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Short-term apartment-level load forecasting using a modified neural network with selected auto-regressive features

Residential electricity load profiles and their diversity have become increasingly important to realize the benefits of Smart or Transactive Energy Networks (TENs). An important element of TENs will be practical, accurate, and implementable residential load forecasting techniques. While there have been many approaches to short-term load forecasting, few have included forecasting for individual households, partly because the high volatility and idiosyncrasies present in individual household load data can pose significant challenges. In this study, we develop a Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory-based neural network with Selected Autoregressive Features (termed a CLSAF model) to improve short-term household electricity load forecasting accuracy by employing three strategies: autoregressive features selection, exogenous features selection, and a “default” state to avoid overfitting at times of high load volatility. We include aggregations of apartments to floor and building level, because utilities may favor transactive approaches that rely on aggregator models, e.g., a cluster of consumers as opposed to an individual. We demonstrate that the CLSAF model, by virtue of its enhanced feature representation and modest computational resources, can accomplish load forecasting in a multi-family residential building across three spatial granularities (individual apartment/household, floor, and building levels), with an accuracy improvement of up to 25% compared to a persistence model. We propose a data screening technique to characterize time-series electricity-load data. This technique is suitable for integration into a TEN ecosystem and allows one to estimate confidence levels of the load forecasts to optimize computational resources and the risks associated with uncertain forecasts.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Meta-Analysis of Advanced Nuclear Reactor Cost Estimations

Supporting Data can be downloaded at: https://gain.inl.gov/content/uploads/4/2024/06/INL-RPT-24-77048-R1.xlsx Nuclear energy is a critical cornerstone of the current United States clean energy supply and may play a larger role in the future in support of a transition to a net-zero economy. The current fleet of nuclear reactors predominantly consists of large light-water reactors (LWRs), while many of the reactor designs under consideration are smaller and/or different technologies. Because these new designs have not yet been built, there is a high degree of uncertainty associated with their cost. This complicates energy-planning efforts because cost projections are not always standardized, consistent, and centralized in an easily accessible location. To help support energy planning in the US, this report provides advanced nuclear cost ranges using a transparent methodology along with other relevant information that can be used to help support decision making and energy planning. The purpose of this work was to conduct a methodical process for cost evaluation using only public information that was vetted with the end-goal to provide reference cost projections for nuclear energy. To provide a solid basis for these values, the approach and assumptions are explicitly laid out throughout the report allowing any user of the data to challenge or reconsider them. Because future US nuclear-reactor costs are still unknown due to little recent observed data, the report opted to compile a comprehensive list of bottom-up estimates and evaluate averages/trends within the data to identify reference ranges. This was deemed preferable to opining on the robustness or validity of one cost estimation versus another. To that end, the work evaluated thousands of lines of cost subaccounts from several bottom-up cost estimates. A wide variety of different reactor types captured in the data are of various sizes and technologies. Some of these reactors will be representative of advanced reactors under development while others will not. Thus, the results here are dependent on the data that are available and the accuracy of the estimates that are used. Each bottom-up estimate was reviewed to determine whether it was complete. Incomplete data sets were corrected to ensure an adequate basis of cross-comparison. The report is not without limitations and should be interpreted as an initial step to develop cost ranges for nuclear technology. Ultimately, future work can build upon the methodology with refined cost estimates to reduce uncertainty. US-based overnight capital cost (OCC) estimates were compiled from extensive data sets into ranges for both large and small reactor sizes for 2030. To project the cost declines over time, learning rates were sampled from literature sources. No SMRs were previously built; hence, learning rates based on bottom-up approaches (e.g., by quantifying the impact stemming from fabrication of different components, modular work, site construction, commissioning) were prioritized. For larger reactors, actual learning rates from deployments were used to project future costs (adjusted to account for standardization or lack thereof between designs). Other costs included are fixed and variable operations and maintenance costs. The final variables were capacity factors and ramp rates to support energy planning.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Inference of neutrino flavor evolution through data assimilation and neural differential equations

The evolution of neutrino flavor in dense environments such as core-collapse supernovae and binary compact object mergers constitutes an important and unsolved problem. Its solution has potential implications for the dynamics and heavy-element nucleosynthesis in these environments. In this paper, we build upon recent work to explore inference-based techniques for the estimation of model parameters and neutrino flavor evolution histories. Here, we combine data assimilation, ordinary differential equation solvers, and neural networks to craft an inference approach tailored for nonlinear dynamical systems. Using this architecture, and a simple two-neutrino-beam, two-flavor model, we compare the performances of nine different optimization algorithms and expand upon previous assessments of the efficacy of inference for tackling problems in flavor evolution. We find that employing this new architecture, together with evolutionary optimization algorithms, accurately captures flavor histories in the small-scale model and allows us to quickly explore both model parameters and initial flavor content. In future work we plan to extend these inference techniques to large numbers of neutrinos.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A Comprehensive Review of Latent Space Dynamics Identification Algorithms for Intrusive and Non-Intrusive Reduced-Order-Modeling

