SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “operating system”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

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

At least 55 records · Page 3

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

DOE OSTI2024

Application of Banking Scoring and Rating for Coherent Risk Measures in Electricity Systems ABSCORES

This project developed a framework for asset and system risk management that can be incorporated into current electricity system operations to improve economic efficiency and establish an Electric Assets Risk Bureau. We leveraged scoring and ratings from banking and financial institutions alongside current optimization methods in dispatching power systems to help system operators and electricity markets schedule resources. This approach is based on the observation that there are major discrepancies between the power scheduled by a system operator and the actual power generated/consumed. These discrepancies—exacerbated by unplanned contingencies (e.g., natural disasters)—are caused by multiple factors, including the different financial, environmental and risk preferences of power producers, consumers, and aggregators. We developed a framework that counteracts two failures in electricity system operations: imperfect information and missing markets for products. The technical approach included five tasks. Tasks 1 and 2 supported the development of risk scores at the asset level with historical data collected for this project. Tasks 3, 4, and 5 incorporated scoring into decision-making at the system level. The proposed effort achieved PERFORM's Program Objectives because the proposed outputs and algorithms do not exist in the electricity industry and are an innovative approach to managing risk. Since the acknowledged need to better assess and act upon risk profiles for grid assets has not been met by the industry, this project will also impact ARPA-E's Mission Areas, including improving energy efficiency and giving the U.S. a technological lead in advanced energy technologies.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Intercomparison of Three Continuous Monitoring Systems on Operating Oil and Gas Sites

We compare continuous monitoring systems (CMS) from three different vendors on six operating oil and gas sites in the Appalachian Basin using several months of data. We highlight similarities and differences between the three CMS solutions when deployed in the field and compare their output to concurrent top-down aerial measurements and to site-level bottom-up inventories. Furthermore, we compare vendor-provided emission rate estimates to estimates from an open-source quantification algorithm applied to the raw CMS concentration data. This experimental setup allows us to separate the effect of the sensor platform (i.e., sensor type and arrangement) from the quantification algorithm. We find that 1) localization and quantification estimates rarely agree between the three CMS solutions on short time scales (i.e., 30 min), but temporally aggregated emission rate distributions are similar between solutions, 2) differences in emission rate distributions are generally driven by the quantification algorithm, rather than the sensor platform, 3) agreement between CMS and aerial rate estimates varies by CMS solution but is close to parity when CMS estimates are averaged across solutions, and 4) similar sites with similar bottom-up inventories do not necessarily have similar emission characteristics. These results have important implications for developing measurement-informed inventories and for incorporating CMS-inferred emission characteristics into emission mitigation efforts.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

A sequential Attacker-Defender game for distribution systems resilience enhancement against extreme weather events

Improving distribution system resilience against frequent extreme weather events is important for reliable power system operations. Especially when dealing with events such as hurricanes that have short-term predictions, proactive pre-event preparedness plays a vital role in system resilience performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to construct pre-event resource allocation plans for system operators to cope with upcoming threats through a sequential attacker-defender game framework. The sequential attacker-defender game is designed to model the interaction between the extreme weather and the system operator. In each round of the game, the attacker and the defender sequentially update their current strategies by accounting for the opponent’s action set. The attacker model is formulated as a bi-level problem to identify the severe outage scenarios, and the defender model is formulated as a two-stage optimization problem to determine the allocation of restoration resources including mobile responsive resources and repair crews. Two scale-reduction strategies are proposed to ensure the scalability of the game scheme. Finally, case studies on the IEEE 33-bus and a 7149-node practical utility system validate the effectiveness of the proposed sequential game and the efficiency of the scale-reduction strategies.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2024

