Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Generative learning”

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 325 records · Page 18

EXERGETIC: De-Risking Next-Generation Resilient Geothermal Hybrids via At-Scale Evaluation Using Virtual Emulation Digital Twin Environment for Efficient Operation

The DOE-GTO-funded project, award number 5.1.2.12, entitled "EXERGETIC - De-risking Next Generation Resilient Geothermal Hybrids via at-Scale Evaluation Using a Virtual Emulation Digital Twin Environment for Efficient Operation," advances the solution to these challenges by developing and validating a geothermal co-emulation environment implemented at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR)'s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform. This framework enables the de-risking of next-generation geothermal and geothermal hybrid systems through high-fidelity modeling, real-time digital emulation, advanced control strategies, and techno-economic assessment. The project focused on geothermal hybrid configurations that integrate geothermal power plants with concentrated solar power and underground thermal energy storage, enabling enhanced efficiency, flexibility, and grid support capabilities. The main goal of this project was the development of a geothermal digital co-emulation environment to demonstrate the technical and economic value of geothermal hybrid systems and their contribution to grid stability and flexibility. The EXERGETIC framework combined physics-based models, controls, and real assets at ARIES, including digital real-time simulators (DRTS), a 20-MW-scale controllable grid interface (CGI), and a 2-MW conventional generator. Detailed transient models were developed for the key subsystems of a hybrid geothermal plant, including parabolic trough solar collectors, reservoir thermal energy storage (RTES), and a binary Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plant. The ORC model explicitly captured thermal inertia and off-design operation and integrated control strategies to dynamically respond to electric load profiles. The models were validated against published experimental and numerical studies, demonstrating strong agreement and confirming the accuracy and robustness of the modeling approach. The resulting digital twin represents geothermal-solar-storage systems at multiple scales (1 MW to 100 MW) and enables realistic emulation of grid-connected operation. The control architecture allows the geothermal resource to provide stable baseload generation, while solar and stored thermal energy supply flexible, dispatchable support during periods of high demand or variable grid conditions. A key contribution of the EXERGETIC project is the demonstration that geothermal hybrid systems can be designed to be active grid assets rather than passive baseload generators. Using the ARIES platform, the digital twin was evaluated under multiple grid scenarios, including load following, voltage support at the distribution level, and frequency response at the transmission level. Results show that hybrid geothermal systems can respond effectively to dynamic grid conditions, providing inertia-like behavior, primary frequency support, and voltage regulation through coordinated control. In addition to the performance and grid services capability analysis of geothermal and hybrid geothermal systems, the EXERGETIC project also focused on scalability and techno-economic analysis of geothermal hybrid plants. In particular, for the scalability analysis, machine-learning (ML)-based surrogate models were trained using data generated from the geothermal digital twin under different grid-connected scenarios and plant capacities. These ML models demonstrated strong interpolation and extrapolation capabilities across plant sizes, accurately reproducing both steady-state and transient responses with very low errors. Regarding the techno-economic analysis, plant performance results were integrated with cost models for hybrid geothermal systems, and the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) was used as the main economic metric to evaluate system performance across a range of system capacities, solar shares, solar multiples, and storage durations. Results indicate that economies of scale significantly reduce geothermal LCOE as plant capacity increases, with large-scale systems (25-100 MW) achieving substantially lower costs than small plants. Hybridization with solar thermal energy and storage further improves economic performance by increasing capacity utilization and enabling flexible dispatch. In addition, thermal storage plays a critical role in reducing LCOE by maximizing geothermal, solar, and stored energy resources. In summary, the results from this project demonstrate that geothermal hybrid systems represent a promising alternative for increasing the energy conversion efficiency of geothermal technologies, contributing to the preservation of geothermal resources, and supporting the transition of geothermal plants from traditional baseload resources into flexible, resilient, and cost-competitive energy conversion technologies.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Conceptual Design of Integrated Energy Systems with Market Interaction Surrogate Models

Most integrated energy system (IES) optimization frameworks employ the price-taker approximation, which ignores important interactions with market and can result in overestimated economic values. In this work, we pro-pose a machine learning surrogate-assisted optimization framework to quantify the IES/market interactions and thus go beyond price taker. We use time series clustering to generate representative IES operation profiles for the IES optimization problem and use machine learning surrogate models to predict the IES/market interaction. We quantify the accuracy of the time series clustering and surrogate models in a case study to optimally retrofit a nuclear power plant with polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzer to co-produce electricity and hydrogen.

