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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Data-driven Community-centered Resilient Assessment and Planning Toolkit for Nexus of Energy and Water (DCRAPT-NEW)

Urban areas, including Detroit and Pittsburgh, have suffered significant dual outages of the electrical and water infrastructure in the past decade due, in part, to the increasing number of extreme weather events. With increasing temperatures and rainfall intensity, these regions need to prepare for increasing extreme events through community-based energy and water resilience analysis, planning, and enhancement. This project developed a suite of open-source, open-access, community-centered, data-driven assessment and distributed energy resource (DER) and planning tools for energy and water resilience enhancement in urban areas. Through establishing a multi-level community awareness and engagement mechanism and a comprehensive collection of power outage and flooding data, an innovative group of community energy and water resilience assessment and planning tools have been developed for a wide range of users with differing and variable sets of data available to them. The developed tools include (1) DOE EAGLE-I data-driven, deep-learning assisted resilience assessment and DER planning tools at the county level with socioeconomic factors incorporated; (2) Utility annual power outage data-driven tools for long term resilience assessment and DER planning and 15-min power outage data-driven tools for short term resilience assessment and planning; (3) Detailed engineering tools for energy and water systems resilience assessment and planning when the system topology and component fragility curves are available; (4) Alternative Resiliency Metric Calculation that extracts and separates outage and restoration processes; and (5) Co-optimization tools that evaluate the resilience of the power and sewage system and allow users to conduct joint planning with energy and wastewater systems. The developed tools provide planners, decision-makers, and stakeholders with powerful capabilities to systematically evaluate system/community resilience and optimal and actionable guidance for enhancing resilience while prioritizing DER investments. The tools have been used and validated in Detroit and Pittsburgh and can be used in other areas of the nation. In addition, this project will (1) advance the knowledge and applications of machine-learning methods in analyzing and fusing different layers of information and generating meaningful data points such as generating rare weather events; (2) significantly improve the energy and water resilience of the identified communities in Detroit and Pittsburgh and prepare for more frequent and severe weather conditions; (3) help communities assess extreme weather event impacts and address short-term and long-term resilience-related issues The developed tools have been made public via GitHub and demonstrated to community stakeholders and utility companies via the two annual workshops and numerous community engagement meetings. The project outcomes are also disseminated through publications in various journals and conference proceedings, and presentations at top conferences.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

Phase II Nevada Water Resources Data, Modeling, and Visualization (DMV) Center (Final Report)

