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At least 955 records · Page 53

Decarbonizing all-electric communities via carbon-responsive control of behind-the-meter resources

The progression of electrification in the building and transportation sectors brings new opportunities for energy decarbonization. With higher dependence on the grid power supply, the variation of the grid carbon emission intensity can be utilized to reduce the carbon emissions from the two sectors. Existing coordinated control methods for buildings with distributed energy resources (DERs) either consider electricity price or renewable energy generation as the input signal, or adopt optimization in the decision-making, which is difficult to implement in the real-world environment. This paper aims to propose and validate an easy-to-deploy rule-based carbon responsive control framework that facilitates coordination between all-electric buildings and electric vehicles (EVs). The signals of the grid carbon emission intensity and the local photovoltaics (PV) generation are used for shifting the controllable loads. Extensive simulations were conducted using a model of an all-electric mixed-use community in a cold climate to validate the control performance with metrics such as emissions, energy consumption, peak demand, and EV end-of-day state-of-charge (SOC). Our study identifies that 4.5% to 27.1% of annual emission reduction can be achieved with limited impact on energy costs, peak demand, and thermal comfort. Additionally, up to 32.7% of EV emission reduction can be obtained if the EV owners reduce the target SOC by less than 21.2%.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A hybrid architecture for volt-var control in active distribution grids

Modern active distribution grids are characterized by the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs). The proper coordination and scheduling of a large numbers of these small-scale and spatially distributed DERs is necessary, and warrants the use of novel distributed approaches. In this paper, we propose a hybrid volt-var control architecture for the distribution grid, which leverages existing centralized and local approaches to planning, decision making, and control, and augments it with distributed optimization and distributed control for DER management. First, we propose a convex model to describe the power physics of distribution grids of meshed topology and unbalanced structure, based on current injection and McCormick Envelopes. Second, we employ the distributed proximal atomic coordination (PAC) algorithm to coordinate DERs to provide voltage support. We implement volt-var optimization by optimally coordinating DERs including PV smart inverters and demand response. We present results using the IEEE-34 bus network, using real data from a distribution feeder in Hawaii, to model load and PV generation. Different levels of DER penetration and objective functions are simulated. Finally, our results show the need for the coordination of DERs to improve voltage profiles, even in networks with existing voltage control devices. Further, we show the need for flexible reactive power capabilities to achieve desired grid performance.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Laboratory Testing of Demand-Response Enabled Household Appliances

With the advent of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems capable of two-way communications between the utility's grid and the building, there has been significant effort in the Automated Home Energy Management (AHEM) industry to develop capabilities that allow residential building systems to respond to utility demand events by temporarily reducing their electricity usage. Major appliance manufacturers are following suit by developing Home Area Network (HAN)-tied appliance suites that can take signals from the home's 'smart meter,' a.k.a. AMI meter, and adjust their run cycles accordingly. There are numerous strategies that can be employed by household appliances to respond to demand-side management opportunities, and they could result in substantial reductions in electricity bills for the residents depending on the pricing structures used by the utilities to incent these types of responses. The first step to quantifying these end effects is to test these systems and their responses in simulated demand-response (DR) conditions while monitoring energy use and overall system performance.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Robust bidding strategy for aggregation of distributed prosumers in flexiramp market

Distributed prosumers (DPs) are the grid customers that own energy production/storage assets. Due to the flexibility and fast response of their assets, they can procure ancillary service products (ASP) in the wholesale market. An appealing ASP offered by California ISO in the real-time market (RTM) is flexiramp for which market participants do not submit direct offers, and the compensation is based on their energy opportunity costs. Here in this report, we propose a bidding strategy model for DP aggregator participation in the RTM considering energy and flexiramp. First, we develop a risk-averse optimization to determine the optimal energy and reserve product to trade in day-ahead market while considering proper amounts of flexiramp to trade in the RTM. In the RTM, to obtain optimal amounts of energy and flexiramp, the aggregator must submit hourly multi-level price-quantity energy bids for multiple RTM intervals with 15 min time-steps. On this basis, we propose a robust hourly economic bidding strategy model that determines the optimal energy bids in the RTM. We develop an adjustable robust counterpart of the model to address the RTM energy and flexiramp price uncertainties. The simulation results justify the efficacy of our proposed framework in gaining profits from the wholesale market.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Roadmap and Benchmarking: Privacy in Federated Load Forecasting

