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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 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

A Robust Hierarchical Dispatch Scheme for Active Distribution Networks Considering Home Thermal Flexibility

Distribution networks are changing from passive absorbers of electric energy to active distribution networks (ADNs) capable of operating and participating in electricity markets. In the context of residential microgrids, which is a type of ADNs, aggregated home heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) loads present a key opportunity to drive operational and economic objectives, facilitate high renewable energy penetration, and enhance both system resiliency and flexibility. A robust, hierarchical dispatch scheme is developed and presented in this paper, which connects an upper level multi-phase distribution optimal power flow (DOPF) to a lower level model predictive control (MPC)-based HVAC fleet controller. The approach is tested and verified on a modified IEEE 13 bus system in an intraday market application. The results demonstrate that the proposed hierarchical dispatch scheme is able to drive both economic and operational objectives for the ADN operator.

Rooks, Cody D.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Developing Non-Food Grade Brassica Biofuel Feedstock Cultivars with High Yield, Oil Content, and Oil Quality that are Suitable for Low Input Production Dryland Systems (Final Report)

The U.S. uses a substantial amount of fossil fuel as an energy source for a wide range for functions including home heating, agriculture and transportation. In the transportation sector, diesel and jet fuel are consumed at a rapid rate, and alternative liquid energy is being investigated globally and nationally to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel and reduce the impact of our carbon footprint on global climate change. Non-food Brassica crops have the potential of producing high oil yield (over 250 gal acre-1) and have oil quality highly desirable for use as biodiesel or bio jet fuel. Developing oilseed feedstock Brassica cultivars with higher seed and oil yield, with high oil quality and with resistance to pathogens, that can be grown with few chemical inputs will helping break our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce importation of fossil fuels. While some oilseed Brassicas have been grown on a small scale for many years in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), adoption has been limited, and the potential of the crops have not been realized or even fully investigated. This report summarizes the results of a study to develop superior non-food grade winter (B. napus) and spring (B. napus and B. juncea) oilseed cultivars suitable for a range of PNW, and other US environments with high resistance to the biotic and abiotic stresses suitable for high-quality biofuel feedstocks. In conducting this work, genome-wide association selection was used to dissect the genetic architecture of industrial Brassica oilseed germplasm for yield, quality, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. A genome-wide bioinformatics approach was used to identify putative PRR (pattern recognition receptor) - type resistance genes that confer durable resistance to blackleg. A novel transgenic approach was developed to generate resistant non-food oilseed lines using PPR genes Br1033 and Br8486. These genes were inserted into regionally adapted oilseed cultivars.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Biodiesel Handling and Use Guide: Sixth Edition

This document serves as background and a guide for those who blend, distribute, and/or use biodiesel and biodiesel blends. It provides basic information on the proper and safe use of biodiesel in compression ignition engines, home heating oil systems, boilers, and other applications. This guide is intended to help users, fleets, blenders, distributors, and others understand handling and use of biodiesel and biodiesel blends. Information on the environmental benefits of biodiesel is also provided.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Climatology of aerosol properties at an atmospheric monitoring site on the northern California coast

Between April 2002 and June 2017, the Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) made continuous measurements of a suite of in situ aerosol optical properties at a long-term monitoring site near Trinidad Head (THD), California. In addition to aerosol optical properties, between 2002–2006 a scanning humidograph system was operated, and inorganic ion and total aerosol mass concentrations were obtained from filter measurements. A combined analysis of these datasets demonstrates consistent patterns in aerosol climatology and highlights changes in sources throughout the year. THD is predictably dominated by sea salt aerosols; however, marine biogenic aerosols are the largest contributor to PM1 in the warmer months. Additionally, a persistent combustion source appears in the winter, likely a result of wintertime home heating. While the influences of local anthropogenic sources from vehicular and marine traffic are visible in the optical aerosol data, their influence is largely dictated by the wind direction at the site. Comparison of the THD aerosol climatology to that reported for other marine sites shows that the location is representative of clean marine measurements, even with the periodic influence of anthropogenic sources.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

What is Geotherrmal?

Get fast facts about geothermal energy, including a peek at its role in the natural world, home heating and cooling, and power production.

