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At least 235 records · Page 13

ComStock Measure Documentation: Variable-Speed Pumps

Building on the 3-year End-Use Load Profiles project to calibrate and validate the U.S. Department of Energy's ResStock and ComStock models, this work produces national data sets that enable cities, states, utilities, and other stakeholders to answer a broad range of questions regarding their commercial building stock. ComStock is a highly granular, bottom-up model that uses various data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual subhourly energy consumption of the commercial building stock across the United States. The "baseline" model intends to represent the U.S. commercial building stock as it existed in 2018. The methodology of the baseline model is discussed in the ComStock Reference Documentation. The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures that cover market-ready technologies and study their mass adoption impact on the baseline building stock. "Measures" refers to various "what-if" scenarios that can be applied to buildings. The results for the baseline and measure scenario simulations are published in public data sets that provide insights into building stock characteristics, operational behaviors, utility bill impacts, and annual and sub-hourly energy usage by fuel type and end use. This report describes the modeling methodology for a single ComStock measure scenario - variable speed pumps - and briefly introduces key results. The full public data set can be accessed on the ComStock data lake or via the Data Viewer at comstock.nlr.gov. The public data set enables users to create custom aggregations of results for their use case (e.g., filter to a specific county or building type).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Increasing the Number of Installed Residential Heat Pump Water Heaters in the USA Through Improved Technology and Utility Programs

Heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) offer an efficient alternative to electric resistance water heaters, but they suffer from limited market penetration. This paper reviews the current state of HPWHs in the USA, focusing on technology developments and programs to increase adoption. What technological improvements are needed to make HPWHs a good fit in more homes? Additionally, what are the best ways of promoting HPWHs to consumers? Improved communication and controls will allow HPWHs to provide demand response and follow dynamic utility rates. To enable fuel-switching, HPWHs are being developed that only need a standard 120V outlet. Split HPWHs can alleviate the cooling and noise that limit the use of HPWHs in small homes, multifamily buildings, and cold climates. Additionally, new utility programs aim to train installers and provide incentives to distributors to increase the number of HPWHs installed. Some utilities offer novel incentive programs that have led to increased customer uptake. Those advances, coupled with improved controls for load shifting and new products such as split HPWHs and HPWHs that can run on 120V power, may finally move the market forward.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop Modeling and Operation of a High-Power DC Charging Hub

High-power charging (HPC) concept will be a critical enabler for the wide-scale adoption and integration of electric vehicles (EVs). HPC hubs will have a significant impact on achieving this goal, particularly when considering the charging requirements of next-generation medium and heavy-duty vehicles (MD/HD) used in various vocational scenarios. This emphasizes the significance of evaluating and confirming the technical planning and multi-level operation of HPC hubs through modeling, protocol implementation, and simulation before hardware demonstration. The focus of this study is to develop the architecture, modeling, communication, and real-time controller hardware-in-the-loop (C-HIL) simulation of HPC hubs using the DC distribution system approach. Specifically, this work demonstrates the practical implementation of a custom Smart Energy Management System (SEMS) for a real-time C-HIL HPC hub simulation using the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) for communication. OCPP is implemented on the Node-Red framework and the custom controller is executed in Python. We developed a rule-based controller to demonstrate the proposed approach.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

ComStock Measure Documentation: High-Efficiency Rooftop Unit

Building on the 3-year End-Use Load Profiles project to calibrate and validate the U.S. Department of Energy's ResStock and ComStock models, this work produces national data sets that enable cities, states, utilities, and other stakeholders to answer a broad range of questions regarding their commercial building stock. ComStock is a highly granular, bottom-up model that uses various data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual subhourly energy consumption of the commercial building stock across the United States. The "baseline" model intends to represent the U.S. commercial building stock as it existed in 2018. The methodology of the baseline model is discussed in the ComStock Reference Documentation. The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures that cover market-ready technologies and study their mass adoption impact on the baseline building stock. "Measures" refers to various "what-if" scenarios that can be applied to buildings. The results for the baseline and measure scenario simulations are published in public data sets that provide insights into building stock characteristics, operational behaviors, utility bill impacts, and annual and sub-hourly energy usage by fuel type and end use. This report describes the modeling methodology for a single ComStock measure scenario - high-efficiency rooftop unit (RTU) - and briefly introduces key results. The full public data set can be accessed on the Comstock data lake or via the Data Viewer at comstock.nlr.gov. The public data set enables users to create custom aggregations of results for their use case (e.g., filter to a specific county or building type).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

ComStock Measure Documentation: Fan Static Pressure Reset for Multizone Variable Air Volume Systems

