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DOE OSTI2022

Decarbonizing Medium & Heavy-Duty On-Road Vehicles

We analyze the decarbonization potential of medium and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs) across multiple vehicle classes and market segments. We evaluate the timeframe in which zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) could achieve cost parity with conventional diesel vehicles and the implications for energy and emissions. Our results show that ZEVs can achieve cost parity with conventional vehicles by 2035 across the majority of vehicle classes and market segments. Emissions reductions range from 27% to 77% by 2050 relative to 2019 across multiple fuel cost and technology progress sensitivities. Multiple technology pathways are viable for decarbonization, including battery-electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. This presentation is based on previous work published by NREL: Ledna, C., Muratori, M., Yip, A., Jadun, P., and Hoehne, C. 2022. Decarbonizing Medium & Heavy-Duty On-Road Vehicles: Zero-Emission Vehicles Cost Analysis. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/82081.pdf.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2025

West Coast Offshore Wind Transmission Study

As a primary federal investigation of the utility of transmission to support offshore wind emergence in the Western Interconnect, the West Coast Offshore Wind Transmission study evaluates five distinct West Coast-wide transmission scenarios and trades the economic benefits and costs of six development pathways from 2035 to 2050. In this time, 33 GW of OSW generation and supporting transmission are explored within the context of 350 additional GW of generation to support 100% clean electricity. Geospatial analysis informed plausible transmission topologies and cost estimates. All pathways to intraregional or interregional coordination transmission builds showed more than $\$$14 billion in present value cost savings, with a maximum of $\$$25 billion of savings in the interregional case. These savings are primarily driven by fuel costs and increased availability of power flows enabled by new transmission networks. Key considerations of clean, dispatchable generation options, geographic disaggregation of costs, system reliability reinforcements, resilience, and community values are also presented and discussed.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hydrogen Infrastructure Analysis for the Port Applications [Slides]

The International Maritime Organization has committed to 50% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050 worldwide as of 2023. This analysis includes performing an inventory and modeling efforts to understand the energy, equipment and cost requirements to support decarbonization of cargo handling and shore power at U.S. Ports, along with assessment of zero- and near- zero emission fuel supplies at or near U.S. ports focused upon Hydrogen technologies. Initial market assessment for ocean going vessels for harbor support and ocean-going vessels is explored. An energy analysis is performed on the port system using a holistic approach and considering the port as an entire ecosystem that functions as a transportation and energy node. Presently, a comprehensive view is lacking for future analysis efforts, this analysis seeks to address this gap in data by evaluating four representative port types and the potential for utilizing hydrogen for the maritime industry. Every port is different, but broadly they could be bracketed into reference cases with scaling factors for the relative size of the port operations. These reference ports are for future use, potentially as baselines for analysis and development of demonstration programs. An equipment inventory for each reference port type (container, bulk, breakbulk, and inland waterway) is presented. A comparative analysis of fuel cell electric and battery electric equipment is conducted based on the following criteria: technology readiness level, refueling/charging time, operational range, energy consumption, and fuel cost savings compared to baseline internal combustion engine equipment. The tradeoffs and synergies between two alternative powertrains is highlighted. Based on energy and infrastructure analysis, average and high equipment utilization profiles across different port types is identified and quantified baseline fuel and electricity demand for various decarbonization scenarios. Based on the portfolio of equipment converted to fuel cell electric, the estimates of initial capital investment are provided for hydrogen refueling stations across ports. An energy demand model is developed that predicts well the all-electric cargo handling equipment annual energy consumption for ports with annual tonnage under 2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). The model is a good rubric to follow for further energy demand models that can create a scalable solution to understand the energy needs of cargo handling equipment, whether they are all-electric, hydrogen fuel cell, or powered by another fuel-type. Zero and near-zero emission fuel supply at ports is evaluated looking into the characteristics of hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol as an alternative fuel, as well as the bunkering status. The readiness of reference ports to produce ammonia or methanol and bunker the fuel is examined based on the framework developed by the Global Maritime Forum and Rocky Mountain Institute.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Low-Cost Sulfur Thermal Storage for Solar Industrial Process Heat Applications

