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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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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Energy burden aware and thermal resilience informed thermal energy storage system planning for disadvantaged communities

Disadvantaged communities often face a disproportionate energy burden because they need to allocate a higher percentage of their income to energy costs. More importantly, climate change-induced extreme weather events, such as heat waves and severe cold snaps, exacerbate these communities’ energy burdens. As a result, low- and medium-income communities are more likely to experience energy supply disruptions, increased health risks, and elevated energy bills because of inadequate thermal insulation and airtightness in their houses. Thermal energy storage (TES) systems, such as large-scale (community-level) geothermal energy storage and small-scale (building-level) phase change material (PCM)–based storage, have a great potential to improve building energy efficiency and to enhance thermal comfort, load shifting, and integration with renewable energy. The objective of this study is to optimally allocate building level PCM-based TES systems at the community level by considering energy equity and extreme weather effects. To this end, we developed an energy burden and thermal resilience–informed TES system planning framework, which includes three modules: (1) a community-level energy burden and thermal resilience assessment module, (2) building-level a TES system integration and assessment module, and (3) a community-level optimal planning module. Case studies were conducted on four disadvantaged communities in Montgomery and Shelby Counties in Tennessee with energy burdens >10% and with high percentages of people of color. The results indicate that this comprehensive planning framework can assist disadvantaged communities in reducing their energy burden and in bolstering their resilience against the adverse effects of climate change.

Shen, Zhenglai↗
DOE OSTI2022

Localized energy burden, concentrated disadvantage, and the feminization of energy poverty

Energy burden directly influences households' health and safety. Amid a growing literature on energy, poverty and gender remains relatively understudied. We evaluate socioeconomic, geographic, and health factors as multidimensions of concentrated disadvantage that magnify energy burden in the United States over time. We show that the energy burden is more pronounced in disadvantaged counties with larger elderly, impoverished, disabled people, and racialized populations where people do not have health insurance. Neighborhoods with households headed by women of color (especially Black women) are more likely to face a high energy burden, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although energy costs are often regarded as an individual responsibility, these findings illustrate the feminization of energy poverty and indicate the need for an intersectional and interdisciplinary framework in devising energy policy directed to households with the most severe energy burden.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Community vulnerability is the key determinant of diverse energy burdens in the United States

Low-income households generally experience a high energy burden; however, the factors influencing energy burdens are beyond socio-economics. This study explores the relationships between the multidimensionality of community vulnerability factors and energy burden across multiple geospatial levels in the United States. Our study found the distribution of energy burden in 2020 showed a great deal of variety, ranging from a minimum of 2.93 % to a maximum of 30.45 % across 3142 counties. The results of non-spatial and spatial regressions showed that the vulnerability ranks of socioeconomic, household composition and disability, minority and language, household type and transportation, and COVID mortality rate are significant predictors of energy burdens at the national level. However, at the regional level, only socioeconomic, minority and language significantly influence energy burdens. Minority and language negatively impact energy burdens except for the South East-Central region. Additionally, our analyses highlight the need to consider community vulnerability indicators' spatial homogeneity and heterogeneity. At the national level, only the epidemiological factors index is a spatially homogeneous predictor; on the regional and state level, the spatially homogeneous predictors such as socioeconomic status, household composition and disability, and household type and transportation vary by region. Such a region-sensitive relationship between energy burden and the predictors indicates spatial heterogeneity. Here this study suggests policy recommendations through the lens of the multidimensionality of community vulnerability factors. Implementing flexible national energy policies while making particular energy assistance policies for the vulnerable population at the regional or state levels is essential.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Modeling the potential effects of rooftop solar on household energy burden in the United States

Policymakers at the federal and state level have begun to incorporate energy burden into equity goals and program evaluations, aiming to reduce energy burden below a high level of 6% for lower income households in the United States. Pairing an empirical household-level dataset spanning United States geographies together with modeled hourly energy demand curves, we show that rooftop solar reduces energy burden across a majority of adopters during our study period from a median of 3.3% to 2.6%. For low- and moderate-income adopters (at or below 80% and 120% of area median income, respectively), solar reduces median 2021 energy burden from 7.7% to 6.2%, and 4.1% to 3.3%, respectively. Importantly, solar reduces the rate of high or severe energy burden from 67% of all low-income households before adoption to 52% of households following adoption, and correspondingly from 21% to 13% for moderate-income households. Here, we show rooftop solar can support policy goals to reduce energy burden along with strategies such as weatherization and bill assistance.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Household Energy Burden in Lawrence, Massachusetts [Slides]