This report assesses the potential for nationwide adoption of a duct static pressure reset in MZ VAV systems in appropriate applications. Building on the 3-year End-Use Load Profiles project to calibrate and validate the U.S. Department of Energy’s ResStock™ and ComStock™ models, this work produces national datasets that enable cities, states, utilities, and other stakeholders to answer a broad range of questions regarding their commercial building stock. ComStock is a highly granular, bottom-up model that uses various data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual sub-hourly energy consumption of the commercial building stock across the United States. The “baseline” model intends to represent the U.S. commercial building stock as it existed in 2018. The methodology of the baseline model is discussed in the ComStock Reference Documentation. The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures that cover market-ready technologies and study their mass-adoption impact on the baseline building stock. “Measures” refers to various “what-if” scenarios that can be applied to buildings. The results for the baseline and measure scenario simulations are published in public datasets that provide insights into building stock characteristics, operational behaviors, utility bill impacts, and annual and sub-hourly energy usage by fuel type and end use. This report describes the modeling methodology for a single ComStock measure scenario—Fan Static Pressure Reset for Multizone Variable Air Volume (VAV) Systems—and briefly introduces key results. The full public dataset can be accessed on the ComStock data lake or via the Data Viewer at comstock.nrel.gov. The public dataset enables users to create custom aggregations of results for their use case (e.g., filter to a specific county or building type).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Factors Affecting Override Behavior during Demand Flexibility from High-Resolution Smart Thermostat Data

In this study, we delineate key weather and demographic predictors of override behavior in residential buildings during connected thermostats demand response events. Anticipating and reducing overrides is critical to demand flexibility (DF) program success. We use high- dimensional fixed effects linear regression techniques on a large ecobee dataset for about 5,000 enrolled households in the United States. We identify critical weather (indoor and outdoor temperature), building (housing type), and occupant (previous DF overrides and previous DF event exposure) factors influencing the override patterns of customers during thermostat demand response. We also differentiate DF events by season to understand the different indoor and outdoor conditions that might influence seasonal override rates. We found significant differences in override rates between building types, with single-family semi-detached homes generally having the highest overrides. Having a history of overrides was additionally a critical factor in predicting occupant response to future DF events. Understanding these override differences is necessary for rural electric cooperatives and emerging DF programs without access to large DR historical data. Overall, we provide critical information on technical and local demographic characteristics that may be correlated to building type to influence strategies to reduce overrides and improve the adoption of DF technologies.

connected thermostats (CTs)↗

The Solar Influencer Next Door: Predicting Low-Income Solar Referrals and Leads

Increasing the adoption of solar among low-to-moderate income (LMI) households remains an important policy goal because of its promise to simultaneously reduce energy burden and support the just distribution of benefits of renewable energy. However, scaling LMI solar remains challenging due to affordability and access issues. Most existing LMI adoption has occurred under public-funded programs, highlighting the importance of increasing the cost-effectiveness of these programs at scale. We develop a new household-level data set on LMI solar lead acquisition, referrals, and adoption to understand the processes through which LMI solar uptake has occurred in California. Then, we develop models to predict two sub-mechanisms in the solar adoption process: whether an otherwise qualified lead becomes "lost" i.e. non-responsive to outreach and, for existing clients, whether they refer solar to others. For the program analyzed, participants received their solar system at no cost, which deemphasizes economic drivers of solar adoption and could differ from other program experiences. Both models substantially improved the accuracy of prediction relative to a baseline. Overall, we find that peer effects and solar economics are important to predicting referrals, and household demographic factors in lead loss prediction. Finally, we find that referrals are both the highest quality and largest source of LMI solar leads, providing a promising mechanism to expand LMI programs further.

customer acquisition costs↗

Options for Achieving Cost Reduction in Advanced Reactors through Open Architecture

A key contributor to high capital costs and schedule overruns for new nuclear power plants is lack of standardization, driven by site-specific customization and construction of multiple designs by competing vendors rather than commitment to a single standardized program. While advanced reactor vendors typically individually target repeat construction of standardized units, the many competing designs could exacerbate the problem. “Open Architecture”, the open specification of requirements and interfaces for structures, systems and components (SSCs), has been proposed as a means of promoting standardization, by facilitating existing non-nuclear suppliers to enter the industry and/or allowing SSCs to be configured for more than one reactor within the same technology type. Contracting mechanisms that facilitate information sharing and alignment of incentives between stakeholders may complement such an approach. A preliminary scheme is presented for selection of SSCs for which such strategies could be adopted, based on a vendor make/buy decision model and stakeholder interviews. SSCs are categorized according to number of suppliers and their contribution to the reactor’s competitive edge. SSCs with many potential suppliers and a high contribution to competitive edge may be attractive for widening the supply chain via open specification of system requirements and interfaces, e.g., SSCs in the power island. SSCs with few suppliers and low contribution to competitive edge may be potential avenues for common system specification between vendors, e.g., some of the auxiliary SSCs. Potential cost reductions from such strategies will depend upon the size of the build program and the reactor type.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Throughput-Oriented and Accuracy-Aware DNN Training with BFloat16 on GPU

