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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
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Variable Emittance Coatings

Variable emittance coatings (VECs) can reduce thermal control system mass and power by passively changing radiator heat rejection according to spacecraft and environment heat loads. VECs make establishing a lunar presence easier since this technology helps overcome challenges with harsh thermal environments on the lunar surface and in transit. This CIF focuses on creating testing capabilities to assess VECs from collaborators in academia and industry. Two main testing capabilities were created. First, a set of temperature dependent Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) measurement accessories were designed, fabricated, and used to measure samples received from collaborators. These accessories are capable of measuring the transmittance and reflectance of semi transparent and opaque samples. Second, a vacuum calorimetry experiment was designed and built to assess the variable heat rejection of larger coupons.

Sydney Taylor↗
NASA NTRS2012

NASA InterCenter Collaboration Increases ROI

Funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space mission operations is tighter than ever in the current environment of federal government deficit reductions. Conventional wisdom would expect this environment to drive increasing competition between NASA centers for the limited available funds. However, recent inter-center activities at the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center emphasize collaboration rather than competition and demonstrate the value of partnerships to increase the return on shrinking investments. These efforts cover a variety of activities and potential returns. To facilitate sharing data from test and verification through operations without levying requirements on data format or software tools, the HOSC is working with multiple centers on an evolutionary path toward a distributed data architecture and archive. The approach reduces the required investment by allowing the partners to reuse their existing formats and tools, while facilitating gone ]stop h user visibility into and controlled access to the full complement of data regardless of user or data location. The HOSC is also working on two activities to promote sharing operations implementations and leveraging the experts and expertise across multiple NASA sites. In one, the use of Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) standards for the message abstraction layer provides an interoperability layer on top of existing ground data system communication architectures. This allows missions to select the most appropriate solutions for their requirements with a minimal investment in rehosting the components in a coherent operational environment. The other emphasizes shared tools and increased remote access to minimize travel for tests and critical activities and reduce the floor space required for a dedicated operations center. This paper summarizes these and other inter-center collaboration activities at the HOSC and the benefits that each can bring, not just to the participants, but to the broader operations community.

Lankford, Kimberly↗
DOE OSTI2022

Supplementing Gamma Sterilization with X-Ray and E-Beam Technologies: An International Industry and Academia Collaboration

Ionizing-technology–based industries are growing rapidly around the world. The expansion is driven mostly by the technology’s myriad applications, including polymer crosslinking, medical device sterilization, food pasteurization, and phytosanitary treatment. Ionization also is used in the manufacture of some healthcare products such as medical devices and biopharmaceuticals. Industrial sterilization methods render single-use products and manufacturing components safe and ready for their intended use. ISO11137-1 describes the validation and routine control of a sterilization process for medical devices and mentions the three types of radiation considered under this scope: gamma, X-ray, and electron beam (e-beam)

gamma sterilization, electron beam sterilization, ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Research to Address Technical Barriers to Expanded Markets for Biodiesel and Biodiesel Blends (CRADA Final Report)

NREL and the Clean Fuels Alliance America (CFAA) will work cooperatively to assess the effects of biodiesel blends on the performance of modern diesel engines. This work will include research to understand the impact of biodiesel blends on the operation and durability of particle filters and NO x control sorbents/catalysts, to quantify the effect on emission control systems performance, and to understand effects on engine component durability. This research was performed at NREL Renewable Fuels and Lubricants (REFUEL) laboratory (an engine testing laboratory) as well as at third party labs paid directly by CFAA with NREL as part of the project management team. Also, research to develop appropriate ASTM standards for biodiesel quality and stability was conducted in NREL’s bench scale fuel chemistry laboratory. The cooperative project involved laboratory testing and research at NREL using biodiesel from a variety of sources and in collaboration with a broad range of other stakeholders. In addition, NREL will work with NBB to set up an Industrial Steering Committee to design the scope for the various tasks and to provide technical oversight to these projects. NREL and NBB will cooperatively communicate the study results to as broad an audience as possible. This research benefits the public by expanding markets for a domestically produced low-carbon intensity fuel for use in diesel engines.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Design and characterization of the SPT-3G receiver (Conference Presentation)

