Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “municipalities”

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.

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

At least 289 records · Page 16

Travel Decision Survey - San Francisco - 2014

On behalf of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), Corey, Canapary & Galanis undertook a Travel Decision Survey within the City and County of San Francisco, as well as the eight surrounding Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin, Santa Clara, Napa, Sonoma, and Solano. The primary goals of this study were to: 1. Assess percent mode share for travel in San Francisco for evaluation of the SFMTA Strategic Objective 2.3: Mode Share target of 50% non-private auto travel by FY 2018 with a 95% confidence level and margin of error ±5% or less. 2. Evaluate the above statement based on number of trips to, from, and within San Francisco by Bay Area residents. Trips by visitors to the Bay Area and for commercial purposes are not included. 3. Provide additional trip details, including trip purpose for each trip in the mode-share question series. 4. Collect demographic data on the population of Bay Area residents who travel to, from, and within San Francisco. 5. Collect data on travel behavior and opinions that support other SFMTA strategy and project evaluation needs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Travel Decision Survey - San Francisco - 2015

On behalf of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), Corey, Canapary & Galanis undertook a Travel Decision Survey within the City and County of San Francisco, as well as the eight surrounding Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin, Santa Clara, Napa, Sonoma, and Solano. The primary goals of this study were to: 1. Assess percent mode share for travel in San Francisco for evaluation of the SFMTA Strategic Objective 2.3: Mode Share target of 50% non-private auto travel by FY 2018 with a 95% confidence level and margin of error ±5% or less. 2. Evaluate the above statement based on number of trips to, from, and within San Francisco by Bay Area residents. Trips by visitors to the Bay Area and for commercial purposes are not included. 3. Provide additional trip details, including trip purpose for each trip in the mode-share question series. 4. Collect demographic data on the population of Bay Area residents who travel to, from, and within San Francisco. 5. Collect data on travel behavior and opinions that support other SFMTA strategy and project evaluation needs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Travel Decision Survey - San Francisco - 2017

On behalf of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), Corey, Canapary & Galanis undertook a Travel Decision Survey within the City and County of San Francisco, as well as the eight surrounding Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin, Santa Clara, Napa, Sonoma, and Solano. The primary goals of this study were to: 1. Assess percent mode share for travel in San Francisco for evaluation of the SFMTA Strategic Objective 2.3: Mode Share target of 50% non-private auto travel by FY 2018 with a 95% confidence level and margin of error ±5% or less. 2. Evaluate the above statement based on number of trips to, from, and within San Francisco by Bay Area residents. Trips by visitors to the Bay Area and for commercial purposes are not included. 3. Provide additional trip details, including trip purpose for each trip in the mode-share question series. 4. Collect demographic data on the population of Bay Area residents who travel to, from, and within San Francisco. 5. Collect data on travel behavior and opinions that support other SFMTA strategy and project evaluation needs.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Reference data, predictors, and probability grids for forest degradation classes in three sites in the Brazilian Amazon

Forest degradation by fires and selective logging is widespread in the Amazon region. We implemented a gradient boosted classification modeling framework to classify intact, logged, and burned forests at three Amazonian sites: Feliz Natal Municipality and Xingu Indigenous Territory in Mato Grosso State, and Saracá-Taquera National Forest in Pará State. We used forest degradation history from Landsat time-series as reference data and textural metrics derived from PlanetScope images as predictors. Textural metrics were computed using the Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) textural technique. Included in the attached zip file are ten files: - a shapefile containing the reference data (fire and selective logging polygons and year of event) for each site; - a multiband tif file containing the 8 GLCM metrics used as predictors (Mean, Variance, Homogeneity, Contrast, Dissimilarity, Entropy, Angular Second Moment, Correlation) at the original PlanetScope resolution (3.125m) for each site; - a multiband tif file containing the 72 aggregated GLCM metrics used as predictors (Mean, Variance, Homogeneity, Contrast, Dissimilarity, Entropy, Angular Second Moment, and Correlation aggregated using the mean, first quartile, third quartile, maximum, median, minimum, root mean square, standard deviation, and skewness statistics) at 562m resolution for each site; - a multiband tif file containing the 3 probability grids for either intact, logged, or burned forests at the aggregation resolution (562m) for each site.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