Water is unquestionably a critical resource throughout the United States. In the semi-arid west -- an area stressed by increase in human population and sprawl of the built environment -- water is the most important limiting resource. Crucially, science must understand factors that affect availability and distribution of water. To sustain growing consumptive demand, science needs to translate understanding into reliable and robust predictions of availability under weather conditions that could be average but might be extreme. These predictions are needed to support current and long-term planning. Similar to the role of weather forecast and climate prediction, water prediction over short and long temporal scales can contribute to resource strategy, governmental policy and municipal infrastructure decisions, which are arguably tied to the natural variability and unnatural change to climate. Change in seasonal and annual temperature, precipitation, snowmelt, and runoff affect the distribution of water over large temporal and spatial scales, which impact the risk of flooding and the groundwater recharge. Anthropogenic influences and impacts increase the complexity and urgency of the challenge. The goal of this project has been to develop a decision support framework of data acquisition, digital modeling, and 3D visualization. This integrated framework consists of tools for compiling, discovering and projecting our understanding of processes that control the availability and distribution of water. The framework is intended to support the analysis of the complex interactions between processes that affect water supply, from controlled availability to either scarcity or deluge. The developed framework enables DRI to promote excellence in water resource management, particularly within the Lake Tahoe basin. In principle, this framework could be replicated for other watersheds throughout the United States. Phase II of this project builds upon the research conducted during Phase I, in which the hydrologic framework was investigated and the development initiated. Phase II concentrates on practical implementation of the earlier work but emphasizes applications to the hydrology of the Lake Tahoe basin. Phase 1 efforts have been refined and extended by creating a toolset for geographic information systems (GIS) that is usable for disparate types of geospatial and geo-referenced data. The toolset is intended to serve multiple users for a variety of applications. The web portal for internet access to hydrologic and remotely sensed product data, prototyped in Phase I, has been significantly enhanced. The portal provides high performance access to LANDSAT-derived data using techniques developed during the course of the project. The portal is interactive, and supports the geo-referenced display of hydrologic information derived from remotely sensed data, such as various vegetative indices used to calculate water consumption. The platform can serve both internal and external constituencies using inter-operating infrastructure that spans both sides of the DRI firewall. The platform is intended grow its supported data assets and to serve as a template for replication to other geographic areas. An unanticipated development during the project was the use of ArcGIS software on a new computer system, called the IBM PureSytems, and the parallel use of the systems for faster, more efficient image processing. Additional data, independent of the portal, was collected within the Sagehen basin and provides detailed information regarding the processes that control hydrologic responses within mountain watersheds. The newly collected data include elevation, evapotranspiration, energy balance and remotely sensed snow-pack data. A Lake Tahoe basin hydrologic model has been developed, in part to help predict the hydrologic impacts of climate change. The model couples both the surface and subsurface hydrology, with the two components having been independently calibrated. Results from the coupled simulations involving both surface water and groundwater processes show that it is possible to fairly accurately simulate lake effects and water budget variables over a wide range of dry and wet cycles in the historical record. The Lake Tahoe basin is representative of the hydrology, topography and climate throughout the Sierra Nevada Range, and the entire model development is prototypical of the efforts required to replicate the decision support framework to other locales. The Lake Tahoe model in particular, could allow water managers to evaluate more accurately components of the water budget (ET, runoff, groundwater, etc) and to answer important questions regarding water resources in northern Nevada. This report discusses the geographic scale and the hydrologic complexity of the calibrated model developed as part of this project, as well as simulation results for historical and future climate projects To enable human-driven data exploration and discovery, de novo software for a globalized rendering module that extends the capability of our evolving custom visualization engine from Phase I (called SMEngine) has been developed. The new rendering component, called Horizon, supports terrain rendering capable of displaying and interrogating both remotely sensed and modeled data. The development of Horizon necessitated adaptation of the visualization engine to allow extensible integration of components such as the global rendering module and support for associated features. The resulting software is general in its GIS capability, but a specific Lake Tahoe visualization application suitable for immersive decision support in the DRIVE6 virtual reality facility has been developed. During the development, various features to enhance the value of the visualization experience were explored, including the use of hyperspectral image overlays. An over-arching goal of the visualization aspect of the project has been to develop and demonstrate the CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment) as a practical tool for hydrologic research.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Fe3 Traffic Simulator Overview

NASA Ames developed a first of its kind air traffic simulation tool known as Flexible engine for Fast time evaluation of Flight environments (Fe3). The patent-pending technology is a robust simulation tool that provides the capability of statistically analyzing the high-density and low-altitude traffic system. With this capability, stakeholders can study the impacts of critical components (such as wind, surveillance, communication, collision, avoidance, traffic rules, energy consumption, etc.) in the low-altitude high-density traffic system, gain insights and help define requirements, policies, and protocols for a safe and efficient traffic system, and assess operational risks and optimize fight schedules.

Flexible engine for Fast time evaluation of Flight↗
DOE OSTI2024

Identifying Disadvantaged Communities in the United States: An Energy-Oriented Mapping Tool that Aggregates Environmental and Socioeconomic Burdens

This paper defines a policy-relevant nationwide composite index to identify communities disproportionately impacted by environmental, energy, and climate injustices in the United States. We review existing vulnerability indicators and indices to assess the tradeoffs of different design parameters, including variable selection, geographic unit, dimensionality reduction, weighting, and aggregation methods. From this methodological review, we create the first nationwide, census tract-level index of cumulative burden that includes energy-relevant indicators alongside climate, social, environmental, and economic indicators, and is flexible to the inclusion of additional data sources. We provide a summary of the sources of inputs used to develop a definition for "disadvantaged communities" that can be used to prioritize energy investments. We discuss use-cases for this index including the implementation of the Justice40 Initiative, which calls for 40% of certain federal clean energy benefits to flow to disadvantaged communities in the United States. We use our results to examine historic allocations of federal energy investments and show that communities that we identify as disadvantaged received about 37% fewer funds per capita than non-disadvantaged communities.