Chen, Xinhe↗

Prediction of laser beam spatial profiles in a high-energy laser facility by use of deep learning

We adapt the significant advances achieved recently in the field of generative artificial intelligence/machine-learning to laser performance modeling in multipass, high-energy laser systems with application to high-shot-rate facilities relevant to inertial fusion energy. Advantages of neural-network architectures include rapid prediction capability, data-driven processing, and the possibility to implement such architectures within future low-latency, low-power consumption photonic networks. Four models were investigated that differed in their generator loss functions and utilized the U-Net encoder/decoder architecture with either a reconstruction loss alone or combined with an adversarial network loss. We achieved inference times of 1.3 ms for a 256 × 256 pixel near-field beam with errors in predicted energy of the order of 1% over most of the energy range. It is shown that prediction errors are significantly reduced by ensemble averaging the models with different weight initializations. These results suggest that including the temporal dimension in such models may provide accurate, real-time spatiotemporal predictions of laser performance in high-shot-rate laser systems.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Constructing a High‐Resolution Aftershock Catalog for the 2017 Mw 8.2 Tehuantepec Earthquake Sequence Using a Machine Learning–Based Workflow

The 8 September 2017 Mw 8.2 Tehuantepec earthquake was the largest instrumentally recorded normal‐faulting earthquake in Mexico. The mainshock occurred offshore within the Tehuantepec seismic gap, generating >30,000 aftershocks in the following year. We applied an open‐source, machine learning (ML)–assisted workflow to construct a high‐resolution aftershock catalog using data from temporary and permanent seismic networks in southern Mexico. The workflow integrates PhaseNet for phase detection; GaMMA for phase association; and VELEST, HypoInverse, and HypoDD for velocity modeling and relocation. We processed seven months of continuous waveform data from 29 broadband stations, including a temporary rapid‐response deployment that improved station coverage of the offshore rupture zone. To evaluate performance, we compared our results against analyst‐reviewed picks and event locations from the Servicio Sismológico Nacional catalog. The resulting catalog contains 11,374 relocated earthquakes and represents the most comprehensive published dataset for this sequence, incorporating the first full use of the temporary network. Relocated hypocenters show improved depth control and align well with the Slab2.0 subduction geometry, revealing clearer separation between offshore slab events and onshore crustal seismicity. This study demonstrates that combining ML‐based detection with established methods provides a scalable and reproducible approach for constructing high‐quality earthquake catalogs in tectonically complex environments and offers practical guidance for adapting similar workflows to other earthquake sequences.

Garcia, Marc [The University of Texas at El Paso, ↗

Safe Deep Reinforcement Learning for Active Distribution System Model Predictive Control with EVs and DERs

The temporal and spatial mismatch between PV generation and electric vehicle (EV) charging and discharging may cause voltage violations in active distribution networks. Despite the widespread use of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) in power system optimization and control, it lacks guarantees on constraint satisfaction during both training and deployment. This paper proposes a Lagrangian-based safe DRL approach for model predictive control (MPC) of active distribution systems with large-scale integration of PVs, EVs, and energy storage systems (ESSs). A Transformer-LSTM time-series model is proposed to forecast EV charging demand, which is then formulated as a constraint to ensure charging requirements are met. Using this prediction, a Lagrangian-based safe soft actor-critic (SAC) framework is developed for real-time control in a three-phase unbalanced distribution system, enforcing voltage safety constraints while optimizing the cumulative net reward. By integrating the forecasting model with multi-period constraints, the proposed framework jointly coordinates PV systems, EV charging and discharging, and ESS scheduling within the MPC horizon. Numerical experiments on a modified IEEE 123-bus system with real-world data show that, under a high PV penetration scenario, the proposed method increases the net reward by 30.74% and reduces average voltage violations from 0.0011 p.u. to 0.0002 p.u. compared with standard SAC. Compared with the optimal power flow (OPF) approach, it achieves similar voltage security while yielding lower line losses. It also maintains real-time control capability, reducing operation latency to 53.21 ms per 15-minute control interval. The proposed method remains effective under varying PV/EV penetrations and load conditions.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Lessons Learned from Three Agrivoltaic Installations in New Jersey

Agrivoltaics is a new technology that has the potential to positively impact commercial farming by combining agricultural practices with the generation of solar energy. While some yield reduction is to be expected, resulting from less sunlight reaching the plant canopy and ground occupied by support structures, the generated electricity provides a low-risk supplemental income to farmers. In order to combine farming with electricity generation, agrivoltaic systems use a lower ground coverage ratio compared to normal solar farms and the PV panels are often mounted higher above the ground in order to facilitate the movement of agricultural equipment and to reduce the contrast between shaded and non-shaded areas. With funding provided from the state of New Jersey and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), we designed and installed three unique agrivoltaic research systems at Rutgers/NJAES farms. These projects were recently completed and are generating electricity that is exported to the grid. This paper discusses the lessons we have learned along the way, including all the steps necessary to see an agrivoltaic project through to completion.

