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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Dataset for: Rooftop solar and energy storage programs can remediate energy-limiting behaviors of energy insecure households

Energy insecurity affects most low-income households in the United States. Energy insecurity, which is characterized by a household’s inability to afford their energy needs, often leads to risky choices, causing other forms of insecurity including food and health. Although there are government programs designed to provide relief to low-income households that face energy insecurity, eligibility for these programs is usually determined by household income, and those with incomes close to the threshold face uncertainty or may be left out. In many cases, these households turn to energy-limiting behaviors as a strategy to lower their electric utility bills. This paper explores the relationship between energy insecurity and energy-limiting behaviors to investigate alternative solutions that target the households that may fall out of available energy assistance programs. We explore the role of battery energy storage systems and rooftop solar photovoltaics in improving energy affordability. The results show that residential rooftop solar and behind-the-meter energy storage can offset two-thirds of the bill savings that households attain through energy-limiting behavior. Household renewable energy systems could complement existing energy assistance programs to provide long-term bill relief, enabling occupants to live in their homes with comfort and dignity. This dataset is intended to allow readers to reproduce and customize the analysis performed in this work to their benefit.

Kerby, Jessica [Pacific Northwest National Laborat↗
DOE OSTI2026

The Dark Energy Bedrock All-sky Supernova Program: Motivation, Design, Implementation, and Preliminary Data Release

Precise measurements of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) at low redshifts (z) serve as one of the most viable keys to unlocking our understanding of cosmic expansion, isotropy, and growth of structure. The Dark Energy Bedrock All-Sky Supernovae (DEBASS) program will deliver a uniformly calibrated low-z dataset of more than 400 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia in the Southern Hemisphere. DEBASS utilizes the Dark Energy Camera to image supernovae in conjunction with the Wide-Field Spectrograph to gather comprehensive host-galaxy information. By using the same photometric instrument as both the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey, DEBASS not only benefits from a robust photometric pipeline and well-calibrated images across the Southern sky, but can replace the historic and external low-z samples that were used in the final DES supernova analysis. In this paper, along with a companion paper, we present an early data release of 77 DEBASS SNe within the DES footprint. We introduce the DEBASS program, discuss its scientific goals and the advantages it offers for supernova cosmology, and present our initial results demonstrating data quality. With this early data release, we find a robust median absolute standard deviation of Hubble diagram residuals of ∼0.10 mag and an initial measurement of the host-galaxy mass step of 0.06 ± 0.04 mag, both before performing bias corrections. This low scatter shows the promise of a low-z SN Ia program with a well-calibrated telescope and high signal-to-noise ratio across multiple bands.

Sherman, Nora F. [Boston U.] (ORCID:00000001539901↗
DOE OSTI2022

Rooftop solar incentives remain effective for low- and moderate-income adoption

Financial incentives for rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption have declined in the United States over time by policy design. Incentive phase-down can efficiently promote early adoption and avoid ineffective payments to late adopters. Furthermore, incentive phase-down may exclude low- and moderate-income (LMI) households from realizing the same financial benefits from PV adoption as high-income early adopters. Here, data from two state-level LMI PV incentive programs are analyzed to test whether incentives still drive PV adoption among LMI households. As a first order approximation, the analysis suggests that incentives drove adoption that would not otherwise have happened in about 80% of cases. To the extent that policymakers prioritize PV adoption equity as part of the emerging energy justice policy agenda, the results suggest that ongoing incentive support for LMI adoption may be merited.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Light-Duty Vehicle Choice Modeling and Benefits Analysis (van018)

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies and Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Offices (VTO and HFTO) support research and development of efficient and sustainable transportation technologies that will improve energy efficiency, minimize emissions, and enable America to use less petroleum. The analysis in this poster is based on technical progress goals established in VTO and HFTO in the years immediately prior to and including 2020, and it summarizes the estimated energy and emissions benefits corresponding with achievement of those goals. The goals span research activities on batteries, electric drive technologies (EDT), combustion, lightweight materials, fuel cells, and hydrogen storage. The Automotive Deployment Options Projection Tool (ADOPT) is used to estimate the benefits for light-duty vehicles. ADOPT is a vehicle choice and stock model that estimates vehicle technology improvement impacts on sales, energy, and emissions. It includes all the existing vehicle options for realism, estimates their sales using extensively validated consumer preferences, creates new market-driven vehicle options through time, and rolls up sales to estimate energy and emissions. ADOPT takes in technology progress assumptions and applies these to the modeled vehicles through time. The assumptions are represented by a No Program scenario that reflects the technology improvements assumed to occur without further contributions from VTO or HFTO, and a Program Success scenario under which VTO and HFTO program goals are realized. The benefits are calculated by comparing ADOPT's estimated national-level energy and emissions resulting from the Program Success relative to the No Program scenario. By 2050, the Program Success scenario results in 11% less annual petroleum consumption and 10% less annual carbon emissions than the No Program scenario.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Education for PV Modeling Professionals: Observations from the 2025 PVPMC Workshop