(On behalf of the SPT-3G collaboration)The SPT-3G receiver was commissioned in early 2017 on the 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT) to map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with arcminute resolution. The new instrument significantly improves on previous SPT camera designs, offering unprecedented sensitivity to the CMB’s temperature and polarization anisotropies while maintaining a tight control on systematic effects.A restructured optics chain features new secondary and tertiary mirrors to increase the receiver’s field of view by a factor of four in area, coupling light through a set of four cryogenic 720 mm alumina elements, which re-image the Gregorian focus inside the receiver. The broad-band (70-270 GHz) anti-reflective coated lenses are paired with a Lyot stop and cooled to 4 K using a dedicated two-stage pulse-tube cooler (PTC) to minimize in-band attenuation, internal radiative loading, and stray light on the considerably larger focal plane, which is populated with ~2,700 diffraction-limited pixels.Each independent pixel incorporates a lenslet-coupled broadband sinuous antenna, which routes signals through superconducting transmission lines and in-line band-defining filters to six transition-edge sensors, each measuring one of three bands (90, 150, and 220 GHz) and two polarizations, yielding a total of ~16,000 bolometers distributed across ten 150 mm monolithic wafers on a 430 mm image plane. A robust mechanical and thermal architecture supports and cools all detectors across this sizable focal plane to ~250 mK using a closed-cycle Helium adsorption refrigerator backed by a PTC, allowing a duty cycle greater than 90%.This order of magnitude increase in detector count relies on an improved digital frequency-domain SQUID readout system which integrates superconducting inductor-capacitor resonators wired in series with each bolometer to achieve a 68x multiplexing factor while mitigating noise and crosstalk effects.Cumulatively, SPT-3G’s new optics, detector, and readout strategies boast a potential factor of ~20 improvement in mapping speed over its predecessor, SPT-Pol, offering the potential to improve our understanding of inflationary physics, astroparticle physics, and growth of structure. We summarize the new receiver’s core design principles, outline technology characterization results, and report on plans for future upgrades.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Wind Energy Forecasting with the Weather Research and Forecasting Model

This was a collaborative effort between Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC as manager and operator of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Siemens Energy, Inc. (Siemens) to develop a wind resource forecasting tool. LLNL was to develop an independent high-resolution mesoscale modeling capability forecasting tool that could be implemented in conjunction with existing wind farm control and monitoring software to provide forecasting of wind resources using local observations of winds and temperature. Research with LLNL’s state-of-the-art large-eddy simulation meteorological prediction model, based on the community WRF model and innovative turbulence parameterizations, would improve that model’s applicability to large wind farms offshore and in complex terrain. The modeling capability would include uncertainty quantification. Finally, the application of the modeling tool and existing global climate change predictions would enable the delineation of the likely effects of climate change on wind resources. Siemens was to provide high time resolution hub-height wind speed and other meteorological data streams, including temperature profiles from wind farms, for LLNL to incorporate into the modeling system, to validate and tune this forecasting model for their locations of interest. These data streams would also be used for longer-term studies of correlations of wind resources to climate oscillations to indicate how long-term climate change trends may affect the available wind resource. Siemens would also provide information and observations of turbine wakes for incorporation into the modeling tool. By implementing state-of-the-art turbulence parameterizations into a simulation model and/or ensembles of simulation models, and by integrating real-time hub height wind speed and other meteorological datastreams from wind farms into that model or ensemble of models, LLNL would develop a forecasting tool that could be implemented by Siemens as an add-on to existing wind farm control and monitoring software to provide owners with useful resource forecasting. The desired outcome was that the accuracy level of the output would be sufficient to substantiate power output commitments. The final deliverable for this work would consist of a document outlining the algorithms and software tools that could be integrated into Siemens Wind Park Supervisor.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Sodium Fire Collaborative Study Progress CNWG Fiscal Year 2021

This report discusses the progress on the collaboration between Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) and Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) on the sodium fire research in fiscal year (FY) 2021 and is a continuation of the FY2020 progress report. In this report, we only report the changes made to the current sodium pool fire model in MELCOR. We modified and corrected many control functions to enhance the current model from the FY2020 report. This year’s enhancements relate to better agreement of the suspended aerosol measurement from JAEA’s F7 series tests. Staff from Sandia and JAEA conducted the validation studies of the sodium pool fire model in MELCOR. To validate this pool fire model with the latest enhancement, JAEA sodium pool fire experiments (F7-1 and F7-2) were used. The results of the calculation, including the code-to-code comparisons are discussed as well as suggestions for further model improvement. Finally, recommendations are made for new MELCOR simulations for FY2022.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Advanced Algal Biofoundries for the Production of Polyurethane Precursors [Abstract]

