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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 271 records · Page 15

Predictions of Transient Flame Lift-Off Length With Comparison to Single-Cylinder Optical Engine Experiments

A state-of-the-art, grid-convergent simulation methodology was applied to three-dimensional calculations of a single-cylinder optical engine. A mesh resolution study on a sector-based version of the engine geometry further verified the RANS-based cell size recommendations previously presented by Senecal et al. (“Grid Convergent Spray Models for Internal Combustion Engine CFD Simulations,” ASME Paper No. ICEF2012-92043). Convergence of cylinder pressure, flame lift-off length, and emissions was achieved for an adaptive mesh refinement cell size of 0.35 mm. Furthermore, full geometry simulations, using mesh settings derived from the grid convergence study, resulted in excellent agreement with measurements of cylinder pressure, heat release rate, and NOx emissions. On the other hand, the full geometry simulations indicated that the flame lift-off length is not converged at 0.35 mm for jets not aligned with the computational mesh. Further simulations suggested that the flame lift-off lengths for both the nonaligned and aligned jets appear to be converged at 0.175 mm. With this increased mesh resolution, both the trends and magnitudes in flame lift-off length were well predicted with the current simulation methodology. Good agreement between the overall predicted flame behavior and the available chemiluminescence measurements was also achieved. Our present study indicates that cell size requirements for accurate prediction of full geometry flame lift-off lengths may be stricter than those for global combustion behavior. This may be important when accurate soot predictions are required.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Translating climate change and heating system electrification impacts on building energy use to future greenhouse gas emissions and electric grid capacity requirements in California

Climate change and increased electrification of space and water heating in buildings can significantly affect future electricity demand and hourly demand profiles, which has implications for electric grid greenhouse gas emissions and capacity requirements. We use EnergyPlus to quantify building energy demand under historical and under several climate change projections of 32 kinds of building prototypes in 16 different climate zones of California and imposed these impacts on a year 2050 electric grid configuration by simulation in the Holistic Grid Resource Integration and Deployment (HIGRID) model. We find that climate change only prompted modest increases in grid resource capacity and negligible difference in greenhouse gas emissions since the additional electric load generally occurred during times with available renewable generation. Heating electrification, however, prompted a 30-40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions but required significant grid resource capacity increases, due to the higher magnitude of load increases and lack of readily available renewable generation during the times when electrified heating loads occurred. Overall, this study translates climate change and electrification impacts to system-wide endpoint impacts on future electric grid configurations and highlights the complexities associated with translating building-level impacts to electric system-wide impacts.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Energy Research at Idaho National Laboratory

Energy-related research at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) takes many forms. In this presentation, Liam Boire will step through a specific, on-going research project at INL which seeks to understand transmission grid resilience, and the components which can be improved to increase the resilience of our electrical infrastructure. While utilities and researchers similarly strive to improve power grid reliability, the frequency of large power outages are increasing. Thus, the importance for developing efficient methodologies that enable utilities and researchers alike to identify the most effective areas for improvement within the electric grid is more critical than ever. The method developed during this project recognized that a variety of factors were important to consider when identifying areas for improvement in the electric grid. Physics-based simulators are able to calculate voltage stability, load draws and generation capacities, and enumerate the combinations of component failures which result in system-wide failures (blackout scenarios). Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) is able to assign probabilities to these failure scenarios based on typical component data (or more specific data if a specific system is being analyzed), and thus prioritize the list of failure scenarios based on likelihood and the components based on importance. Finally, adaptive capacity models can simulate the candidate grid and evaluate real and reactive power generation versus demand over time, calculating the total adaptive capacity available in various regions of the grid. The less adaptive capacity a region has, the less “buffer” that region has from failure. Not only are the individual results of these analyses valuable in understanding grid resilience, but the results of these analyses can be cross-correlated for deeper insight. When a grid is analyzed with this approach, failure scenarios can be enumerated and ranked by likelihood, components can be ranked by likelihood to drive system-wide failure, regions can be evaluated for adaptive capacity, and sensitive regions can be identified by recognizing the locations of important components within sensitive regions. Following this detailed discussion, a brief overview of some of the other energy research and areas of interest for the lab will be presented.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Design of High-Fidelity Testing Framework for Secure Electric Grid Control

A solution methodology and implementation components are presented that can uncover unwanted, unintentional or unanticipated effects on electric grids from changes to actual electric grid control software. A new design is presented to leapfrog over the limitations of current modeling and testing techniques for cyber technologies in electric grids. We design a fully virtualized approach in which actual, unmodified operational software under test is enabled to interact with simulated surrogates of electric grids. It enables the software to influence the (simulated) grid operation and vice versa in a controlled, high fidelity environment. Challenges in achieving such capability include achieving low-overhead time control mechanisms in hypervisor schedulers, network capture and time-stamping, translation of network packets emanating from grid software into discrete events of virtual grid models, translation back from virtual sensors/actuators into data packets to control software, and transplanting the entire system onto an accurately and efficiently maintained virtual-time plane.