Numerical solvers of partial differential equations (PDEs) have been widely employed for simulating physical systems. However, the computational cost remains a major bottleneck in various scientific and engineering applications, which has motivated the development of reduced-order models (ROMs). Recently, machine-learning-based ROMs have gained significant popularity and are promising for addressing some limitations of traditional ROM methods, especially for advection dominated systems. In this chapter, we focus on a particular framework known as Latent Space Dynamics Identification (LaSDI), which transforms the high-fidelity data, governed by a PDE, to simpler and low-dimensional latent-space data, governed by ordinary differential equations (ODEs). These ODEs can be learned and subsequently interpolated to make ROM predictions. Each building block of LaSDI can be easily modulated depending on the application, which makes the LaSDI framework highly flexible. In particular, we present strategies to enforce the laws of thermodynamics into LaSDI models (tLaSDI), enhance robustness in the presence of noise through the weak form (WLaSDI), select high-fidelity training data efficiently through active learning (gLaSDI, GPLaSDI), and quantify the ROM prediction uncertainty through Gaussian processes (GPLaSDI). We demonstrate the performance of different LaSDI approaches on Burgers equation, a non-linear heat conduction problem, and a plasma physics problem, showing that LaSDI algorithms can achieve relative errors of less than a few percent and up to thousands of times speed-ups.

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science (c↗

Multimodal sensor fusion framework for residential building occupancy detection

For several years now, smart building energy systems have been a research area of intensive activity. In light of the increasing need for sustainable buildings and energy systems, this trend motivates an increasing need for a solution to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve energy efficiency. This work proposes a high-performing and transferable occupancy detection framework that combines sensor data from different data modalities, including time series environmental data (temperature, humidity, and illuminance), image data, and acoustic energy data using ensemble method. To draw out the best prediction performance in each modality, the proposed framework was developed, including various models that were designed to learn the occupancy patterns reflected in the physical data streams. To tackle the time series environmental data, we designed two variants of an occupancy detection spatiotemporal pattern network (Occ-STPN) that performs both feature level and decision level fusion, respectively. We also propose a new metric; the fading memory mean square error (FMMSE), that provides a fair evaluation and penalization of delayed occupancy predictions. Multiple open-sourced datasets, including the Electricity Consumption and Occupancy and the University of California, Irvine's (UCI) building occupancy detection dataset, along with our own real data collected from six different houses, were used to validate the algorithms' performance. The experimental results presented herein break down the performance for each sensing modality, and a detailed analysis of the performance is also discussed.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Modelling of Wastewater Heat Recovery Heat Pump Systems

Wastewater heat recovery is currently an underutilized technology that could be part of solving the climate crisis. A large portion of the heat that leaves a building in the form of wastewater is potentially recoverable for pre-heating domestic hot water or other service water systems. While there are several different approaches to wastewater heat recovery, this project focused on creating detailed, integrated building models for wastewater heat recovery heat pump systems. EnergyPlus models were developed featuring inputs and assumptions corresponding to manufacturers’ specifications, performance lab test data and feedback from engineering consultants. EnergyPlus’s supervisory control Energy Management System objects were heavily relied upon to overcome modelling challenges. The developed EnergyPlus model was integrated into U.S. Department of Energy New Construction Reference Building models for various climate zones and building types to assess potential energy use, energy cost and greenhouse gas emission reductions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Distributed Resources for the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) Advanced Management (DREAM). Final Report