We surveyed professionals in the photovoltaic industry to understand interests in education and training for performance modeling of solar power systems. We found that most professionals are self-taught and rely on a variety of public sources of technical materials. Available formal education, such as courses or certification programs, either lacks detail or is focused on software user training. Responses indicate several opportunities to create public resources that would benefit professional learning for solar power system modeling: • Create a glossary of terms and common variable names. • Develop guidance on uncertainty analysis in the context of solar power systems modeling. • Assemble a catalog of available educational materials and data sources.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantifying the Financial Impacts of Electric Vehicles on Utility Ratepayers and Shareholders [Slides]

Widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption is critical for meeting economy-wide decarbonization goals and, as a result, states are considering enabling policies and rate designs to accelerate EV deployment. EVs can provide possible financial upside to electric utilities and ratepayers in several ways. For example, from the utility perspective, EVs could drive increased electricity sales and new earnings opportunities through increased capital investments. From the ratepayer perspective, increased electric loads from EVs could reduce average all-in retail rates. The degree to which there are net benefits or costs to shareholders and/or ratepayers depends on how EVs are integrated and managed through enabling grid investments and charging strategies. Using Berkeley Lab’s Financial Impacts of Distributed Energy Resources (FINDER) model that mimics the electric utility investment planning and ratemaking processes, we estimate the utility earnings and customer rate impacts of EVs using a bookend approach of “managed” (i.e., best case) and “mismanaged” (i.e., worst case) charging strategies for a generic summer-peaking, investor-owned, and vertically integrated utility. The analysis also examines the sensitivity of results to different assumptions of EV deployment characteristics, EV impacts on retail electricity sales, incremental distribution system costs, EV charging location, and utility EV enablement costs (i.e., utility costs to invest in EV charging, controls, and communication to deliver and administer EV programs). The results are intended to inform EV policies and deployment strategies that maximize utility system benefits and minimize ratepayer costs.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Estimation of Arrivals on Green at Signalized Intersections Using Stop-Bar Video Detection

Across the world, traffic congestion is increasing with alarming rapidity. Traffic signal control effectiveness, in coordinated networks, is often investigated in relation to the type of vehicle arrivals at the signalized intersections. Recently, several transportation agencies have switched from traditional loop detectors to video detection. When video cameras are accompanied by computer vision, one can extract more information about traffic “dynamics” than by using traditional inductive loop detectors. Collecting arrival times of multiple vehicles after the first arrival at the stop-bar detector might be challenging when using inductive loop detectors (since after the first arrival, detector status is always occupied). However, emerging video detection systems allow tracking of each vehicle’s entrance time in the detection zone, departure time from the detection zone, and the type of vehicle. This information can be used to estimate vehicular arrival and departure times, which then can be fed into machine learning algorithms to estimate arrivals on green (AOG). However, such research ideas have not been documented so far. Thus, this paper presents an estimation model for AOG, which was developed using multigene genetic programming. A robust experimental dataset was collected from a highly calibrated and validated microsimulation model of an 11-intersection corridor in Chattanooga, TN. The results of the model’s performance analysis showed the high accuracy of the training-, testing-, and validation datasets. The practical benefit of this model is that it can be applied to estimate arrival types at intersections where only stop-bar video detection exists.

Engineering↗
DOE OSTI2020

Report on the Use and Function of the Integrated Operations Capability Analysis Platform (ICAP) and the LWRS Innovation Portal (IP)

The commercial nuclear power industry has achieved excellent safety and reliability performance but is struggling to survive in an electricity market that is increasingly dominated by subsidized renewables and cheap natural gas. These challenges have forced utilities to explore previously uncharted avenues to drastically reduce the operations and maintenance costs of their plants which are the primary drivers of the total cost to produce electricity. The petrochemical industry faced similar challenges some years ago as the costs of extraction and processing were rising while their reservoirs were being depleted along with a drop-in commodity prices that resulted in unsustainable operations. In this challenging climate, they developed a business model called Integrated Operations (IO) that sought to utilize technology to enable news ways of working through the integration of people, technology, process and governance changes. The Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program, working with IFE have developed an operating model via transferable learnings from the North Sea O&G industry. This framework is termed “Integrated Operations for Nuclear” (ION). ION is a transformation model that integrates the benefits and features of four principal factors: People, Technology, Process and Governance. The purpose of this report is to describe how to generate an ION business process analysis and utilize this information to reduce O&M costs. In order to make this job easier, DOE LWRS has created a suite of tools that will allow a person who is involved in a transformation effort at their company to build a solid documented business case for embarking on a major transformation effort. These tools, the Integrated Operations Capability Analysis Model (ICAP) and the LWRS Innovation Portal (IP) are described herein with instructions on their use. Instructions on how the interface with the EPRI Business Case Analysis Method (BCAM) are also provided.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2022