Yoginath, Srikanth B↗

Cyber-Physical Event Emulation-Based Transmission-and-Distribution Co-Simulation for Situational Awareness of Grid Anomalies (SAGA)

Energy management of transmission and distribution networks (T&D) is becoming more challenging with the accelerated adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs)-such as distributed photovoltaic generation and battery energy storage systems (BESS)-on the electric grid. To better analyze the impacts of DERs on both transmission and distribution systems, a comprehensive T&D co-simulation platform is developed. Further, with DERs more actively participating in system operation-e.g., by providing real-time grid services-their cyber vulnerability needs to be better understood to maintain system reliability. This paper discusses a cyber-physical events emulation-based T&D co-simulation platform to perform comprehensive cyber events emulations, physical simulation, and analysis of interdependent impacts. Results from the case studies-which show how cyber events on a synthetic distribution network can impact operations on the transmission and distribution network-validate that the proposed T&D cosimulation platform can perform cyber-physical events emulation and produce response in near realtime; therefore, with extensive simulation using the proposed co-simulation platform, the system operators can accumulate adequate training data for system situational awareness of grid anomalies.

anomalies detection↗

Modeling of Grid-Forming Inverters for Transient Stability Simulations of an all Inverter-based Distribution System

Existing models of grid-forming inverters are typically three-phase electromagnetic models and positive sequence electromechanical models. Both of them are not suitable for dynamic simulations of large scale three-phase unbalanced distribution systems. In order to investigate grid-forming inverters’ impact on the transient stability of large scale three-phase unbalanced distribution systems, a dynamic model of a grid-forming inverter is developed and implemented in an open-source GridLAB-D simulation environment. The advantage of this method is that it can be extended to full-size three-phase unbalanced distribution systems. Simulation results of an all grid-forming inverter-based modified version of IEEE 123-node distribution system verify the capability of grid-forming inverters to maintain the transient stability of a resilient distribution system.

Grid-forming, Inverter, Distribution System, Trans↗

Emerging Computing Architectures: Simulation of Power Electronics in Power Grids

As the penetration of power electronics increases in power grids, new computing architectures needed to be evaluated for the simulation of high-fidelity models of power electronics in power grids in operations. In this paper, emerging computing architectures such as quantum processing units are evaluated for the simulation of power electronics in power grids. A hybrid algorithm based on classical computing and quantum computing is developed and tested for different use cases of electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation of power electronics (PE)-based systems and simple circuits. The algorithms needed to simulate power electronics in emerging computing architectures are discussed and thereafter, simulation results are shown.

Debnath, Suman↗

Design of Photosensitive Glass based X-ray Anti-scattering Grid by using MCNP code - Paper 6

It is required to protect individual against the dangers of ionizing radiation from medical exposure. And in order to increase accuracy of radiography and radiotherapy, it is essential to remove scattered radiation. Therefore, to satisfy these, proper anti-scattering x-ray grid is required. An anti-scattering grid is composed of penetration material and shielding material. Many studies have been carried out about fabricating x-ray anti-scattering grid by lithography. Lithography gives benefit of getting high aspect ratio and makes it easy to have smooth and thin fabrication. Photosensitive glass is focused on because it has advantages for laser fabrication. UV laser micro fabrication technology is used widely in VLSI, and other micro systems. These technologies can be employed into anti-scattering grid because it is also requires precise fabrication. In this study, it includes computer simulation of grid with photosensitive glass. Some models are adopted and analyzed by using MCNP code and the efficiencies are estimated. (authors)

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Power grid reliability and security

