SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “296000 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Electric Power”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

1,567 records · Page 16

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

DOE OSTI2026

Roadmap and Benchmarking: Privacy in Federated Load Forecasting

Data-driven techniques for energy demand forecasting continue to emerge with promising impacts on distribution grid planning. However, the development of robust and generalizable machine learning models requires that representative high quality training data are available. Distributed energy resources have begun to embed intelligence, gathering large amounts of data on customer demand, behavior, and household devices that are connected to the grid. Though utilities aggregate meter-level demand data for load shaping, demand response, outage management, reliability planning, and billing applications, there lies an inherent privacy concern in sharing consumption data that may identify individual consumer behavioral patterns. Hence, while sharing the data is crucial, the private sensitive customer data must be safeguarded from being exposed or manipulated. In this study, we propose a roadmap for implementing a based privacy preserving framework to support the advancement of data-driven analytics in data-sensitive distributed energy resources environments. The roadmap incorporates federated learning–a distributed training framework, differential privacy–a statistical framework that provides guarantees to safeguard the leakage of sensitive data, secure multiparty computation and homomorphic encryption– techniques for encrypting model gradients and applying secure aggregation on the server. Moreover, we perform baseline experiments on the federated short-term load forecasting (STLF) task using open-source residential load profile datasets, offering insights into the challenges of integrating differential privacy into federated learning.

Abebe, Waqwoya [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORN↗

NASA NTRS1996

Hypervelocity Impact Testing of Nickel Hydrogen Battery Cells

Nickel-Hydrogen (Ni/H2) battery cells have been used on several satellites and are planned for use on the International Space Station. In January 1992, the NASA Lewis Research Center (LeRC) conducted hypervelocity impact testing on Ni/H2 cells to characterize their failure modes. The cell's outer construction was a 24 mil-thick Inconel 718 pressure vessel. A sheet of 1.27 cm thick honeycomb was placed in front of the battery cells during testing to simulate the on-orbit box enclosure. Testing was conducted at the NASA White Sands Test Facility (WSTF). The hypervelocity gun used was a 7.6 mm (0.30 caliber) two-stage light gas gun. Test were performed at speeds of 3, 6, and 7 km/sec using aluminum 2017 spherical particles of either 4.8 or 6.4 mm diameter as the projectile. The battery cells were electrically charged to about 75 percent of capacity, then back-filled with hydrogen gas to 900 psi simulating the full charge condition. High speed film at 10,000 frames/sec was taken of the impacts. Impacts in the dome area (top) and the electrode area (middle) of the battery cells were investigated. Five tests on battery cells were performed. The results revealed that in all of the test conditions investigated, the battery cells simply vented their hydrogen gas and some electrolyte, but did not burst or generate any large debris fragments.

Frate, David T.↗

DOE OSTI2025

Tensorized Interior Radiative Heat Transfer for a Scalable and Calibrated Building Energy Simulator

Building energy simulation is a critical tool for developing and testing advanced control strategies, such as Reinforcement Learning (RL), to provide demand flexibility and affordable energy costs. The recently introduced Smart Buildings Control Suite (sbsim) provides a lightweight, scalable, and data-calibrated simulation environment based on a 2D finite-difference model. However, the initial model primarily focused on conductive and convective heat transfer, neglecting the significant impact of long-wave radiative heat exchange between interior surfaces. This paper presents a significant extension to the sbsim framework by incorporating a physically-grounded model for interior radiative heat transfer. Our primary contribution is the development and integration of a fully tensorized radiative heat transfer module, which preserves the computational efficiency and scalability of the original simulator. This was achieved by developing a pipeline for view factor calculation, including an algorithm to identify directly seeing surfaces within complex floor plans, and formulating the net radiation equations for efficient execution on modern hardware accelerators. We validate the numerical accuracy of our tensorized implementation by comparing its results against a traditional iterative approach, demonstrating identical outcomes. This enhancement increases the physical fidelity of sbsim, enabling more accurate training of RL agents for building energy optimization.

