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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 289 records · Page 16

FitCache: A Transparent Drop-In Framework for Multi-Tier Caching to Accelerate Distributed Deep Learning Workloads

Training in Deep learning (DL) remains highly compute- and data-intensive, with I/O becoming a critical bottleneck as models and datasets scale. Recent studies report that data loading can dominate training time, especially on large-scale HPC systems with shared parallel file systems (PFS). Existing caching approaches either rely on single-tier designs or require intrusive modifications to training pipelines, limiting their portability and effectiveness. In this work, we present FitCache, a transparent drop-in framework for multi-tier caching to accelerate distributed DL training by coordinating fast local memory (e.g., DRAM, Persistent Memory (PMem)) and NVMe as hierarchical caches atop PFS. Our design adapts to hardware diversity, i.e., if NVMe is missing, memory transparently acts as a caching tier, ensuring stable performance. FitCache transparently intercepts I/O requests and issues concurrent fetches across all tiers, returning data from the fastest responder without centralized metadata or static redirection paths. FitCache adapts to dynamic workloads and heterogeneous clusters while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Experiments on Frontier (2048 GPUs) and smaller research clusters show that FitCache reduces training time by up to 40% and per-batch I/O latency by up to 71.6% compared to Lustre Orion PFS, offering a drop-in solution for scalable DL training.

Hu, Guangxing [ORNL] (ORCID:0009000283203614)↗

Dynamic programming on a shared-memory multiprocessor

Three new algorithms for solving dynamic programming problems on a shared-memory parallel computer are described. All three algorithms attempt to balance work load, while keeping synchronization cost low. In particular, for a multiprocessor having p processors, an analysis of the best algorithm shows that the arithmetic cost is O(n-cubed/6p) and that the synchronization cost is O(absolute value of log sub C n) if p much less than n, where C = (2p-1)/(2p + 1) and n is the size of the problem. The low synchronization cost is important for machines where synchronization is expensive. Analysis and experiments show that the best algorithm is effective in balancing the work load and producing high efficiency.

Edmonds, Phil↗

Hanover LED Streetlight Conversion

On May 8, 2017, Hanover residents voted overwhelmingly to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2030 and heating, cooling and transportation by 2050. In so doing, we became the first municipality in the country to make this commitment by popular vote. To accomplish these goal town leaders developed a plan to address first transitioning municipal energy uses to renewable forms of energy, through on-site generation of the municipal electrical load, load reduction through energy efficiency improvements to town facilities and infrastructure. Significant progress has been accomplished in the generation of energy with 90%+ of the 2024 municipal load being offset by generation and through various energy efficiency projects. The utility owned street lighting was identified as a large energy consumer of 165 MWh annually (7% of the annual municipal load) due to old inefficient high-pressure sodium and mercury vapor streetlights with no ability to reduce wattage during periods with low lighting needs. The Hanover LED Streetlight Replacement Project replaced utility owned streetlights with town owned controllable (dimmable and trimmable) LED lights that can be adjusted by location and time of night. Coupled with ownership of the streetlights transfer to the town, the town’s share of the project pay back is 11 months and for the complete project including federal share the payback is approximately 3 years. With the completion of lighting upgrade, the annual streetlighting energy load has dropped by 60% to 67 MWh in the first year of operation (7/1/24 - 6/30/25). This amounts to an approximate $90,000 annual savings or a local 1% tax rate impact. Additionally, over 200,000 pounds of CO2 will be saved annually.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Unbalanced Parallel I/O: An Often-Neglected Side Effect of Lossy Scientific Data Compression