The City of Lawrence consists of 18 census tracts, of those, 9 census tracts have an average energy burden (the percent of income spent on energy bills) of 6% or greater. The Lawrence Stakeholders Coalition's (LSC) main goal is to "Reduce energy burden and create well-paying local jobs and businesses by increasing the distribution and use of sustainable technologies such as heat pumps, community and rooftop solar, and weatherization." As part of that goal, the LSC is interested in understanding Lawrence's pathway to electrification, specifically through the building sector. This technical assistance aims to assist the LSC's electrification and energy burden reduction planning by: 1) Identifying the most energy-burdened households by owner-occupied and renter-occupied housing status; 2) Identifying and quantifying the characteristics of the most energy-burdened housing units by housing type, age, and heating fuel type; 3) Identifying the tenure and housing types of the most energy-burdened and prevalent households for subsequent ResStock analysis of cost-effective efficiency upgrades.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Housing Characteristics and Energy Burden Analysis for Highland Park, Michigan

Through the Communities LEAP (Local Energy Action Program) Pilot, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) engaged the Highland Park Stakeholder Coalition to scope four technical assistance work areas to address their energy needs and goals. This slide deck addresses the highlighted tasks under work area "C", related to Housing Characteristics and Energy Burden Analysis. Assessed residential building energy consumption across different building envelope and electrification upgrades to see potential savings in energy consumption, emissions, energy bills, and energy burden.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Household Energy Burden in Beacon Hill, Seattle, WA [Slides]

This technical assistance is part of the Communities Local Energy Action Program (CLEAP) for the Beacon Hill, Seattle, Washington community coalition consisting of El Centro de la Raza, Beacon Hill Council and Bethany United Church of Christ with supportive partners, Seattle City Light and the Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment. This report uses the Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool to identify the most energy burdened households by income group, building type, building age and fuel type.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Sharing the Sun: Community Solar Deployment, Subscription Savings, and Energy Burden Reduction [Slides]

This presentation reviews trends in the national community solar market, with project and subscriber data through 2020. It summarizes data on community solar deployment over time, by state, and by project characteristics. It also examines how market factors have shaped community solar deployment and explores data on the community solar value proposition to subscribers, energy burden, and affordable housing benefits.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Long-term decarbonization impacts on residential energy security across income groups and US states

Abstract The impact of a transition to a net-zero economy on the residential energy sector across diverse income groups in the US remains uncertain. Here, we employ an integrated human-Earth system model, incorporating an expanded set of ten income groups in the residential energy sector, to examine the distributional impacts of long-term decarbonization scenarios on residential energy security at the state level through 2050. We use multiple metrics of energy security, including energy burden, energy satiation gap, and the distribution of energy service across income groups. Our findings show that the net-zero decarbonization scenarios affect residential energy security differently across income groups, with low-to-mid-income groups experiencing larger negative impacts on the dimensions studied here. Comparatively, climate change impact on residential energy security is minor through 2050 based on our model outcomes. Specifically, the net-zero decarbonization scenarios lead to increased energy burden across all income groups and states in 2050, where the lowest (highest) income group in each state shows an average of 0.6 (0.2) percentage point increase in energy burden, relative to the business-as-usual in 2050. The distribution of energy service consumption across income groups is also slightly more skewed under these scenarios. As incomes grow across all deciles in the future, residential energy security generally improves through 2050. Targeted interventions could mitigate the disproportionate impacts that some groups could incur under a transition to a net-zero economy.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Assessing the energy equity benefits of energy storage solutions

Safety, reliability, efficiency, and affordability are no longer the sole tenets of electric grid planning. The evolving social and policy climate have placed new explicit requirements on the electric grid, including resilience, decarbonization, and energy equity and justice. Integrating energy equity strategies into modern grid design is intended to achieve a fair and just distribution of benefits within the energy system. This study aims to characterize the energy equity and community benefits of energy storage systems (ESS) under the following three use-case models: utility ESS that are operated within the distribution system; community-owned ESS; and behind-the-meter ESS that are customer-owned to serve the household. The goal of this energy equity analysis is to characterize the environmental, economic, and social benefits of ESS through applied metrics such as energy burden, energy poverty, energy vulnerability, job creation, and more. A 13.8 kV, 265 node representative feeder corresponding to the hot-humid climate of Louisiana, chosen for its high energy burden, frequent hurricanes and outage events, was used to perform a storage adequacy analysis for six different outage scenarios to determine energy storage access for each use-case. The results of this analysis are then used to characterize both the grid and equity benefits of storage solutions to inform a prioritization framework matching community needs with system preferences for utility planning processes, market regulations, and the wider network of energy system stakeholders.