Ham, Sang woo↗

NASA NTRS1977

The standard 20 AH battery

The modular power system, which is the first intended use for the NASA standard battery, is basically a four foot by four foot by eighteen inch box which can handle a complement of three 20 ampere hour batteries or later on the intended use is for three 50 ampere hour batteries to be the full complement. The system is designed to be used as a plug on component on a multi mission modular spacecraft. It has as a design point a basically 1250 watt orbital average load. The way it breaks up in a near earth orbit it would be somewhere around 1,000 watts for everything except 10 minutes, and during any 10 minute period it may go up to a peak of 3,000 watt load. Features of the battery reviewed include criteria to store electrical energy, the battery package, the covers and cases, and electrolytes. The capacities expected are 90 percent, the average cell capacity for 24 C, 90 percent of the actual battery capacity of 19 C, and 85 percent of the actual 25 degree battery capacity at zero discharge voltage for 50 percent DOD new battery is in the vicinity expected or predicted of 26.4 volts.

Zollner, M. T.↗

DOE OSTI2025

Development of a high fidelity CFD model for solvent evaporation and transport in porous structure during battery electrode drying

An efficient battery manufacturing process is the key to the mass production of Electric Vehicles (EV), in which drying is one of the most energy-intensive steps significantly influencing the battery cell performance. An accurate 3D CFD model for drying is essential for predicting the drying mechanism and optimizing its parameters. By optimizing the drying process, it is possible to reduce energy consumption and cost during battery manufacturing, minimize binder loading and maximize active material loading to achieve superior electrochemical performances and facilitate wider and faster public adoption of EV. This project aims to optimize the drying process during electrode manufacturing by leveraging high-fidelity, porous electrode simulations for solvent evaporation. By optimizing this process, we seek to reduce energy consumption during battery manufacturing, while minimizing binder loading and maximizing active material loading, with the overall goal of enhancing electrical vehicle performance.

Horner, Jeffrey Scott [Sandia National Laboratorie↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Thin-Film Embedded Sensors for Battery Health Monitoring

Hybrid or all-electric aircraft are being developed as the next generation of aircraft to both allow new forms of aviation and decrease environmental impact. Since these types of aircraft are based on high-capacity battery technology, safe operation of these batteries becomes increasingly important. In particular, the potential for battery failure due to uncontrolled chemical reactions resulting in thermal runaway, catastrophic failure, and battery fires must be addressed in order for such battery technology to have the level of safety needed for standard aviation implementation. Efforts to ensure battery safety often involve engineering solutions that seek to contain rather than prevent such events by early detection. Such approaches increase the system weight and decrease the power per unit mass provided by the battery system. Existing methods for measuring battery parameters to determine the battery state-of-health are limited. These methods include electrical measurements of the cell current and/or voltage output as well as temperature measurements taken externally on the cell surface. Such external temperature measurements are limited in their ability to provide early warning of impending battery failure. In response, an effort to develop sensors operating internal to battery for health monitoring has been ongoing in the NASA Sensor-based Prognostics to Avoid Runaway Reactions & Catastrophic Ignition (SPARRCI) project. The basic approach associated with this sensor work is the deposition of thin film sensors on the battery separator located between the anode and cathode of the battery. These thin film sensors are then monitored to determine changes in battery parameters and health. Microfabrication techniques are employed to minimize the overall impact of the sensors on battery operation through the implementation of sensors with minimal size, weight, and power consumption. The thickness of the films, which are fabricated through physical vapor deposition (sputtering), are on the order of thousands of angstroms and can have minimal surface area. Thin film sensors for system health management have been implemented for a many decades on complex components for aerospace applications. However, the application of thin films of this type on a battery separator for internal battery monitoring applications has not previously been demonstrated to our knowledge. This paper describes the development of sensors for the internal battery monitoring through the use of thin film sensor technology. Thin metal films were successfully deposited on a battery separator polymer material with good adherence and electrical continuity. Multiple types of sensors have been deposited, as well as lead connections from the sensor to the edge of the separator material. The ability of these thin film sensors immersed in electrolyte to perform multiple types of battery parameter measurements has been demonstrated. For example, a multiparameter sensor system measured multiple properties simultaneously inside of a pouch cell over a wide temperature range. Further, real time measurement of interior temperature changes in a battery pouch cell with an integrated interior temperature sensor was demonstrated. These changes include detecting a fault in the battery (shorting) in situ with rapid response time (less than a minute) corresponding to a more limited response by a temperature sensor mounted externally. Other aspects of monitoring battery health were also explored, such as real-time measurement of simulated dendrite growth/metal deposition by sensor on separator material demonstrated. Future efforts will include improvements in the durability of the sensor structure to allow introduction of the approach into standard battery fabrication techniques. Overall, this work is a step forward in providing a method to prevent catastrophic battery failures and provide a foundation for safer, lighter, and higher energy batteries for the electric aircraft industry.

thin film battery health↗

DOE OSTI2026

Challenges for Megawatt-Scale Artificial Intelligence Rack Infrastructure

As artificial intelligence (AI) computing densities continue to increase, industry is pursuing megawatt-scale rack architectures that require tightly coordinated advances in electrical power delivery, thermal management, operations, and infrastructure integration. This document summarizes the primary technical challenges for achieving this target.