AmeriFlux MX-Aog Alamos Old-Growth tropical dry forest

This is the AmeriFlux version of the carbon flux data for the site MX-Aog Alamos Old-Growth tropical dry forest. Site Description - This tower is located at a patch of remnant old growth tropical dry forest where the dominant vegetation are leguminous trees and a notorious presence of the genus Brusera. The site is at about 18 km from the municipality of Alamos Sonora Mexico within a private ranch managed by the NGO Nature Culture International. The area is also within a federally protected land named “Area de Proteccion de Flora y Fauna Sierra de Alamos Rio-Cuchijaqui" in the catalog of the “Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP-Mexico)”. The preserved ranch is surrounded by a mosaic of forest patches with different successional stages of tropical dry forest, and some places that are used for local agriculture and livestock. This ecosystem lies in a highly seasonal region under the influence of the North American Monsoon that brings about 70% of the rains from July to September.

Yepez, Enrico A.↗

AmeriFlux FLUXNET-1F MX-Aog Alamos Old-Growth tropical dry forest

This is the AmeriFlux Management Project (AMP) created FLUXNET-1F version of the carbon flux data for the site MX-Aog Alamos Old-Growth tropical dry forest. This is the FLUXNET version of the carbon flux data for the site MX-Aog Alamos Old-Growth tropical dry forest produced by applying the standard ONEFlux (1F) software. Site Description - This tower is located at a patch of remnant old growth tropical dry forest where the dominant vegetation are leguminous trees and a notorious presence of the genus Brusera. The site is at about 18 km from the municipality of Alamos Sonora Mexico within a private ranch managed by the NGO Nature Culture International. The area is also within a federally protected land named “Area de Proteccion de Flora y Fauna Sierra de Alamos Rio-Cuchijaqui" in the catalog of the “Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP-Mexico)”. The preserved ranch is surrounded by a mosaic of forest patches with different successional stages of tropical dry forest, and some places that are used for local agriculture and livestock. This ecosystem lies in a highly seasonal region under the influence of the North American Monsoon that brings about 70% of the rains from July to September.

Yepez, Enrico A. [Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora]↗

Cryogenic Carbon Capture™ (CCC) Status Report

The Cryogenic Carbon Capture™ (CCC) process separates CO2 from light gases in essentially any continuous process. CCC cools the gases to the frost or desublimation point of CO2 (-100 to -135 °C), separates and pressurizes the solids, and warms all streams to produce a CO2-depleted stream at ambient pressure and a pure (99+%) pressurized liquid CO2 stream typically to about 150 bar, both at ambient temperature. The process also recovers all gas moisture and most gas impurities less volatile than CO2 (NOx, SOx, Hg, PM, UHC, CCC, etc.) in separable streams. CCC nearly eliminates refrigeration energy for sensible temperature changes through heat integration. CCC does require energy to change the CO2 phase from a mixed vapor to a pressurized fluid, which represents the minimum energy required of any process for this separation. CCC uses additional energy for turbomachinery inefficiencies, heat losses, moisture removal and overall process pressure drop. Aside from these real-world energy demands, CCC operates near the minimum energy required to perform this gas separation by minimizing stream recycling. CCC compresses CO2 as a liquid, which is one of several reasons it costs about about half as much and consumes about half as much energy as an amine process when using flue gases with about 15% CO2. The process also has several major additional advantages, including (a) it is a bolt-on retrofit technology that does not need steam or any modification of existing equipment, (b) it recovers water and nearly all pollutants in addition to CO2 from the flue gas, (c) it enables highly efficient and cost effective energy storage at grid scale and on time scales of minutes, (d) it enables NG storage if the energy storage option is used, and (d) it has a small footprint and is minimally disruptive to existing plants, requiring only electrical power and a gas source to operate. Sustainable Energy Solutions (SES) has scaled this technology through several levels, the largest of which captures nominally 1 tonne of CO2/day and is called the skid system. Skid system field tests include utility-scale power plants, cement plants, heating plants, and other utility or industrial sites that burn natural gas, biomass, coal, shredded tires, municipal waste, and combinations of these fuels. These field tests produced 95-99% CO2 capture with CO2 purities of 99+% and initial CO2 contents that range from 4 to 28%. SES currently seeks to scale the system to merchant scale (10-80 tonnes of CO2 per day). In the process of doing so, SES has demonstrated the potential for CCC to contribute to energy storage and direct air capture in innovative and cost-effective ways. This presentation discusses the overall process and highlights results from field and in-house tests. These include (a) measured CO2 capture rates and operating conditions from in-house and field tests, and (b) predicted utility-scale costs and energy demands. This discussion also includes the application of the CCC technology to energy storage and direct air capture.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