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Passive cooling designs to improve heat resilience of homes in underserved and vulnerable communities

Disadvantaged communities face a growing threat to staying safe during heat waves, especially during coincident power outages. This study develops a methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of passive cooling measures (those that operate without power) to improve residential building heat resilience. Building performance is simulated for representative homes and on district scales in two disadvantaged communities in Fresno, California. Eleven passive measures are evaluated using four heat resilience metrics with and without grid power. Results show performance of the mitigation measures varies by building characteristics, surrounding environment, and power scenario. The two most effective measures were installing solar-control window films and adding roof insulation. For pre-1978 single-family homes, these two measures can reduce unmet degree-hours (UDH) indoors by 12% and 11% respectively without grid power, or 28% and 37% with grid power. Their respective UDH reductions at district scale typically range 8% — 20% and 4% — 12% without grid power, or 14% — 44% and 8% — 51% with grid power. Top floors have higher overheating risk than lower floors during extreme heat events with coincident power outages. Natural ventilation can help, reducing UDH by 21% — 26%. The methodology and findings from this study can help cities, communities, and utilities develop effective and targeted strategies to promote greater residential heat resilience.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Corrigendum to “Cool Rooms for Indoor Heat Resilience: Evaluating Affordable Cooling Strategies in Heat-Stressed California Homes” [Building and Environment 287 (2026) 113877]

The authors regret an error in the acknowledgments section regarding the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office award number. The previously listed grant number, 2597–1625, was incorrect. The corrected acknowledgment should read: “This work was supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technologies of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), under Contract No. DE-AC02–05CH11231. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Solar Energy Technologies Office Award Number DE-EE00040384. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Energy.” The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Malik, Jeetika↗
DOE OSTI2026

Characterizing electrical demand and load diversity of low-power water and space heating appliances in US homes

Home renovation and remodeling projects can involve costly and time consuming electrical infrastructure upgrades at the household level. From the grid perspective they also lead to costly replacement of local infrastructure, such as transformers, and can add stress to the grid at peak times. The emergence of innovative, power-efficient household appliances offers a way to minimize these problems. These appliances are designed for lower power consumption, simplifying installation through standard plug-in connections, reducing the need for new electric circuits/panels/service, and minimizing the peak power demand for the home. Key examples include low-power heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) and cold climate window heat pumps that operate on standard 120V outlets. To assess the real-world impact of these solutions, we compiled and analyzed power metering data from several US field studies. This data provides insights into the effects on peak power demand of selecting lower-power appliances. Our analysis focuses on several key metrics, including the maximum power demand of individual appliances, their operational runtime, continuous operation and load diversity. While individual low-power 120V space and water heating appliances offer significant peak demand reductions compared to 240V heat pump or resistance alternatives, their longer runtimes might increase the likelihood of operation during whole-dwelling peak events, albeit at lower power levels.

Less, Brennan↗
DOE OSTI2021

An Integrated Control Method for Supplemental Minisplit Heat Pumps in Existing Homes

The FSEC Energy Research Center(FSEC) at the University of Central Florida has investigated low-cost space-conditioning upgrade solutions for existing homes since 2014. The retrofits involve installing a modest capacity, centrally located, high efficiency, ductless, minisplit heat pump (MSHP) for use in conjunction with the home’s existing central space conditioning system (CSCS). This type of retrofit targets homes with older but not obsolete CSCSs that have not reached end of life, and presents a more cost-effective option to achieve space conditioning energy savings than outright CSCS replacement. This report describes results from investigating the energy savings potential, given adherence to comfort management, if the control of the MSHP and CSCS were integrated.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2025

Performance Results from DOE Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge Field Validation

Space conditioning and water heating consume over 40% of the nation’s primary energy use and represent a significant component of many homeowners’ monthly energy bill. However, in cold climates, performance of heat pumps has traditionally suffered as the units have been unable to efficiently transfer heat from colder outdoor air temperatures to warm the interior space of homes. Optimizing heat pumps for cold climates (5 °F and below) requires coordinated effort to ensure heat pump technologies can be enjoyed by Americans living in these regions. The DOE Cold Climate Heat Pump (CCHP) Challenge sought to address this challenge by partnering with industry to develop, test, and validate the performance of new, highly efficient heat pumps in real homes. The Challenge, launched in 2021, brought together leading heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) manufacturers to develop prototype units optimized for performance at cold climates. This report summarizes results from the field validation that occurred 2022-2024.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Energy Saving Quantification on Ductless Heat Pump (DHP) in Existing Homes