Lossy compression techniques have demonstrated promising results in significantly reducing the scientific data size while guaranteeing the compression error bounds. However, one important yet often neglected side effect of lossy scientific data compression is its impact on the performance of parallel I/O. Our key observation is that the compressed data size is often highly skewed across processes in lossy scientific compression. To understand this behavior, we conduct extensive experiments where we apply three lossy compressors MGARD, ZFP, and SZ, which are specifically designed and optimized for scientific data, to three real-world scientific applications Gray-Scott simulation, WarpX, and XGC. Our analysis result demonstrates that the size of the compressed data is always skewed even if the original data is evenly decomposed among processes. Such skewness widely exists in different scientific applications using different compressors as long as the information density of the data varies across processes. We then systematically study how this side effect of lossy scientific data compression impacts the performance of parallel I/O. We observe that the skewness in the sizes of the compressed data often leads to I/O imbalance, which can significantly reduce the efficiency of I/O bandwidth utilization if not properly handled. In addition, writing data concurrently to a single shared file through MPI-IO library is more sensitive to the unbalanced I/O loads. Therefore, we believe our research community should pay more attention to the unbalanced parallel I/O caused by lossy scientific data compression.

Wang, Xinying↗

Sensor Impact Evaluation at Different Sensor Locations in a Multi-zone Office Building

FY 2022 Q1 deliverables include the development of an emulator that can evaluate the sensor impacts at different sensor locations (i.e., thermostat locations) in a multizone office building. This report presents the detailed procedure of developing the emulator and using the emulator for preliminary sensor impact analysis. In designing new multizone buildings or retrofitting existing buildings, the room thermostat locations or subzoning design has been often determined by best practices without considering the effects of this design in terms of energy or thermal comfort. In subzoning design, the total number of thermostats is usually smaller than the total number of rooms. As a result, one thermostat in one room often controls the indoor temperature of several other adjacent rooms. For example, five zones might share one thermostat located in one of the zones. Because the demands for thermal load in different zones could be different for the multizone buildings, this subzoning design can compromise control performance and waste building energy consumption. Furthermore, for multizone buildings, subzoning could introduce thermal discomfort for zones. This issue has not be thoroughly investigated in simulation/field studies, and the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory explored the impacts of subzoning design through modeling and experimental study.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Development of Shared Mounting Structure for SUSAN Aircraft Tail and Aft Engine

This paper introduces an overview of the design and development of the Subsonic Single Aft eNgine (SUSAN) aircraft aft tail and engine shared mounting structure. Unique design considerations were made here to take advantage of aerodynamic effects such as boundary layer ingestion of the aft mounted engine. Challenges that arose from sharing the same mounting structure with the T-tail and aft engine were addressed. The structural development process will be discussed for both the initial design concept for the full-scale SUSAN aircraft concept, as well as the higher fidelity development of the 25% scale research vehicle. Numerical simulations for the aerodynamic loads are detailed and were fed into the 25% scale structural analysis effort. Additionally, mockup component fabrications of the shared aft engine and tail mounting structure are also shown to demonstrate design feasibility.

Lilia R Glaser↗

Dispatching Grid-Forming Inverters in Grid-Connected and Islanded Mode: Preprint

This paper explores the dispatch-ability of grid-forming (GFM) inverters in grid-connected and islanded mode. Grid-forming (GFM) inverters usually use droop control to automatically share power with other GFM sources (inverters and synchronous generator (SG)) and follow the change of the load demand. However, they can be dispatched like their grid-following (GFL) counterparts to output the target active and reactive power. This will help the grid operator better manage their inverter-based resources (IBRs) for improved operation efficiency and reliability. Therefore, this paper proposes an innovative concept of dispatching GFM sources (inverters and SG) to output the target power for both grid-connected and islanded mode by adjusting their droop intercepts. The fundamental principle of doing so is that the GFM inverter's active and reactive power is dictated by its frequency and voltage, thus, dispatching active and reactve power of a GFM inverter can be achieved through dispatching its frequency and voltage. Moreover, the concept distinguishes the dispatch rules for grid-connected and islanded mode. Finally, the concept is validated with an example microgrid system with two GFM inverters, one diesel generator, one grid-following inverter and loads in both grid-connected and islanded mode. This pioneering work results in a practical guidance for power system energy management system (EMS) development to control a future grid with GFM and GFL inverters.