Recent Cryogenic Carbon Capture™ Field Test Results

Sustainable Energy Solutions (SES) has been developing Cryogenic Carbon Capture™ (CCC) since 2008. In that time, two processes have been developed, the External Cooling Loop and Compressed Flue Gas CCC processes (CCC-ECL and CCC-CFG, respectively). The CCC-ECL process cools the flue gas with an external refrigerant loop. This process currently captures up to 1 tonne of CO2 per day (TPD). SES has tested CCC-ECL on real flue gas slip streams from subbituminous coal, bituminous coal, biomass, natural gas, shredded tires, and municipal waste fuels at field sites that include utility power stations, heating plants, cement kilns, and pilot-scale research reactors. The CO2 concentrations from these tests ranged from 5 to 22% on a dry basis. CO2 capture ranged from 95-99+% during these tests. Several other condensable species were also captured including NO2, SO2 and PMxx at 95+%. NO was also captured at a modest rate. The CCC-CFG process has been scaled up to a 0.25 ton per day system. This system has been tested on real flue gas streams including subbituminous coal, bituminous coal, and natural gas at field sites that include utility power stations, heating plants, and pilot-scale research reactors. CO2 concentrations for these tests ranged from 5 to 15% on a dry basis. CO2 capture ranged from 95-99+% during these tests. Several other condensable species were also captured including NO2, SO2, and PMxx at 95+%. NO was also captured at 90+%. Hg capture was also verified and the resulting effluent from CCC-CFG was below a 1ppt concentration. This paper will focus on discussion of the capabilities of CCC generally, the results of CCC-ECL field testing, and future steps surrounding the development of this technology. Test results that will be presented have been collected during 9 months of testing at a commercial power plant under funding from the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the host utility. Testing of one of the systems at a commercial cement plant in the United States will also be discussed. During this testing, the system captured CO2 from the cement plant and stored the CO2 in pressurized tanks. These tanks were provided to a partner company that later used the CO2 in a CO2 utilization demonstration. The CO2 was utilized to cure concrete manufactured using cement from the same plant where the CO2 was captured. This integrated capture and utilization demonstration was the first time that the cement industry has shown in the field that it can sequester its CO2 emissions in its main product stream. This represents a potential game changing solution for industrial CO2 emissions. Operational data and host-site feedback indicate that the CCC process is ideally suited for deployment into a variety of commercial environments. A few areas of de-risking remain to make sure the technology can meet very strict industrial reliability standards. These areas of de-risking are identified and discussed. The product CO2 is shown to meet specification for many uses including industrial and merchant applications. The technology is nearing readiness for deployment at commercial scale and several initial target markets have been identified.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

Factorial experiment to identify two-way interactions between temperature, harvesting period, hydraulic retention time, and light intensity that influence the biomass productivity and phosphorus removal efficiency of a microalgae–bacteria biofilm

Rotating algae biofilm reactors (RABRs) can reduce energy requirements for wastewater reclamation but require further optimization for implementation at water resource recovery facilities (WRRF). Optimizing RABR operation is challenging because conditions at WRRF change frequently, and disregarding interaction terms related to these changes can produce incorrect conclusions about RABR behavior. This study evaluated the two-way interaction and main effects of four factors on the biomass productivity and phosphorus removal efficiency of a microalgae-bacteria biofilm grown in municipal anaerobic digester centrate, with factor levels and operating conditions selected to mimic a pilot RABR at a WRRF in Utah. Two-way interactions harvesting period*light intensity (LI), harvesting period*temperature, and LI*hydraulic retention time (HRT) had significant effects on biomass productivity: at high temperature and low LI, highest biomass productivity was achieved with a 14-day harvesting period, but at medium temperature and high LI, highest biomass productivity was achieved with a 7-day harvesting period. At high HRT, highest biomass productivity occurred at low LI, but at low HRT, highest biomass productivity occurred at high LI. Phosphorus removal was strongly influenced by LI and occurred most rapidly during the first 2 days HRT, which suggests precipitation contributed significantly to phosphorus removal. These observations provide insight for further RABR optimization.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Design Consideration for Solar Powered Wastewater Treatment Facility for Agriculture and Potable Usage on Acoma Pueblo Reservation