Data-driven techniques for energy demand forecasting continue to emerge with promising impacts on distribution grid planning. However, the development of robust and generalizable machine learning models requires that representative high quality training data are available. Distributed energy resources have begun to embed intelligence, gathering large amounts of data on customer demand, behavior, and household devices that are connected to the grid. Though utilities aggregate meter-level demand data for load shaping, demand response, outage management, reliability planning, and billing applications, there lies an inherent privacy concern in sharing consumption data that may identify individual consumer behavioral patterns. Hence, while sharing the data is crucial, the private sensitive customer data must be safeguarded from being exposed or manipulated. In this study, we propose a roadmap for implementing a based privacy preserving framework to support the advancement of data-driven analytics in data-sensitive distributed energy resources environments. The roadmap incorporates federated learning–a distributed training framework, differential privacy–a statistical framework that provides guarantees to safeguard the leakage of sensitive data, secure multiparty computation and homomorphic encryption– techniques for encrypting model gradients and applying secure aggregation on the server. Moreover, we perform baseline experiments on the federated short-term load forecasting (STLF) task using open-source residential load profile datasets, offering insights into the challenges of integrating differential privacy into federated learning.

Abebe, Waqwoya [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORN↗

High-Dose Spatially Fractionated GRID Radiation Therapy (SFGRT): A Comparison of Treatment Outcomes With Cerrobend vs. MLC SFGRT

Purpose: Spatially fractionated GRID radiotherapy (SFGRT) using a customized Cerrobend block has been used to improve response rates in patients with bulky tumors. The clinical efficacy of our own multileaf collimator (MLC) technique is unknown. We undertook a retrospective analysis to compare clinical response rates attained using these two techniques. Methods and Materials: Seventy-nine patients with bulky tumors (median diameter, 7.6 cm; range, 4-30 cm) treated with SFGRT were reviewed. Between 2003 and late 2005, the Cerrobend block technique (n = 39) was used. Between late 2005 and 2008, SFGRT was delivered using MLC-shaped fields (n = 40). Dose was prescribed to dmax (depth of maximum dose) and was typically 15 Gy. Eighty percent of patients in both groups received external beam radiotherapy in addition to SFGRT. The two-sided Fisher-Freeman-Halton test was used to compare pain and mass effect response rates between the two groups. Results: Sixty-one patients (77%) were treated for palliative intent and 18 (23%) for curative intent. The majority of patients had either lung or head-and-neck primaries in both groups; the most frequent site of SFGRT application was the neck. The majority of patients complained of either pain (65%) or mass effect (58%) at intake. Overall response rates for pain and mass response were no different between the Cerrobend and MLC groups: pain, 75% and 74%, respectively (p = 0.50), and mass effect, 67% and 73%, respectively (p = 0.85). The majority of toxicities were Grade 1 or 2, and only 3 patients had late Grade 3-4 toxicities. Conclusions: MLC-based and Cerrobend-based SFGRT have comparable and encouraging response rates when used either in the palliative or curative setting. MLC-based SGFRT should allow clinics to more easily adopt this novel treatment approach for the treatment of bulky tumors.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Space‐Time Causal Discovery in Earth System Science: A Local Stencil Learning Approach