droop control↗

Gateway Cities Unplugged: (em)Powering Affordable Housing (Final Technical Report)

The Gateway Cities Unplugged: (em)Powering Affordable Housing (the “Project”) was launched to address a critical challenge in the U.S. building and energy sectors: enabling multifamily buildings especially those serving low and moderate‑income (LMI) communities to actively support grid modernization through Grid‑Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB). Multifamily housing represents a large share of national building energy consumption, yet the sector faces persistent barriers to adopting advanced load flexibility technologies, including capital constraints, aging infrastructure, and limited access to demand‑side management tools. This Project sought to overcome those barriers by defining, evaluating, and designing commercially viable GEB technology packages for six representative multifamily properties across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Force sharing in high-power parallel servo-actuators

The various existing force sharing schemes were examined by conducting a literature survey. A list of potentially applicable concepts was compiled from this survey, and a brief analysis was then made of each concept, which resulted in two competing schemes being selected for in-depth evaluation. A functional design of the equalization logic for the two schemes was undertaken and specific space shuttle application was chosen for experimental evaluation. The application was scaled down so that existing hardware could be utilized. Next, an analog computer study was conducted to evaluate the more important characteristics of the two competing force sharing schemes. On the basis of the computers study, a final configuration was selected. A load simulator was then designed to evaluate this configuration on actual hardware.

Neal, T. P.↗

A synchronized computational architecture for generalized bilateral control of robot arms

This paper describes a computational architecture for an interconnected high speed distributed computing system for generalized bilateral control of robot arms. The key method of the architecture is the use of fully synchronized, interrupt driven software. Since an objective of the development is to utilize the processing resources efficiently, the synchronization is done in the hardware level to reduce system software overhead. The architecture also achieves a balaced load on the communication channel. The paper also describes some architectural relations to trading or sharing manual and automatic control.

Bejczy, Antal K.↗

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↗

An Efficient Annual-Performance Model of a Geothermal Network for Improved System Design, Operation, and Control: Preprint

Geothermal district energy systems (DES), and specifically geothermal networks, provide a viable solution for decarbonizing residential and commercial heating and cooling loads. District energy systems of all kinds enable a thermal resource with a relatively high capital cost (such as a geothermal borehole field) to be shared among a large number of users. While district heating and cooling has been studied for many years, geothermal networks, fifth generation DES that utilize water-source heat pumps and an ambient temperature loop to meet heating and cooling loads, have not been implemented extensively and thus require additional technical and economic optimization to obtain maximum benefits. This paper presents a newly developed reduced-order model that captures the flow of energy within the network, including the commercial and residential users' electrical usage, at an hourly rate over a year. The model includes building loads, heat pumps, borehole fields, and auxiliary heat/cool input, all connected with an ambient-temperature thermal loop model. In the model, operational control is possible for the borehole fields, circulation pump, and auxiliary system. For a given system, the model can output the complete state parameters for each component, the thermal loop, and the collective system, such as flow rate over time, average thermal loop temperature over time, and total electricity usage. The model can also be used to optimize the system control for maximizing system efficiency or minimizing system operational cost. For example, one initial assessment of the borehole controller for an example system showed that a controller with on/off operation of the borehole field reduces annual electrical usage by 33%, compared with continuous operation mode. Hence, the model can assist in optimizing a given system's operation to get the most value out of a geothermal network installation. Future work will consider the model's application to a demonstration project, including the model validation against operational data and system operation optimization.

ambient-temperature loop↗

Chapman-1024 Processor Shared Memory

NASA has developed new technology that improves upon weakness in current mainstream supercomputer designs: those of "scalability," "humadmachine interface," and "load balancing." The system simplifies running large computer simulations of national and international importance like climate prediction and space vehicle design.