Environmental stewardship has long been a guiding principle among indigenous peoples. Acoma Pueblo, located approximately 45 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, shares these values. They are exploring how to incorporate these values into future development projects. As such, Acoma recently created a wastewater treatment facility to provide irrigation water to nearby crops. Treatment facilities like this further sustainable practices and benefit the community but may draw power from the grid. This report looks at design considerations for possible photovoltaic utilization at the site to offset current power and monetary costs. Lessons learned from a larger, municipal wastewater treatment center will be applied with special considerations for Acoma Pueblo's values and unique wastewater treatment facility configuration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Building Tune-Up Accelerator Program (Final Technical Report)

In 2016, the City of Seattle passed a mandatory Building Tune-Up requirement for all commercial buildings 50,000 square feet (SF) and larger as part of its Climate Action strategy. The requirement is phased in by size with large buildings (greater than 200,000 SF) required first. This allowed Seattle’s Office of Sustainability & Environment (OSE) to offer the Building Tune-Up Accelerator (TUA) Program to the “mid-size” building market (less than 100,000 SF) to meet the requirements early. With funding from the US DOE, a package of technical and financial support was developed for building owners and energy service providers to encourage this hard-to-reach market to participate in the tune-up—and even go beyond requirements for greater energy savings. Seattle City Light, the municipal electric utility, offered participants a simple per square foot financial incentive. Partners at the University of Washington Integrated Design Lab, Smart Buildings Center and Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) offered service provider trainings, analytical tools and technical support. This final technical report summarizes the program, projected energy and emissions savings and lessons learned from program development to implementation to final evaluation for the 102 buildings that participated.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

10 MWE CDCL Large Pilot Plant – pre-FEED Study

Coal Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL) is an advanced oxy-combustion technology that has the potential to substantially reduce the energy penalty and the cost of electricity (COE) for coal-fired power generation with CO₂ capture. The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) and The Ohio State University (OSU) have been collaborating on the development of an iron oxide oxygen-carrier based chemical looping technology for clean power generation with inherent carbon capture. In this process, coal is dried and pulverized prior to being transported into a moving-bed reducer. In the reducer, coal reacts with the oxygen-carrier particles, forming combustion byproducts, predominantly CO₂ and H₂O, while reducing the iron oxide oxidation state from Fe₂O₃ to a mixture of FeO and Fe. The reduced state particles are then transported to a combustor reactor and re-oxidized with air. Following the oxidation, the oxygen-carrier particles are regenerated, and a large amount of heat is released for steam production. The produced steam is sent to a turbine for electricity generation. Meanwhile, the CO₂–rich stream leaving the reducer is cooled, cleaned, and compressed for subsequent pipeline transportation and sequestration. By combining air separation and fuel conversion into a single system, the CDCL technology enables the intensification of oxy-combustion processes by eliminating the energy and cost intensive cryogenic air separation unit and thereby results in higher overall plant efficiencies and lower COE’s. The use of a moving-bed reducer results in high conversions of volatile hydrocarbons and high CO₂ purity, which reduces the cost of downstream CO₂ purification for sequestration or utilization. The Babcock & Wilcox Company in collaboration with The Ohio State University, Johnson & Matthey, The Electric Power Research Institute, and Dover Light & Power completed a Preliminary Front-End Engineering and Design (Pre-FEED) study of a 10 MWe coal-direct chemical looping (CDCL) pilot plant. The planned system is a modular 10 MWe CDCL large pilot facility consisting in 4 modules of 2.5 MWe each, working in parallel and to be hosted within the current structure at the City of Dover’s Municipal Power Plant. The CDCL system can achieve auto-thermal operation and includes a sub-critical steam cycle for power generation. The pilot system was designed to demonstrate full commercial operation at a reduced scale. The coal distribution per plan area is a representative slice of larger commercial arrangements. The system includes a CO₂ recycle system, but it does not include a compression system. The large pilot includes all the environmental control equipment and oxygen carrier and ash handling systems. As part of the project, the Team performed laboratory testing and carried out multiple pilot test campaigns to obtain design and performance information at the 250 kWth CDCL pilot facility at the Babcock & Wilcox Company’s Research Center. The Team demonstrated sustained operations at designed coal inputs, high coal conversion, high CO₂ purity, heat generation on the combustor, low carbon carryover between reactors and low particle attrition. Emissions generated in the reducer reactor were identified as SO₂ and NO x . The commercial manufacturing cost of oxygen carrier particle was evaluated by JM. A particle manufacturing report was generated and submitted to the DOE. Based on the results from the pilot tests and the pre-FEED design efforts, a techno-economic analysis was performed. The study shows that the CDCL process is a promising carbon-friendly technology capable of producing electricity with high efficiency. The estimated COE of the supercritical CDCL plant is $83.3 / MWh, which meets DOE’s target of less than 30% increase in COE when compared to a supercritical PC plant without CO₂ capture. This is the lowest among the existing carbon capture technologies (post-combustion and oxy-combustion) for fossil fuel power plant. CDCL is evaluated to be the most promising technology for carbon capture from the economic aspect.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Review of Technical Pathways

