, resilient PV systems help host sites generate revenue and/or reduce electricity bill charges. During grid outages, resilient PV provides critical emergency power that can help people in need and ease demand on emergency fuel supplies. The combination of grid interruptions during recent storms, the proliferation of solar PV, and the growing deployment of battery storage technologies has generated significant interest in using these assets for both economic and resiliency benefits. This report analyzes the technical and economic viability for resilient PV on three critical infrastructure sites in New York City (NYC): a school that is part of a coastal storm shelter system, a fire station, and a NYCHA senior center that serves as a cooling center during heat emergencies. This analysis differs from previous solar-plus-storage studies by placing a monetary value on resiliency and thus, in essence, modeling a new revenue stream for the avoided cost of a power outage. Analysis results show that resilient PV is economically viable for NYC's critical infrastructure and that it may be similarly beneficial to other commercial buildings across the city. This report will help city building owners, managers, and policymakers better understand the economic and resiliency benefits of resilient PV. As NYC fortifies its building stock against future storms of increasing severity, resilient PV can play an important role in disaster response and recovery while also supporting city greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and relieving stress to the electric grid from growing power demands.
Demand response and energy storage resources present potentially important sources of bulk power system services that can aid in integrating variable renewable generation. While renewable integration studies have evaluated many of the challenges associated with deploying large amounts of variable wind and solar generation technologies, integration analyses have not yet fully incorporated demand response and energy storage resources. This report represents an initial effort in analyzing the potential integration value of demand response and energy storage, focusing on the western United States. It evaluates two major aspects of increased deployment of demand response and energy storage: (1) Their operational value in providing bulk power system services and (2) Market and regulatory issues, including potential barriers to deployment.
Demand response and energy storage resources present potentially important sources of bulk power system services that can aid in integrating variable renewable generation. While renewable integration studies have evaluated many of the challenges associated with deploying large amounts of variable wind and solar generation technologies, integration analyses have not yet fully incorporated demand response and energy storage resources. This report represents an initial effort in analyzing the potential integration value of demand response and energy storage, focusing on the western United States. It evaluates two major aspects of increased deployment of demand response and energy storage: (1) Their operational value in providing bulk power system services and (2) Market and regulatory issues, including potential barriers to deployment.
The Energy Storage research and development (R&D) subprogram within the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) provides support and guidance for projects focusing on batteries for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in support of the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge. PEVs could have a significant impact on the nation's goal of reducing dependence on imported oil and gaseous pollutant emissions. The Energy Storage program targets overcoming technical barriers to enable market success, including: (1) significantly reducing battery cost; (2) increasing battery performance (power, energy, durability); (3) reducing battery weight and volume; and (4) increasing battery tolerance to abusive conditions such as short circuit, overcharge, and crush. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) supports the VTO's Energy Storage program by evaluating the thermal performance of cells and packs, developing electrochemical-thermal models to accelerate the design cycle for developing batteries, investigating the behavior of lithium-ion batteries under abuse conditions such as crush, enhancing the durability of electrodes by coatings such as atomic layer deposition, synthesis of materials for higher energy density batteries, and conducting techno-economic analysis of batteries in various electric-drive vehicles. This report describes the progress made by NREL on the research and development projects funded by the DOE VTO Energy Storage subprogram in FY15.
High fidelity computational models of thermocline-based thermal energy storage (TES) were developed. The research goal was to advance the understanding of a single tank nanofludized molten salt based thermocline TES system under various concentration and sizes of the particles suspension. Our objectives were to utilize sensible-heat that operates with least irreversibility by using nanoscale physics. This was achieved by performing computational analysis of several storage designs, analyzing storage efficiency and estimating cost effectiveness for the TES systems under a concentrating solar power (CSP) scheme using molten salt as the storage medium. Since TES is one of the most costly but important components of a CSP plant, an efficient TES system has potential to make the electricity generated from solar technologies cost competitive with conventional sources of electricity.
Duke Energy Renewables owns and operates the Notrees Wind Farm in west Texas’s Ector and Winkler counties. The wind farm, which was commissioned in April 2009, has a total capacity of 152.6 MW generated by 55 Vestas V82 turbines, one Vestas 1-V90 experimental turbine, and 40 GE 1.5-MW turbines. The Vestas V82 turbines have a generating capacity of 1.65 MW each, the Vestas V90 turbine has a generating capacity of 1.86 MW, and the GE turbines have a generating capacity of 1.5 MW each. The objective of the Notrees Wind Storage Demonstration Project is to validate that energy storage increases the value and practical application of intermittent wind generation and is commercially viable at utility scale. The project incorporates both new and existing technologies and techniques to evaluate the performance and potential of wind energy storage. In addition, it could serve as a model for others to adopt and replicate. Wind power resources are expected to play a significant part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generation by 2030. However, the large variability and intermittent nature of wind presents a barrier to integrating it within electric markets, particularly when competing against conventional generation that is more reliable. In addition, wind power production often peaks at night or other times when demand and electricity prices are lowest. Energy storage systems can overcome those barriers and enable wind to become a valuable asset and equal competitor to conventional fossil fuel generation.