The collaboration between PNNL, LBNL, and UCSD will develop novel algae bioproduction platforms for the generation of polymer precursors. To achieve this, we will design and construct genetic tools for enhanced production of target chemicals. Biosensors will be developed to detect target chemical production. We will expand our knowledge of metabolic and regulatory systems that control or inhibit biosynthesis of the target molecules, and use this knowledge base to optimize production titers. Finally, we will integrate the knowledge gained from each activity to produce a set of the most promising production strains used to demonstrate the economic viability of producing polymer precursors in algal bioproduction platforms at scale under either heterotrophic or photosynthetic growth.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Radioactivity-in-materials lead for nEXO (Final Scientific Report)

Abstract, introduction, and summary of work completed and products produced by DOE award SC002466. Primary products were six peer-reviewed publications and two PhD theses. This award also supported the operation of an underground HPGe detector and several radioassay measurements: one in a stand alone publication in Phys. Rev. C and the others in an upcoming nEXO radioassay summary paper. The nEXO collaboration aims to demonstrate the Majorana nature of the neutrino by observing the neutrinoless double-beta decay of 136 Xe with a next-generation experiment. The University of Kentucky nEXO group (UKY) operates a world-leading ultra-low-background γ-ray spectrometer as part of the nEXO radioactive background control R&D effort. The nEXO project is a proposed ton-scale neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment. The UKY PI is leading the radioactivity content assessment for all materials required by the nEXO project. As a subset of this task, UKY is also responsible for project-wide management of all low-background γ-ray spectrometry measurements; material assays with these types of instruments, together with ICP-MS, neutron-activation-analysis, and α-spectrometry, are critical to ensuring that the nEXO project can achieve its design sensitivity

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2005

Matlab GUI for a Fluid Mixer

The Test and Engineering Directorate at NASA John C. Stennis Space Center developed an interest to study the modeling, evaluation, and control of a liquid hydrogen (LH2) and gas hydrogen (GH2) mixer subsystem of a ground test facility. This facility carries out comprehensive ground-based testing and certification of liquid rocket engines including the Space Shuttle Main engine. A software simulation environment developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK (M/S) will allow NASA engineers to test rocket engine systems at relatively no cost. In the progress report submitted in February 2004, we described the development of two foundation programs, a reverse look-up application using various interpolation algorithms, a variety of search and return methods, and self-checking methods to reduce the error in returned search results to increase the functionality of the program. The results showed that these efforts were successful. To transfer this technology to engineers who are not familiar with the M/S environment, a four-module GUI was implemented allowing the user to evaluate the mixer model under open-loop and closed-loop conditions. The progress report was based on an udergraduate Honors Thesis by Ms. Jamie Granger Austin in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Tulane University, during January-May 2003, and her continued efforts during August-December 2003. In collaboration with Dr. Hanz Richter and Dr. Fernando Figueroa we published these results in a NASA Tech Brief due to appear this year. Although the original proposal in 2003 did not address other components of the test facility, we decided in the last few months to extend our research and consider a related pressurization tank component as well. This report summarizes the results obtained towards a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the evaluation and control of the hydrogen mixer subsystem model and for the pressurization tank each taken individually. Further research would combine the two components - mixer and tank, for a more realistic simulation tool.

Barbieri, Enrique↗
DOE OSTI2019

Creating Cybersecurity Professionals of the Future

Cybersecurity is a growing public concern with more threats and vulnerabilities being discovered and exploited by adversaries each day. In particular, industrial control systems (ICS) are at a higher risk because their components were not designed with cybersecurity in mind. With increased risk to ICS, it is vital that the employees who work on the system are trained in cybersecurity best practices and the latest threats. Research has shown that there are currently no curriculum standards for an ICS cybersecurity professional, which may contribute to the issues faced during the hiring process. In fact, most individuals require extensive post-hire training before they can begin normal operations. The goal in cybersecurity is to become operationally resilient, which means in part that employees of an organization are trained to prevent and handle a cybersecurity incident. Therefore, the authors present a project that offers a solution to the education gap by creating a workforce pipeline for ICS cybersecurity professionals. The project is a virtual ecosystem for collaboration and transforming operational resilience (VECTOR). VECTOR incorporates many different efforts to increase operational resilience including the development of ICS cybersecurity curriculum and apprenticeships.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Metadata Schemas and Ontologies for Building Energy Applications: A Critical Review and Use Case Analysis