Industrial process heat (IPH) is one of the largest energy demands in U.S., representing about 10% of all domestic energy consumption. Fuel costs to generate this industrial process heat are generally a top three cost for industry, a major component in American manufacturing competitiveness. Roughly 60% of US IPH demand (about 6,500 TBtu annually) falls in the medium-temperature range of 100–250 °C. While concentrated solar thermal (CST) technologies can provide a cost-effective source of heat in this temperature range, solar intermittency limits their adoption in industries that operate 24/7. Element 16 Technologies, Inc. developed a low-cost sulfur thermal energy storage (TES) technology to bridge this gap by capturing excess solar heat during the day and dispatching it reliably during non-solar hours. The core innovation is the use of sulfur, an abundant, industrial waste byproduct that costs ten times less than molten salt used in commercial TES systems. The overall goal of the project was to advance the design and development of molten sulfur TES to a manufacturing-relevant prototype stage for solar industrial process heat applications, while establishing and validating a realistic pathway to commercial success. Key tasks included corrosion and mechanical durability testing to identify cost-effective materials, design investigations using physics-based simulation tools, techno-economic evaluations of system lifetime costs, and pilot-scale testing for performance verification. Corrosion testing of steel alloys under cyclic molten sulfur conditions showed that austenitic stainless steels in the 300 series performed particularly well, with no structural degradation of welds or joints. Thermal cyclic testing of pilot sulfur TES units up to 1.5 MWh quantified charge/discharge rates, heat losses, round-trip efficiency and validated the system's capability to operate effectively under intermittent charging conditions. A techno-economic model, informed by sulfur TES performance model validated using pilot test data, showed that hybrid solar+sulfur TES+NG boiler systems are economically competitive with incumbent natural gas boilers for multiple locations in the southwest US. In summary, this project established molten sulfur TES as a technically viable pathway to improve economic competitiveness of American manufacturing by lowering the cost of solar industrial process heat.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Surface Roughness Effects from Additive Manufacturing in High Efficiency Gas Turbine Combustion Systems

In the past, clean combustion systems were characterized by high system development costs due to growing complexity and escalating manufacturing costs from conventional manufacturing processes. As a result, high efficiency concepts are difficult to design and more difficult to be cost-effectively manufactured. In recent years, with the introduction of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, the rapid prototyping and mass production processes of clean combustion systems are promising to be significantly simplified with significant reduction in terms of engine manufacturing cost and engine energy cost. Compared with conventional manufacturing built parts, the AM process enabled a simpler design to be adopted for the nozzle, reducing the number of required braze and weld joints from twenty-five to just five. The resulting nozzle was 25% lighter and five times more durable and contributed to a 15% reduction in fuel burn in comparison with the previous model produced. Applying these improvements to a fleet of 5,000 turbofan engines at 150 kN thrust would result in fuel cost savings of $ \$ $6B annually (at $ \$ $5/gallon Jet-A fuel price, 700 gallon/hour fuel consumption rate, and 2,300 operational hours per year), and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 25 million tons per year. These advances support core Department of Energy (DOE) missions in energy efficiency, improving productivity, and environmental sustainability. Maximizing the benefit of these new capabilities will require high prediction capability of high speed turbulent flow with wall modeled Large Eddy Simulation (LES). GE Aviation maintains that advanced simulation technology and supercomputing is required in order to provide the appropriate boundary conditions to realize the maximum potential of AM and Ceramic Matrix Composite to reduce cooling flow, a first order penalty on the Brayton cycle. The algorithm developed using the ANSYS/Fluent software would provide the foundation for entirely new avenues of research and development with potential multi-billion dollar impact to the US economy, and significant reduction in carbon based emissions across the aerospace and power generation industries. The formulation of this iWLES (integral wall model for LES) is generic and allows to capture the changes in flow dynamics that have a significant impact on the wall bounded flow characteristics, such as swirler effective area, bulk swirl number, local pressure distribution, exit velocity profile, and turbulence kinetic energy profile. A periodic channel flow with rough flat plate is simulated using LES (Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-viscosity) model to verify the implementation of iWLES in the Fluent User Defined Function (UDF). As the flow fields are highly sensitive due to surface roughness of the wall bounded flows in the combustion systems, there is significant potential to conduct further LES studies focusing on the turbulence boundary layer interaction. Accurately capturing near wall physics will elucidate the impact of rough surfaces on combustor flow and aero-thermal interactions.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Surface Roughness Effects from Additive Manufacturing in High Efficiency Gas Turbine Combustion Systems