This project has led to the development of a real-time simulation platform for electric power grids called Grid Simulator or GridSim for simulating the dynamic and information network interactions of large- scale power systems. The platform consists of physical models of power system components including synchronous generators, loads and control, which are simulated using a modified commercial power simulator namely Transient Stability Analysis Tool (TSAT) [1] together with data cleanup components, as well as an emulated substation level and wide-area power analysis components. The platform also includes realistic representations of communication network middleware that can emulate the real-time information flow back and forth between substations and control centers in wide-area power systems. The platform has been validated on a realistic 6000-bus model of the western American power system. The simulator GridSim developed in this project is the first of its kind in its ability to simulate real-time response of large-scale power grids, and serves as a cost effective real-time stability and control simulation platform for power industry.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Novel Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop Interface Method for Grid-Forming Inverter Systems

Power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulations of grid-forming (GFM) inverter systems facilitate the testing of drastic scenarios, such as on-grid to off-grid transitions and islanded microgrid operations without a stiff grid. To the authors’ best knowledge, most studies in the literature focus on PHIL simulations for grid-following inverter systems. Only a few studies focus on GFM inverters, and those are challenging and problematic, especially for high-power applications. This article proposes a novel PHIL simulation platform that enables interfacing high-power GFM inverter systems. The paper proposes the concept of a virtual GFM inverter as a part of the proposed PHIL interface. This addition of a virtual GFM inverter in the PHIL interface expands the conventional ideal transformer model (ITM) method and enables it to overcome the issues of instability of existing ITM methods. In the validation stage, a PHIL experiment is conducted on a three-phase, 480-V, 125-kVA GFM inverter system with the proposed interfacing method. The results corroborate that the proposed PHIL simulation method performs well and is stable for GFM inverter systems.

droop control↗

Demonstrate Mobility Energy Productivity Benefit of Intelligent Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Design Using Agent-Based Models

In this project, we seek to understand the impact of EV charging availability and charging behavior on regional travel demand, as well as the reciprocal impact of travel demand on the deployment of additional EV chargers, through simulation analysis. The focus on computational efficiency and extensibility in the development of the POLARIS and BEAM agent-based simulation engines allow for the efficient extension to Electric-Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) and grid interaction simulation. Simulation systems for analyzing interactions between vehicle charging and travel demand have previously been implemented, but generally involve simplified representations of traveler behavior, vehicle energy consumption or both.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

A framework for WRF to WRF-IBM grid nesting to enable multiscale simulations

With advances in computational power, mesoscale models, such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, are often pushed to higher resolutions. As the model’s horizontal resolution is refined, the maximum resolved terrain slope will increase. Because WRF uses a terrain-following coordinate, this increase in resolved terrain slopes introduces additional grid skewness. At high resolutions and over complex terrain, this grid skewness can introduce large numerical errors that require methods, such as the immersed boundary method, to keep the model accurate and stable. Our implementation of the immersed boundary method in the WRF model, WRF-IBM, has proven effective at microscale simulations over complex terrain. WRF-IBM uses a non-conforming grid that extends beneath the model’s terrain. Boundary conditions at the immersed boundary, the terrain, are enforced by introducing a body force term to the governing equations at points directly beneath the immersed boundary. Nesting between a WRF parent grid and a WRF-IBM child grid requires a new framework for initialization and forcing of the child WRF-IBM grid. This framework will enable concurrent multi-scale simulations within the WRF model, improving the accuracy of high-resolution simulations and enabling simulations across a wide range of scales.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Prescient

Prescient is a software package for simulating electricity grid (power systems) operations, under both nominal and extreme event conditions. Core functionality includes discrete event simulation, commitment and dispatch optimization, probabilistic scenario construction, and reporting/visualization. SAND2020-0169 M Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Watson, Jean Paul↗

A Novel Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop Interface Method for Grid-forming Inverter Systems: Preprint

Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) simulation of grid-forming (GFM) inverter systems facilitates the testing of drastic scenarios like on-grid to off-grid transition, islanded microgrid operation without stiff grid etc. To the authors best knowledge, most of studies in literature are focused on PHIL simulation for grid-following inverter systems and only few studies are focused on GFM inverters and those are challenging and problematic especially for high-power applications. In this article, a novel PHIL simulation platform is proposed that enables interfacing of high-power GFM inverter systems. It proposes the concept of a virtual GFM inverter as a part of the proposed PHIL interface for GFM inverter. This addition of virtual GFM inverter in the PHIL interface expands the conventional Ideal Transformer Model (ITM) method and enables it to overcome the issues of instability of existing ITM methods. In the validation stage, a PHIL experiment is conducted on a 3-phase 480 V, 125 kVA GFM inverter system with proposed interfacing method. The results corroborates the fact that the proposed PHIL simulation method performs well and stable for GFM inverter system.