Ciotii, Robert↗

Methods for Computing Physically Realistic Estimates of Electric Water Heater Demand Response Resource Suitable for Bulk Power System Planning Models

Demand response is commonly called on to reduce load during system peak times or to respond to contingency events. In future power systems with higher shares of wind and solar generation (which we describe together as variable generation [VG]), demand response could have more opportunities to provide energy shifting or operating reserve services. This report evaluates the ability of residential electric water heaters, both electric resistance water heaters (ERWHs) and heat pump water heaters (HPWHs), to provide such services starting from detailed whole-building energy models that realistically represent New England single family home stock. We use a parsimonious surrogate model to represent operational flexibility in a form suitable for linear and mixed integer programming. This enables relatively fast determination of aggregate contingency reserve resource, price-taking energy shifting outcomes, and in some cases the determination of aggregate models at the megawatt (MW) scale that can be directly included in large-scale grid models. After selecting modeling methods and parameters through various computational experiments, we find interquartile ranges of contingency reserve resource in ISO-NE for about 603,400 ERWHs of 45 MW - 69 MW for Claim10 (50 minute responses provided with 10 minutes of advanced notification) and 65 MW - 102 MW for Claim30 (30 minute responses provided with 30 minutes of advanced notification), and for about 619,000 HPWHs of 48 MW - 88 MW for Claim10 and 52 MW - 90 MW for Claim30. The overall reserve resource is up to 32% of total load for ERWHs providing Claim10 service, 47% for ERWHs providing Claim30 service, 93% for HPWHs providing Claim10 service, and 97% for HPWHs providing Claim30 service. More work is required to determine if HPWHs are inherently more suitable than ERWHs for providing contingency reserve or if these results reflect idiosyncrasies of the single family home stock model used in this study. The value of this contingency resource in a Near-term VG model of ISO-NE is $\$ 0.40$ to $\$1.20$ per water heater-year, and significantly larger, $\$ 3.80$ to $\$ 5.30$ per water heater-year in a Mid-term VG model of ISONE. Aggregating surrogate models to the MW-scale for energy shifting service is more challenging than for contingency service and we only present such results for ERWHs, because we were unable to determine satisfactory ways to deal with HPWHs' time-varying and path dependent operational characteristics. Individual surrogate models suitable for evaluating the energy shifting resource from both ERWHs and HPWHs are created, however, and dispatched against day-ahead prices from the Near-Term VG and Mid-Term VG models of ISO-NE. The individual surrogate models are able to access and potentially shift all 640 GWh of HPWH load and 1,547 GWh of ERWH load we modeled in two different single family home stock models. In contrast, the most effective model of aggregate ERWH shifting resource we created only captured 34.7% of the total ERWH load. Energy shifting affected by price-taking dispatch against modeled day-ahead energy prices produces per water heater year profits of $\$19.44$ - $\$22.93$ for individual HPWHs, $\$39.11$ - $\$40.54$ for individual ERWHs, and up to $\$4.00$ - $\$4.24$ for aggregated ERWHs, with the variations mainly due to grid conditions (more or less VG). When the supply-side response to these changes is accounted for, the per water heater year production cost savings for ISO-NE are $\$7.50$ to $\$17.70$ for the most effective set of endogenously dispatched aggregate ERWHs, $\$15.60$ to $\$15.70$ for individual ERWHs dispatched against the DA prices, and $\$10.70$ to $\$11.20$ for individual HPWHs dispatched against DA prices. Those ranges primarily represent the difference between Near-Term VG and Mid-Term VG grid conditions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Optimal Control Strategy With Efficiency and Reliability Improvement for Offshore DC Microgrids

Offshore microgrids, due to their remote location and lack of external energy support, face significant challenges in wide-range load operation and maintenance. Consequently, efficiency and reliability are critical concerns for converters in offshore dc microgrids. This article presents an optimal control strategy aimed at enhancing both efficiency and reliability. A normalized nonlinear relationship between power loss and thermal stress of a paralleled converter is first established. Based on this, a dual-objective optimization function with an active weight function as well as a system overall performance index is established. The active weight function dynamically adjusts the control priority based on converter efficiency and switching device thermal stress. Then, the optimal power-sharing strategy is derived by the Lagrange multiplier method with the proposed optimal function. Additionally, to accommodate a wide load range, an optimal selection strategy for operating converter combinations is proposed, requiring only low-bandwidth communication. Experiment verification is given to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy can improve the overall performance of offshore microgrids by optimizing efficiency and reliability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Dispatching Grid-Forming Inverters in Grid-Connected and Islanded Mode

