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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

A systematic analytical framework for multi-source municipal solid waste characterization for energy recovery

Advancing municipal solid waste (MSW) management from disposal-oriented practices toward circular, value-driven systems requires standardized methodologies capable of identifying material composition and resource recoverable potential at the point of generation. Despite extensive research, MSW characterization remains fragmented due to inconsistences in sampling methodologies, waste sorting categories, and temporal coverage across previous studies which limit cross-site comparability, reproducibility, and constrain the reliable evaluation of potential resource recovery pathways. This lack of consistency has hindered the development of a unified framework for MSW characterization and resource assessment. This study introduces a standardized, field-validated protocol for MSW sampling and composition analysis that ensures consistent, traceable data across diverse waste sources. The protocol integrates randomized spatial sampling, systematic material sorting, and controlled subsampling for multi-site and multi-season field campaigns. Validation included MSW collection from residential, grocery, restaurant, and school MSW streams across five U.S. states, including Maryland, Idaho, Virginia, Ohio, and Mississippi, to demonstrate the protocol’s ability to identify source-based composition patterns relevant to resource recovery applications. Grocery and restaurant streams were dominated by food waste and high-moisture organics, while school waste contained higher paper content and residential waste showed greater heterogeneity. Aggregation into energy-relevant fractions highlighted practical recovery pathways via anaerobic digestion or gasification, supporting data-driven planning, policy, and circular economy strategies for sustainable waste management across waste sources.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Thermoeconomic analysis of a multigeneration system using waste heat from a triple power cycle

Multigeneration systems represent an appealing concept, due to their multiple benefits compared to standalone systems, which has motivated researchers to develop different types of multigeneration systems for several applications. Considering their significance, in this study, a novel multigeneration is proposed that uses the waste heat of a thermodynamically efficient triple power cycle with a 100 MWe capacity. The proposed system, which can generate power, freshwater, cooling, and domestic hot water concurrently, is evaluated using detailed thermodynamic and economic analyses. The triple cycle includes a simple Brayton cycle coupled with a supercritical carbon dioxide recompression cycle and a high-temperature organic Rankine cycle. The waste energy of the recompression and organic Rankine cycles is recovered by a half effect absorption chiller, a multi-effect distillation unit, and two heat exchangers. The results show that for an optimized triple cycle, up to 1,804 kW cooling and 8,472 m 3 /day of hot water can be generated from the hot supercritical carbon dioxide stream with a levelized cost of cooling and hot water of 0.0362/ton-hr and $0.6823/MWth, respectively. The integration of a multi-effect distillation unit with 7 effects can generate 4,167 m 3 /day freshwater with a levelized cost of water of $1.142/m 3 . Finally, the proposed multigeneration system offers a very promising application and a number of benefits such as a generating multiple useful products with no adverse effect on the thermodynamic efficiency of the triple power cycle.

Thermoeconomic analysis↗
DOE OSTI2021

Applications of Strain-Coupled Magnetoelectric Composites

This article deals with research, development and future directions of magnetoelectric composites for practical devices applications. In the past 20 years there has been a surge of research in the area of multiferroics (MF) and magnetoelectrics (ME) due to their potential to replace existing technologies based only on ferroelectric or ferromagnetic materials. Some of the magnetoelectric composites show exceptionally high potential in the area of magnetic field sensors, however, work remains before commercialization can be realized. The cross coupling among various ferroic parameters in magnetoelectric composites is several orders higher than single phase magetoelectrics, which make its favorable for low detection (nT or pT) magnetic field sensors. Advances in both layered structures or controlled three-dimensional matrix composites for applications as magnetoelectric nonvolatile memory elements are both required. Robust cross-coupling among various parameters with more than four logic states and its compatibility with complementary-symmetry metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology are the main requirements for heterostructure magnetoelectric thin films. The major hurdles in the area of magnetoelectric nonvolatile memory elements are poor interfacial properties and weak magnetoelectric coupling for high density fast read and write processes. Another potential area is strained coupled magneto-electric composites where magnetostriction mediated dimensional change in the magnetic layer effectively modulate the change in the dimension of piezoelectric layers via piezostriction, which leads to a strong ME coupling where their coupling magnitude is sufficient for magnetic field sensors. Energy harvesters based on magnetoelectric composites are also intriguing concepts to capture various types of waste energy, in the form mechanical vibration, pressure, wind energy, hydrothermal and waste temperature.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Oklahoma State University – Industrial Assessment Center (Final Report)