The 106-billion-gallon global (21-billion-gallon domestic) commercial jet fuel market is projected to grow to over 230 billion gallons by 2050. Cost-competitive, environmentally sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) are recognized as a critical part of decoupling carbon growth from market growth. Renewable and wasted carbon can provide a path to low-cost, clean-burning, and low-soot-producing jet fuel. Research shows an opportunity to produce fuel in which aromatics are initially diluted with the addition of renewable iso-alkanes, aromatics are later fully replaced with cycloalkanes, and finally high-performance molecules that provide mission-based value to jet fuel consumers are introduced. Key to this fuel pathway is sourcing the three SAF blendstocks - iso-alkanes, cycloalkanes, and high-performing molecules - from inexpensive resources. When resourced from waste carbon, there are often additional benefits, such as cleaner water when sourcing carbon from wet sludges or less waste going to landfills when sourcing the carbon from municipal solid waste or plastic waste. Jet fuel properties differ from gasoline and diesel, so research will be most successful if it begins with the end result in mind.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

A Circular Economy for Solar Photovoltaic System Materials: Drivers, Barriers, Enablers, and U.S. Policy Considerations

As PV capacity increases, owners are also decommissioning older system assets. Estimates based on a 30-year lifetime assumption found that cumulative U.S. end-of-life (EoL) PV modules could total one million metric tons (Mt) by 2030 and up to 10 million Mt by 2050 (Weckend, Wade, and Heath 2016). Beyond maintenance replacements, early retirements that are due to efficiency upgrades and extreme weather, as well as PV deployment beyond earlier expectations, would increase these projections. PV system owners must evaluate equipment management options for used modules and system components retired during maintenance activities, refurbishment, repowering and system decommissioning. PV manufacturers must also evaluate material management options from customer returns, defects, and scrap. Management options for early retired and EoL PV system material include reuse, repair for reuse, recycling-based resource recovery, storage, and disposal. Disposal of PV system material increases the burden on landfill capacity, while reuse, repair for reuse, and recycling-based resource recovery (reuse/repair/recovery) options salvage valuable materials and provide secondary market opportunities and ancillary benefits (Weckend, Wade, and Heath 2016; EPA 2019c; SWEEP 2019). PV system owners may also decide store used modules and components as spares, or in the interim before a reuse or EoL management decision is made. Despite potential secondary market opportunities and the potential benefits associated with the repair/reuse/recovery of PV system material, anecdotal evidence suggests that in the United States decommissioned PV modules are stored, landfilled or otherwise disposed of (Salim et al. 2019; CPUC 2019b; DTSC 2019b; NREL 2019a). Some modules are being disposed of in municipal nonhazardous landfills and federally regulated hazardous treatment, storage, and disposal facilities, and others are being stored in warehouses until economically viable repair/reuse/recycling becomes available (CPUC 2019b; DTSC 2019b; NREL 2019a; Libby and Shaw 2018). As awareness of current practices grows, and the demand for critical PV module material increases, U.S. industry stakeholders, regulators, and policymakers are starting to (1) consider solutions to drive and enable environmentally sustainable materials management decisions and behaviors and (2) identify barriers to a circular economy for PV system materials. Circular economy principles attempt to transition from a "take-make-consume-dispose" linear economic system to a circular system that allows for the long life, and the reuse/repair/recovery of products and materials (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2020). We begin this report by summarizing the drivers, barriers, and enablers to a circular economy for PV system materials in the United States. We then report on our analysis of federal and state regulatory considerations that may impact the repair/reuse/recovery of PV materials, and potential civil and criminal liabilities associated with noncompliance. We then discuss state policies and initiatives in the United States that expressly address PV system decommissioning and repair/reuse/recovery of PV materials. We conclude by providing case studies of U.S. business models for the repair/reuse/recovery of PV system materials. Our results are based on legal and literature-based research and interviews with solar industry stakeholders, regulators, and policymakers.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Construction Support for New Slab Creek Powerhouse Project (Final Technical Report)