BgtL, LLC (BgtL) is focused on developing and commercializing its proprietary compact technology for processes in the energy sector. One such application is a compact high efficiency Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system that utilizes the heat of fusion through phase change between solid and liquid to store and release energy at high temperatures and incorporate state-of-the-art insulation to minimize heat dissipation. BgtL’s TES system would greatly improve the economics of existing nuclear and coal-fired power plants by allowing the power plant to store energy when power prices are low and sell power into the grid when prices are high. Compared to existing battery storage technology, BgtL’s novel thermal energy storage solution can be significantly less costly to acquire and maintain, does not have any waste or environmental emissions, and does not deteriorate over time; it can keep constant efficiency and operates cleanly and safely. BgtL’s engineers are experienced in this field and are able to design and engineer such a system to a specific power plant’s requirements. BgtL also has a strong manufacturing partner to fabricate the system such that it qualifies for an ASME code stamp. BgtL’s vision is to be the leading provider of compact systems for various applications including energy storage. BgtL requests that all technical information about the TES designs be protected as proprietary information. To honor that request, only non-proprietay summaries are included in this report.
Increased contributions from wind and solar power resources are necessary to meet California’s goal to use 33 percent renewable energy by 2020. Using these renewable resources, however, will substantially increase the variability and uncertainty in electricity generation resources available to California’s electricity grid operators. Automated demand response and energy storage systems can help reduce this variability and uncertainty through energy buying and selling (arbitrage) in day-ahead markets that would levelize loads and prices throughout the day. They could also provide load-following capability through bids in the real-time market and system management (or regulation) services to the system operator. The project identified policies, technologies (energy storage), and control methods (demand response) that could reduce the cost and improve the reliability of electric power for California ratepayers. Data and assumptions describing energy storage and demand response resources were provided by the Electric Power Research Institute, the California Energy Storage Alliance, and the Demand Response Research Center. The California Independent System Operator provided the production simulation model and supporting data.
In 2017, a report was prepared by the Spent Nuclear Fuel Working Group in 2017 and titled “Technical Considerations and Challenges for Extended (>50 Years) Dry Storage” [1-2]. In this report several key scientific issues were identified pertaining to the problem of aluminum spent nuclear fuel (ASNF) and its safe removal from wet storage with subsequent drying and transfer to dry storage at the Department of Energy (DOE) Idaho National Laboratory (INL). This report outlines two modeling analyses performed for aluminum and aluminum oxides. The first analysis examined the solubility of aluminum oxides as a function of temperature and pH. This report presents existing literature produced as far back as the 1950’s and including significant analysis and reporting performed at Alcoa in the 1980’s. The primary technical gap was the lack of solubility data beyond that reported at standard temperature (25°C). The analysis examined these solubility curves as a function of temperature as well as phase type. The pH value of minimum solubility shifted with temperature but was insensitive to the oxide phase type. The solubility increases with temperature as would be expected, where an order of magnitude increase was observed from 25°C and 90°C. This data provides greater information to understand the various conditions experiences by ASNF including in dry storage in cases where water filming may occur. A second thermodynamic analysis was performed to examine the aluminum phase behavior as a function of temperature. This was performed to understand limitations and possible problems with fuel drying at elevated temperatures. Based on what has been established in previous reports, water remains chemically entrained within boehmite until temperatures exceeding 400°C. Analysis showed that significant phase changes occurred with highly alloyed AA6061 and AA5052 while the more pure aluminum (AA1100) showed nearly ideal behavior (i.e. limited phase changes). In the case of the more alloyed AA5052 and AA6061, the phase changes could take place at relatively low temperatures (100°C to 250°C), and thus may have already experienced some of these phase changes in service. As results are thermodynamic in nature, assessment of kinetics will be examined to determine if the phase changes are a concern for the relatively short fuel drying step.
Dispatchable generation refers to sources of electricity that can be turned on or off, or can adjust their power output accordingly to an order. Geothermal plants are usually used for base-load power rather than dispatchable power. Flexibility is a challenge for a geothermal plant because the heat source does not naturally respond quickly to changes in demand. The current state-of-the-art approach to address this challenge is to maintain the geothermal fluid flows at relatively steady rates while providing a bypass around the generation equipment as needed. Under part load, some of the geothermal fluid is pumped to the surface, bypasses the generation equipment, and is re-injected to the ground without extracting any useful enthalpy. This approach is robust but necessarily incurs high parasitic power draws at part load due to the constant, full-flow pumping power requirements. There are even more challenges and unknowns for steam and flash geothermal plants, which were the focus for this project. As a process improvement to this existing configuration of a dispatchable geothermal plant, we examined the use of a phase-change thermal-energy storage (TES) unit that will provide some “inertia” against temperature fluctuations. The TES phase change material (PCM) could be in the form of eutectic molten nitrate salts, organic sugar alcohols, or the like based on the required temperature. This configuration allowed the power plant to meet the ramp rate requirements while allowing the geothermal resource to drawn down at the duty-cycle-averaged extraction rate rather than the full-rated-output extraction rate. The project team performed an experimental and computational evaluation of a peak shaving technical approach that used thermal storage to switch between two nominal operating points: full rated power and 50% power. In the initial requirements definition phase, the team decided to examine the PCM/TES-enhanced geothermal plant in the context of a 40-MW two-stage flash plant operating in mid-Southern California. Steady-state process simulations were used to understand the equipment sizing and the energetics. Dynamic process simulations were used to understand the response rate of the system to changes in requested power output from the utility. The technical approach was also guided by a techno-economic analysis (TEA) and a high-level analysis of the reservoir. Recognizing that performance of the thermal storage was a key risk element, high-fidelity finite-element simulations of the PCM-TES heat exchanger were performed to better understand its performance and temporal response. These simulations were validated with a subscale PCM-TES experimental apparatus that mimicked the geometry of the full-scale system. The key outcomes of this Phase I project were that: 1) the PCM-TES heat exchanger met the target for gravimetric energy storage density, 2) the dispatchable geothermal plant met its target for response rate, 3) the peak shaving approach reduces the number of production wells and does not disturb the wellfield, and 4) the incentives for properly remunerating dispatchable operation were identified.