Nawaz, Kashif [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000251612491)↗

DOE OSTI1968

Nuclear Physics Made Very, Very Easy

The fundamental approach to nuclear physics was prepared to introduce basic reactor principles to various groups of non-nuclear technical personnel associated with NERVA Test Operations. NERVA Test Operations functions as the field test group for the Nuclear Rocket Engine Program. Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) program is the combined efforts of Aerojet-General Corporation as prime contractor, and Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory as the major subcontractor, for the assembly and testing of nuclear rocket engines. Development of the NERVA Program is under the direction of the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, a joint agency of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This report is being reprinted for use in the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission and National Aeronautics and Space Administration educational and technology utilization programs.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

NASA NTRS2026

Application of Energy-efficient Electromagnetic Melt-Processing for the Upcycling of Recycled Polyphenylene Sulfide into Multifunctional Segregated Nanocomposites

Polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) is widely used in structural and functional composites because of its thermal stability, chemical resistance, and mechanical strength. As circular manufacturing becomes increasingly important, extending the service life of recycled PPS (rPPS) is essential. However, conventional high-temperature reprocessing accelerates thermo-oxidative degradation, reducing recycled composite performance. This study proposes a rapid and potentially energy-saving upcycling strategy for rPPS using electromagnetic (EM) melt-processing to form segregated carbon nanotube (CNT) networks and produce EM-responsive nanocomposites. The aim was to determine whether CNT-assisted EM heating could reduce polymer degradation while improving multifunctional properties at ultralow filler loadings. rPPS micropellets were coated with CNTs by ball milling to create conductive shells, then compacted into green bodies (GBs) and selectively melted by rapid EM irradiation. Structural, electrical, mechanical, rheological, and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding properties were evaluated. Electrical percolation occurred at an ultralow CNT loading of 0.08 wt%, with conductivity reaching (1.24 ± 0.74) × 10 -5 S⋅m -1 at 0.1 wt%. At this concentration, tensile strength and modulus increased by 72% and 99%, respectively. At ~ 0.7 mm thickness, X-band EMI shielding effectiveness reached 6 dB for GBs and 3 dB after EM processing. This shows that EM melt-processing upcycles rPPS into high-performance multifunctional nanocomposites with minimum thermal degradation.

recycled↗

DOE OSTI2026

Ductless Heat Pump Program

The Verde Ductless Heat Pump (DHP) Program expanded access to high-efficiency electric heating and cooling technologies for households in priority communities within the Portland Metro area. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office (DE-EE0010132), the program combined residential ductless heat pump deployment with community-based outreach, participant support, contractor partnerships, and system development to improve program delivery.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Aerothermal Shape Optimization of Actively-Cooled Battery Packs Using Conjugate Heat Transfer

Thermal management for battery is important for electric aircraft because battery temperature is critically important to vehicle safety, and it also has direct impact on the efficiency of the battery system. Because ambient air is a readily available resource for aircraft, this paper considers an active cooling concept with forced convection of ambient air through the battery pack. Conjugate heat transfer analysis is used to solve the coupled aero-thermal problem, which consists of a finite-volume computational fluid dynamics solver for the fluid domain, and a conduction heat transfer solver for the solid domain. A mixed Neumann and Dirichlet boundary condition is developed for the fluid-solid interface, which allows the solid domain to completely submerge in the fluid domain. A gradient-based optimization method is adopted, and the discrete adjoint approach implemented in DAFoam is used to efficiently compute the gradients. The aero-thermal coupling for primal analysis and gradient computation is handled using the OpenMDAO-based MPhys framework. A constant heat source is prescribed for the battery cells, and the battery shape (design variable) is optimized to minimize cooling pump power and battery weight (composite objective function) while keeping the battery temperature below a threshold (constraint). The optimized design achieves a 44.6% and 1.5% reduction in the cooling pump power and battery weight, respectively, and the maximal temperature constraint is satisfied. This work has the potential to reduce battery-pack weight, improve performance, and reduce the weight of thermal management systems for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

heat transfer↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Aerothermal Shape Optimization of Actively-Cooled Battery Packs using Conjugate Heat Transfer

thermal management↗

DOE OSTI2025

Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor Amplifiers for Fusion Plasma Heating and Control