In residential retrofit applications, ductless mini-split heat pumps (DHP) are often reported to have high-energy savings potential, depending on the system they are supplementing or replacing. However, recently, there have been a number of utility studies and analyses indicating these energy savings are not being achieved when the existing system is left in place for backup heating or air conditioning. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory conducted a three-phase project to help determine which control strategies would have the most energy savings impact in various climate zones around the United States. The first phase developed the standalone simulation model for the PNNL Lab Homes and investigated the energy-saving potential from different control strategies and HVAC system configurations. The second phase focused on conducting experiments in the PNNL Lab Homes, which tested the most promising solutions that were modeled in the first phase. The third phase used the field data to calibrate the simulation model and then extrapolated the results to different climate locations and different building sizes. This report focuses on the third phase of the study, including five major parts: model calibration, parametric model setup, results, a sensitivity analysis of air leakage rate, and conclusions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Maximizing the Use of Ductless Mini-Splits in Homes with Existing Central or Zonal Heating and Cooling Equipment

In the residential retrofit application, ductless mini-split heat pumps (DHP) are often reported to hold high-energy savings potential, depending on the system they are supplementing or replacing. However, of late, there have been a number of studies and analyses indicating these energy savings are not being achieved. The primary goal of this project was to determine the most cost effective (lowest cost for the most energy saved) and persistent (e.g. automated, hard to change, etc.) solution for controlling a ductless heat pump in an existing home with central forced air furnace. Various control strategies were tested at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Lab Homes to compare the energy savings between the different energy efficient control strategies. A maximum of 40% energy savings was realized by using the ductless mini-split as the primary heat source with the central air conditioning unit as the secondary source.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Residential Integrated Heat Pump to Meet All the Home Comfort Needs

This paper will introduce development and field trial of a residential air-source integrated heat pump for cold climates. The heat pump is multi-functional to meet all the home comfort demands, including space cooling, space heating, domestic water heating. The integrated heat pump is an ideal solution to decarbonize northern homes via providing efficient space heating and water heating to replace natural gas. It uses a three-stage compressor and a single set of heat exchangers and valves to deliver all the functions, and thus achieve cost reduction. We developed an innovative system configuration and related controls to solve typical charge unbalance, accelerate charge migration and smoothen mode transition in integrated heat pumps. Laboratory investigations were conducted for individual modes and verified the control functions. Laboratory tests demonstrated that the unit delivered outstanding performance. It achieved 17.0 SEER (seasonal cooling energy efficiency rating) and 11.0 HSPF (heating seasonal performance factor). In the most efficient mode (combined space cooling and water heating mode), the unit reached a total energy efficiency > 30.0 EER and required only 25 minutes to heat a 50-gallon tank of water. One heat pump prototype is going through a field trial since April, 2023 in Syracuse, New York. The one-year field test results are summarized.

Shen, Bo↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Scalable Hardware-and-Human-in-the-Loop Grid-interactive Efficient Building Equipment Performance Dataset

This project developed a publicly available, high-fidelity dataset about the interactions among humans, homes, and heat pumps supporting grid interactive efficient buildings to balance demand on the grid with comfort for occupants. Laboratory measurements and simulations of the hardware capture the second-scale electric power dynamics of heat pumps providing grid services like load shifting and load shedding. Field measurements, behavior tracking, and qualitative surveys of people in their homes over multiple years—including experimentally adjusting the heating and cooling system to provide grid services—to capture the reciprocal effect of human behavior on grid services, and grid services on human comfort. Taken together, these data capture the complete Hardware and Human in the loop system for residential heat pumps, reducing large uncertainties in simulation for design, and models for control of heat pumps, and grid-interactive buildings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Impact of installation faults in air conditioners and heat pumps in single-family homes on U.S. energy usage