Opportunities, Challenges, and Research Needs for Remote Microreactor Operations

As the nuclear industry develops new advanced reactor technologies, many companies are embracing this advancement by pursuing the development of microreactors. The term microreactor generally refers to a nuclear reactor with an operating power of 20 MW(thermal) or less. The power range of microreactors makes them appealing for many use cases, such as powering remote communities, mining sites, and military bases. Most of the microreactor designs being pursued are expected to incorporate remote facility operations into the final product. However, no framework has yet been developed to determine what remote operations systems require for reliable, resilient, and secure operation of a microreactor. Here, this work identifies the research needs for challenges that are unique to remote operations and monitoring for microreactors, specifically regarding instrumentation and control, communication methods, regulatory requirements, and operational policies. The types of commands and sensor measurements that must be transmitted between the facilities, as well as methods for verifying the trustworthiness of these signals, are assessed. This work evaluates the security, reliability, and performance requirements that must be met when considering the selection of communication hardware and protocols for use in remote operations. Also, an assessment was performed to study how remote operations fit within current regulatory requirements and what may need to be updated in regulatory policy to allow for remote operation. Finally, the operational contingencies unique to remote operations that must be in place for responses to abnormal events are identified. This paper identifies the challenges and research opportunities within the areas of importance for the design of remote operation systems.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Transmission Operator Workflows for Real-Time Reliability Studies: A Review of Control Room Practices and Naturalistic Decision Making

This report provides an overview of real-time reliability study tools and their use by power system operators in the control room environment. After introducing some of the nuances of the control room environment and the differences in perspectives between power system engineers and operators, the roles and responsibilities of key entities involved in RTCA workflows are introduced. These are specifically the transmission system operator (TOP) and reliability coordinator (RC), which are required to run tools such as real-time contingency analysis (RTCA) as part of a real-time reliability assessment every 30 minutes, as dictated by a series of standards issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). The process by which power systems operators operate the grid is discussed in terms of naturalistic decision making (NDM) and the recognition-primed decision-making (RPD) model. This cognitive model describe how experts working in high-risk, high-stress environments make safety-critical decisions under uncertainty and time pressure. For power system operators, the mental simulations involved in the traditional RPD model are supplemented by physics-based simulations using numerical tools, such as RTCA, to improve situational awareness and effectiveness of control actions. Next, a generic workflow is introduced to describe operator decision making for running RTCA tools and responding to system violations on a pre-contingent basis. The types of analysis performed and control actions chosen by power system operators are described in detail. The overall high-level workflow is then expanded in subsequent sections, with special attention given to high-voltage violations, low-voltage violations, and thermal overloads. Each type of violation is described in detail, with explanations of common causes, impacts on equipment and customers, and mitigation strategies. An additional workflow diagram is provided for each type of violation.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2024

Fish Friendly Water Rules' Impact On the Power Grid with High VRE Levels

Columbia River basin multipurpose reservoirs are operated for hydropower production and many other purposes considering the aquatic habitat of the river basin. Specifically, the river basin fish population is a vital element for the tribal community of the river basin. When conventional thermal power plants are retired, hydropower flexibility balances the wind and solar variability of the power grid and provides grid services to maximize the high renewable power absorption. On the other hand, over-reliance on hydropower could harm the river basin fish habitat. For example, water release pulses during peak electricity demand hours and shorter-term water release variation could harm the fish population. Power grid planners, environmentalists, Columbia Basin tribes, hydro regulators, and water resource planners work together to understand the impacts of Columbia River basin operation in a fish-friendly way in the current power grid and power grid with higher renewable power share. We examine different levels of renewable share in the Western Interconnection to understand the multiple weather years and future climate projection and operating scenario impact on the power grid and water system. We measure power grid impacts for various water resources planning scenarios in terms of total system operating cost, system reliability indicators, changes in wind and solar generation and curtailments, local marginal prices, and revenue for hydropower producers. The study results inform reservoir operating rules decisions from hydropower power producers, system operators, other water users, tribes, environmentalists, and other stakeholders.

environmental↗

DOE OSTI2024

Field Programmable Gate Array-Based Reactor Protection Systems and Potential for Inclusion of Secure Elements to Improve Cybersecurity