This paper discusses power electronics developed under the ARPA-E GAMOW program to support nuclear fusion power production. The goal of this project was to develop and assess the potential for wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor devices in power electronics to enable high-efficiency and high-voltage solid-state systems for fusion plasma generation, heating, and control. The power electronics use an architecture in which multiple high-power boards can be combined to produce megawatt-level power, where using multiple boards provides high reliability. Two main areas of power electronics boards are developed in this project for fusion plasma heating and control applications: (1) pulse generation and control and (2) radiofrequency generation. The first area is for boards capable of driving high-voltage millisecond pulses at high duty cycles. The envisioned application of these pulses is in plasma control of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, plasma position, and edge-localized modes. Pulse-width modulation allows for the implementation of a wide variety of linear and nonlinear control systems. The boards developed for this project could actuate control coils based on digital input signals and can be parallelized to provide megawatts of output power. The design of the pulse generator is a low-side load switch. A load switch was designed and constructed that utilized 2-kV-rated field-effect transistor (FET)-based cascodes developed by Qorvo under this project to perform initial testing of these cascodes. The second area is being implemented using class E amplifiers with WBG devices and a reactance steering network to handle inductive or capacitive plasma loads. Applications include ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) and high-harmonic fast-wave (HHFW) heating. A class E reactance steering network is demonstrated in modeling and experiment with a resistive-inductive load that models an inductively-coupled plasma. Power combining of boards with class E reactance steering networks is also simulated and demonstrated experimentally, to enable scaling up to high power. Modeling of high-power-density cooling and remaining useful life is conducted to enable reliable, effectively cooled high-power electronics for fusion applications.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2026

In situ electric field X-ray total scattering reveals composition-dependent electromechanical strain mechanisms in (1 − x )BiFe 2/8 Ti 3/8 Mg 3/8 O 3 – x PbTiO 3 ceramics

Ferroelectric materials find many applications in energy and aerospace industries. A major challenge for ferroelectric materials is maintaining their properties at elevated temperatures. The (1 − x )BiFe 2/8 Ti 3/8 Mg 3/8 O 3 – x PbTiO 3 (BFTM–xPT) ferroelectric solid solution is a promising candidate for high-temperature applications as it has a high piezoelectric response while also maintaining its ferroelectric phase until a high Curie temperature (T C ) of 650 °C. In this work, we investigate the piezoelectric mechanism in BFTM–xPT, a novel high-T C ferroelectric ceramic. To elucidate the origin of its enhanced piezoelectric performance, relative to other piezoceramics of similar T C , in situ electric field X-ray total scattering experiments were performed. Total scattering combines Bragg scattering (diffraction) and diffuse scattering (pair distribution function), providing insight on various length scales. With information spanning different length scales, extrinsic contributions (i.e., domain wall motion and interphase boundary motion) can be separated from intrinsic contributions (i.e., piezoelectric lattice strain). We show that, for compositions within the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB, x = 0.325), the piezoelectric response is dominated by intrinsic piezoelectric lattice strain, whereas outside the MPB (x = 0.375) the major component of the piezoelectric response is from extrinsic mechanisms including an electric-field-induced phase transition and tetragonal domain wall motion. This article reveals that the origin of piezoelectric response in BFTM–xPT is composition-dependent and shows that high-performance materials may also be located outside the MPB. These findings can help guide material design to optimize properties for specific applications.