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) has constructed a new powerhouse and Boating Flow Release Facility (BFRF) ¼ mile downstream of the existing Slab Creek Dam with the assistance of grant funding from the Department of Energy in the amount of $1.5 million. Slab Creek Dam impounds 16,600 acre-feet of storage and has a normal full pool elevation of 1850ft. Water is conveyed from Slab Creek Reservoir through a 4.9 mile power tunnel to the 224 MW White Rock Powerhouse which discharges into Chili Bar Reservoir. A small 450 kW powerhouse located at Slab Creek Dam utilizes the original license in-stream flow requirement. The new license (FERC Project No. 2101-084) requires significantly more instream flows immediately below the dam for aquatic preservation and recreational flows over the original license. The terms of the new license allow the Slab Creek Powerhouse to utilize the original required dam releases, while the new South Fork Powerhouse will use the new instream flow requirements above the original license requirement. The South Fork Powerhouse routes flows back to the South Fork of the American River via a new penstock that is tied into the White Rock Tunnel at Adit #3. This new penstock bifurcates at the Adit #3 portal with one leg going to the BFRF and the other to the new powerhouse. The South Fork Powerhouse is a single generating unit with a capacity of 2.98 kVA. The BFRF is valve house with an energy dissipation chamber for a 60” fixed cone valve capable of passing 1,300 cfs for meeting the recreational flow requirements of the license.

power tunnel↗

Integration of a DER Management System in Riverside. Final report

The tasks in this project covered various aspects, including algorithm development, algorithm integration into a commercial Active Network Management (ANM) platform, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing in an industry-standard testing platform, pilot demonstration in Riverside, California, and also cost and benefit analysis. The DERMS platform in this project can host different algorithms developed on different platforms (e.g., MATLAB and Python) and it can interact with different hardware devices (e.g., different PV inverters, battery inverters, and different sensors). The DER control solution are based on an advanced model-free, layered, and clustered DER control paradigm. At the core of the DER control algorithms was the concept of Extremum Seeking (ES), which is a model-free probing-based control technique. The ES-based control algorithms were tested on major real-world inverters; both individually and in a cluster. It was shown that even legacy equipment (or when paired with a few additional advanced equipment) can support such advanced control. The monitoring algorithms utilize a heterogeneous set of legacy and advanced sensor measurements, such as behind-the-meter DER sensors, distribution-level Phase Measurement Units, distribution-substation Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), and line current sensors, with their limited availability; in order to infer practical network conditions. Sensor data are utilized to achieve resource forecasting, phase identification, and distribution system state estimation. The technology that was developed and demonstrated in this project could be transformational to utilities, including the smaller municipal utilities such as in Riverside, which may not have the resources to deploy advanced distribution system and DERMS solutions in order to support high penetration of solar power integration. This project created a real-world prototype to provide utilities with an assessment of smart grid monitoring and control technologies.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Techno-Economic Assessment for Opportunities to Integrate Algae Farming with Wastewater Treatment

This report investigates the economic and scalability potential for algal biomass production based on opportunities to couple algae farming with wastewater treatment (WWT). This activity was motivated in part by a recent influx of technology developers who are currently in various stages of planning, construction, and operation of algae facilities for treating municipal wastewater, all making claims of tremendous economic potential for algal WWT relative to other more traditional WWT methods when viewing treated wastewater as the primary product output and algal biomass as a secondary coproduct. In addition to solving for minimum biomass selling price (MBSP) for a farm configured to maximize biomass production while minimizing water footprint (when sourcing makeup water from local groundwater resources at added cost), the algal WWT cases evaluated here also solved for MBSP while assigning a treatment credit as a means to valorize the treated water as a coproduct in the farm model. This enables a consistent comparison against the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s standard algae farm models.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