Our first primary objective is to provide industrial assessments to clients in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and north and northwest Texas, including the Texas Panhandle (about 10% of the state of Texas). This geographical region extends about 400 miles north and south and about 600 miles east and west. In addition, the partnership links two universities, Oklahoma State University (OSU) and Wichita State University (WSU) within our region together in a significant collaboration focused on improving our region’s industrial competitiveness. Our second primary objective is to produce competent, motivated energy engineers. Student training will be a combination of classroom work, individual mentoring, and on-the-job training. The focus will be on energy conservation technologies, in conjunction with increased productivity, the economics of the same, and client relationships including client recruiting, on-site assessment, reporting, and client-related communications. Finally, we will work to provide resources and expertise to complement the first two primary objectives. The effectiveness and efficiency of our IAC will be measured, internally, by four broad criteria: (1) client benefits, (2) student development and acceptance after graduation, (3) regional/national contribution to lowering energy use and reducing pollutants, and (4) compliance with DOE/FM requirements. Client-related benefits include client contacts, timeliness of assessments and reports, the value of recommendations provided, and the value of recommendations implemented. Student development includes many students trained and the level of training provided in energy, waste, and productivity-related technologies as well as teamwork and communication skills. The contribution to lower national energy use and waste production is a natural outcome of the program. Compliance with DOE/FM requirements includes timeliness of reports, participation in Best Practices activities, contributions to EERE goals and objectives, and other requirements as communicated to the IAC.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Conversion of food waste to renewable energy: A techno-economic and environmental assessment

Increasing quantities of food waste have become a concern due to high disposal costs in landfills and high greenhouse gas emissions. With this increase in food waste generation, there is also an increasing demand for renewable natural gas to supplement traditional fossil fuel combustion and offset the impacts of climate change. Collecting food waste from landfills and turning it into renewable natural gas using anaerobic digestion could be a win-win option for both food waste disposal and renewable energy production. While some literature exists on the energy potential, economic feasibility, and environmental benefit of food waste disposal via anaerobic digestion, no existing study simultaneously evaluates the energy, economic and environmental effect of food waste to renewable energy via anaerobic digestion, especially on a plant and city scale. Further, this study is focused on the techno-economic and environmental assessment of food waste to energy via anaerobic digestion in order to fill this gap. Four anaerobic digestion pathways are considered in this study: flare, pipeline natural gas, combined heat and power, and combined cycle for efficient power generation. Using a city of 1M people the results show that renewable natural gas from food waste could supply the natural gas usage for 1.9% of residential use, 2.7% of commercial use, 1.1% of industrial use, 167.5% of the compressed natural gas vehicle fleet, 0.7% of electric power generation, or 2.5% of industrial high-temperature heating processes. All pathways except pipeline natural gas will have a positive net present value in the baseline scenario, and the pipeline natural gas pathway will become economically viable with a net present value of 31 USD/t of food waste with renewable energy credits. Lastly, all of the pathways achieve negative greenhouse gas emissions, which indicates that anaerobic digestion is a more environmentally friendly method for the handling of food waste than landfills.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Microcam: A Low Power and Privacy Preserving Multi-modal Platform for Occupancy Detection (Final Report)