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have transformed the field of artificial intelligence and achieved extraordinary success in many areas. The training of DNNs is commonly compute and memory-intensive, which has resulted in several optimizations in the training phase. Among them, reduced precision is a typical and widely used technique to accelerate DNN training and reduce memory requirements. However, applying a widely adopted reduced precision format such as Float16 to all involved operations in DNN training is not optimal as the use of Float16 in some operations can hurt model accuracy. Meanwhile, additional optimizations including loss scaling and autocast techniques can mitigate the accuracy loss but lead to inherent overhead and inadequate use of reduced precision. In this work, we leverage another reduced precision format, BFloat16, and introduce a throughput-oriented and accuracy-aware approach to maximize the performance potential of DNN training. Since the high throughput provided by BFloat16 format is accompanied by low precision of the floating-point representation, this approach achieves high throughput by using BFloat16 on all DNN operations and avoids the accuracy loss through a customized accuracy-aware normalization. Results show that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art mixed-precision training by 1.21x on an NVIDIA A100 GPU.

Xie, Zhen↗

Electrification Futures Study Flexible Load Profiles

This data set includes hourly profiles for flexible load developed for the Electrification Futures Study (EFS). The load profiles represent projected end-use electricity demand that is assumed to be flexible (i.e., can be shifted throughout a day) for various scenarios of flexibility (Base, Enhanced), electrification (Reference, Medium, High), and technology advancement (Slow, Moderate, Rapid), and were developed as inputs into the ReEDS model. The quantity of flexible load is estimated using assumptions on the level of flexibility and customer participation within each subsector modeled in the EFS. Detailed assumptions and modeling implementation will be documented in ongoing EFS analyses. Flexible load profiles are provided for a subset of years (2018, 2020, 2024, 2030, 2040, 2050) and are aggregated to the state and sector level. Total electricity load profiles can be found in a related EFS data set (https://dx.doi.org/10.7799/1593122). NOTE: Due to the file size, Mac users may experience issues decompressing the zip files using the Mac Archive Utility. In those cases, decompressing using the command line is recommended. - Mai, Trieu, Paige Jadun, Jeffrey Logan, Colin McMillan, Matteo Muratori, Daniel Steinberg, Laura Vimmerstedt, Ryan Jones, Benjamin Haley, and Brent Nelson. 2018. Electrification Futures Study: Scenarios of Electric Technology Adoption and Power Consumption for the United States. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-71500. https://doi.org/10.2172/1459351. - Murphy, Caitlin, Trieu Mai, Yinong Sun, Paige Jadun, Matteo Muratori, Brent Nelson, Ryan Jones. Forthcoming. Electrification Futures Study: Scenarios of Power System Evolution and Infrastructure Development for the United States. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. - Sun, Yinong, Paige Jadun, Brent Nelson, Matteo Muratori, Caitlin Murphy, Jeffrey Logan, and Trieu Mai. Forthcoming. Electrification Futures Study: Methodological Approaches for Assessing Long-Term Power System Impacts of End-Use Electrification. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

buildings↗

A Generic Advanced Computing Framework for Executing Windows-based Dynamic Contingency Analysis Tool in Parallel on Cluster Machines

Dynamic contingency analysis tool (DCAT) has been developed to assess the impact and likelihood of extreme contingencies and potential cascading events across their systems and interconnections. By including more customized protection models and corrective actions into the Windows-based commercial tools, DCAT can help operators understand the cascading behavior and find mitigation approaches to reduce the risk of cascading outages in a more realistic manner. In order to further enhance the capability of DCAT, this paper presents a design of an advanced computing framework that enables DCAT to run on a cluster machine to improve its computational performance. This framework is generic and can be applied to other Windows-based simulation tools to fill the technical gap of applying advanced computing technology to vendors' Windows-based tools. The preliminary tests using medium to large power systems have shown the effectiveness of this framework and its potential for accelerating the adoption of advanced computing in utilities.