grid-forming inverters↗

Direct Numerical Simulation of the Turbulent Flow Through PWR Spacer Grid and Mixing Vanes

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) has been regarded as a reliable data source for the development and validation of turbulence models along with experiments. The realization of DNS usually involves a very fine mesh that should be able to resolve all relevant turbulence scales down to Kolmogorov scale. As the most computationally expensive approach compared to other CFD techniques, DNS applications used to be limited to flow studies at very low Reynolds numbers. Thanks to the tremendous growth of computing power over the past decades, the simulation capability of DNS has now started overlapping with some of the most challenging engineering problems. One of those examples in nuclear engineering is the turbulent coolant flow inside reactor cores. In Light Water Reactor (LWR) cores, the nuclear fuel rods are arranged together as rod bundles in a triangular or square pattern. The fuel rod bundles are supported by the spacer grids. The mixing vanes are also installed to promote the turbulence intensity in coolant flow. An understanding of spacer grid and mixing vanes effect is important because it has a direct impact on the heat removal efficiency from the fuel rod surface. In the presented work, the DNS of turbulent flows are performed in three different types of geometries: (a) a regular Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) subchannel; (b) a special PWR subchannel with reduced size spacer grid and mixing vanes (SGMV); (c) a special PWR subchannel with reduced size SGMV, but with a longer domain size. The springs and dimples of the spacer grid are not represented for the simplicity in the present investigation. The mean flow velocity and turbulent kinetic energy profiles are averaged from the instantaneous DNS data in different types of geometries as well as various downstream locations with respect to SGMV region. The results will help better assess the influence of spacer grid and mixing vanes on core coolant flows.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Neural Network Predictive Controller for Grid-Connected Virtual Synchronous Generator

In this paper, a neural network predictive controller is proposed to regulate the active and the reactive power delivered to the grid generated by a three-phase virtual inertia-based inverter. The concept of the conventional virtual synchronous generator (VSG) is discussed, and it is shown that when the inverter is connected to non-inductive grids, the conventional PI-based VSGs are unable to perform acceptable tracking. The concept of the neural network predictive controller is also discussed to replace the traditional VSGs. This replacement enables inverters to perform in both inductive and non-inductive grids. The simulation results confirm that a well-trained neural network predictive controller illustrates can adapt to any grid impedance angle, compared to the traditional PI-based virtual inertia controllers.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Modeling of Grid-Forming and Grid-Following Inverters for Dynamic Simulation of Large-Scale Distribution Systems

Historically, distribution system planning studies mainly focused on steady state and quasi-steady state analysis, with limited attention paid to dynamic analysis. This paper develops three-phase, electromechanical models for both grid-forming and grid-following inverters, and integrates them into an open source, three-phase distribution network solver, thereby enabling dynamic simulation of large-scale, three-phase unbalanced distribution systems with high penetration of inverter-based DERs. The proposed inverter models are validated against electromagnetic simulation and field test data from the CERTS/AEP microgrid testbed, and simulated in an islanded 5252 node distribution system in the GridLAB-D simulation environment. Simulation verifies the effectiveness of the proposed inverter models for large-scale distribution system analysis. Finally, study results show that compared to traditional grid-following inverters, the high penetration of grid-forming inverters can improve the voltage and frequency stability of islanded distribution systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Cyber-Physical Events Emulation Based Transmission and Distribution Co-Simulation for Situation Awareness and Grid Anomaly (SAGA) Detection: Preprint

Energy management of transmission and distribution networks is becoming more challenged with the accelerated increasing of distributed energy resources (DERs) such as distributed photovoltaic (PV) generation and distributed energy storage. To better analyze the impacts of DERs on both transmission and distribution systems, a comprehensive transmission and distribution co-simulation platform should be developed. Furthermore, with DERs more actively participated in system operation such as providing real time grid services, their cyber vulnerability should be better understood to maintain system reliability. This paper discussed a cyber-physical events emulation based transmission & distribution co-simulation platform to perform different cyber events emulation and analyze the impacts of cyber physical events happened in distribution system on the T&D system operation. The case studies with both a transmission network and a synthetic distribution network data validate that the proposed T&D co-simulation platform can perform comprehensive cyber physical events emulation. Therefore, with extensive simulation using the proposed model, the system operator can accumulate adequate training data for the system situation awareness and grid anomaly detection purpose.

31 CESER - Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Securit↗