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) consumes a significant portion of the energy used in buildings. Much of this is wasted energy, used when buildings are either not occupied at all, or occupied well under their maximum design conditions. This project has focused on residential occupancy detection to autonomously control HVAC systems and save energy. Limitations of existing occupancy sensors include one or more of the following: (i) they employ sensors or algorithms that are not able to detect stationary occupants; (ii) they cannot classify the source of the motion (such as a pet); (iii) depending on the camera resolution and employed algorithms, they do not allow for embedded or onboard computation, and require external or cloud-based processing; (iv) many algorithms developed for camera-based systems are sensitive to lighting changes, and thus prone to missed detections or false alarms; (v) Most existing systems depend on adjustment of settings for different scenarios, complicating self-commissioning; (vi) they cannot provide high enough accuracy; (vii) they are costly; (viii) they are not battery-powered, thus limiting ease of use and installation. In this project, Syracuse University and its partner SRI have developed a low-cost, high accuracy, standalone residential occupancy sensing platform, referred to as the MicroCam, to address all of the aforementioned challenges. MicroCam can operate on typical alkaline batteries without relying on the “cloud” or external computing resources, and consists of low-power, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based, IoT platforms. Each platform has multi-modal sensors and can process motion, audio and video data, and send binary occupancy result to a lead platform. All sensor data is processed locally on platforms, and the only transmitted data is the binary occupancy state. In addition, preliminary work has been done on images wherein occupants are not discernable. Thus, MicroCam is a standalone solution preserving privacy of the occupants.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Midwest Nuclear-based Net-Zero Carbon Steelmaking Demonstration

Globally, the iron and steel industry accounts for around a quarter of GHG emissions from the manufacturing sector , which is about 7% of the 33 gigatonnes (Gt) of global CO 2 emissions . Thus, globally, the steel industry is a 2-3 Gt CO 2 per year emissions challenge. The steel industry is important to the U.S. economy with output equal to $0.5 trillion and domestic production capacity is critical to national defense, infrastructure, energy production, and transportation. President Biden’s executive order on climate identifies actions and policies to put the Nation on a path to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050. To achieve this, deep carbon reductions in the power, transportation, buildings and capital-intensive industrial manufacturing segments such as steel, cement and chemicals need to be addressed. In its recent “Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System” report , the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) stated that, “while technology exists to decarbonize all parts of the energy system, some sectors remain at precommercial or first-of-a-kind demonstration stages and require significant improvement in cost and performance to become commercially viable.” The NAS goes on to state that these hard to decarbonize sectors include “aviation, shipping, and industrial subsectors such as steel, cement, and chemicals manufacturing .” The Administration has proposed a timeline to decarbonize energy, transportation and then industry and manufacturing. From a life-cycle approach, decarbonizing steel and other large industrial inputs are necessary to decarbonize transformations in energy and transportation. DOE’s TRI-Lab Consortium’s Integrated Energy Systems (IES) program is a collaboration amongst DOE’s three applied energy laboratories: the National Energy Technology Laboratory; National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory. The IES approach looks at more tightly integrating low-carbon nuclear energy, renewable electricity, energy storage, load/demand balancing, and biomass (including plastics and other wastes) with one or more industrial processes that utilize heat and/or power from these clean and waste energy sources to produce a low-carbon commodity-scale product.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Numerical Investigation of Susceptor-Catalyst Design for Ethylene Generation in Radio Frequency Based Reactors

Ethylene is the most widely produced petrochemical component in the world. Whether reactors are heated directly or indirectly via steam, manufacturers use economies of scale to overcome inherent thermodynamic inefficiencies when burning fossil fuels. While allowing large-scale operations to use alternative sources of energy and raw materials, new methods of supplying energy to chemical reactor systems can reduce the energy waste produced by conventional processes. One viable method for effectively supplying energy to reactor systems is electromagnetic (EM) induction heating. Using the properties of radio frequency (RF) waves, heterogeneous catalysts can be precisely targeted for heating inside reactors. Site-selective heating can greatly lower the energy requirements of the process by supplying heat to reaction sites while reducing needless heat transfer elsewhere. In this study, a microscale model was used to help create guidelines for susceptors and catalysts to improve ethylene production. The oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane is investigated by utilizing several catalysts and potential catalyst/susceptor combinations, with heat provided by an EM susceptor. Having the susceptors and catalyst function separately results in higher gradients in both heat and mass transfer, which drives transport through the catalyst region, while still providing adequate heating for endothermic reactions. However, using a susceptive core with a catalyst covering produces the maximum ethylene concentration.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

BEEAM (Building Electrical Efficiency Analysis Model) [SWR-20-107]