Both, A. J. (ORCID:0000000150845296)↗

Lessons Learned from Three Agrivoltaic Installations in New Jersey

Agrivoltaics is a new technology that has the potential to positively impact commercial farming by combining agricultural practices with the generation of solar energy. While some yield reduction is to be expected, resulting from less sunlight reaching the plant canopy and ground occupied by support structures, the generated electricity provides a low-risk supplemental income to farmers. In order to combine farming with electricity generation, agrivoltaic systems use a lower ground coverage ratio compared to normal solar farms and the PV panels are often mounted higher above the ground in order to facilitate the movement of agricultural equipment and to reduce the contrast between shaded and non-shaded areas. With funding provided from the state of New Jersey and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), we designed and installed three unique agrivoltaic research systems at Rutgers/NJAES farms. These projects were recently completed and are generating electricity that is exported to the grid. This paper discusses the lessons we have learned along the way, including all the steps necessary to see an agrivoltaic project through to completion.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Lessons Learned from Three Agrivoltaic Installations in New Jersey

Agrivoltaics is a new technology that has the potential to positively impact commercial farming by combining agricultural practices with the generation of solar energy. While some yield reduction is to be expected, resulting from less sunlight reaching the plant canopy and ground occupied by support structures, the generated electricity provides a low-risk supplemental income to farmers. In order to combine farming with electricity generation, agrivoltaic systems use a lower ground coverage ratio compared to normal solar farms and the PV panels are often mounted higher above the ground in order to facilitate the movement of agricultural equipment and to reduce the contrast between shaded and non-shaded areas. With funding provided from the state of New Jersey and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), we designed and installed three unique agrivoltaic research systems at Rutgers/NJAES farms. These projects were recently completed and are generating electricity that is exported to the grid. This paper discusses the lessons we have learned along the way, including all the steps necessary to see an agrivoltaic project through to completion.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

The development of thermodynamically consistent and physics-informed equation-of-state model through machine learning

Ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations have become an important tool used in the construction of equations of state (EOS) tables for warm dense matter. Due to computational costs, only a limited number of system state conditions can be simulated, and the remaining EOS surface must be interpolated for use in radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of experiments. In this work, we develop a thermodynamically consistent EOS model that utilizes a physics-informed machine learning approach to implicitly learn the underlying Helmholtz free-energy from AIMD generated energies and pressures. The model, referred to as PIML-EOS, was trained and tested on warm dense polystyrene producing a fit within a 1% relative error for both energy and pressure and is shown to satisfy both the Maxwell and Gibbs–Duhem relations. In addition, we provide a path toward obtaining thermodynamic quantities, such as the total entropy and chemical potential (containing both ionic and electronic contributions), which are not available from current AIMD simulations.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Power generation forecasting for solar plants based on Dynamic Bayesian networks by fusing multi-source information

A Dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) model for solar power generation forecasting in solar plants is proposed in this paper. The key idea is to fuse sensor data, operational indicators, meteorological data, lagged output power information, and model errors for more accurate short-term (e.g., hours) and mid-term (e.g., days to weeks) power generation forecasting. The proposed DBN augments automated data-driven structure learning with expert knowledge encoding using continuous and categorical data given constraints to represent causal relationships within a solar inverter system. Additionally, an error compensation mechanism is proposed to capture temporal fluctuation. The effectiveness of the DBN on solar power generation forecasting was evaluated by rolling window analysis with one-year testing data collected from a local solar plant. The proposed DBN is compared with four state-of-art methods including support-vector regression (SVR), k-nearest neighbors (kNN), artificial neural network (ANN), and long short-term memory (LSTM) models. The result show that the proposed DBN achieves better accuracy in general, and it is not as data-hungry as some neural network-based models. The proposed DBN is also shown to have robust and consistent forecasting power with different forecasting horizons. The accuracy is 92% - 95% from one hour to one week ahead forecasting.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Data imbalance in drug response prediction: multi-objective optimization approach in deep learning setting