Distributed Resources for the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) Advanced Management (DREAM) is a proposed system that will enable data from an infinite number of diverse sources to be organized and accessed from anywhere using any handheld or other computer device. The approach offers a powerful roadmap for the creation and integration of a unified knowledge base of an entire ecosystem, including its many geophysical, geographical, social, political, agricultural, energy, transportation, and cyber aspects. The resulting aggregation of data has the potential to generate an informational universe of unprecedented size that has never before been possible due to the prohibitive costs, managerial complexity, and technical barriers associated with ever-changing exponential-growth data flows. We envision that DREAM will accelerate discovery by enabling climate researchers, among other types of researchers, to manage, analyze, and visualize data from earth-scale measurements and simulations. DREAM’s success will be built on proven components that leverage existing services and resources. A key building block for DREAM will be the ESGF, chaired by Dean N. Williams. Expanding on the existing ESGF, the project will ensure that the access, storage, movement, and analysis of the large quantities of data that are processed and produced by diverse science projects can be dynamically distributed with proper resource management. Much of the Office of Science data is currently generated by multiple stand-alone facilities. DREAM can collect data accumulated from these facilities and incorporate it into a fully integrated network accessible from anywhere in the world. The result is a completely new paradigm shift for data management, analysis, and visualization enabling researchers to: Manage their calculations, data, tools, and research results; Ensure that all data are sharable, reproducible and (re)usable—accompanied by appropriate metadata describing its provenance, syntax, and semantics at creation; Advance application performance by selectively adapting APIs and services in response to scientific requirements and architectural complexities; and Provide scalable interactive resource management—navigate data and metadata at multiple levels, provide architecture-aware data integration, analysis and visualization tools. We will engage closely with DOE, NASA, and NOAA science groups working at the leading edge of computing. These engagements—in domains such as biology, climate, and hydrology—will allow us to advance disciplinary science goals and inform our development of technologies that can accelerate discovery across DOE more broadly. We will advertise and promote our technologies via dedicated workshops, tutorials, and sessions at conferences, stand-alone events with broad inter-disciplinary invitation, and engagements with leadership facilities.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Centroidal Voronoi tessellation based methods for optimal rain gauge location prediction

With more satellite and model precipitation data becoming available, new analytical methods are needed that can take advantage of emerging data patterns to make well informed predictions in many hydrological applications. Herein we propose a new strategy where we extract precipitation variability patterns and use correlation map to build the resulting density map that serves as an input to centroidal Voronoi tessellation construction that optimizes placement of precipitation gauges. We provide results of numerical experiments based on the data from the Alto-Adige region in Northern Italy and Oklahoma and compare them against actual gauge locations. This method provides an automated way for choosing new gauge locations and can be generalized to include physical constraints and to tackle other types of resource allocation problems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Dynamic Modeling of a Kaplan Hydroturbine Using Optimal Parametric Tuning and Real Plant Operational Data

To address grid variability caused by renewable energy integration and to maintain grid reliability and resilience, hydropower must quickly adjust its power generation over short time periods. This changing energy generation landscape requires advance technology integration and adaptive parameter optimization for hydropower systems via digital twin effort. However, this is difficult owing to the lack of characterization and modeling for the nonlinear nature of hydroturbines. To solve this issue, this paper first formulates a six-coefficient Kaplan hydroturbine model and then proposes a parametric optimization tuning framework based on the Nelder–Mead algorithm for adaptive dynamic learning of the six-coefficients so as to build models that describe the turbine. To assess the performance of the proposed optimal parametric tuning technique, operational data from a real-world Kaplan hydroturbine unit are collected and used to model the relationship between the gate opening and the generated power production. The findings show that the proposed technique can effectively and adaptively learn the unknown dynamics of the Kaplan hydroturbine while optimally tune the unknown coefficients to match the generated power output from the real hydroturbine unit with an inaccuracy of less than 5%. The method can be used to provides optimal tuning of parameters critical for controller design, operational optimization and daily maintenance for hydroturbines in general.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Equitable Strategies for Residential Building Energy Efficiency and Electrification in San José, California

Hotter summers, heat waves, wildfires, and droughts are already affecting San Jose residents, with historically marginalized communities impacted first and worst. The City of San Jose has ambitious goals to make the city climate-neutral by 2030 and serve as an example for cities to accelerate climate action around the world. Electrifying and decarbonizing residential buildings are important priorities to achieve San Jose's plans to reach carbon neutrality while enabling residents to live the "Good Life 2.0" - a vision that aligns with community-identified priorities of safety, health, freedom, community, and positive experiences. This technical assistance built upon the Electrify San Jose: Framework for Existing Building Electrification to identify actionable strategies to make single- and multi-family buildings both energy-efficient and all-electric. This report is intended to provide the San Jose Climate Smart team and their partners with relevant data, insights, and actionable analysis to aid in-depth and nuanced engagements with key stakeholders. In particular, the findings in this report highlight opportunities and challenges for San Jose City Council, residents, building owners, developers, financial institutions, and utility partners instrumental in building support and earning buy-in for energy efficiency and electrification upgrades in existing buildings.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Equitable Strategies for Residential Building Energy Efficiency and Electrification in San José, California [Slides]