With the increasing digitalization of processes throughout the lifecycle of buildings, data exchanged between stakeholders and between building systems has grown significantly. However, a lack of semantic interoperability between data in different systems is still prevalent, hindering the development of applications that can be reused across buildings and limiting the scalability of innovative solutions. Semantics refers to the description of the meaning of the data in a way that can be consistently understood by applications. Recently, several competing initiatives have been developing metadata schemas and ontologies to express this semantic information for different applications in the building domain. This paper systematically reviews these schemas and conducts an analysis of five of them to evaluate their applicability to three high-value use cases for building operations: energy audits, automated fault detection and diagnostics and optimal control. The survey finds 40 schemas published in the last 10 years but but their actual use in industry is difficult to estimate. Among the five selected ontologies, several gaps are highlighted in relation to the three use cases. Recommendations for the future include better harmonization of these initiatives, more centralized repositories and search engines for these schemas as well as better industry engagement to facilitate their adoption.

Smart Building, Sematic, Metadata, Ontology, Data ↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Risk-Reduction Autonomy Implementation to Enable NASA Artemis Missions

To achieve NASA’s Artemis program mission objectives a high level of autonomy and ubiquitous autonomy throughout the systems that are being developed will be necessary. The autonomous systems of Artemis will require a distributed autonomy capability, with autonomous systems organized functionally in a hierarchical architecture, where systems at higher levels of the hierarchy have authority over systems at lower levels. The challenge of developing autonomy technologies and concepts of operations for Artemis has been undertaken by the NASA Gateway Working Group. This group has developed requirements, architectures, concepts of operations, and interface control documents, in the context of a hierarchical distributed architecture that includes the following: a Vehicle System Manager (VSM) that autonomously manages the entire Gateway; Module System Managers (MSMs) that autonomously manage each module; and System Managers (SMs) that autonomously manage systems within a module(i.e. ECLSS).A substantially high level of autonomy needs to be achieved by each element of the hierarchy (VSM, MSM, SM)to meet requirements for uncrewed operations; this includes conditions that will have minimal and/or delayed ground intervention (i.e. requirements for sustainability for months of operation without crew or ground support). To advance an implementation of this autonomy design (Gateway Autonomy Design –GAD), a collaboration was established between the Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL) at NASA Stennis Space Center and Lockheed Martin. The objectives of this partnership were the following: (1)to implement autonomy at the VSM, MSM, and SM levels;(2) to implement communications among a VSM, 2 MSMs, ORION (a visiting vehicle somewhat equivalent to a module) and 1 SM (a power system), and (3) test autonomous operations with representative use cases. A SM backed by a high-fidelity simulation was created to facilitate demonstrations of use cases that originated in a system of a module. Communication between the VSM and MSMs was implemented according to Concepts of Operations and Interface Control Documents (ICDs). Demonstrations were conducted to address nominal and off-nominal operations and multi-module interactions with VSM. Additionally, user interfaces were created to provide awareness about ongoing processes and results while enhancing the demonstration. Demonstrations included the following use cases: (1)Orion as visiting vehicle registers with VSM;(2) VSM reschedules a module’s timelines when another module’s MSM task fails; and (3) a module’s Power System Manager (PSM) standalone demonstration that included component failure diagnostics, tracing component failure to effected components, which in turn, reports failure information up to the VSM for acknowledgement and display. This paper will describe the detailed technology and autonomous systems developed, and the integrated multi-module demonstrations conducted. Also, challenges that must be met to fully implement the GAD defined by Gateway will be addressed.