Abstract Drug response prediction (DRP) methods tackle the complex task of associating the effectiveness of small molecules with the specific genetic makeup of the patient. Anti-cancer DRP is a particularly challenging task requiring costly experiments as underlying pathogenic mechanisms are broad and associated with multiple genomic pathways. The scientific community has exerted significant efforts to generate public drug screening datasets, giving a path to various machine learning models that attempt to reason over complex data space of small compounds and biological characteristics of tumors. However, the data depth is still lacking compared to application domains like computer vision or natural language processing domains, limiting current learning capabilities. To combat this issue and improves the generalizability of the DRP models, we are exploring strategies that explicitly address the imbalance in the DRP datasets. We reframe the problem as a multi-objective optimization across multiple drugs to maximize deep learning model performance. We implement this approach by constructing Multi-Objective Optimization Regularized by Loss Entropy loss function and plugging it into a Deep Learning model. We demonstrate the utility of proposed drug discovery methods and make suggestions for further potential application of the work to achieve desirable outcomes in the healthcare field.

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology↗

Multi-agent voltage control in distribution systems using GAN-DRL-based approach

Active distribution grids can experience voltage fluctuations and violations due to the high penetration of variable distributed energy resources (DERs). These problems might occur because of the uncertain and variable generation natures of these resources, especially solar photovoltaic resources, during panel shadowing scenarios. Volt-VAR control (VVC) is an efficient method that controls the reactive power set-points of the inverters to regulate the voltage of distribution grids. Although several VVC approaches have been proposed recently, the performance of these approaches degrades significantly if behind-the-meter solar generation data are unobservable/missing. Therefore, it is necessary to impute missing/unobservable PV data accurately to be utilized in VVC approaches. Further, this paper proposes a model-free, data-driven, centrally trained, and decentrally executed multi-agent deep reinforcement learning-based VVC architecture to regulate the voltage of distribution networks. A generative adversarial network (GAN) is incorporated to impute the unobservable PV data accurately, which improves the performance of the proposed control architecture. The proposed multi-agent-soft-actor–critic algorithm (MASAC)-based VVC technique utilizes the actual PV dataset as well as the imputed dataset from the GAN framework to learn the optimal coordinated control policy for controlling the optimal reactive power set-points of PV inverters. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is analyzed on a modified IEEE 34-bus test case with added PV inverters. The results are compared and analyzed with a base case model with no VVC and VVC with a local droop control approach, genetic algorithm optimization, and a centralized soft actor–critic-based approach. Moreover, the performance of the proposed approach is compared with that of a multi-agent VVC framework without using the PV generation data and load information as the system state. The results illustrate that the proposed method with more state input improves the voltage profile and reduces the power loss of the network across various loading and PV generation scenarios.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Broad range material-to-system screening of metal–organic frameworks for hydrogen storage using machine learning

Hydrogen is pivotal in the transition to sustainable energy systems, playing major roles in power generation and industrial applications. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as promising mediums for efficient hydrogen storage. However, identifying potential candidates for deployment is challenging due to the vast number of currently available synthesized MOFs. This study integrates molecular simulations, machine learning, and techno-economic analysis to evaluate the performance of MOFs across broad operation conditions for hydrogen storage applications. While previous screenings of MOF databases have predominantly emphasized high hydrogen capacities under cryogenic conditions, this study reveals that optimal temperatures and pressures for cost minimization depend on the raw price of the MOF. Specifically, when MOFs are priced at $15/kg, among the 9720 MOFs tested, 9692 MOFs achieve the lowest cost at temperatures between 170 K and 250 K and a pressure of 150 bar. Under these optimal conditions, 362 MOFs deliver a lower levelized cost of storage than 350 bar compressed gas hydrogen storage. Furthermore, this study reveals key material properties that result in low system cost, such as high surface areas (>3000 m2/g), large void fractions (>0.78), and large pore volumes (>1.1 cm3/g).

Hydrogen storage↗

Synthetic Atmospheric River Ensembles Generated by Deep-AR

This dataset contains 35,850 synthetic landfalling atmospheric river (AR) realizations generated by the Deep-AR two-stage deep-learning framework over the Northeast Pacific and U.S. West Coast. The archive contains 25 stochastic ensemble members for each of 1,434 held-out observed seed events. Each synthetic realization is initialized from conditions 48 hours before the corresponding observed AR landfall and is generated autoregressively at 6-hour intervals over a 144-hour period. Deep-AR combines a deterministic residual network (ResNet) that advances the large-scale atmospheric state with a Wasserstein generative adversarial network (WGAN) that produces stochastic, high-resolution fields. Each HDF5 file contains 0.25° gridded synthetic integrated vapor transport components (qu, qv), 10 m wind components (u10, v10), and 6-hour accumulated precipitation on a common 200 × 480 grid. The files also include coordinate and datetime arrays. This dataset supports AR hazard analysis, ensemble-based uncertainty characterization, precipitation-extremes research, and regional stress testing. Synthetic files follow the naming convention deepar.model.YYYYMMDD.HHMMSS.vNN.h5. YYYYMMDD.HHMMSS identifies the UTC initial-condition timestamp, which occurs 48 hours before the diagnosed observed landfall, and vNN identifies the zero-padded ensemble member, ranging from v01 through v25. Each synthetic file can be paired with its corresponding observed file by matching the initial-condition timestamp. The paired observed file follows the naming convention deepar.obs.YYYYMMDD.HHMMSS.h5 and is available in the separately registered oracle/deepar.obs dataset at https://wdh.energy.gov/ds/oracle/deepar.obs (DOI: https://doi.org/10.21947/3377671).

