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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 181 records · Page 10

A Comparison of Brayton and Stirling Space Nuclear Power Systems for Power Levels from 1 Kilowatt to 10 Megawatts

An analytical study was conducted to assess the performance and mass of Brayton and Stirling nuclear power systems for a wide range of future NASA space exploration missions. The power levels and design concepts were based on three different mission classes. Isotope systems, with power levels from 1 to 10 kW, were considered for planetary surface rovers and robotic science. Reactor power systems for planetary surface outposts and bases were evaluated from 10 to 500 kW. Finally, reactor power systems in the range from 100 kW to 10 mW were assessed for advanced propulsion applications. The analysis also examined the effect of advanced component technology on system performance. The advanced technologies included high temperature materials, lightweight radiators, and high voltage power management and distribution.

Mason, Lee S.↗

Power system technologies for the manned Mars mission

The high impulse of electric propulsion makes it an attractive option for manned interplanetary missions such as a manned mission to Mars. This option is, however, dependent on the availability of high energy sources for propulsive power in addition to that required for the manned interplanetary transit vehicle. Two power system technologies are presented: nuclear and solar. The ion thruster technology for the interplanetary transit vehicle is described for a typical mission. The power management and distribution system components required for such a mission must be further developed beyond today's technology status. High voltage-high current technology advancements must be achieved. These advancements are described. In addition, large amounts of waste heat must be rejected to the space environment by the thermal management system. Advanced concepts such as the liquid droplet radiator are discussed as possible candidates for the manned Mars mission. These thermal management technologies have great potential for significant weight reductions over the more conventional systems.

Bents, Dave↗

Application of Site Controllers for Electrification of Commercial Fleet Vehicles

Electrification of transportation fleets presents a significant challenge for commercial customers. These challenges can be specific to region, weather, operating schedule, charging infrastructure, and other factors. This paper presents the value of integrating a site controller to monitor the health of assets and co-optimize the operation of commercial sites with multiple distributed energy resource technologies and electric vehicle fleets. The tests demonstrate smart-charging and vehicle-to-building uses compared to business-as-usual cases. The secondary objectives of power management for the customer vehicle are optimized by a planning tool (REopt) and integrated using the site controller. Any deviations from the planned dispatch are addressed by the real-time controllers offering tertiary controls, such as energy management, and limiting the reverse power flow (back into the grid). The results indicate that site controllers offer an efficient solution to manage the health of the connected assets and a scalable means to optimize the operations of a commercial customer with electrified transportation fleets.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,POWER TRANSMISSION AND↗

Pilot in Command: An Illustration of Autonomous Flight Management

Several years of NASA research have produced the concept for air traffic management called "Distributed Air/Ground Traffic Management," a major operational advancement that should significantly increase the capacity of the National Airspace System. A key component, "Autonomous Flight Management," introduces a new class of aircraft operations in which pilots are authorized to freely maneuver and execute optimal trajectories independent from air traffic controllers. These aircraft operators would benefit from significant increases in flexibility to optimize all flight operations and from avoiding most of the delays associated with ground-controlled operations. Responsibilities for aircraft separation and arrival flow conformance are transferred to the flight deck, and the pilots use computerized decision-support tools to accomplish these tasks. A research prototype of these tools called the "Autonomous Operations Planner" is being developed at the NASA Langley Research Center. This 14-minute video illustrates Autonomous Flight Management from the airline pilot's perspective.

Wing, David J.↗

High-Efficiency Food Production in a Renewable Energy Based Micro-Grid Power System

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) systems can be used to produce high-quality, desirable food year round, and the fresh produce can positively contribute to the health and well being of residents in communities with difficult supply logistics. While CEA has many positive outcomes for a remote community, the associated high electric demands have prohibited widespread implementation in what is typically already a fully subscribed power generation and distribution system. Recent advances in CEA technologies as well as renewable power generation, storage, and micro-grid management are increasing system efficiency and expanding the possibilities for enhancing community supporting infrastructure without increasing demands for outside supplied fuels. We will present examples of how new lighting, nutrient delivery, and energy management and control systems can enable significant increases in food production efficiency while maintaining high yields in CEA. Examples from Alaskan communities where initial incorporation of renewable power generation, energy storage and grid management techniques have already reduced diesel fuel consumption for electric generation by more than 40% and expanded grid capacity will be presented. We will discuss how renewable power generation, efficient grid management to extract maximum community service per kW, and novel energy storage approaches can expand the food production, water supply, waste treatment, sanitation and other community support services without traditional increases of consumable fuels supplied from outside the community. These capabilities offer communities with a range of choices to enhance their communities. The examples represent a synergy of technology advancement efforts to develop sustainable community support systems for future space-based human habitats and practical implementation of infrastructure components to increase efficiency and enhance health and well being in remote communities today and tomorrow.