In the past, clean combustion systems were characterized by high system development costs due to growing complexity and escalating manufacturing costs from conventional manufacturing processes. As a result, high efficiency concepts are difficult to design and more difficult to be cost-effectively manufactured. In recent years, with the introduction of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, the rapid prototyping and mass production processes of clean combustion systems are promising to be significantly simplified with significant reduction in terms of engine manufacturing cost and engine energy cost. Compared with conventional manufacturing built parts, the AM process enabled a simpler design to be adopted for the nozzle, reducing the number of required braze and weld joints from twenty-five to just five. The resulting nozzle was 25% lighter and five times more durable and contributed to a 15% reduction in fuel burn in comparison with the previous model produced. Applying these improvements to a fleet of 5,000 turbofan engines at 150 kN thrust would result in fuel cost savings of $6B annually (at $5/gallon Jet-A fuel price, 700 gallon/hour fuel consumption rate, and 2,300 operational hours per year),and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 25 million tons per year. These advances support core Department of Energy (DOE)missions in energy efficiency, improving productivity, and environmental sustainability. Maximizing the benefit of these new capabilities will require high prediction capability of high speed turbulent flow with wall modeled Large Eddy Simulation (LES). GE Aviation maintains that advanced simulation technology and supercomputing is required in order to provide the appropriate boundary conditions to realize the maximum potential of AM and Ceramic Matrix Composite to reduce cooling flow, a first order penalty on the Brayton cycle. The algorithm developed using the ANSYS/Fluent software would provide the foundation for entirely new avenues of research and development with potential multi-billion dollar impact to the US economy, and significant reduction in carbon based emissions across the aerospace and power generation industries. The formulation of this iWLES (integral wall model for LES) is generic and allows to capture the changes in flow dynamics that have a significant impact on the wall bounded flow characteristics, such as swirler effective area, bulk swirl number, local pressure distribution, exit velocity profile, and turbulence kinetic energy profile. A periodic channel flow with rough flat plate is simulated using LES (Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-viscosity) model to verify the implementation of iWLES in the Fluent User Defined Function (UDF). As the flow fields are highly sensitive due to surface roughness of the wall bounded flows in the combustion systems, there is significant potential to conduct further LES studies focusing on the turbulence boundary layer interaction. Accurately capturing near wall physics will elucidate the impact of rough surfaces on combustor flow and aero-thermal interactions.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Update on the United States Advanced Ultra-Supercritical Program with Full Scale Component Fabrication to Develop Utility Scale Power Plants with 760°C Steam Temperature