Causal discovery tools enable scientists to infer meaningful relationships from observational data, spurring advances in fields as diverse as biology, economics, and climate science. Despite these successes, the application of causal discovery to space-time systems remains immensely challenging due to the high-dimensional nature of the data. For example, in climate sciences, modern observational temperature records over the past few decades regularly measure thousands of locations around the globe. To address these challenges, we introduce Causal Space-Time Stencil Learning (CaStLe), a novel meta-algorithm for discovering causal structures in complex space-time systems. CaStLe leverages regularities in local space-time dependencies to learn governing global dynamics. This local perspective eliminates spurious confounding and drastically reduces sample complexity, making space-time causal discovery practical and effective. For causal discovery, CaStLe flexibly accepts any appropriately adapted time series causal discovery algorithm to recover local causal structures. These advances enable causal discovery of geophysical phenomena that were previously unapproachable, including non-periodic, transient phenomena such as volcanic eruption plumes. Regularities in local space-time dependencies are transformed into informative spatial replicates, which actually improve CaStLe's performance when applied to ever-larger spatial grids. We successfully apply CaStLe to discover the atmospheric dynamics governing the climate response to the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption. We provide validation experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of CaStLe over existing causal-discovery frameworks on a range of geophysics-inspired benchmarks while identifying the method's limitations and domains where its assumptions may not hold.

Nichol, J. Jake [Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque,↗

Characteristics of plasma grid bias in large-scaled negative ion source

The electron density was measured at various bias voltages to understand how the plasma grid bias affects the electron near the plasma grid in large-scaled negative ion sources. It was found that the response of the electron to the bias voltage changes depending on negative ion production processes. The electron density remarkably decreases with increasing the bias voltage in the pure-volume plasma. On the other hand, the electron density depends on the bias voltage weakly in the Cs-seeded plasma. In addition, it was observed that the response of the co-extracted electron current to the bias voltage has similar trend to that of the electron density.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Variational formulation of macro-particle plasma simulation algorithms

A variation formulation of macro-particle kinetic plasma models is discussed. In the electrostatic case, the use of symplectic integrators is investigated and found to offer advantages over typical generic methods. For the electromagnetic case, gauge invariance and momentum conservation are considered in detail. It is shown that, while the symmetries responsible for these conservation laws are broken in the presence of a spatial grid, the conservation laws hold in an average sense. The requirements for exact invariance are explored and it is shown that one viable option is to represent the potentials with a truncated Fourier basis.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of Multiple Photovoltaic Inverters' Volt-Var Control with Real-Time Grid Model

Traditional testing methods fall short in evaluating interactions between multiple smart inverters providing advanced grid support functions due to the fact that such interactions largely depend on their placements on the electric distribution systems with impedances between them. Even though significant concerns have been raised by the utilities on the effects of such interactions, little effort has been made to evaluate them. In this paper, power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) based testing was utilized to evaluate autonomous volt-var operations of multiple smart photovoltaic (PV) inverters connected to a simple distribution feeder model. The results provided in this paper show that depending on volt-var control (VVC) parameters and grid parameters, interaction between inverters and between the inverter and the grid is possible in some extreme cases with very high VVC slopes, fast response times and large VVC response delays.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Synthesizing Distributed Energy Resources in Microgrids with Temporal Logic Specifications

Grid supportive modes integrated within distributed energy resources aim at improving the frequency response. However, hybrid behaviors induced by deadbands and other thresholds and their impact on system frequency remain unclear. This paper employs the parametric metric temporal logic specification for validating such behaviors to ensure adequate frequency response. It allows a richer description of system protections like under-frequency load shedding and can explore the temporal specification of frequency dynamics. The approach is applied on a diesel-wind fed microgrid and appropriate settings of deadband will be obtained, which can be regarded as a guideline for practitioners. The results are expected to be less conservative since the temporal properties are taken into accounts.