Energy Equity, energy justice, equity, reliability↗
DOE OSTI2024

Washington Housing Electrification Analysis [Slides]

This technical assistance is part of the Communities Local Energy Action Program (CLEAP) for the community of Beacon Hill, Seattle, WA. This analysis focuses on opportunities to reduce energy burden, energy consumption, and energy bills for both single family homes and large multifamily buildings. It uses state-level data from the ResStock modelling tool that was filtered to be relevant to Beacon Hill. Hence, this content includes single family detached homes and large multifamily buildings in the income group of 0-80% AMI, and climate zone 4c (mixed temperatures, relatively cooler summers) within Washington State.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Stakeholder-guided holistic, Adaptive Framework for enhancing community Energy Resilience (SAFER) (Final Technical Report)

The Stakeholder-guided holistic, Adaptive Framework for enhancing community Energy Resilience (SAFER) project advances resilience science and engineering by addressing challenges in rural Kansas communities where aging infrastructure, extreme weather, and socioeconomic disparities heighten vulnerability to energy disruptions. Traditional approaches often focus on technical performance while overlooking community concerns and priorities. SAFER responds by integrating community perspectives with advanced analytical frameworks to create a holistic model for measuring and improving resilience. Project objectives included developing novel resilience metrics, advancing modeling frameworks that capture interdependencies across infrastructures, and embedding community-centric indicators directly into planning processes for distributed energy resources. The key technical innovations included the creation of self-organizing map (SOM)-based indices for objective resilience quantification, hetero-functional graph theory (HFGT) models linking power, water, transportation, and community assets, and graph neural network (GNN) tools for identifying critical nodes in complex systems. Community-centric energy planning was demonstrated through optimal siting and sizing of (photovoltaic) PV and battery storage, ensuring resilience enhancements also addressed energy burden and energy insecurity. SAFER engaged community partners in Dodge City and Ford County through surveys, focus groups, and workshops, generating more than 600 responses that established baseline measures of energy burden, financial insecurity, and willingness-to-pay to avoid outages. This data, organized in terms of a community capitals framework, informed the development of weighted reliability indices that better reflect community costs than traditional utility metrics. SAFER’s GNN-based critical node identification framework identified expert-labelled critical nodes with over 99% accuracy, while also uncovering additional functionalities essential for proactive resilience planning. The project’s models demonstrated that optimal PV and storage deployment could improve resilience indices by over 11 percent, with dispatch strategies further enhancing outcomes, confirming both the technical effectiveness and economic feasibility of these approaches. Through its combined emphasis on rigorous modeling, community-focused planning, and community engagement, SAFER advances the state of resilience research while delivering direct benefits to rural communities. The project provides tools, guidelines, and resilience heatmaps that help utilities, local governments, and residents better anticipate disruptions, prioritize investments, and strengthen the capacity to withstand and recover from energy-related hazards. Furthermore, the developed HFG and GNN frameworks are designed for transferability, allowing them to be adapted for resilience planning in other communities with minimal retraining. This inductive learning capability provides a scalable pathway to extend the SAFER project’s impact. Thus, creating a foundation for a nationally applicable model of infrastructure resilience. Additionally, the HFG can also be extended to include other FEMA community lifelines.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Long-term impact of electrification and retrofits of the U.S residential building in diverse locations

The U.S. buildings sector contributes 30% of operational carbon emissions, with residential buildings accounting for 56%. Reducing residential carbon emissions is crucial for achieving net-zero carbon goal. While many studies examine energy efficiency retrofit (EER) and electrification, few explore their long-term impacts across diverse climates and dynamic grid clean energy penetrations, as well as their economic effects on households. Here, this study proposes a method to assess how EER and electrification affect long-term decarbonization and economics across different climates, focusing on carbon emissions, energy burden (the percentage of household income spent on energy), and payback period in four locations: Tampa, San Diego, Denver, and Great Falls. The study also introduces the concept of implicit energy burden by considering investment costs. Results show that while electrification can reduce long-term emissions with increased clean energy penetration, it may not always achieve decarbonization due to mismatches between clean energy availability and demand. In cooling-dominant locations, electrification lowers energy burden and peak demand, but in heating-dominant locations, it increases energy burden to 8.24%, raises peak demand by 632.78%, and shifts it from summer to winter. After integrating investment costs, the implicit energy burden can reach 8.35% in cold climates. For already highly electrified buildings in Denver and Great Falls, the payback period of EER measures can be shortened by up to 48.98%. The study highlights a tradeoff between decarbonization and energy burden alleviation, showing that while EER measures can reduce the energy burden, they only achieve one-quarter of the carbon emission reduction of electrification.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