To ensure that new residential air conditioners and heat pumps operate optimally, care must be taken during the initial system design and installation to avoid missteps that immediately degrade a system’s performance. Laboratory and simulation studies have quantified the impact that faults can have on capacity and efficiency. Field studies have demonstrated that installation-related faults are commonplace. However, the national impact of installation-related faults cannot be accurately estimated by only simulating a limited number of homes at several fault levels because of the variety of home characteristics and climates involved. In our analysis, we use an improved residential building stock simulation tool to predict the annual energy increase and additional utility costs resulting from two common installation faults: indoor airflow rate and refrigerant charge level. Our method considers the wide range of building characteristics and climate zones of the U.S. housing stock. We use existing field data to develop fault intensity probability distributions to inform our analysis. The study shows that these two faults result in approximately 20.7 TWh/y of additional energy use for central air conditioners and air-source heat pumps in U.S. single-family detached homes, which is a 9% increase over baseline (no-fault) usage, costing homeowners approximately $2.5 billion annually on utility bills. Air-source heat pumps are responsible for a disproportionate fraction of this energy use increase because of the larger number of operating hours compared to central air conditioners and the sensitivity of heating mode performance to the faults analyzed compared to cooling mode.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Magnetocaloric refrigerator

The invention is for an apparatus and method for a refrigerator and a heat pump based on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) offering a simpler, lighter, robust, more compact, environmentally compatible, and energy efficient alternative to traditional vapor-compression devices. The subject magnetocaloric apparatus alternately exposes a magnetocaloric material to strong and weak magnetic field while switching heat to and from the material. Action of the heat switches is coordinated with the magnetic field strength to move heat up the thermal gradient. The invention may be practiced with multiple magnetocaloric stages to attain large differences in temperature. Key applications include thermal management of electronics, as well as industrial and home refrigeration, heating, and air conditioning. The invention offers a simpler, lighter, compact, and robust apparatus compared to magnetocaloric devices of prior art. Furthermore, the invention may be run in reverse as a thermodynamic engine, receiving low-level heat and producing mechanical energy.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2025

RENEWABLE MARINE-SOURCE INTEGRATED HEAT PUMP FOR SPACE CONDITIONING, WATER HEATING, AND FRESH WATER HARVESTING IN REMOTE COASTAL AND ISLAND COMMUNITIES

US coastal and island communities have vulnerable energy infrastructure and high energy costs, which are exacerbated by climate change. A unique opportunity exists to use thermal energy from year-round mild temperature variations to satisfy the broad energy needs of these communities. The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed a small-scale marine-source integrated heat pump (MS-IHP) that, as a single appliance, combines space conditioning, dehumidification (including fresh water harvesting from humid air), and water heating for home and commercial building applications in remote coastal and island communities. The unique, innovative features of the MS-IHP offer improved efficiency and substantially reduced costs for space conditioning, dehumidification, and water heating by seamlessly integrating a heat pump, heat pump water heater, and dehumidifier by using a single compressor; optimal year-round space cooling and heating, dehumidification, water harvesting, and water heating; and improved thermal comfort and reliable operation without frosting and defrosting because of the ocean’s warm temperatures and high heat capacity. Preliminary testing was conducted by retrofitting a commercial heat pump, demonstrating an outperformed performance compared with traditional air-source heat pumps. The MS-IHP technology can help decarbonize energy systems in remote coastal and island communities.

Gao, Zhiming [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000271397995)↗
DOE OSTI2022

Magnetocaloric refrigerator

The invention is for an apparatus and method for a refrigerator and a heat pump based on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) offering a simpler, lighter, robust, more compact, environmentally compatible, and energy efficient alternative to traditional vapor-compression devices. The subject magnetocaloric apparatus alternately exposes portions of an MCE material to strong and weak magnetic field while coordinating the heat flow between the exposed portions by heat bridges to move the heat up the thermal gradient. The invention may be practiced with multiple MCE material portions or segments to attain large differences in temperature. Key applications include thermal management of electronics, as well as industrial and home refrigeration, heating, and air conditioning. The invention offers a simpler, lighter, compact, and robust apparatus compared to magnetocaloric devices of prior art. Furthermore, the invention may be run in reverse as a thermodynamic engine, receiving low-level heat and producing mechanical energy.

Vetrovec, Jan↗