cumulative burden↗
DOE OSTI2026

Alternative Fuels Data Center

This presentation provides an overview of the Alternative Fuels Data Center for the 2026 Transportation Technologies Annual Merit Review, including project objectives, milestone, approach to developing and maintaining the website, project accomplishments and progress, and collaboration with other national labs and external partners.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Key Takeaways from Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) Wage Study & Analysis

In early 2021, the National Association for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP) and its Workforce Development Working Group provided turnkey survey tools to the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) network on compensation rates for six core WAP positions. From February to April 2021 wage surveys were voluntarily conducted by 27 states, with 286 Subgrantees self-reporting hourly wage data. For context, a $1/hour increase in wages = $2,080/year increase in salary.

ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

A comparative analysis of green building rating systems in China and the United States

Several studies have compared green building rating systems (GBRSs) in China and the United States, Nonetheless, few studies included in-depth analysis on specific rating tools with project specific data validating green building technologies and actual performance. This study conducted a comprehensive data-driven comparison of the GBRSs of China and the United States. The goal was to understand the current status and further improve China's GBRS and promote green building technologies. The study first conducted thorough comparisons of GBRSs in China and the U.S. by selecting a series of distinct rating tools. Then, it analyzed each tool's development objectives, contents, and rating score settings. Further, the comparison concludes the future development needs for China's GBRS. In addition to standard comparison, green building technologies applied in certified projects were also summarized. The results demonstrated that GBRSs in both China and the U.S. reflect well the technical paths to achieve green building sustainable development. By analyzing certified projects, it was also found that the incremental costs of green building technologies were controllable. Finally, based on the comparison and case analysis, the study provide a set of policy recommendations to further improve China's green building standards.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Energy Storage and Power Plant Decommissioning

The report examines three fossil-fuel power plant decommissioning strategies to assess the role of energy storage in enabling an equitable clean energy transition future. The analysis showed how storage could enable reduction of fossil-fuel sources from the grid while enabling increased renewable energy integration into the electric grid. The report offers recommendations for future work, including the need to further develop the non-energy benefit attributes of energy storage systems with a focus on the benefits accrued to local communities to understand past decisions and inform future decision-making tools that account for environmental, economic, and social impacts, particularly those on disadvantaged communities.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2011

HPC-EPIC for High Resolution Simulations of Environmental and Sustainability Assessment

Multiple concerns over the impact of wide scale changes in land management have motivated comprehensive analyses of environmental sustainability of food and biofuel production. These call for high-resolution land management tools that enable comprehensive analyses of natural resources for decision-making. The agroecosystem simulation models with the most biophysical detail are point models, which often have a user interface that allows users to provide inputs and examine results for agricultural field scale analyses. These are not able to meet the needs of high-resolution regional or national simulations. We describe an efficient computational approach for deployment of the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model at high-resolution spatial scales using high performance computing (HPC) techniques. We developed an integrated procedure for executing the millions of simulations required for high-resolution, regional studies, and also address building databases for model initialization, model forcing data, and model outputs. We first ported EPIC from Windows to an HPC platform and validated output from both platforms. We then developed methods of packaging simulations for efficient, unattended parallel execution on the HPC cluster. The job queuing system, Portable Batch System (PBS) is employed to control job submission. Simulation outputs are extracted to PostgreSQL database for analysis. In a case study covering four counties in central Wisconsin using HPC-EPIC, we finished over 140 K simulations in a total of 10 h on an HPC cluster using 20 nodes. This is a speedup of 40 times. More nodes could be used to achieve larger speedups. The HPC-EPIC model developed in this study is anticipated to provide information useful for high-resolution land use management and decision making. The framework for high-performance computing can be extended to other traditional, point-based biophysical simulation models.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Valuing Resilience

There is a variety of work in progress at NREL that is evaluating the value of resiliency. This presentation summarizes of this ongoing work, which including: 1. The development of quantitative resilience metrics for the power system. 2. The implementation of quantitative, performance-based resilience metrics into existing models and tools 3. Methods for valuing resilience, including a time-varying value of lost load. 4. The extent to which accounting for performance-based resilience metrics and/or the value of resilience could impact investment (planning) decisions related to electricity supply. 5. Developing and implementing a consistent valuation methodology for resilience distribution system field validation projects.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Combining Reclaimed PET with Bio-Based Monomers Enables Plastics Upcycling