For acceptable implementations of technologies like wireless communications, remote monitoring, etc., strong mitigations must be developed and evaluated to ensure that new attack pathways do not increase risk for Advanced Reactors. Secure Elements can be adopted and adapted for this purpose based on tamper resistance and cryptographic abilities, but research must be done to properly integrate into critical components such as FPGA-based Important to Safety systems in conjunction with current and future regulations on cyber security features in Advanced Reactors. Typically, the integration of a Secure Element happens during the POST and UEFI boot of a computing platform, performed by the Operating System, which is not possible with FPGAs because they do not include these firmware components. Work must be done to identify a reliable and secure method for integration in FPGA-based systems which lack Operating Systems and therefore complex boot procedures, system calls, etc.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2024

Field Programmable Gate Array-Based Reactor Protection Systems and Potential for Inclusion of Secure Elements to Improve Cybersecurity

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Data-driven reduced-order models for port-Hamiltonian systems with operator inference

Hamiltonian operator inference has been developed in Sharma et al. (2022) to learn structure-preserving reduced-order models (ROMs) for Hamiltonian systems. The method constructs a low-dimensional model using only data and knowledge of the functional form of the Hamiltonian. The resulting ROMs preserve the intrinsic structure of the system, ensuring that the mechanical and physical properties of the system are maintained. In this work, we extend this approach to port-Hamiltonian systems, which generalize Hamiltonian systems by including energy dissipation, external input, and output. Based on snapshots of the system’s state and output, together with the information about the functional form of the Hamiltonian, reduced operators are inferred through optimization and are then used to construct data-driven ROMs. To further alleviate the complexity of evaluating nonlinear terms in the ROMs, a hyper-reduction method via discrete empirical interpolation is applied. Accordingly, we derive error estimates for the ROM approximations of the state and output. Lastly, we demonstrate the structure preservation, as well as the accuracy of the proposed port-Hamiltonian operator inference framework, through numerical experiments on a linear mass–spring-damper problem and a nonlinear Toda lattice problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2025

Networked Microgrid Topology Reconfiguration to Promote Fairness in Proactive Load Shedding

Increasing occurrences of natural disasters and grid emergency events consistently challenge the safe and reliable operations of power systems. During such emergency situations, system operators may proactively shed load to mitigate risks. However, uncoordinated implementation of load shedding may disrupt electricity supply and even lead to cascading failures. Meanwhile, it is crucial to address potential biases affecting different customers when executing load shedding. This paper addresses the dynamic topology reconfiguration problem for networked microgrids with distributed energy resources under emergency conditions. Specifically, we propose a novel rolling-horizon optimization model that integrates fairness-aware constraints into the networked microgrid topology reconfiguration. Unlike existing approaches that focus solely on efficiency or apply fairness considerations in static settings, our method explicitly incorporates temporal fairness constraints to restrict repeated or excessive load curtailment for load blocks. Moreover, the fairness-aware constraints are specifically developed for the context of dynamic networked microgrid topology reconfiguration, and are designed to be convex or amenable to linear reformulations, which offers a more tractable alternative to traditional models with non-convex formulations. Numerical studies on a modified IEEE 13-bus system and a larger-sized SMART-DS networked microgrid system demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm towards more fairness-aware networked microgrid topology reconfiguration decision-making.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2025