Richtik, Brooke N. [University of Calgary, AB (Can↗

NASA NTRS1984

Space Power

Appropriate directions for the applied research and technology programs that will develop space power systems for U.S. future space missions beyond 1995 are explored. Spacecraft power supplies; space stations, space power reactors, solar arrays, thermoelectric generators, energy storage, and communication satellites are among the topics discussed.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2026

Electromagnetic Melt Processing: A Pathway to New Additive Manufacturing Technologies for Functional High-Performance Thermoplastics

In this study, we apply the electromagnetic (EM) melt processing of thermoplastics on an innovative EM field-driven powder bed fusion additive manufacturing (AM) concept for high-performance functional parts: Selective Microwave Melting/Sintering (SMM/SMS). This technique leverages the EM susceptibility of carbon nanotube-coated polymer micro-pellets to achieve rapid, localized heating and powder fusion. Thus, selective microwave melting (SMM) was used to fabricate multilayer specimens made of recycled polyphenylene sulfide (rPPS) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The resulting SMM specimens exhibited very good interlayer integrity, localized fusion at pellet boundaries, and tolerable residual porosity, indicating effective fusion and acceptable consolidation. CNT-rich interphases were retained after irradiation, generating anisotropic electrically active network pathways and enabling conductivity enhancement at low filler content. At only 1.0 wt% CNT, the specimens exhibited electrical conductivity approximately three orders of magnitude higher than neat rPPS. Dynamic mechanical analysis showed improved viscoelastic response relative to neat rPPS, while tensile testing confirmed that the SMM-processed specimens retained practical mechanical integrity despite localized voids. These results demonstrate that SMM can effectively consolidate EM susceptible thermoplastic powder beds while preserving their segregated conductive networks. This may become a scalable route for producing multifunctional thermoplastic parts with low filler loadings, tunable anisotropy, and structured materials and parts. Overall, the findings suggest that EM field-based AM can help overcome key limitations of conventional thermoplastic processing by enabling scalable, energy-efficient fabrication of nanostructured composites and expanding AM to a broader range of resins, including high-performance thermoplastics with customized functional properties.

Powder bed fusion↗

NASA NTRS2002

Hubble Space Telescope On-orbit NiH2 Battery Performance

This paper summarizes the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) nickel-hydrogen (NiH2) battery performance from launch to the present time. Over the life of HST vehicle configuration, charge system degradation and failures together with thermal design limitations have had a significant effect on the capacity of the HST batteries. Changes made to the charge system configuration in order to protect against power system failures and to maintain battery thermal stability resulted in undercharging of the batteries. This undercharging resulted in decreased usable battery capacity as well as battery cell voltage/capacity divergence. This cell divergence was made evident during on-orbit battery capacity measurements by a relatively shallow slope of the discharge curve following the discharge knee. Early efforts to improve the battery performance have been successful. On-orbit capacity measurement data indicates increases in the usable battery capacity of all six batteries as well as improvements in the battery cell voltage/capacity divergence. Additional measures have been implemented to improve battery performance, however, failures within the HST Power Control Unit (PCU) have prevented verification of battery status. As this PCU fault prevents the execution of on-orbit capacity testing, the HST Project has based the battery capacity on trends, which utilizes previous on-orbit battery capacity test data, for science mission and servicing mission planning. The Servicing Mission 38 (SM-3B) in March 2002 replaced the faulty PCU. Following the servicing mission, on-orbit capacity test resumed. A summary of battery performance is reviewed since launch in this paper.

Rao, Gopalakrishna M.↗

DOE OSTI2026

Robust Heat-Flux Sensors for Coal-Fired Boiler Extreme Environments

In this project, robust heat-flux measurement systems were developed. The heat-flux sensors utilize thermoelectric effects to directly transduce the heat-flux inputs to analog electrical voltage signals. They were constructed from dedicated materials that can withstand temperatures of at least 1000°C and maintain adequate performance at these conditions for prolonged periods of time. The proposed approaches took into account numerous considerations, including system cost, sensor head resilience, sensor footprint, data accuracy, response time, and maintenance requirements. Through modern thermoelectric materials design, methodical materials selection and rigorous testing in materials characterization labs and medium-scale fire research facilities, we have demonstrated functioning laboratory prototypes, upon which one could base industrial heat-flux sensing platforms capable of operating in the challenging high-temperature, corrosive environments of the boilers of coal-fired power plants. A distributed sensor array for heat-flux measurements throughout the furnace water-wall, the superheater area and the economizer coils can provide critical data for the power plant control systems to increase efficiency, improve safety and reduce down times. For example, the combined heat-flux sensor/control systems can contribute to the optimization of burner and boiler operations under flexible loads, the optimization of heat-exchange conditions and overall reduction of heat rate and emissions, the prediction of imminent overheating conditions, and the optimization of the soot-blowing protocols.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