Modern high-performance buildings exhibit an increasing number of building loads that use direct current (DC) electricity internally, rather than alternating current (AC), due to the advent of low-cost computing and advanced power electronics. Powering DC devices from the AC grid requires AC/DC power conversion, which introduces energy losses and reduces efficiency. As DC loads proliferate, the cumulative wasted energy associated with hundreds of millions of AC/DC converters has become one of the broadest energy savings opportunities in buildings. DC power distribution systems have been proposed as an elegant and transformative solution to the problem of DC devices. In a DC distribution system, the building's wires carry DC electricity, rather than AC; and a few centralized, highly efficient AC/DC converters replace the many smaller, less efficient converters that serve individual DC loads. Unfortunately, the trade-offs associated with DC distribution systems are not well understood. Reported energy savings associated with DC power distribution differ widely and have not been well validated. The Building Electrical Efficiency Analysis Model (BEEAM) is a Modelica library that simulates the efficiency of building electrical distribution systems using harmonic power flow. BEEAM can model a wide variety of building distribution topologies, including three-phase AC, single-phase AC, unipolar DC, bipolar DC, and hybrid networks under both balanced and unbalanced load conditions. BEEAM accurately models power electronic converter losses, provides granular estimates of losses throughout the distribution system, and properly models efficiency at part load conditions. Users can package BEEAM within a functional mockup unit (FMU), enabling co-simulation with other modeling platform, such as EnergyPlus. In summary, BEEAM provides a tool suite for fair and accurate comparison of the efficiency of building electrical distribution systems, including AC, DC, and hybrid systems.

Frank, Stephen↗
DOE OSTI2025

Scalable Unit Commitment with Security Constrained AC Power Flow via ADMM and Hybrid Modeling Strategies

This research introduces a more efficient way to optimize power grid operations, breaking the problem into manageable steps and using advanced mathematical techniques to speed up calculations. By incorporating smart heuristics, improved preprocessing, and contingency analysis, the approach allows operators to make better decisions faster. These innovations enhance our understanding of how to optimize energy generation, making it possible to anticipate failures before they happen, reduce system costs, and improve overall grid performance. Ultimately, this research helps bridge the gap between theoretical models and real-world applications, paving the way for a smarter, more resilient power grid. This research directly benefits the public by making electricity more affordable, reliable, and sustainable. By improving how power grids schedule and distribute electricity, the project helps energy providers reduce operational costs, which can lead to lower electricity prices for consumers. Additionally, the ability to predict and prevent power system failures enhances grid reliability, reducing the likelihood of blackouts that can disrupt homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure such as hospitals. From an environmental perspective, optimizing power generation reduces energy waste and lowers carbon emissions, contributing to cleaner air and a more sustainable energy system. Furthermore, with extreme weather events becoming more frequent, these advancements make the power grid more resilient, ensuring communities are better prepared for emergencies and natural disasters. By strengthening the nation's energy infrastructure, this research plays a crucial role in improving economic stability, public safety, and environmental sustainability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Roadmap on energy harvesting materials

Ambient energy harvesting has great potential to contribute to sustainable development and address growing environmental challenges. Converting waste energy from energy-intensive processes and systems (e.g. combustion engines and furnaces) is crucial to reducing their environmental impact and achieving net-zero emissions. Compact energy harvesters will also be key to powering the exponentially growing smart devices ecosystem that is part of the Internet of Things, thus enabling futuristic applications that can improve our quality of life (e.g. smart homes, smart cities, smart manufacturing, and smart healthcare). To achieve these goals, innovative materials are needed to efficiently convert ambient energy into electricity through various physical mechanisms, such as the photovoltaic effect, thermoelectricity, piezoelectricity, triboelectricity, and radiofrequency wireless power transfer. By bringing together the perspectives of experts in various types of energy harvesting materials, this Roadmap provides extensive insights into recent advances and present challenges in the field. Additionally, the Roadmap analyses the key performance metrics of these technologies in relation to their ultimate energy conversion limits. Building on these insights, the Roadmap outlines promising directions for future research to fully harness the potential of energy harvesting materials for green energy anytime, anywhere.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Oneida Indian Nation Community-Scale Clean Energy Deployment Combined Heat and Power Project. Tribal Renewable Energy (Final Technical Report)