Hotter summers, heat waves, wildfires, and droughts are already affecting San Jose residents, with historically marginalized communities impacted first and worst. The City of San Jose has ambitious goals to make the city climate-neutral by 2030 and serve as an example for cities to accelerate climate action around the world. Electrifying and decarbonizing residential buildings are important priorities to achieve San Jose's plans to reach carbon neutrality while enabling residents to live the "Good Life 2.0" - a vision that aligns with community-identified priorities of safety, health, freedom, community, and positive experiences. This technical assistance built upon the Electrify San Jose: Framework for Existing Building Electrification to identify actionable strategies to make single- and multi-family buildings both energy-efficient and all-electric. This report is intended to provide the San Jose Climate Smart team and their partners with relevant data, insights, and actionable analysis to aid in-depth and nuanced engagements with key stakeholders. In particular, the findings in this report highlight opportunities and challenges for San Jose City Council, residents, building owners, developers, financial institutions, and utility partners instrumental in building support and earning buy-in for energy efficiency and electrification upgrades in existing buildings.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Inference of the linear matter power spectrum at z = 0 using DESI DR1 Full-Shape data

Measurements of galaxy distributions at large cosmic distances capture clustering from the past. In this study, we use a cosmological model to translate these observations into the present-day galaxy distribution. Specifically, we reconstruct the 3D linear matter power spectrum at redshift z = 0 using Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Year 1 (DR1) galaxy clustering data and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations, assuming the ΛCDM model, and compare it to the result assuming the w 0 w a CDM model. Building on previous state-of-the-art methods, we apply Effective Field Theory (EFT) modelling of the galaxy power spectrum to account for small-scale effects in the 2-point statistics of galaxy data. Implementation of the EFT approach improves the modelling of the galaxy power spectrum, providing a more robust consistency test of the assumed cosmological model. By casting both CMB and galaxy clustering observations, spanning distinct redshift regimes, into k-space, we can identify discrepancies between the datasets of different redshifts, which would indicate potential inaccuracies in the assumed expansion history. While previous studies have shown consistency with ΛCDM, this work extends the analysis with higher-quality data to further test the expansion histories of both ΛCDM and w 0 w a CDM. Our findings show that both ΛCDM and w 0 w a CDM provide consistent fits to the linear matter power spectrum recovered from DESI DR1 data.

cosmological parameters from LSS↗

ResStock™ v3.2.0 [SWR-19-15 and SWR-20-07]

The ResStock™ analysis tool was built on NREL's OpenStudio® platform, and is a project geared at modeling existing residential building stocks at national, regional, or local scales with a high-degree of granularity (e.g., one physics-based simulation model for every 200 dwelling units), using the EnergyPlus® simulation engine. Information about ComStock™, a sister tool for modeling the commercial building stock, can be found here: https://www.nrel.gov/buildings/comstock.html This repository contains: Housing characteristics of the U.S. residential building stock, in the form of conditional probability distributions stored as tab-separated value (.tsv) files. Comments at the bottom of each file document data sources and assumptions for each. A library of housing characteristic "options" that translate high-level characteristic parameters into arguments for OpenStudio measures, and which are referenced by the housing characteristic .tsv files and building energy upgrades defined in project definition files Project definition files: v2.3.0 and later: buildstockbatch YML files openable in any text editor v2.2.5 and prior: Project folder openable in PAT Unit-level OpenStudio Measures for automatically constructing OpenStudio Models of each representative dwelling unit model: v3.0.0 and later: OpenStudio-HPXML Measures v2.5.0 and prior: OpenStudio Measures Higher-level OpenStudio Measures for controlling simulation inputs and outputs This repository does not contain software for running ResStock simulations, which can be found as follows: Versions 2.3.0 and later only support the use of buildstockbatch for deploying simulations on high-performance or cloud computing. Version 2.3.0 also removed separate projects for single-family detached and multifamily buildings, in lieu of a combined project_national representing the U.S. residential building stock. See the changelog for more details. Versions 2.2.5 and prior support the use of the publicly available OpenStudio-PAT software as an interface for deploying simulations on cloud computing. Read the documentation for v2.2.5.

Horowitz, Scott↗

A Discrete Hankel Transform Approach to Nuclear Data Processing for Fusion Applications

This study introduces advancements to the numerical solutions employed in the processing of nuclear data for fusion applications. It leverages the convolution theorem and Fourier transform techniques to enhance computational efficiency and broaden applicability. Building upon a previously reported discrete Hankel transform approach for Doppler broadening, this work refines the solution of convolution integrals central to these applications. The methodology provides a general and unified framework for evaluating any convolution operation, regardless of whether the underlying problem involves temperature effects in nuclear reactions. The applicability to the nuclear data processing for fusion is demonstrated by deriving the convolution integrals for some of the fusion-related quantities. As before, the convolution operation utilizes a Gaussian-based kernel; however, the discrete Hankel transform of order $𝛼$ = $\frac{1}{2}$ is now applied to the forward Fourier transform of the nonkernel argument, rather than the inverse Fourier transform. This modification eliminates the need for the integration of the nonkernel, cross section–based function, which is a step that posed challenges for certain pointwise cross-section representations. It also removes the requirement for cross-section linearization. Optimized for graphics processing unit architectures, the approach significantly improves computational performance. These advancements are currently under evaluation as the foundation for the next-generation thermonuclear data file processing codes being developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Nuclear science and engineering↗