This paper explores the dispatchability of grid-forming (GFM) inverters in grid-connected and islanded mode. GFM inverters usually use droop control to automatically share power with other GFM sources (inverters and synchronous generators) and follow the change in the load demand; however, they can be dispatched like their grid-following (GFL) counterparts to output the target active and reactive power. This will help grid operators better manage their inverter-based resources (IBRs) to improve operation efficiency and reliability; therefore, this paper proposes an innovative concept of dispatching GFM sources (inverters and synchronous generators) to output the target power in both grid-connected and islanded mode by adjusting their droop intercepts. The fundamental principle is that the GFM inverter's active and reactive power is dictated by its frequency and voltage, and thus dispatching the active and reactve power of a GFM inverter can be achieved through dispatching its frequency and voltage. Moreover, the concept distinguishes the dispatch rules for grid-connected and islanded mode. Finally, the concept is validated with an example microgrid system with two GFM inverters, one diesel generator, one GFL inverter, and the load in both grid-connected and islanded mode. This pioneering work results in practical guidance for the development of energy management systems for future electric grids with GFM and GFL inverters.

dispatching↗

Community-Based Transactive Coordination Mechanism for Enabling Grid Edge Systems

The changing landscape of the electricity industry, characterized by a surge in distributed energy resources (DERs) and proactive customers, necessitates practical solutions for coordinated operations especially at the distribution-level. This paper introduces a community-based transactive coordination mechanism designed to incentivize customers for providing localized and system-level services reflected through real-time prices. The work presents a bidding approach for communities with DERs, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage systems (BESS), to formulate their price-responsiveness for retail energy coordination, emphasizing a community-centric model. By sending bidding curves to a third-party, the mechanism enables customers with DER assets to actively participate in localized coordination with the load serving entity (LSE), thereby supplementing each other’s and even the utilities needs through a shared energy economy. The proposed transactive mechanism is implemented leveraging a co-simulation framework that integrates a distribution grid simulator and Python-based agents for performance evaluation. Collaboration with a local utility to access real distribution feeder models and consumption profiles yields simulation results demonstrating the potential to reduce costs by 12\% for communities with DERs like PV and BESS.

Community-based coordination, grid-edge systems, R↗

Security Constrained Distributed Transaction Model for Multiple Prosumers

Massive access of renewable energy has prompted demand-side distributed resources to participate in regulation and improve flexibility of power systems. With large-scale access of massive, decentralized, and diverse distributed resources, demand-side market members have transformed from traditional “consumers” to “prosumers”. To explore the distributed transaction model of prosumers, in this paper, a multi-prosumer distributed transaction model is proposed, and the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) theory is applied to quantify potential risks caused by the stochastic characteristics inherited from renewable energy. First, a prosumer model under constraints of the distribution network including photovoltaic units, fuel cells, energy storage system, central air conditioning and flexible loads is established, and a multi-prosumer distributed transaction strategy is proposed to achieve power sharing among multiple prosumers. Second, a prosumer transaction model based on CVaR is constructed to measure risks inherited from the uncertainty of PV output within the prosumer and ensure safety of system operation in extreme PV output scenarios. Then, the alternating direction multiplier method (ADMM) is utilized to solve the constructed model efficiently. Finally, distributed transaction costs of prosumers are distributed fairly based on the generalized Nash equilibrium to maximize social benefits. Simulation results show the multi-prosumer distributed transaction mechanism established under the proposed generalized Nash equilibrium method can encourage power sharing among prosumers, increasing their own income and social benefits. Also, the CVaR can assist decision making of prosumers in weighting the risks and benefits, improving system resilience through energy management of prosumers.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