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Real-Time Sea State Estimation for Wave Energy Converter Control via Machine Learning

Wave energy converters (WECs) harness the untapped power of ocean waves to generate renewable energy, offering a promising solution to sustainable energy. An optimal WEC control strategy is essential to maximize power capture that dynamically adjusts system parameters in response to rapidly changing sea states. This study presents a novel control approach that leverages neural networks to estimate sea states from onboard WEC measurements such as position, velocity, and force. Using a point absorber WEC device as a test platform, our proposed approach estimates sea states in real-time and subsequently adjusts PID controller gains to maximize energy extraction. Simulation results across diverse sea conditions demonstrate that our strategy eliminates the need for external wave monitoring equipment while maintaining power capture efficiency. The results show that our neural network-based control technique can improve power capture by 25.6% while significantly reducing system complexity. This approach offers a practical alternative for WEC deployments where direct wave measurements are either infeasible or cost prohibitive.

PIDcontrol↗

Structure prediction of porous organic crystals

In this work, we explore the possibility of applying automated crystal structure prediction to reproduce the experimentally identified metastable porous polymorphs. Using our recently developed High-Throughput Organic Crystal Structure Prediction ( HTOCSP ) framework, we conducted a systematic study on five representative organic crystalline systems including hydrogen-bonded frameworks (HOFs), featured by the presence of significant porosity, in conjunction with different choices of energy models from classical, machine learning force fields, tight binding to density functional theory. Our results suggest that the current structure generation framework, with careful selection of symmetry conditions, is likely to generate rather complex and abundant metastable crystal candidates for porous crystals. In conjunction with the recent advance in universal machine learning force fields, it becomes possible to identify experimental structures as the energetically favorable candidates from a simple energy versus density analysis, thus paving the way for computational design of complex porous materials with the target systems prior to the experimental synthesis and characterization.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

From clutter to clarity: Emergent neural operators via questionnaire metrics

Real-world datasets in chemical engineering and bioengineering processes—such as those from catalytic reactors, multiphase flows, polymerization reactors, bioreactors, and clinical trials—can often be unlabeled or disorganized, rendering the training of existing supervised learning models ineffective at learning the underlying dynamics. To salvage these datasets for decision-making, we first seek to obtain clarity from the cluttered data. Here, we present a framework for developing “structural” generative models, discovering emergent equations, and constructing efficient emulators from scrambled datasets by integrating unsupervised organizational learning techniques (Questionnaires) with advanced deep learning architectures (Deep Hidden Physics Models and Deep Operator Networks). Our approach is demonstrated on two illustrative model systems: (a) a 1D advection–diffusion partial differential equation representing a winding underground pipe and (b) an ensemble of Stuart–Landau oscillators, an agent-based system of coupled ordinary differential equations. In both cases, we successfully reconstruct meaningful spatial, temporal, and parameter embeddings from scrambled data, enabling good predictions of system dynamics. As a result, we highlight the framework’s potential for broader applications, enabling data-driven system identification in fields with inherently disorganized or hidden parameter spaces.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Expanding the Domain of Applicability of Machine Learning Models with Limited Data for Drug Property Prediction

Accurate machine learning models for predicting small molecule interactions with biological targets are essential for therapeutic discovery, biothreat response, and computational drug design, but their performance is often limited for understudied targets with sparse experimental data. To address this challenge, we developed and evaluated methods to improve molecular property prediction under low-data conditions, using the NimA-related kinase (NEK) family as a proof-of-concept. This work focused on two complementary goals within the ATOM Modeling PipeLine (AMPL) and the Generative Molecular Design (GMD) loop: expanding model applicability through transfer learning, representation learning, feature scaling, sampling strategies, and active-learning-inspired compound selection; and enabling efficient virtual screening to prioritize compounds that balance predicted activity, design objectives, and synthetic accessibility.

organic↗