Following the successful completion of a 15-year effort to develop and test materials that would allow coal-fired power plants to be operated at advanced ultra-supercritical (A-USC) steam conditions, a United States-based consortium is presently engaged in Phase 2 of a project which includes an advanced manufacturing effort to complete US-based supply chain development for full commercial scale (800-850 MWe) A-USC components made of nickel-based alloys, components operating at up to 760°C. The project, funded under U.S. Department of Energy Award No. DE-FE0025064, falls under the US DOE overall goal to Develop cost-effective, reliable technologies to improve the efficiency of new and existing coal-fired power plants. A-USC steam cycles have the potential to improve cycle efficiency, reduce fuel costs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Current development and demonstration efforts are focused on enabling the construction of A-USC plants, operating with steam temperatures as high as 1400°F (760°C) and steam pressures up to 5000 psi (35 MPa), which can potentially increase cycle efficiencies to 47% HHV (higher heating value), or approximately 50% LHV (lower heating value), and reduce CO 2 emissions by roughly 25%, compared to today’s U.S. fleet. A-USC technology provides a lower-cost method to reduce CO 2 emissions, compared to CO 2 capture technologies, while retaining a viable coal option for owners of coal generation assets. Among the specific goals of Phase 2 of the ComTest Project are to: validate that components made from advanced nickel-based alloys can operate and perform under A-USC conditions accelerate the development of a U.S.-based supply chain for the full complement of A-USC components close the remaining gaps and reduce the risks for manufacturing components from advanced materials for commercial demonstration fabricate full-scale versions of selected key components made of nickel-based alloys validate a qualified U.S. supply chain, to provide greater cost certainty for components obtain American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) code approval for new materials, components and processes Additional benefit: Manufacturing technology will be applicable to other advanced fossil energy high temperature cycles, and can support increased flexibility of existing power plants The ComTest project is managed by Energy Industries of Ohio, and technically directed by the Electric Power Research Institute, Inc., with General Electric designing the A-USC components. As stated earlier, the current phase of the effort is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, through the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This presentation outlines the motivation for the project, explains the project’s structure and schedule, and provides some of the technical details on the design of the ComTest components.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2020

Update on the United States Advanced Ultra-Supercritical Program with Full Scale Component Fabrication to Develop Utility Scale Power Plants with 760°C Steam Temperature

Following the successful completion of a 15-year effort to develop and test materials that would allow coal-fired power plants to be operated at advanced ultra-supercritical (A-USC) steam conditions, a United States-based consortium is presently engaged in Phase 2 of a project which includes an advanced manufacturing effort to complete US-based supply chain development for full commercial scale (800-850 MWe) A-USC components made of nickel-based alloys, components operating at up to 760°C. The project, funded under U.S. Department of Energy Award No. DE-FE0025064, falls under the US DOE overall goal to Develop cost-effective, reliable technologies to improve the efficiency of new and existing coal-fired power plants. A-USC steam cycles have the potential to improve cycle efficiency, reduce fuel costs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Current development and demonstration efforts are focused on enabling the construction of A-USC plants, operating with steam temperatures as high as 1400°F (760°C) and steam pressures up to 5000 psi (35 MPa), which can potentially increase cycle efficiencies to 47% HHV (higher heating value), or approximately 50% LHV (lower heating value), and reduce CO 2 emissions by roughly 25%, compared to today’s U.S. fleet. A-USC technology provides a lower-cost method to reduce CO 2 emissions, compared to CO 2 capture technologies, while retaining a viable coal option for owners of coal generation assets. Among the specific goals of Phase 2 of the ComTest Project are to: validate that components made from advanced nickel-based alloys can operate and perform under A-USC conditions accelerate the development of a U.S.-based supply chain for the full complement of A-USC components close the remaining gaps and reduce the risks for manufacturing components from advanced materials for commercial demonstration fabricate full-scale versions of selected key components made of nickel-based alloys validate a qualified U.S. supply chain, to provide greater cost certainty for components obtain American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) code approval for new materials, components and processes Additional benefit: Manufacturing technology will be applicable to other advanced fossil energy high temperature cycles, and can support increased flexibility of existing power plants The ComTest project is managed by Energy Industries of Ohio, and technically directed by the Electric Power Research Institute, Inc., with General Electric designing the A-USC components. As stated earlier, the current phase of the effort is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, through the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This presentation outlines the motivation for the project, explains the project’s structure and schedule, and provides some of the technical details on the design of the ComTest components.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2021