Less than 30% of PET plastic is recycled in the United States. The low reclamation rate may be due to mechanical recycling accounting for the majority of commercial PET recycling. Mechanical recycling yields a lower-quality recycled plastic than the process of chemically recycling back to the monomer phase, which can be energetically and economically expensive. In this work, recently published in Joule, reclaimed PET bottles are chemically recycled and converted into higher-value fiberglass-reinforced plastics (FRPs).This presentation will focus on the supply-chain level energy and greenhouse gas emissions intensities associated with this novel upcycling route. The Materials Flows through Industry supply chain analysis tool, developed at NREL, is used to estimate these impacts. Depending on the extent and speed of adoption, this strategy for plastic upcycling could lead to significant energy usage and emissions reductions over the traditional FRP supply chain. Overall, this approach may provide an economic incentive for plastics recycling and renewable feedstock use through the creation of higher-value FRPs.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Pathways to a Sustainable Aviation Ecosystem: Aviation Energy Research and Operation Simulator (AEROSim)

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has developed highly accessible tools for ground vehicle modeling, making it easy to quickly compare powertrains and estimate the impact of technology improvements on fuel/energy consumption, performance, cost, and battery life. With AEROSim, NREL advanced aircraft, enabling the same level of ease and versatility in comparing aircraft designs across a range of scenarios and conditions.

advanced air mobility↗
DOE OSTI2020

Evidence-based indicator approach to guide preliminary environmental impact assessments of hydropower development

Global expansion of hydropower resources has increased in recent years to meet growing energy demands and fill worldwide gaps in electricity supply. However, hydropower induces significant environmental impacts on river ecosystems - impacts that are addressed through environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes. The need for effective EIA processes is increasing as environmental regulations are either stressed in developing countries undertaking rapid expansion of hydropower capacity or time- and resource-intensive in developed countries. Part of the challenge in implementing EIAs lies in reaching a consensus among stakeholders regarding the most important environmental factors as the focus of impact studies. To help address this gap, we developed a weight-of-evidence approach (and toolkit) as a preliminary and coarse assessment of the most relevant impacts of hydropower on primary components of the river ecosystem, as identified using river function indicators. Through a science-based questionnaire and predictive model, users identify which environmental indicators may be impacted during hydropower development as well as those indicators that have the highest levels of uncertainty and require further investigation. Furthermore, an assessment tool visualizes inter-dependent indicator relationships, which help formulate hypotheses about causal relationships explored through environmental studies. We apply these tools to four existing hydropower projects and one hypothetical new hydropower project of varying sizes and environmental contexts. We observed consistencies between the output of our tools and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licensing process (inclusive of EIAs) but also important differences arising from holistic scientific evaluations (our toolkit) versus regulatory policies. The tools presented herein are aimed at increasing the efficiency of the EIA processes that engender environmental studies without loss of rigor or transparency of rationale necessary for understanding, considering, and mitigating the environmental consequences of hydropower.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2018

Establishing a commercial building energy data framework for India

Buildings account for over 40% of the world’s energy consumption and are therefore a key contributor to a country’s energy as well as carbon budget. Understanding how buildings use energy is critical to understanding how related policies may impact energy use. Data enables decision making, and good quality data arms consumers with the tools to compare their energy performance to their peers, allowing them to differentiate their buildings in the real estate market on the basis of their energy footprint. Good quality data are also essential for policy makers to prioritize their energy saving strategies and track implementation. The United States’ Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) is an example of a successful data framework that is highly useful for governmental and nongovernmental initiatives related to benchmarking energy forecasting, rating systems and metrics, and more. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in India developed the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) and launched the Star Labeling program for a few energy-intensive building segments as a significant first step. However, a data driven policy framework for systematically targeting energy efficiency in both new construction and existing buildings has largely been missing. There is no quantifiable mechanism currently in place to track the impact of code adoption through regular reporting/survey of energy consumption in the commercial building stock. In this paper we present findings from our study that explored use cases and approaches for establishing a commercial buildings data framework for India.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS2004

Coordination of Mars Orbiting Assets to Support Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Activities

NASA policy requires continuous telecommunications with missions during the execution of their critical events, which implies constraints on where missions to other planets may land or inject into orbit. JPL is working to establish a telecommunications network at Mars to provide contact with inbound missions to Mars and assets that have landed on the Martian surface, thus reducing the constraints on where critical events may be performed. Coordination of network assets is required to cover an inbound mission's critical event, such as EDL. This paper describes the development of a tool to evaluate EDL coverage capability of Mars network assets over a specified launch date/arrival date space.