Autonomous Systems↗
DOE OSTI2026

Development of large-scale, 3D Printed high temperature ceramic material

Through this collaborative effort, a new 3D printing platform for ceramics called laser-induced slip casting (LIS) was explored and developed for improving the processing and manufacture of silicon carbide (SiC), a high temperature ceramic material. This method prints layers of ceramic slips/slurries with subsequent selective-laser heating to dry each layer to build a 3D structure. The completed and dried part is then sintered. This manufacturing process is inherently lower cost than alternative ceramic printing methods such as binder jet technology or stereolithography when it comes to the feedstock material but is more expensive than robocasting or direct ink writing. However, it has the potential to make more controlled parts with less defects compared to robocasting. The largest cost is the heating source for the printer. With this technique, there is potential to make large ceramic parts in a near-net shape. Further, there is no known commercial manufacturing of 3D printed ceramics that creates a large range of different high-density ceramics at large scale. The goals and outcomes for the development of the new printing technology were: 1) assessing the technology with alumina by characterizing coupons, 2) printing and sintering of silicon carbide (SiC), and 3) characterization and properties testing of materials printed and a scale-up of SiC part(s). Through this collaborative project, it was sought to provide the best solution to achieving highly dense and near-net shaped ceramic parts at large scale and reduced cost. The goal was to produce high density sintered materials for applications in defense, energy generating systems, armor, and wear parts using 3D printing methods. Variables including powder particle sizes, dispersant molecular weights (MWs), binders, printing parameters, and post processing were explored as well as the characterization of the physical properties (add specifics here).

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Risk-Reduction Autonomy Implementation to Enable NASA Artemis Missions

To achieve NASA’s Artemis program mission objectives a high level of autonomy that is ubiquitous throughout the systems that are being developed will be necessary. The autonomous systems of Artemis will require a distributed autonomy capability, with autonomous systems organized functionally in a hierarchical architecture, where systems at higher levels of the hierarchy have authority over systems at lower levels. The challenge of developing autonomy technologies and Concepts of Operations (ConOps) for Artemis has been undertaken by the NASA Gateway Working Group. This group has developed requirements, architectures, ConOps, and interface control documents (ICDs), in the context of a hierarchical distributed architecture that includes the following: a Vehicle System Manager (VSM) that autonomously manages the entire Gateway; Module System Managers (MSMs) that autonomously manage each module; and System Managers (SMs) that autonomously manage systems within a module (i.e. ECLSS). A substantially high level of autonomy needs to be achieved by each element of the hierarchy (VSM, MSM, SM) to meet requirements for uncrewed operations; this includes conditions that will have minimal and/or delayed ground intervention (i.e. requirements for sustainability for months of operation without crew or ground support). To advance an implementation of this autonomy design (Gateway Autonomy Design – GAD), a collaboration was established between the Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL) at NASA Stennis Space Center and Lockheed Martin. The objectives of this partnership were the following: (1) to implement autonomy at the VSM, MSM, and SM levels; (2) to implement communications among a VSM, 2 MSMs, ORION (a visiting vehicle somewhat equivalent to a module) and 1 SM (a power system), and (3) test autonomous operations with representative use cases. A SM backed by a high-fidelity simulation was created to facilitate demonstrations of use cases that originated in a system of a module. Communication between the VSM and MSMs was implemented according to Concepts of Operations and Interface Control Documents (ICDs). Demonstrations were conducted to address nominal and off-nominal operations and multi-module interactions with the VSM. Additionally, user interfaces were created to provide awareness about ongoing processes and results while enhancing the demonstration. Demonstrations included the following use cases: (1) Orion as visiting vehicle registers with VSM; (2) VSM reschedules a module’s timelines when another module’s MSM task fails; and (3) a module’s Power System Manager (PSM) demonstration that included component failure diagnostics, tracing component failure to effected components, which in turn, reports failure information up to the VSM for acknowledgement and display. This paper will describe the detailed technology and autonomous systems developed, and the integrated multi-module demonstrations conducted. Also, challenges that must be met to fully implement the GAD defined by Gateway will be addressed.