BETO 2021 Peer Review: 2.1.0.100 - Biochemical Platform Analysis

The objective of this project is to perform techno-economic analysis (TEA) to guide Biochemical Platform efforts, utilizing models for purposes of setting future R&D targets and tracking performance progress against those targets. Outcomes of our work are leveraged by BETO to guide program plans, as well as by other NREL/partner projects to quantify the impact of research on key technology barriers and to prioritize future efforts. This project provides high impact and relevance through establishing “bottom-up” TEA models as a basis for understanding the technical feasibility to meet “top-down” BETO cost targets. By providing a framework to translate technical performance to cost reductions in a biorefinery, our TEA models may be leveraged to maximize the efficiency of research funding towards the most economically impactful priorities, ultimately in support of BETO’s 2030 fuel cost targets below $2.5/GGE. In order to mitigate a key risk/challenge to this project in overly-constraining our analyses to a singular technology focus or TEA metric, our approach continuously re-assesses opportunities for better optimization and alternative technology pathway options, while maintaining close interaction with other BETO analysis partners. We have made numerous recent accomplishments rooted around identifying and working with the researchers to solve key technical and TEA/LCA challenges, reflected through notable improvements in State-of-Technology (SOT) updates over prior benchmarks.

biochemical↗
DOE OSTI2022

Medium- and heavy-duty value of technology improvement

Improvements in vehicle technology impact the purchase price of a vehicle and its operating cost. In this study, the monetary benefit of a technology improvement includes the potential reduction in vehicle price from using cheaper or smaller components, as well as the discounted value of the fuel cost savings. As technology progresses over time, the value and benefit of improving technology varies as well. In this study, the value of improving a few selected technologies (battery energy density, electric drive efficiency, tire rolling resistance, aerodynamics, light weighting) is studied and the value of the associated cost saving is quantified. The change in saving as a function of time, powertrain selection and vehicle type is also quantified. For example, a 10% reduction in aerodynamic losses is worth $24,222 today but only $8,810 in 2030 in an electric long haul truck. The decrease in value is primarily due to expected battery cost reduction over time. The same loss reduction in a 2030 conventional long haul truck is worth $5,117 and is primarily driven by a reduction in diesel expenditure. For conventional vehicles, the value of technology improvement is likely to increase over time as diesel price is expected to increase over the next decades while for electric vehicles, the value of technology improvement is likely to decrease as battery energy density increases and cost decreases. The study focuses on medium- and heavy-duty applications where cost of driving is of paramount importance. The savings realized from each technology improvement serve as an upper limit for how much can be spent to acquire that improvement in technology.

Freyermuth, Vincent↗
DOE OSTI2020

Evolution of Electric Sector Water Use Under Alternative Electricity Futures

Increasing competition for water resources in the United States could create future challenges for allocating and using thermal cooling water in the U.S. electric power sector. While thermal power plant retirements and the growth of wind and solar technologies can reduce national aggregate power sector cooling water use, local water constraints and growing demand for agricultural or municipal supply could create greater needs for higher-cost alternative water supplies such as groundwater or recycled wastewater. For some regions, these incentives could change future electricity planning and operational decisions. These relationships and impacts are studied here using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS), a national electric sector planning model that has recently been upgraded to include a highly detailed representation of thermal cooling water demand and supply. Thermal power technologies are differentiated by both cooling technology and water source type to track and constrain thermal cooling water use in a way that incorporates both physical and legal water considerations in the United States. This capability is exercised under a range of electricity sector futures with alternative technology costs, fuel prices, and water constraints to illustrate ways that U.S. electric sector water use could evolve under uncertain future electric sector drivers. In exploring changes to regional generation and transmission planning and operation, water requirements, and cost, we highlight the environmental and economic impacts of future power sector water decisions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Providencia Island High-Level Power System Capacity Expansion Analyses [Slides]

Results of a high level cost-benefit analysis using HOMER Pro software are presented for Providencia Island, Colombia. The analysis focuses on integrating solar photovoltaics (PV) and a battery energy storage system (BESS) into an existing diesel-only remote power system. The analysis uses fuel costs and discount rates provided by the stakeholders and NREL-derived capital cost estimates.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Markets and Economic Requirements for Fission Batteries and Other Nuclear Systems