This document reports on the Oneida Indian Nation's to upgrade and improve the operation of the Nation’s Central Utility Plant (CUP) so that previously wasted energy could be captured and utilized to produce electricity. The final technical report contains an overview of the project and the project objectives, which are increased energy efficiency, reduced dependency on fossil fuels, and lower energy costs while maintaining sound environmental stewardship of natural resources. The report describes the specific activities and milestones accomplished, a summary of the current status of the project, including objectives and results achieved, and a description of project management, challenges and lessons learned.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Efficient Mesofluidic Separation of Large Particles in nuclear slurries - 20408

Efficient and effective particle separation is essential to cleanup of many nuclear wastes. For example, particle separation may be used to accelerate settle-decant bottlenecks that limit the throughput necessary to achieve the U.S. Department of Energy waste cleanup mission in a timely manner. Particle separation may be used to protect downstream processing equipment from pulses of solids that may be encountered near (within a few feet of) liquid-solid interfaces during waste transfer operations, thereby preventing work stoppages. Effective particle separation may permit efficient sludge washing. These are only a few of the ways in which particle separation is important. Yet, efficient and effective particle separation in nuclear processing environments remains challenging. For example, settle-decant operations permit larger and heavier particles to settle, leaving smaller, lighter particles suspended. However, settle-decant operations are slow, convection currents may resuspend solids, hindered settling of multicomponent slurries remains incompletely understood, and predictive models for settling in graduated cylinders fail to match limited observations of settling in large waste tanks. Additionally, pumping operations can cause turbulent resuspension of particles when the pump intake is close to the settled solids layer. Filtration techniques that use membranes or partially permeable barriers retain larger particles, permitting smaller particles to permeate. However, filters, including dead-end filtration, are prone to clogging and caking, operate at elevated pressures due to minimal void volume, and increase in pressure during operations, which require more control systems. Therefore, the need for high throughput particle separation techniques that operate with modest pressure drops persists. A novel mesofluidic separator presents the opportunity to effectively and efficiently accelerate the waste cleanup mission. The separator separates large particles from process streams across a broad range of particle sizes and has no moving parts or media to replace, regenerate, or clean. This separator design has an unusually large void volume, permitting operation at much higher flow rates (and lower pressures) than traditional filtration (e.g., dead-end filtration). Industrial-scale flow rates have been demonstrated. In performance testing, mesofluidic separators operate at might flow rates (>90 gpm (0.0006 m{sup 3}/s) in piping 3 inches (0.08 m) in diameter; Re>10{sup 5}), with modest pressure drop (∼25 psi (170 KPa) in testing). In complex, aggregating waste simulants, the separator loses <25% of flow projected over months without back pulsing or chemical cleaning. Mesofluidic separation presents infrastructure advantages, reduces risk, and provides mission impact. Infrastructure advantages include implementation within existing transfer systems, plug and play without facility modifications to safety systems, and operation at low pressures. The separator is flexible in location, may be positioned within or outside of waste tanks, and may replace or augment dead-end and cross-flow filters. Mesofluidic separation reduces risk by minimizing waste (no media to replace or regenerate and no cleaning chemicals to handle and dispose) and by minimizing filter change-out consistent with as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) exposure to workers. The potential mission impact of these separators is substantial. The separator has potential to support, simplify, and accelerate in-farm transfers and waste feed delivery. Furthermore, the separator can free up settling and holding tanks in the Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) mission by reducing or eliminating post-transfer settling and wait times with the potential to free up 1 Mgal (4000 m{sup 3}) of double-shell tank space. This paper quantitatively compares mesofluidic separation to dead-end filtration, discusses scale-up results, and considers the separator's potential to efficiently and effectively reduce the long-term environmental ability of particulate-rich nuclear wastes. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2020

Universal free-energy landscape produces efficient and reversible electron bifurcation

For decades, it was unknown how electron-bifurcating systems in nature prevented energy-wasting short-circuiting reactions that have large driving forces, so synthetic electron-bifurcating molecular machines could not be designed and built. The underpinning free-energy landscapes for electron bifurcation were also enigmatic. We predict that a simple and universal free-energy landscape enables electron bifurcation, and we show that it enables high-efficiency bifurcation with limited short-circuiting (the EB scheme). The landscape relies on steep free-energy slopes in the two redox branches to insulate against short-circuiting using an electron occupancy blockade effect, without relying on nuanced changes in the microscopic rate constants for the short-circuiting reactions. The EB scheme thus unifies a body of observations on biological catalysis and energy conversion, and the scheme provides a blueprint to guide future campaigns to establish synthetic electron bifurcation machines.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Development of a Unified Taxonomy for HVAC System Faults