Fernando Figueroa↗
DOE OSTI2022

Cloud-Control of Legacy Building Automation System: A case study

As Internet of Things devices and cloud-based platforms become more mature, Energy Management and Information Systems (EMIS) are increasingly gaining momentum in the building industry. In large commercial buildings, Fault-Detection and Diagnostic (FDD) and energy information systems (EIS) are now established technologies with tens of providers and thousands of deployment sites across North America. The new frontier for the EMIS technology is now represented by control systems that use advanced system optimization (ASO) methods to improve the operations of the HVAC system. Given the complexity of the integration of such systems with the existing building automation systems (BAS) and the higher risk involved with direct control of the HVAC, these systems are still emerging in the market. This paper presents the results of a project in which a start-up company partnered with a research institution to develop a cloud-based software EMIS solution and deployed it in a university campus in California. The software system included advanced sensing, data acquisition, storage and advanced control and analytics applications developed on top of the native BAS. The new platform controls ten buildings on the campus and the FDD and the ASO applications deployed on this platform were able to generate energy savings of up to 35% and 25% in certain buildings for each functionality respectively. Where the platform did not save energy, it improved building service (air quality). Lessons learned include the importance of collaborating with and training the building operators and evaluating whether the legacy system can work reliably with the new technology.

Prakash, Anand Krishnan↗
DOE OSTI2018

Perovskite Solar Cells: Addressing Low Cost, High Efficiency, and Reliability Through Novel Hole-Transport Materials

The ultimate goal of this project is to develop low-cost and scalable organic-based hole transport materials that will lead to thin film perovskite solar cells with high efficiencies (>25%) and long lifetimes (>20 years). A very important component of a perovskite solar cell is the hole transport layer (HTL). This layer is also generally the most expensive and problematic component of the device. Currently the state-of-the-art HTL is based on a lithium salt doped aromatic amine termed N 2 ,N 2 ,N 2' ,N 2' ,N 7 ,N 7 ,N 7' ,N 7' -octakis(4-methoxyphenyl)-9,9'-spirobi[9H-fluorene]-2,2',7,7'-tetramine (spiro-OMeTAD) that is very difficult to prepare with no paths for becoming cost effective at high volume. This project will directly prepare perovskite solar cells more easily commercialized by designing and preparing new HTL materials with properties that address the current bottlenecks, such as cost, tunable conductivity and energy levels, hydrophobicity, Li free dopants, and stability to name a few. We have preliminary results from new cost-effective HTLs and dopants that have led to high efficiency (>19%) and long operating lifetime devices without encapsulation – significantly improved over spiro-OMeTAD based devices prepared in our labs as controls. We will focus on using the lessons learned from that first departure from the norm to design even more ideal and scalable HTLs. We believe the outcomes of this proposal will lead to a substantial impact for the perovskite community to develop a low cost, scalable and high performing HTL. This will be a collaborative effort where our synthetic chemists will perform HTL design, chemical synthesis, and materials characterization, while our device engineers will perform device physics, fabrication/processing, and characterization.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Autonomous Tools for Attack Surface Reduction

The electric power grid is a complex critical infrastructure that forms the lifeline of modern society, and its secure and reliable operation is of paramount importance to national security and economic well being. However, recent findings documented in authoritative sources indicate the threat of cyber-based attacks growing in numbers and sophistication. However, securing the grid against stealthy cyber attacks is a challenging task due to legacy nature of the infrastructure coupled with dynamic nature of threat landscape and ever growing sophistication of the adversaries. Additionally, the grid’s attack surface continues to grow with the increased dependence on digital communications and control that now extends to each consumer through smart meters and distributed energy resources. Unfortunately, this expansive surface increases the grid’s vulnerability and further exposes critical control systems in both substations and control centers. To respond to this emerging need, we had successfully assembled an interdisciplinary team with academic- industry partnership to successfully conduct research, development, evaluation, demonstration, and commercialization of attack surface reduction tools, whose goal is to significantly reduce the cyber attack surface in the North American power grid. Our proposed project was a synergistic collaborative effort leveraging the synergistic expertise of the team members across power systems, cyber security and CPS security, testbeds, field deployments and demonstration, and successful commercialization. The team consisted of leading experts from two major universities – Iowa State University, Washington State University – complemented by reputed researchers from two DOE national laboratories – Pacific Northwest National Lab, and Argonne National Lab, one major utility vendor GE Global Research, and one utility partner – Cedar Falls Utilities (CFU). The team members have proven track record of successful academic-industry collaboration in interdisciplinary R&D projects, and bring onboard some of the best state-of-the-art testbed resources, industry-grade SCADA/EMS/DMS environment for experimentation and field demonstration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