Benchmarking thermal energy storage cost for industrial process heat

Process heat accounts for roughly half of industrial energy demand, and currently 95% of process heat is derived from the combustion of natural gas, oil, and coal. Electrification of industrial heating could be an alternative, potentially expanding locations suitable for manufacturing; however, industrial facility owners may desire energy storage to stabilize energy costs. In this work, the economic benefits of pairing thermal storage with electrified process heat to reduce the average price paid for energy are analyzed. Cost savings focus on energy arbitrage, or leveraging flexible energy pricing schemes, alone. The cost of natural gas combustion across decades (2019-2060) is compared to the costs of electricity and thermal energy storage in four United States Independent System Operator (ISO) regions. Systems installed today may not yield positive net present value (NPV) compared to the use of natural gas. However, using estimated electricity prices, systems installed in 2030 using arbitrage alone could be profitable when compared to natural gas in some regions of the U.S. Furthermore, if capital expenditures could be reduced by 50% for sensible thermal storage systems by 2030, profitable systems are found across all regions. This implies that electrification of industrial process heat, when paired with inexpensive thermal energy storage systems, could be less expensive than brownfield natural gas systems, using arbitrage as the only source of revenue and without a dependency on any future policy drivers such as pricing externalities that could further incentivize the electrification of industrial process heat.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2024

Parallel Runtime Interface for Fortran (PRIF): A Multi-Image Solution for LLVM Flang

Fortran compilers that provide support for Fortran’s native parallel features often do so with a runtime library that depends on details of both the compiler implementation and the communication library, while others provide limited or no support at all. This paper introduces a new generalized interface that is both compiler- and runtime-library-agnostic, providing flexibility while fully supporting all of Fortran’s parallel features. The Parallel Runtime Interface for Fortran (PRIF) was developed to be portable across shared- and distributed-memory systems, with varying operating systems, toolchains and architectures. It achieves this by defining a set of Fortran procedures corresponding to each of the parallel features defined in the Fortran standard that may be invoked by a Fortran compiler and implemented by a runtime library. PRIF aims to be used as the solution for LLVM Flang to provide parallel Fortran support. This paper also briefly describes our PRIF prototype implementation: Caffeine.

Bonachea, Dan↗

DOE OSTI2024

Hydropower Flexibility and Environmental Tradeoffs Analysis

The importance of hydropower increases as the power grid evolves with the higher variable renewable contribution. As conventional thermal power plants are retired, the importance of hydropower contribution increases to balance the variability of solar and wind generation. However, reservoir water resources are constrained by multiple constraints, and variability of water inflow to the reservoirs creates limitations to dam water releases for power grid needs. Coordinating multiple tools, including water resources, ecological, and technical and economic power grid modeling, informs dam water releases. The case study, the Columbia River Basin multipurpose reservoir project, is operated for hydropower production and many other purposes considering the aquatic habitat of the river basin. Specifically, the river basin fish population is a vital element for the tribal community of the river basin. We integrated a production cost model, a water resource model, and decades of tribal knowledge to analyze the fish-friendly way of operating Columbia hydropower scheduling and grid impacts. We measure power grid impacts for various water resources planning scenarios in terms of total system operating cost, system reliability indicators, changes in wind and solar generation and curtailments, local marginal prices, and revenue for hydropower producers. The study results inform reservoir operating rules decisions from hydropower power producers, system operators, other water users, tribes, environmentalists, and other stakeholders.

Columbia River↗

DOE OSTI2024

Interpreting Forced Oscillation Notifications from ESAMS: General Guidance for Reliability Coordinators

The Eastern Interconnection Situational Awareness Monitoring System (ESAMS) project demonstrated the feasibility of aggregating synchrophasor measurements from across an interconnection, analyzing them, and providing real-time wide-area situational awareness to system operators who may have excellent visibility within their footprint but lack an interconnection-wide view. An application within ESAMS that has garnered industry interest involves detecting forced oscillations visible across multiple areas, identifying the region where the oscillation originated from, quantifying the uncertainty in source localization results, and notifying users in real-time if the detected oscillation amplitudes cross a specified threshold. It is expected that system operators will utilize their internal SCADA/EMS/synchrophasor systems in conjunction with information provided by ESAMS to take effective mitigation actions if forced oscillation notifications are received. This report provides some general guidance on how the ESAMS information can be used for source localization and coordination among multiple reliability coordinators; and also identifies potential enhancements to ESAMS notifications for improved interpretability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2026

Laboratory Evaluation of Federated, Hierarchical Controls for Distribution Power System Management: Preprint