Fission Batteries (FBs) are nuclear reactors defined by five characteristics which enable large-scale deployment: cost competitive, standardized sizes for economic mass production, easy installation and removal, secure and safe unattended operation with high reliability. FBs are not defined by technology or power level. Technical and market considerations suggest that most FBs will produce 20 to 30 MWt. This proceedings reports on the outcomes of two workshops that were held in January 2021 to better define markets and economic challenges for FBs. Three major markets were identified. The largest market is the industrial and commercial heat market. There are about 4000 industrial users (excluding utilities) that require more than one megawatt of heat. The number of customers versus size of heat demand was determined. In a low-carbon world there is the potential for many additional customers—including expanded biofuels production and district heat. The second market is for non-grid electricity. This includes co-generation plants that produce heat and electricity for a single customer. The third market is the maritime market with ~100,000 ships worldwide. In the United States, natural gas is the low-cost energy option today and will remain so unless constraints or taxes impact its use. If restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, the FB competition includes natural gas with carbon capture, biofuels, hydrogen and grid electricity. Natural gas with carbon capture is not economically viable on a small scale. Biofuels may be expensive but may be the economically preferred option for locations with small energy demands of a few megawatts. Hydrogen is a potential competitor with many of the characteristics of natural gas. Grid electricity is not a competitive source of heat. For FBs to be economically competitive, the price of delivered heat must be $20-50/MWh ($6-15/million BTU). The economically competitive range for non-grid electricity is estimated at $70-100/MWh. These electricity prices are competitive with the retail prices of electricity in many parts of the United States for the customer. FBs are not expected to be competitive selling wholesale electricity to the grid. To achieve the aforementioned cost targets for heat and electricity markets, FB designers must (1) maximize the power output within the constraints of a FB (e.g., truck transportability, passive decay heat removal), (2) drastically reduce the size of onsite staff, (3) adopt core designs with low fuel costs (enrichment and fabrication), and (4) develop a system design that is efficiently manufactured in factories. The business case depends upon more than being just a replacement for natural gas. The largest incentives for adoption of FBs is where they create new markets and new sources of revenue. An example is the paper and pulp industry that burns biomass wastes to provide heat and electricity to make paper. An external heat source could meet the demand for heat and electricity by the paper process and enable converting waste biomass into liquid biofuels rather than burning to provide heat. Other markets, such as data centers, are driven by special energy requirements such as extreme reliability. Most customers are not in the energy business but need heat and electricity to produce a product—a manufactured good, education, retail sales (shopping malls), marine transport or some other product. As a consequence, there will be large incentives to lease rather than own FBs. Leasing avoids the regulatory challenges that remain with the owner of the FB. Leasing creates large incentives for FP standardization of sizes and transportability to maintain the value of the FB at the end of the lease—similar to the leasing of jet engines and aircraft. The economic constraints combined with technical constraints suggest competitive FBs will likely have outputs exceeding 10 MWt. There appear to be little incentives for very long-lived reactor cores because such machines require much larger inventories of fuel. Maintenance requirements and the options to provide technology updates may favor shorter lifetimes (~5 years). The assessment is that there is the potential for FBs to be economically viable and play a major role in global decarbonization in three markets: heat, non-grid electricity and maritime applications.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Model to inform the expansion of hydrogen distribution infrastructure