Fuel↗

High-Efficiency Food Production in a Renewable Energy Based Micro-Grid

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) systems can be used to produce high-quality, desirable food year round, and the fresh produce can positively contribute to the health and well being of residents in communities with difficult supply logistics. While CEA has many positive outcomes for a remote community, the associated high electric demands have prohibited widespread implementation in what is typically already a fully subscribed power generation and distribution system. Recent advances in CEA technologies as well as renewable power generation, storage, and micro-grid management are increasing system efficiency and expanding the possibilities for enhancing community supporting infrastructure without increasing demands for outside supplied fuels. We will present examples of how new lighting, nutrient delivery, and energy management and control systems can enable significant increases in food production efficiency while maintaining high yields in CEA.Examples from Alaskan communities where initial incorporation of renewable power generation, energy storage and grid management techniques have already reduced diesel fuel consumption for electric generation by more than 40 and expanded grid capacity will be presented. We will discuss how renewable power generation, efficient grid management to extract maximum community service per kW, and novel energy storage approaches can expand the food production, water supply, waste treatment, sanitation and other community support services without traditional increases of consumable fuels supplied from outside the community. These capabilities offer communities with a range of choices to enhance their communities. The examples represent a synergy of technology advancement efforts to develop sustainable community support systems for future space-based human habitats and practical implementation of infrastructure components to increase efficiency and enhance health and well-being in remote communities today and tomorrow.

Renewable Energy↗

Module-OT: A Hardware Security Module for Operational Technology

Increased penetration levels of renewable energy and other types of distributed energy resources (DERs) on the modern electric grid-combined with technological advancements for electric system monitoring and control-introduce new cyberattack vectors and increase the cyberattack surface of energy systems. According to the IEEE Std. 1547-2018, DERs must use Modbus, Distributed Network Protocol 3 (DNP3), or Smart Energy Profile 2.0 (SEP2) as their communication protocol. Previous research identified several vulnerabilities and security breaches in each one of these communication protocols; despite this, existing standards for DERs do not recommend cybersecurity measures. In order to reduce vulnerabilities in power distribution systems, this paper presents a novel open-source hardware security module that improves both information and operational security to better protect data and communications on the distribution grid. The security hardware is called “module for operational technology,” or simply Module-OT, and it has been validated and tested in an emulated distribution system application. Module-OT is integrated within a communication system in the transport layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. It improves system security through encryption, authentication, authorization, certificate management, and user access control. The main advancement of Module-OT is the addition of hardware cryptographic acceleration that improves the overall communication performance in terms of end-to-end latency.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Advanced software tools space station focused technology

Information is given in outline form on advanced software tools for the Space Station data management system. The Space Station data management system is identified as a highly distributed system with payload users controlling experiments and processing payload data from home facilities.

Nelson, Robert W.↗

Northeast Freight Corridor Charging Plan (Roadmap Report)

Final report produced as part of grant awarded to National Grid. The final report is a roadmap of 39 prioritized sites. These sites would create a minimum viable network of charging infrastructure, enabling the electrification of trucks across the Northeast

02 PETROLEUM↗

Robust and resilient coordination of feeders with uncertain distributed energy resources: from real-time control to long-term planning

To enable flexible demand and ensure reliable and economical operation of distribution systems, we present a novel hierarchical scheme that actively coordinates responsive behind-the-meter grid resources, including distributed energy resources (DERs), to reliably manage each unbalanced distribution feeder and exploits the available flexibility to economically optimize the entire network. Each layer of the scheme employs advanced optimization methods at different timescales to ensure that the system operates within both grid and device limits. The hierarchy is validated in a large-scale realistic simulation based on data from the industry. Simulation results show that coordination of flexibility improves both system reliability and economics, and enables greater penetration of solar PV. Discussion is also provided on the practical viability of the required communications and controls to implement the presented scheme within a large DSO.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Past, present, and future activities in space power technology in the United States of America

Space power technology research in the U.S. is examined. The objectives for advanced power systems are long life, safety, flexibility, modularity, growth capability, and autonomy. Research in the areas of photovoltaic arrays, electrical energy storage, and the development of solar dynamic power systems and radio thermal generators is described. The applications of advances in power generation, energy storage, and power management and distribution to the Space Station are discussed.