Detecting and diagnosing HVAC faults is critical for maintaining building operation performance, reducing energy waste, and ensuring indoor comfort. An increasing deployment of commercial fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) software tools in commercial buildings in the past decade has significantly increased buildings’ operational reliability and reduced energy consumption. A massive amount of data has been generated by the FDD software tools. However, efficiently utilizing FDD data for ‘big data’ analytics, algorithm improvement, and other data-driven applications is challenging because the format and naming conventions of those data are very customized, unstructured, and hard to interpret. This paper presents the development of a unified taxonomy for HVAC faults. A taxonomy is an orderly classification of HVAC faults according to their characteristics and causal relations. The taxonomy includes fault categorization, physical hierarchy, fault library, relation model, and naming/tagging scheme. The taxonomy employs both a physical hierarchy of HVAC equipment and a cause-effect relationship model to reveal the root causes of faults in HVAC systems. A structured and standardized vocabulary library is developed to increase data representability and interpretability. The developed fault taxonomy can be used for HVAC system ‘big data’ analytics such as HVAC system fault prevalence analysis or the development of an HVAC FDD software standard. A common type of HVAC equipment-packaged rooftop unit (RTU) is used as an example to demonstrate the application of the developed fault taxonomy. Two RTU FDD software tools are used to show that after mapping FDD data according to the taxonomy, the meta-analysis of the multiple FDD reports is possible and efficient.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Robustness of energy performance of Zero-Net-Energy (ZNE) homes

Zero-net-energy (ZNE) homes produce an adequate amount of energy on-site to meet their energy demand based on source energy for an entire year. California building energy efficiency standards require new residential buildings started in 2020 to be ZNE. For various reasons, a home designed as ZNE may not achieve ZNE performance in real operation. Here we aimed to quantify the robustness of the energy performance of ZNE homes due to weather variability, climate change, and the uncertainty of occupant behavior. A single-family ZNE house, based on the optimal cost-effective design in three California climate zones, was used to develop the EnergyPlus simulation models. Weather variations were considered from a combination of the historical 30 years’ actual meteorological year (AMY) weather data, typical year weather data in TMY3, and future weather data based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios. Three scenarios of occupant behavior from the energy perspective were defined to represent the uncertainty about occupants’ activities, comfort requirements, and their adaptive interactions with buildings and systems. In terms of annual source energy, the simulation results of the ZNE homes showed: (1) a decrease of 23–38 percent for occupants with energy austerity behavior and an increase of 120–130 percent for occupants with energy wasteful behavior, compared with the baseline assumption of normal occupants; (2) a variation range of –15 percent to +14 percent for the results using 30-year AMY weather data compared with the baseline results using TMY3 weather data; (3) an increase of 10–13 percent with future weather in Fresno and Riverside and a decrease of 15 percent with San Francisco; and (4) climate change can reduce the gap between the austerity and wasteful consumption. These findings provide insights into how ZNE homes may perform in reality and inform architects, engineers, occupants, and policymakers to pay more attention to occupant behavior on design, operation, and regulations of ZNE homes to ensure energy performance robustness.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2025

Akiachak Energy Efficiency Retrofit Project (Final Technical Report)

The Akiachak Native Community (ANC), a federally recognized Yup'ik Tribe, undertook this energy efficiency initiative to enhance energy performance in key community buildings, including the Tribal IRA Office, Laundry, Police Station, Clinic, and Daycare. Through energy audits and upgrades, the project focused on high-impact improvements like air sealing, LED lighting, and programmable thermostats, primarily in the Tribal Office due to funding constraints. The initiative aims to reduce energy waste, lower heating and electricity costs, and improve facility comfort and longevity. The project aims to generate long-term savings for further improvements by decreasing reliance on imported fuel oil. This initiative aligns with the Tribe's vision for responsible energy use, addressing the challenges of high fuel prices in a remote community, and serves as a model for similar efforts in Akiachak and other Alaska Native villages pursuing energy self-reliance.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