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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 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Hydroclimate-coupled framework for assessing power system resilience under summer drought and climate change

Extreme drought, exacerbated by climate change, increasingly threatens power system resilience, and a systematic assessment of such impacts is challenging due to the unpredictability of drought and their associated modeling complexity. Here, to address the challenge, this research develops a hydroclimate-coupled power system resilience assessment framework that enables systematic modeling of drought and climate change impacts on generation, transmission, and demand sectors. Applying the framework to the 2025 Eastern U.S. power grid — comprising 6,055 at-risk generators — under climate-induced summer drought scenarios (including SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585) from 2023 to 2100, the study finds that climate-induced droughts could jeopardize the power system’s reliability to a greater extent than historical events, potentially leading to widespread load shedding. More specifically, the study reveals that under the twenty-one representative drought scenarios, the loss of load expectation (LOLE) of the grid could range from 34.77 to 91.48 days per summer. The simulations indicate that implementing resilience enhancement strategies is crucial to ensure reliable system operation, which encompasses initiatives such as demand response, upgrading open cooling systems, and transmission expansion. In all, these findings underscore the urgent need for proactive planning and investment in resilient U.S. power systems to mitigate the impacts of extreme drought events.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Incorporating energy justice and equity objectives in power system models

Ensuring an equitable energy transition requires models and tools that can account for equity and energy justice goals. Power system models (PSMs) are widely used throughout industry, government, and academia to simulate or optimize the operations and planning of current and future electricity systems under different scenarios, parameter assumptions and policy frameworks. These models are important tools that allow users to understand how the power system may evolve under different future conditions, but importantly, they are also used to inform policy implementation and investment decisions across all aspects of the power system. However, existing models seldom include energy justice considerations and therefore energy justice priorities are not reflected in the policies and other decision-making processes that are informed by these models. The purpose of this review is to provide a framework that energy modelers can draw upon to integrate energy justice and equity goals into PSMs. To this end, 99 papers that examine the intersection of energy justice and power system models are summarized and ten core aspects of the power system that can impact energy justice outcomes, and therefore require new modeling approaches, are identified. This review then establishes key current practices, challenges, and opportunities associated with capturing energy justice considerations in power system models across these ten aspects. This review concludes by proposing four key research directions that should be pursued to improve the representation of energy justice and equity in power system modeling. Finally, this review also addresses challenges raised by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7, which aims to ensure affordable energy access to everyone and Sustainable Development Goal 13, which aims to take urgent action to address climate change.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Developing a Reduced 240-Bus WECC Dynamic Model for Frequency Response Study of High Renewable Integration

The ongoing changes in the generation resource mix, driven by the rapid adoption of inverter-based resources (IBR) as well as the early retirement of synchronous generators, are bringing new challenges to the planning and operation of bulk electric power systems. Consequently, there is an increasing need to understand, design, and quantify the reliability service provision from IBRs by performing integrated scheduling and dynamic simulations. However, test systems that have consistent scheduling and dynamic models rarely exist largely because of the decoupled nature of the two simulations on a synchronous generator-dominated system. This paper develops the dynamic model of a reduced Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) system. In conjunction with the existing scheduling model, it is suitable for integrating scheduling and dynamic simulations. The reduced 240-bus WECC model reflects the generation resource mix of the Western Interconnection as of 2018. Moreover, the developed dynamic model is validated against field frequency events measured by FNET/GridEye and preserves the dominant inter-area oscillation mode in WECC.

dynamic simulation↗
DOE OSTI2024

Managing Increased Electric Vehicle Shares on Decarbonized Bulk Power Systems

Transportation electrification and power sector decarbonization - the convergence of these two trends present a complex planning problem requiring realistic, region-specific modeling and analysis to ensure that both can happen rapidly and cost effectively. This project, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office, models the evolution of the U.S. bulk power system (through 2050) in response to large-scale EV charging across all on-road vehicle segments. We will assess the opportunity and value of demand-side flexibility (i.e., "smart" charging) for reducing energy costs, increasing renewable generation shares, and managing future EV loads on the bulk power system. Overall, this study aims to provide an improved understanding of least-cost solutions for managing EV load growth on the grid and will make high-resolution EV load data sets publicly available for further analysis.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,ENERGY PLANNING, POLIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Same Goal, Different Pathways for Energy Transition: A More Holistic, Multisector, Community-Driven Approach