Advanced computing, dynamic contingency analysis, ↗

Implementation of FAIR principles in the IPCC: the WGI AR6 Atlas repository

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has adopted the FAIR Guiding Principles. We present the Atlas chapter of Working Group I (WGI) as a test case. We describe the application of the FAIR principles in the Atlas, the challenges faced during its implementation, and those that remain for the future. We introduce the open source repository resulting from this process, including coding (e.g., annotated Jupyter notebooks), data provenance, and some aggregated datasets used in some figures in the Atlas chapter and its interactive companion (the Interactive Atlas), open to scrutiny by the scientific community and the general public. We describe the informal pilot review conducted on this repository to gather recommendations that led to significant improvements. Finally, a working example illustrates the re-use of the repository resources to produce customized regional information, extending the Interactive Atlas products and running the code interactively in a web browser using Jupyter notebooks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Refreshing Waste Tracking Software for the 2020's - 20059

The Waste Compliance and Tracking System (WCATS) is a software application designed to manage waste operations from cradle to grave. The system provides the support needed for characterization, generation, processing, and shipment of all waste generated or stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Waste is tracked with task records for containers in real-time via both desktop and mobile device applications. The software allows application administrators to configure sites with appropriate limits for Pu-239 equivalent Curies (PE-Ci), fissile gram equivalents (FGEs), volume limits, as well as custom limits for site-specific technical safety requirements (TSRs). WCATS was developed based on a need at Los Alamos National Laboratory for a modern, customizable waste tracking system that could support many different waste types. The application is built using Oracle{sup R} database and Oracle{sup R} ADF Swing application framework. The technologies and software frameworks selected for the system were finalized in 2006. Although Oracle{sup R} Database has proven to be robust, the user interface and application framework interface with the database have been deprecated and need to be replaced. The technologies selected for modernization follow the open-source model, which allows the WCATS team to more easily recruit developers, improve the speed of development, and ease the deployment and adoption of the system. The tools that support the re-engineering effort are Vue.js{sup R}, a JavaScript{sup R} framework, and Spring Boot{sup R}, an API (application programming interface) development tool written in Java{sup R}. An API allows for simplified communication from the database to the user interface of the application. In addition, legacy Crystal Reports{sup R} will be replaced with reports developed with the open source Pentaho{sup TM}f Report Designer community edition. Because the application uses HTML and JavaScript{sup R}, it builds upon tools that have been used for many years in web development. These tools have large community support and their proven track record will ensure that enhancements to WCATS can continue for years to come. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Carbon emission responsive building control: A case study with an all-electric residential community in a cold climate

In the United States, buildings account for 35% of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, making them important contributors to decarbonization. Carbon intensities in the power grid are time-varying and can fluctuate significantly within hours, so shifting building loads in response to the carbon intensities can reduce a building’s operational carbon emissions. This paper presents a rule-based carbon responsive control framework that controls the setpoints of thermostatically controlled loads responding to the grid’s carbon emission signals in real time. Based on this framework, four controllers are proposed with different combinations of carbon accounting methods and control rules. To evaluate their performance, we performed simulation studies using models of a 27-home, all-electric, net zero energy residential community located in Basalt, Colorado, United States. The carbon intensity data of four future years from the Cambium data set are adopted to account for the evolving resource mix in the power grid. Various performance metrics, including energy consumption, carbon emission, energy cost, and thermal discomfort, were used to evaluate the performance of the controllers. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to determine how the control thresholds and intervals affect the controllers’ performance. Simulation results indicate that the carbon responsive controllers can reduce the homes’ annual carbon emissions by 6.0% to 20.5%. However, the energy consumption increased by 0.9% to 6.7%, except in one scenario where it decreased by 2.2%. Compared to the baseline, the change in energy cost was between –2.9% and 3.4%, and thermal discomfort was also maintained within an acceptable range. The little impact on energy cost and thermal discomfort indicates there are no potential roadblocks for customer acceptance when rolling out the controllers in utility programs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Wyandotte Integrated Renewable Energy Strategy (WIRES 2) (Final Technical Report)