Simulating Wind Around Isolated Buildings with the System for Atmospheric Modeling

A method to represent the flow around obstacles such as buildings is implemented in the System for Atmospheric Modeling (SAM). The method, which we call a Quasi-Solid Box Method (QSBM), introduces a simple modification to the anelastic equations that forces the flow to stagnate within the obstacle's boundaries. The performance of the modified SAM is evaluated using CEDVAL (Compilation of Experimental Data for Validation of Microscale Dispersion Models) wind tunnel measurements of the wind and tracer dispersion around a single rectangular building. All major observed features of the flow are quite well reproduced. The dispersion of the tracer released at the building base is also simulated. The results of simulation of a flow around a cubic building rotated by 45 degrees relative to the flow, and around a building in the form of a cylinder of aspect ratio of one, are also presented.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Classification and Localization of Fracture-Hit Events in Low-Frequency Distributed Acoustic Sensing Strain Rate with Convolutional Neural Networks

Summary Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has been used in the oil and gas industry as an advanced technology for surveillance and diagnostics. Operators use DAS to monitor hydraulic fracturing activities, examine well stimulation efficacy, and estimate complex fracture system geometries. Particularly, low-frequency DAS can detect geomechanical events such as fracture hits because hydraulic fractures propagate and create strain rate variations in the rock. Analysis of DAS data today is mostly done post-job and subject to interpretation methods. However, the continuous and dense data stream generated live by DAS poses the opportunity for more efficient and accurate real-time data-driven analysis. The objective of this study is to develop a machine learning-based workflow that can identify and locate fracture-hit events in simulated strain rate responses correlated with low-frequency DAS data. In this paper, “fracture hit” refers to a hydraulic fracture originating from a stimulated well intersecting an offset well. We start with building a single fracture propagation model to produce strain rate patterns observed at a hypothetical monitoring well. This model is used to generate two sets of strain rate responses with one set containing fracture-hit events. The labeled synthetic data are then used to train a custom convolutional neural network (CNN) model for identifying the presence of fracture-hit events. The same model is trained again for locating the event with the output layer of the model replaced with linear units. We achieved near-perfect predictions for both event classification and localization. These promising results prove the feasibility of using CNN for real-time event detection from fiber-optic sensing data. Additionally, we use edge detection techniques to recognize fracture-hit event patterns in strain rate images. The fracture-hit location can be identified using recognized pixels in the image. The accuracy of edge detection-based location identification is also plausible, but edge detection is dependent on the assumption of pattern shape and image quality, hence it is less robust compared to CNN models. This comparison further supports the need for CNN applications in image-based real-time fiber-optic sensing event detection.

Engineering↗

KBase Credit Metadata Schema

As part of KBase’s commitment to promote open science, we offer users the ability to obtain a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for their work, which can then be cited in an associated science publication. To further support the community-wide shift towards FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data, KBase is expanding our data descriptors so that KBase DOIs have comprehensive citations for datasets, in addition to referencing publications or software used in the workflow. This helps encourage a culture of giving attribution for all research inputs and outputs; standard practice for literature, but still relatively new for software products or datasets. It also promotes open science by building trust that contributors get credit for their work, and accelerates knowledge discovery by supporting and incentivizing the release of data.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Cluster characterization in atom probe tomography: Machine learning using multiple summary functions

In this work, we develop a machine learning-based method to characterize intracluster concentration (ρ c ), background concentration (ρ b ), clustering radius (r̄), and radius dispersity (δ r ) in simulated atom probe tomography data using multiple spatial statistics summary functions to train a Bayesian regularized neural network. Here, we build upon previous work that utilized Ripley’s K-function by incorporating additional features from nearest-neighbor spatial statistics summary functions to better characterize concentration-based metrics. The addition of nearest-neighbor based features allows for highly accurate estimates of ρ c and ρ b , both with 90% of the predictions within 4.0% of the real value; the root-mean-square errors are reduced by 81.5% and 92.8% from predictions using only K-function based features, respectively. Additionally, including these nearest-neighbor based features improves the ability to differentiate between r̄ and δ r .

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