Low- and zero-carbon power systems are central to global decarbonization efforts. Costs for renewable energy (RE) and storage have fallen significantly, and advances in technologies and practices have improved the grid flexibility and stability needed to maintain the reliability of high-RE systems. Zero-carbon power systems, in turn, enable deep decarbonization through the electrification of other sectors, including transportation, buildings, and industry.

100% clean electricity↗
DOE OSTI2026

Effectively Considering the Distribution System in Integrated Resource Plans

While electricity planning practices vary by state and utility based on utility type and market structure, integrated resource planning (IRP) remains a prominent vehicle — even in states with centrally-organized wholesale electricity markets. IRP focuses on meeting forecasted long-term electricity needs. Typically, utilities have not considered impacts of design and operation of the low-voltage distribution network in IRP. With advanced capabilities of grid-edge technologies to generate and store electricity and provide load flexibility, and large utility investments in distribution systems, it's increasingly important to consider at least some distribution planning elements in IRP. This report considers the value proposition for doing so, such as reducing utility costs through resource co-optimization and strategic siting of grid-edge resources, and idenfities the most important touchpoints between planning for bulk power and distribution systems and provide a range of tactics for integrating these two processes.

Relf, Grace [Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory↗
DOE OSTI1991

Recommendations for Establishing Local Rural Electrification Programs Using Photovoltaic Systems [Recomendaciones Para la Implantacidn de Programas Locales de Electrificacidn Rural con Sistemas Fotovoltaicos]

Photovoltaic (PV) technology is becoming one the best options for supplying electricity to rural communities far from electrical networks and which have a small and disperse demand for electricity. As the cost of the technology goes down and its development advances, opportunities for applying it continue to grow. As a result, in the near future we will probably see an increase in massive application programs of this technology in rural Mexico. This document presents some of the most relevant problems needing immediate solution to increase the possibility of success in establishing photovoltaic programs for rural electrification in Mexico. These problems are influenced by economic, technological, engineering, infrastructural, social and political issues. The paper presents the requirements for an industrial center based on PV technology, the accessibility of replacement parts and maintenance service, development of financial solutions, training of the users and introducing norms and technical regulations. The document summarizes the issue of rural electrification in Mexico, emphasizing the low population density in these areas. A brief description is given of photovoltaics showing different configurations that can be utilized for supplying electricity to the rural areas. The issues involved and recommendations for introducing PV systems to the rural area are described.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Powered By CADET

The Capacity Expansion Decision Support for Distribution Networks (CADET) is a Python-based library and framework for creating electrical distribution system capacity planning tools for cost-effective, reliable power delivery. It enables the creation of modular, scalable, and extensible distribution capacity planning tools by providing a high-level optimization interface, parameter and options data managers, optimization constraint and objective libraries, generalized nomenclature, a system for tracking and modifying distribution network changes, optimization solution validation, and other capabilities. This webinar will describe 1) the motivation for creating CADET, 2) key designs, and 3) several use cases.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Climate-Induced Tradeoffs in Planning and Operating Costs of a Regional Electricity System

Electricity grid planners design the system in order to supply electricity to end users reliably and affordably. Climate change threatens both objectives through potentially compounding supply- and demand-side climate-induced impacts. Uncertainty surrounds each of these future potential impacts. Given long planning horizons, system planners must weigh investment costs against operational costs under this uncertainty. Here, we developed a comprehensive and coherent integrated modeling framework combining physically-based models with cost-minimizing optimization models in the power system. We applied this modeling framework to analyze potential tradeoffs in planning and operating costs in the power grid due to climate change in the Southeast U.S. in 2050. We find that planning decisions that do not account for climate-induced impacts would result in a substantial increase in social costs associated with loss of load. These social costs are a result of under-investment in new capacity and capacity deratings of thermal generators when we included climate change impacts in the operation stage. Finally, these results highlight the importance of including climate change effects in the planning process.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Ready for Renewables: Grid Planning and Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) in the Philippines