Ambrus, Judith H.↗

Smart Meter Pinging and Reading Through AMI Two-Way Communication Networks to Monitor Grid Edge Devices and DERs

Today’s power distribution system is changing to a power-electronics-enabled distribution system, especially with the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs). To monitor and manage those electronic devices and DERs at the grid edge, the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) with two-way communications presents great potential. At present, extensive research explores the upstream communication from smart meters to electric utilities (e.g., meter reading) but few examine the downstream communication from the utilities to smart meters (e.g., meter pinging). This article discusses the AMI two-way communication and its recent industrial practice in the U.S., especially for applying the smart meter pinging functionality to monitor grid-edge devices and DERs. This paper then develops the two-way communication model and the network calculus method to quantify the impact of the two-way communication on the AMI network. In the end, the proposed method is validated with ns-3 simulation using the modified 13-node test feeder and real-world feeder systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Control - Demands mushroom as station grows

The NASA space station, which is presently in the planning stage, is to be composed of both rigid and nonrigid modules, rotating elements, and flexible appendages subjected to environmental disturbances from the earth's atmospheric gravity gradient, and magnetic field, as well as solar radiation and self-generated disturbances. Control functions, which will originally include attitude control, docking and berthing control, and system monitoring and management, will with evolving mission objectives come to encompass such control functions as articulation control, autonomous navigation, space traffic control, and large space structure control. Attention is given to the advancements in modular, distributed, and adaptive control methods, as well as system identification and hardware fault tolerance techniques, which will be required.

Szirmay, S. Z.↗

Preserving the Finger Lakes for the Future: A Prototype Decision Support System for Water Resource Management, Open Space, and Agricultural Protection

As described herein, this project has progressed well, with the initiation or completion of a number of program facets at programmatic, technical, and inter-agency levels. The concept of the Virtual Management Operations Center has taken shape, grown, and has been well received by parties from a wide variety of agencies and organizations in the Finger Lakes region and beyond. As it has evolved in design and functionality, and to better illustrate its current focus for this project, it has been given the expanded name of Watershed Virtual Management Operations Center (W-VMOC). It offers the advanced, compelling functionality of interactive 3D visualization interfaced with 2D mapping, all accessed via Internet or virtually any kind of distributed computer network. This strong foundation will allow the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) with anticipated enhanced functionality to be applied to the myriad issues involved in the wise management of the Finger Lakes region.

Brower, Robert↗

Proceedings of the Sixth NASA Langley Formal Methods (LFM) Workshop

Today's verification techniques are hard-pressed to scale with the ever-increasing complexity of safety critical systems. Within the field of aeronautics alone, we find the need for verification of algorithms for separation assurance, air traffic control, auto-pilot, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), adaptive avionics, automated decision authority, and much more. Recent advances in formal methods have made verifying more of these problems realistic. Thus we need to continually re-assess what we can solve now and identify the next barriers to overcome. Only through an exchange of ideas between theoreticians and practitioners from academia to industry can we extend formal methods for the verification of ever more challenging problem domains. This volume contains the extended abstracts of the talks presented at LFM 2008: The Sixth NASA Langley Formal Methods Workshop held on April 30 - May 2, 2008 in Newport News, Virginia, USA. The topics of interest that were listed in the call for abstracts were: advances in formal verification techniques; formal models of distributed computing; planning and scheduling; automated air traffic management; fault tolerance; hybrid systems/hybrid automata; embedded systems; safety critical applications; safety cases; accident/safety analysis.

Rozier, Kristin Yvonne↗

Insights from PPL's DERMS Implementation

PPL Electric Utilities’ Keystone Solar Future Project (KSFP) is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewables, Energy Enabling Extreme Real-time Grid Integration of Solar Energy (ENERGISE) grant. The three-year project, beginning in October, 2017, funded an innovative pilot program to develop and evaluate a technology platform and framework for managing high levels of distributed energy resources (DER), and improving future DER interconnection. The KSFP aimed to bridge gaps between existing and future technology, including Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS), by monitoring, managing, and optimizing a system with high penetration of solar and other DER. Specifically, the project worked to make Demand Management Systems (DMS) applications, devices, and real-time communications technology DER-aware to allow for advanced applications for utility operations. Here, by installing and implementing a DERMS, project designers transformed how DERs interact with PPL’s distribution system, offering learnings and results worth sharing industry-wide.

Leader, Jared↗