Wyandotte Municipal Services (WMS), a Michigan Municipal Utility offering electric generation, transmission & distribution, water filtration & distribution and Broadband/Video sought to deploy a set of renewable energy projects for their Electric Utility that contributed to reducing the City’s environmental and energy impact, provided examples that would encourage businesses and citizens to adopt cleaner energy practices and help WMS meet the required renewable energy standards of the State of Michigan (10% in 2015, 15% in 2021). WMS generates and delivers roughly 280,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity annually to more than 10,000 homes and 1,000 businesses within the City of Wyandotte. The Wyandotte Integrated Renewable Energy Strategy – WIRES 2 resulted in deployment of a set of community-scale micro-wind turbines, evaluation and installation of energy-efficient and low-maintenance light-emitting diode (LED) street lights and park lights in highly visible locations in the City and expansion of the geothermal heating and cooling district that already included residential geothermal systems, to include larger scale business/institutional systems at the Utility’s largest electric customer and at the City Library. Finally, WMS identified the need for job training in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to further develop a local skilled workforce in these areas. Partially funded by the grant, the wind turbine project provides a benchmark for WMS, local businesses and residents in the evaluation of utility-scale wind v. micro-wind in an urban environment as a renewable energy strategy. Also partially funded by the grant, the LED project benefited the City of Wyandotte by reducing load on the electric system for the public utility but also reduced City costs for streetlighting, parking lot lighting and park lighting without a compromise in security. The project also resulted in a visual success that has led to additional approvals for non-Grant related LED lighting installations resulting in further reduction in the electric load in the City. Commercial Geothermal installations resulted in the Utility being able to eliminate steam customers who formerly utilized the byproduct of steam from WMS electric production. Due to the reduction in natural gas prices and the overall reduction in market purchased power, it was no longer feasible for WMS to operate its Power Plant as a base load plant and to only operate on a market dispatch philosophy when market prices dictated that WMS could produce electricity cheaper than the market purchase price. This has resulted in fewer operating days for the WMS Power Plant, resulting in less environmental impact. WMS has now completely exited the steam business and the ability to offer a geothermal option to two (2) former steam customers (BASF-Wyandotte and the Bacon Memorial Library) allowed for that. In addition, peak loads have been shaved for these two (2) large customers due to the consistent temperature offered by geothermal heating and cooling, reducing the swings associated with thermostat changes caused by outside temperature changes during extreme high and low temperatures. Finally, energy efficiency and renewable energy college-level classes at Wayne County Community College allowed a group of interested students to pursue studies in those technologies through grant provided tuition, books and course materials. This effort provided a foundation of potential future employees not only for WMS but other energy efficiency/renewable energy employers such as Franklin Energy, a partner with WMS in energy optimization efforts with Wyandotte businesses.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

How to Build a Quantum Supercomputer: Scaling from Hundreds to Millions of Qubits

In the span of four decades, quantum computation has evolved from an intellectual curiosity to a potentially realizable technology. Today, small-scale demonstrations have become possible for quantum algorithmic primitives on hundreds of physical qubits and proof-of-principle error-correction on a single logical qubit. Nevertheless, despite significant progress and excitement, the path toward a full-stack scalable technology is largely unknown. There are significant outstanding quantum hardware, fabrication, software architecture, and algorithmic challenges that are either unresolved or overlooked. These issues could seriously undermine the arrival of utility-scale quantum computers for the foreseeable future. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of these scaling challenges. We show how the road to scaling could be paved by adopting existing semiconductor technology to build much higher-quality qubits, employing system engineering approaches, and performing distributed quantum computation within heterogeneous high-performance computing infrastructures. These opportunities for research and development could unlock certain promising applications, in particular, efficient quantum simulation/learning of quantum data generated by natural or engineered quantum systems. To estimate the true cost of such promises, we provide a detailed resource and sensitivity analysis for classically hard quantum chemistry calculations on surface-code error-corrected quantum computers given current, target, and desired hardware specifications based on superconducting qubits, accounting for a realistic distribution of errors. Furthermore, we argue that, to tackle industry-scale classical optimization and machine learning problems in a cost-effective manner, heterogeneous quantum-probabilistic computing with custom-designed accelerators should be considered as a complementary path toward scalability.

Mohseni, Masoud↗

Assessing an aqueous flow cell designed for in situ crystal growth under X-ray nanotomography and effects of radiolysis products

Nucleation and growth of minerals has broad implications in the geological, environmental and materials sciences. Recent developments in fast X-ray nanotomography have enabled imaging of crystal growth in solutions in situ with a resolution of tens of nanometres, far surpassing optical microscopy. Here, a low-cost, custom-designed aqueous flow cell dedicated to the study of heterogeneous nucleation and growth of minerals in aqueous environments is shown. To gauge the effects of radiation damage from the imaging process on growth reactions, radiation-induced morphological changes of barite crystals (hundreds of nanometres to ∼1 µm) that were pre-deposited on the wall of the flow cell were investigated. Under flowing solution, minor to major crystal dissolution was observed when the tomography scan frequency was increased from every 30 min to every 5 min (with a 1 min scan duration). The production of reactive radicals from X-ray induced water radiolysis and decrease of pH close to the surface of barite are likely responsible for the observed dissolution. The flow cell shown here can possibly be adopted to study a wide range of other chemical reactions in solutions beyond crystal nucleation and growth where the combination of fast flow and fast scan can be used to mitigate the radiation effects.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