The Department of Energy of the Philippines launched the competitive renewable energy zones (CREZ) process to help achieve the country's goals of scaling up renewable energy generation on the power system and to ensure sustainable, secure, reliable, accessible, and affordable energy. The CREZ process identifies the most economic renewable energy resource areas so transmission planning and expansion can accelerate their development. By proactively focusing transmission expansion to these resource areas, renewable energy generation development obstacles such as transmission access, energy curtailment, land permitting (such as protected or high-slope areas), and regulatory barriers are easier to overcome thus, reducing risk for private sector renewable energy investment. This report is will cover the outputs of the CREZ process, the development of the outputs through stakeholder-driven coordination, and how this process will help the Philippines achieve their renewable energy goals.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Hydrogen Load Modeling Method for Integrated Hydrogen Energy System Planning

The integrated hydrogen energy system incorporates hydrogen energy into the power grid, which has been recognized as a promising option for reaching a 100% renewable electricity supply. It can make a profit because the hydrogen produced can be sold as fuel or used to generate electricity for grid services. In this paper, we develop a planning model for the integrated hydrogen energy system that considers the uncertainty of the load demand, the renewable energy generation, and the market prices. To calculate the hydrogen load, we simulate the refueling operations at a hydrogen fueling station over the course of one day and generate representative load profiles with K-means clustering. Moreover, the long-term profitability of the integrated system under both current and future conditions is validated in 10-year planning results.

grid service↗
DOE OSTI2022

Transmission-distribution long-term volt-var planning considering reactive power support capability of distributed PV

High penetration of grid-edge, inverter-based photovoltaic (PV) can cause significant voltage fluctuations not only at the distribution but also at the sub-transmission levels due to PV output intermittency. Traditional reactive power planning approaches do not consider intermittency, nor the possibility of coordinating the control of existing and future volt-ampere reactive resources. This paper proposes a reactive power planning tool for sub-transmission systems to mitigate voltage violations and fluctuations caused by high PV penetration and intermittency with a minimum investment cost. The planning tool coordinates with an optimization-based volt-var operational tool for: a) modeling the coordination of all existing var assets in both sub-transmission and distribution systems to reduce the need of new equipment, and b)selecting a set of scenarios with voltage violations, derived from PV intermittency c) testing the final investment decision. The tool obtains an investment need for each intermittency scenario with a proposed optimal power-flow framework with efficient techniques to handle a high number of discrete variables. Two options are provided for final planning decision: i) a conservative direct combination of investment need solutions and ii) a machine learning-based selection of representative investment needs at most time steps. The final investment decision options are verified using a realistic large-scale sub-transmission system and 5-minute PV and load data. The results show a significant voltage performance improvement with a lower investment cost for additional var equipment compared to conventional approaches.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Data-driven Community-centered Resilient Assessment and Planning Toolkit for Nexus of Energy and Water (DCRAPT-NEW)