The connection of more loads and distributed energy resources (DERs) to the distribution power system brings both challenges and opportunities to system operators. There are opportunities to aggregate flexible loads and DERs to provide transmission grid services, but the coordinated actions of DERs being managed by independent, third-party DER aggregators to support transmission system operations can present challenges. We developed a federated DER management architecture and control framework that aims to manage heterogeneous DERs to deliver reliable transmission grid services while respecting distribution system constraints. The controls include stochastic day-ahead optimization, model predictive control, and a simple real-time management scheme. We present simulation results obtained from a realistic laboratory test bed of federated controls managing DERs within a substation service area to make the substation net power follow the optimal net power determined by the day-ahead optimization based on cost and limiting reverse power flow.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2024

Solar and Wind Forecast Error Reserve Sharing in a Multi-Utility Region

As electricity systems transition to higher levels of solar and wind generation, electric system operators will likely need to hold additional reserves to manage solar and wind forecast error. Because solar and wind forecast errors tend to be weakly correlated across space, system operators can reduce their reserve requirements by sharing reserves. This paper examines the benefits of forecast error reserve sharing among balancing areas in the Southeastern United States, in scenarios in which solar and wind generation ranges from 34% to 65% of total generation. It finds that day-ahead forecast error reserve requirements increase linearly with growth in solar and wind generation capacity (6%-10% of total capacity), but that reserve sharing can significantly reduce these requirements (by 6%-29%). It finds that, in economic terms, the value of forecast error reserve sharing ($\$$0.09-$\$$1.24 billion per year, $\$$0.12-$\$$1.68/MWh of load across scenarios) tends to decline with higher levels of solar and wind generation, due to lower reserve and energy prices. Even with declines in reserve prices, forecast error reserve sharing can still provide substantial value, though with higher levels of solar, wind, and electricity storage this value is increasingly tied to avoiding scarcity prices.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2024

Solar and Wind Forecast Error Reserve Sharing in a Multi-Utility Region

As electricity systems transition to higher levels of solar and wind generation, electric system operators will likely need to hold additional reserves to manage the forecast error associated with these resources. Because wind and solar forecast errors tend to be poorly correlated across space, system operators can reduce their reserve requirements by sharing reserves. This paper examines the value of forecast error reserve sharing among balancing areas in the Southeast United States. It finds that forecast error reserve requirements increase linearly with growth in solar and wind generation capacity but that reserve sharing can significantly reduce physical (MW) reserve requirements (from 25%-26% to 18%-19% of average load in high solar scenarios). It finds that the value of forecast error reserve sharing declines with higher levels of solar and wind generation, due to lower wholesale energy and reserve prices. Even with declines in wholesale prices, forecast error reserve sharing can still provide substantial value (as much as $\$$400 million per year in a high solar scenario), though with higher levels of solar, wind, and electricity storage, this value is increasingly tied to avoiding scarcity prices. The results suggest the importance of coordinated capacity expansion planning for forecast error reserve sharing.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2024

Data-driven Modeling for Grid Edge IBRs: A Digital Twin Perspective of User-Defined Models

Recent events in Odessa have brought attention to the challenges associated with the interaction between Inverter- Based Resources (IBRs) and the transmission and distribution system. The NERC event diagnosis report has highlighted sev- eral issues, emphasizing the need for continuous performance monitoring of these IBRs by system operators. Key areas of concern include the mismatch of control and protection perfor- mance of IBRs between the original equipment manufacturer (OEM)-provided models and field measurements. The inability to replicate the realistic response can result in incorrect reliability and resilience studies. In this paper, we developed an approach on how to emulate the behavior of an IBR using measurement data obtained for system operators to utilize in real-time and long- term planning. Two experiments are conducted in the phasor domain and electromagnetic transients (EMT) domain to emulate the behavior for grid forming and grid following inverters under various operating conditions and the effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated in terms of accuracy and ease of utilizing user-defined models (UDMs)

Mahapatra, Kaveri [BATTELLE (PACIFIC NW LAB)]↗