SAS4A/SASSYS-1 Validation with the FFTF LOFWOS Tests #10-12

The FFTF liquid sodium cooled test reactor was built to assist the development and testing of advanced fuels and material for fast reactors. The goals of the FFTF Passive Safety Testing program included confirming the safety margins of FFTF as a liquid metal reactor, providing data for computer code validation, and demonstrating the inherent and passive safety benefits of its specific design features. The program included thirteen unprotected loss of flow without scram tests. The results of modeling and simulation of LOFWOS Tests #10, #11, and #12 are presented in this report to support validation of Argonne’s SAS4A/SASSYS-1 fast reactor safety analysis code. These three tests did not use the primary loop pony motors and thus transitioned to natural circulation flow rates from varying initial power levels. This validation activity leverages modeling and simulation efforts that originated under an International Atomic Energy Agency Coordinated Research Project (CRP) for benchmark analysis of the FFTF LOFWOS Test #13. The SAS4A/SASSYS-1 model originally developed for the CRP has been extended to include LOFWOS Tests #10-12 and modernized to utilize new code features and modeling practices. Predicted results from SAS4A/SASSYS-1 were compared to measured test data and differences were investigated. Overall, it was concluded that, for LOFWOS Tests #10-12, there was good agreement between the flow, power, and temperature predictions and the measured data.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Safeguards Technology Development Program: FY 2024 Mid-Year Report

This project has 2 major thrusts and 2 minor tasks – One of the major ones is a scoping study for improving uranium isotopics by analyzing higher energy, lower yield U-235 gamma emissions. The second major one benefits past projects such as auto-enrichment, and peak-based analysis routines previously added to GADRAS-DRF [1]. The two minor tasks involve an in-person or remote GADRAS-DRF training for the IAEA, and characterizing detectors of interest.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Determining Utility System Value of Demand Flexibility From Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings

This report focuses on ways current methods and practices that establish the value to electric utility systems of distributed energy resource (DER) investments can be enhanced to determine the value of demand flexibility in grid-interactive efficient buildings that can provide grid services. The report introduces key valuation concepts that are applicable to demand flexibility that these buildings can provide and links to other documents that describe these concepts and their implementation in more detail.The scope of this report is limited to the valuation of economic benefits to the utility system. These are the foundational values on which other benefits (and costs) can be built. Establishing the economic value to the grid of demand flexibility provides the information needed to design programs, market rules, and rates that align the economic interest of utility customers with building owners and occupants. By nature, DERs directly impact customers and provide societal benefits external to the utility system. Jurisdictions can use utility system benefits and costs as the foundation of their economic analysis but align their primary cost-effectiveness metric with all applicable policy objectives, which may include customer and societal (non-utility system) impacts.This report suggests enhancements to current methods and practices that state and local policymakers, public utility commissions, state energy offices, utilities, state utility consumer representatives, and other stakeholders might support. These enhancements can improve the consistency and robustness of economic valuation of demand flexibility for grid services. The report concludes with a discussion of considerations for prioritizing implementation of these improvements.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

LA100 Equity Strategies. Chapter 8: Equitable Rooftop Solar Access and Benefits

The LA100 Equity Strategies project integrates community guidance with robust research, modeling, and analysis to identify strategy options that can increase equitable outcomes in Los Angeles' clean energy transition. This chapter focuses on analysis of customer-sited rooftop solar and storage as a means to reduce electricity bills for low- and moderate-income (LMI) households, multifamily building residents, and renters, who traditionally lack access to bill savings from rooftop solar. Specifically, NREL modeled customer-sited solar and storage adoption using the Distributed Generation Market Demand (dGen™)1 model through 2035 and developed scenarios to identify programs or policies that could support equitable access to bill savings from rooftop solar or solar-plus-storage. Scenarios tested include a direct-install program for LMI customers, net metering for LMI customers, and equitable distribution of benefits from installing solar between owners and renters of renter-occupied buildings. Research was guided by input from the community engagement process, and equity strategies are presented in alignment with that guidance.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Feedback from International Decommissioning Planning Projects - 20269

Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants is an increasing reality in many countries with nuclear power. Already many years before final shutdown, planning of the decommissioning work is usually started in order to understand for example the costs, waste volume capacity and licensing work needed. In many countries it is required to have a final decommissioning plan before any decommissioning work is allowed to start. Westinghouse has been involved in international decommissioning planning for more than 30 years, where the first 20 years was mostly funding and preliminary plans due to that decommissioning was many years away. However, as many more plants are now moving into decommissioning, the focus has shifted to final decommissioning plans with budgets instead of funding plans, strategic decisions instead of choices, waste volume specifications instead of estimates and a defined approach instead of what ifs. Westinghouse has developed a methodology based on the planning and execution of many decommissioning projects in Europe, America and Asia. That international experience and understanding helps the customers to adopt a systematic planning process where strategy development is done with the end state in mind, where the goals are clearly outlined and the starting point described. The process and steps to reach the desired end state need to be clearly defined and all options/alternatives evaluated from a cost/benefit point of view. This is followed by a thorough and quantitative risk analysis in order to give solid recommendations and credible conclusions. One important feedback has been that real decommissioning experience from reference projects is invaluable for an efficient and timely progress in order not to spend unnecessary time and effort on understanding the barriers and links between different activities in decommissioning. Skilled project managers or engineers can drive the project forward, but without decommissioning experience previously gained, valuable lessons learned are not used and the same mistakes can be made again. Many utilities have invested in knowledge transfer from other decommissioning projects through site visits, exchange programs and supplier meetings, which is a valuable asset and way of implementing lessons learned from performed decommissioning projects into the planning process. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2022

Observation, Analysis, and Recommendations for ND Management Reviews (W88-0/Mk5 ALT 370 Program Report)

Progress and status reviews allow teams to provide updates and targeted information designed to inform the customer of progress and to help the customer understand current risks and challenges. Both presenters and the customer should have well-calibrated expectations for the level of content and information. However, what needs to be covered in systems-level management reviews can too often be poorly defined. These unclear expectations can lead teams to overpreparing or attempting to guess what information the customer considers as most critical. This aspect of the review process is stressful, disruptive, and bad for morale – and time spent overpreparing reports is time spent not focusing on the technical work necessary to stay on schedule. To define and address these issues, this report was designed to observe various aspects of development program coordination and review activities for NNSA and Navy customers, and then to conduct unbiased, independent Human Factors observation and analysis from an outside perspective. The report concludes with suggestions and recommendations for improving the efficiency of information flow related to reviews, with the goals of increasing productivity and benefitting both Sandia and the customer.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Cyber-Informed Engineering Requirements Framework Use Cases

The requirement analysis use case effort leverages the Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE) requirements framework to examine two real-world scenarios: Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) installation at the Flatirons Campus, NLR; SCADA improvement program. This work evaluates the existing requirements for each use case, applies the CIE requirements framework, and assesses the benefits and enhancements gained compared to the current requirements. The results will advance CIE from concept to practical application by identifying key opportunities for integrating CIE principles into established engineering workflows during the requirements phase.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

2024 Wildfire Danger Rating Update: Analysis of the Wildfire Danger Rating Instruction for Kirtland Air Force Base.

A study of wildfire danger ratings was conducted by the Meteorological Program using the adjective ratings reported to the Weather Information Management System (WIMS). The focus of this study was to identify the shortcomings of Instruction 13-212 from Kirtland Air Force Base with regards to fire danger rating. The goal was to illustrate the benefits of using data from the Sandia National Labs Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS) to better identify the proper fire danger rating on Kirtland Air Force Base.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Detailed Simulation Study to Evaluate Future Transportation Decarbonization Potential

This report is the ninth revision of a continuous-improvement, scenario-based study on program benefits from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office and Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office. With each revision of the study, Argonne made improvements to the assumptions, control strategies at the vehicle level, methodologies, powertrain selections, and the number of vehicles analyzed. In 2019, separate reports were published on the analysis of light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles. From 2020 onwards, summaries for both light- and heavy-duty vehicles are consolidated into one report. The first part of the report covers the impact of technology progress on light-duty vehicles and the second part of the report is devoted to the technology progress assumed for medium- and heavy-duty trucks.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2025

DistOPF: Advanced Solutions for Distribution Optimal Power Flow Analysis - DistOPF v0.2 Documentation

To achieve an affordable and reliable energy system, research on power distribution system is often focused on integration of distributed generators, energy storage solution, EV charging, smart meters, and other advanced assets that may benefit from or require more advanced control and optimization techniques. Despite this focus on advanced distribution system topics, early researchers and grid scientists often start from scratch when developing optimization programs for power distribution systems. This report introduces DistOPF, a Python package that consolidates years of research into a versatile and modular tool. DistOPF provides researchers with essential capabilities to solve distribution system Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problems using standard network models. Additionally, it offers a platform to benchmark both new and existing algorithms against established test systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