A growing hydrogen economy requires new hydrogen distribution infrastructure to link geographically distributed hubs of supply and demand. The Hydrogen Optimization with Deployment of Infrastructure (HOwDI) Model helps meet this requirement. The model is a spatially resolved optimization framework that determines location-specific hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure to cost-optimally meet a specified location-based demand. While these results are useful in understanding hydrogen infrastructure development, there is uncertainty in some costs that the model uses for inputs. Thus, the project team took the modeling effort a step further and developed a Monte Carlo methodology to help manage uncertainties. Seven scenarios were run using existing infrastructure and new demand in Texas exploring different policy and tax approaches. The inclusion of tax credits increased the percentage of runs that could deliver hydrogen at <$\$4$ /kg from 31% to 77% and decreased the average dispensed cost from $\$4.35$ /kg to $\$3.55$ /kg. However, even with tax credits there are still some runs where unabated SMR is deployed to meet new demand as the low-carbon production options are not competitive. Every scenario, except for the zero-carbon scenario (without tax credits), resulted in at least 20% of the runs meeting the $\$4$ /kg dispensed fuel cost target. This indicates that multiple pathways exist to deliver $\$4$ /kg hydrogen.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

STREAM: A technology planning and capacity expansion model for the industrial sector

The Strategic Technology Roadmapping and Energy, Environmental, and Economic Analysis Model—STREAM—is an optimization-based modeling tool and analysis framework to assist with strategic planning and technology investments of the industrial sector. This open-source framework is written in Julia using the JuMP package, which enables users to model future “pathways” for incumbent and future production technologies, costs, fuels and energy carriers, and energy and non-energy environmental impacts from industries as they transform in pursuit of a robust and competitive manufacturing sector. The model starts with an initial stock of industrial production technologies and assets at a facility level and then determines pathways that minimize cost, subject to an array of possible constraints on demand, market shares, environmental flows, and other exogenously specified operational considerations such as capacity utilization rates or regional energy costs. Key features of the framework include flexibility to model a wide range of industries and industrial technologies/processes at varying levels of granularity, ability to perform parametric sensitivity analyses, and ability to visualize model results using visualization objects.

capacity expansion↗
DOE OSTI2021

Estimating the value of jointly optimized electric power generation and end use: a study of ISO-scale load shaping applied to the residential building stock

A generation-to-load simulation estimated the impact, in terms of production costs and CO2 emissions, attributable to the joint optimization of electric power generation and flexible end uses to support increasing penetrations of renewable energy. Newly conceived, evaluated, and foundational in developing a U.S. National Standard was a transaction-less yet continuous demand response system based on a day-ahead optimum load shape (OLS) designed to encourage Internet-connected devices to autonomously and voluntarily explore options to favour lowest cost generators - without requiring two-way communications, personally identifiable information, or customer opt-in. Boundary conditions used for model calibration included historical weather, residential building stock construction attributes, home appliance and device empirical operating schedules, prototypical power distribution feeder models, thermal generator heat rates, startup and ramping constraints, and fuel costs. Results of an hourly-based annual case study of Texas indicate a 1/3 reduction in production costs and a 1/5 reduction in CO2 emissions are possible.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

On-Road Heavy-Duty Low-NOx Technology Cost Study

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted a cost analysis for emission control technologies under contract to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB sought incremental cost analysis for emission control technologies for on-road heavy-duty (HD) engines, used in vehicle greater than 14,000 pounds (lbs) gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) to achieve oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions rates significantly lower than those required by current emissions standards. Specifically, incremental costs (without any retail price mark-up) were estimated for representative diesel, natural gas, and gasoline engine and emission aftertreatment systems that were selected to represent potential technology packages that could achieve 0.02 grams per brake horsepower hour (g/bhp-hr) NOx on certification test cycles, including a proposed updated certification test cycle that includes additional low load operating conditions. NREL surveyed stakeholders including industry association groups, Tier 1 suppliers, and engine original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to estimate incremental direct and indirect costs. Incremental costs were considered for current engine full useful life (FUL) definitions, as well as with proposed increased FUL and warranty period. The incremental costs were subsequently incorporated in life-cycle cost analyses examining the incremental engine and aftertreatment costs along with life-cycle costs over the various engine FUL scenarios. Life-cycle costs analysis included the incremental upfront cost, fuel consumption changes (changes in fuel economy), diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) consumption changes, and the maximum FUL of the aftertreatment package (major overhaul intervals).

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