Urban areas, including Detroit and Pittsburgh, have suffered significant dual outages of the electrical and water infrastructure in the past decade due, in part, to the increasing number of extreme weather events. With increasing temperatures and rainfall intensity, these regions need to prepare for increasing extreme events through community-based energy and water resilience analysis, planning, and enhancement. This project developed a suite of open-source, open-access, community-centered, data-driven assessment and distributed energy resource (DER) and planning tools for energy and water resilience enhancement in urban areas. Through establishing a multi-level community awareness and engagement mechanism and a comprehensive collection of power outage and flooding data, an innovative group of community energy and water resilience assessment and planning tools have been developed for a wide range of users with differing and variable sets of data available to them. The developed tools include (1) DOE EAGLE-I data-driven, deep-learning assisted resilience assessment and DER planning tools at the county level with socioeconomic factors incorporated; (2) Utility annual power outage data-driven tools for long term resilience assessment and DER planning and 15-min power outage data-driven tools for short term resilience assessment and planning; (3) Detailed engineering tools for energy and water systems resilience assessment and planning when the system topology and component fragility curves are available; (4) Alternative Resiliency Metric Calculation that extracts and separates outage and restoration processes; and (5) Co-optimization tools that evaluate the resilience of the power and sewage system and allow users to conduct joint planning with energy and wastewater systems. The developed tools provide planners, decision-makers, and stakeholders with powerful capabilities to systematically evaluate system/community resilience and optimal and actionable guidance for enhancing resilience while prioritizing DER investments. The tools have been used and validated in Detroit and Pittsburgh and can be used in other areas of the nation. In addition, this project will (1) advance the knowledge and applications of machine-learning methods in analyzing and fusing different layers of information and generating meaningful data points such as generating rare weather events; (2) significantly improve the energy and water resilience of the identified communities in Detroit and Pittsburgh and prepare for more frequent and severe weather conditions; (3) help communities assess extreme weather event impacts and address short-term and long-term resilience-related issues The developed tools have been made public via GitHub and demonstrated to community stakeholders and utility companies via the two annual workshops and numerous community engagement meetings. The project outcomes are also disseminated through publications in various journals and conference proceedings, and presentations at top conferences.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Guest Editorial: Planning and operation of resilient distribution system for integrated multi-energy

Resilience is the ability of power systems to prepare for and adapt to low-probability, high-impact incidents and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. With the ageing of electricity distribution infrastructure and increasing threats of weather-related incidents and natural disasters, the need to effectively enhance the resilience of the electricity distribution system has become urgent and has attracted worldwide attention. Although there are an increasing number of publications related to enhancing resilience strategies, resilience is an emerging concept in power systems. Existing practices are mostly focused on deploying distributed energy resources (DERs) and microgrids, hardening the existing infrastructures and building redundant capacities. However, from a broader perspective, resilience enhancement of power distribution system is a systematic engineering, involving long-term system planning and upgrading (e.g., deployment of smart grid technologies and intelligent switches), short-term proactive scheduling, real-time robust and resilient control of DERs, and post-event restoration and recovery strategies. Based on this point, this Special Issue in IET Energy System Integration focuses on soliciting the most recent and original technologies, scheduling and control strategies for improving the resilience of power distribution system. Eight papers are presented in this Special Issue, covering various aspects related to resilience enhancement of power distribution system, including fault-tolerant frequency measurement, robust scheduling of integrated electricity and district heating systems, robust control of DERs, efficient methods for safety verification as well as novel graph theory-based approach to restore the distribution systems after multiple simultaneous faults. A brief introduction of these 8 papers is provided below.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study (LA100): Chapter 1. Introduction

The City of Los Angeles has set ambitious goals to transform its electricity supply, aiming to achieve a 100% renewable energy power system by 2045, along with aggressive electrification targets for buildings and vehicles. To reach these goals, and assess the implications for jobs, electricity rates, the environment, and environmental justice, the Los Angeles City Council passed a series of motions directing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to determine the technical feasibility and investment pathways of a 100% renewable energy portfolio standard. The Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study (LA100) is a first-of-its-kind objective, rigorous, and science-based power systems analysis to determine what investments could be made to achieve these goals. The LA100 final report is presented as a collection of 12 chapters and an executive summary, each of which is available as an individual download. This chapter introduces the study.

100% Renewable↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study (LA100): Chapter 11. Economic Impacts and Jobs

The City of Los Angeles has set ambitious goals to transform its electricity supply, aiming to achieve a 100% renewable energy power system by 2045, along with aggressive electrification targets for buildings and vehicles. To reach these goals, and assess the implications for jobs, electricity rates, the environment, and environmental justice, the Los Angeles City Council passed a series of motions directing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to determine the technical feasibility and investment pathways of a 100% renewable energy portfolio standard. The Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study (LA100) is a first-of-its-kind objective, rigorous, and science-based power systems analysis to determine what investments could be made to achieve these goals. The LA100 final report is presented as a collection of 12 chapters and an executive summary, each of which is available as an individual download. This chapter reviews economic impacts, including local net economic impacts and gross workforce impacts.

100% Renewable↗