Mars Network↗
NASA NTRS2009

NASA Applied Sciences Program

NASA's strategic Goals: a) Develop a balanced overall program of science, exploration, and aeronautics consistent with the redirection of human spaceflight program to focus on exploration. b) Study Earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs. NASA's partnership efforts in global modeling and data assimilation over the next decade will shorten the distance from observations to answers for important, leading-edge science questions. NASA's Applied Sciences program will continue the Agency's efforts in benchmarking the assimilation of NASA research results into policy and management decision-support tools that are vital for the Nation's environment, economy, safety, and security. NASA also is working with NOAH and inter-agency forums to transition mature research capabilities to operational systems, primarily the polar and geostationary operational environmental satellites, and to utilize fully those assets for research purposes.

Estes, Sue M.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Lessons Learned for Improving Spacecraft Ground Operations

NASA policy requires each Program or Project to develop a plan for how they will address Lessons Learned. Projects have the flexibility to determine how best to promote and implement lessons learned. A large project might budget for a lessons learned position to coordinate elicitation, documentation and archival of the project lessons. The lessons learned process crosses all NASA Centers and includes the contactor community. o The Office of The Chief Engineer at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C., is the overall process owner, and field locations manage the local implementation. One tool used to transfer knowledge between program and projects is the Lessons Learned Information System (LLIS). Most lessons come from NASA in partnership with support contractors. A search for lessons that might impact a new design is often performed by a contractor team member. Knowledge is not found with only one person, one project team, or one organization. Sometimes, another project team, or person, knows something that can help your project or your task. Knowledge sharing is an everyday activity at the Kennedy Space Center through storytelling, Kennedy Engineering Academy presentations and through searching the Lessons Learned Information system. o Project teams search the lessons repository to ensure the best possible results are delivered. o The ideas from the past are not always directly applicable but usually spark new ideas and innovations. Teams have a great responsibility to collect and disseminate these lessons so that they are shared with future generations of space systems designers. o Leaders should set a goal for themselves to host a set numbers of lesson learned events each year and do more to promote multiple methods of lessons learned activities. o High performing employees are expected to share their lessons, however formal knowledge sharing presentation are not the norm for many employees.

Bell, Michael↗
DOE OSTI2024

Geothermal Play Fairway Analysis of Low-Temperature Resources for Sedimentary Basin Geothermal Play Types: An Example in the Denver Basin

This project is part of a nationwide effort to highlight the advantages of incorporating low-temperature geothermal resource evaluation into the implementation of combined heat and power (CHP), and geothermal direct use (GDU) technologies (e.g., space heating and/or cooling). The initiative aims to hasten the nation's decarbonization process by exploring the potential for using low-temperature geothermal resources (< 150 Degrees Celsius) in selected sedimentary basins that have several population centers. The Play Fairway Analysis (PFA) techniques were modified from earlier studies of sedimentary basin geothermal play types (SBGPTs) that assessed the viability of low-temperature resources. The decision-making process for leveraging low-temperature geothermal resources for GDU and CHP applications is complex and considers a variety of factors, including geological, economic, and risk criteria. This study covers workflows, relevant datasets, python code, and both common and composite maps used to create low-temperature geothermal resource favorability maps for the Denver Basin, which extends across Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The replication of these methodologies in other SBGPTs can evaluate potential for low-temperature resources. The proposed geothermal PFA approach for low-temperature geothermal resources includes: (1) identifying available relevant data and grouping data sets into PFA criteria (e.g., geological, economic, and risk criteria); (2) analyzing data gaps enable future focalized exploration; (3) performing uncertainty quantification; (4) weighting relevant data; (5) developing favorability and common risk maps for low-temperature geothermal resources to identify potential locations for more focused data collection. This project will facilitate future deployment of CHP and GDU by providing data, tools, and a workflow applicable to low-temperature geothermal resources in sedimentary basins.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