Zhang, Yichen↗

Bus.py: A GridLAB-D Communication Interface for Smart Distribution Grid Simulations

As more Smart Grid technologies (e.g., distributed photovoltaic, spatially distributed electric vehicle charging) are integrated into distribution grids, static distribution simulations are no longer sufficient for performing modeling and analysis. GridLAB-D is an agent-based distribution system simulation environment that allows fine-grained end-user models, including geospatial and network topology detail. A problem exists in that, without outside intervention, once the GridLAB-D simulation begins execution, it will run to completion without allowing the real-time interaction of Smart Grid controls, such as home energy management systems and aggregator control. We address this lack of runtime interaction by designing a flexible communication interface, Bus.py (pronounced bus-dot-pie), that uses Python to pass messages between one or more GridLAB-D instances and a Smart Grid simulator. This work describes the design and implementation of Bus.py, discusses its usefulness in terms of some Smart Grid scenarios, and provides an example of an aggregator-based residential demand response system interacting with GridLAB-D through Bus.py. The small scale example demonstrates the validity of the interface and shows that an aggregator using said interface is able to control residential loads in GridLAB-D during runtime to cause a reduction in the peak load on the distribution system in (a) peak reduction and (b) time-of-use pricing cases.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Adaptive PV Frequency Control Strategy Based on Real-time Inertia Estimation

The declining cost of solar Photovoltaics (PV) generation is driving its worldwide deployment. As conventional generation with large rotating masses is being replaced by renewable energy such as PV, the power system’s inertia will be affected. As a result, the system’s frequency may vary more dramatically in the case of a disturbance, and the frequency nadir may be low enough to trigger protection relays such as under-frequency load shedding. The existing frequency-watt function mandated in power inverters cannot provide grid frequency support in a loss-of-generation event, as PV plants usually do not have power reserves. Here, a novel adaptive PV frequency control strategy is proposed to reserve the minimum power required for grid frequency support. A machine learning model is trained to predict system frequency response under varying system conditions, and an adaptive allocation of PV headroom reserves is made based on the machine learning model as well as real-time system conditions including inertia. Case studies show the proposed control method meets the frequency nadir requirements using minimal power reserves compared to a fixed headroom control approach.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

RAVEN Theory Manual

RAVEN is a software framework able to perform parametric and stochastic analysis based on the response of complex system codes. The initial development was aimed at providing dynamic risk analysis capabilities to the thermohydraulic code RELAP-7, currently under development at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Although the initial goal has been fully accomplished, RAVEN is now a multi-purpose stochastic and uncertainty quantification platform, capable of communicating with any system code. In fact, the provided Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow RAVEN to interact with any code as long as all the parameters that need to be perturbed are accessible by input files or via python interfaces. RAVEN is capable of investigating system response and explore input space using various sampling schemes such as Monte Carlo, grid, or Latin hypercube. However, RAVEN strength lies in its system feature discovery capabilities such as: constructing limit surfaces, separating regions of the input space leading to system failure, and using dynamic supervised learning techniques. The development of RAVEN started in 2012 when, within the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program, the need to provide a modern risk evaluation framework arose. RAVEN’s principal assignment is to provide the necessary software and algorithms in order to employ the concepts developed by the Risk Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) program. RISMC is one of the pathways defined within the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program. In the RISMC approach, the goal is not just to identify the frequency of an event potentially leading to a system failure, but the proximity (or lack thereof) to key safety-related events. Hence, the approach is interested in identifying and increasing the safety margins related to those events. A safety margin is a numerical value quantifying the probability that a safety metric (e.g. peak pressure in a pipe) is exceeded under certain conditions. Most of the capabilities, implemented having RELAP-7 as a principal focus, are easily deployable to other system codes. For this reason, several side activates have been employed (e.g. RELAP5-3D, any MOOSE-based App, etc.) or are currently ongoing for coupling RAVEN with several different software. The aim of this document is to provide a set of commented examples that can help the user to become familiar with the RAVEN code usage.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

RAVEN User Guide

The goal of this document is to provide a set of detailed examples that can help the user to become familiar with the RAVEN code. RAVEN is capable of investigating system response and explore input space using various sampling schemes such as Monte Carlo, grid, or Latin Hypercube. How- ever, RAVEN strength lies in its system feature discovery capabilities such as: constructing limit surfaces, separating regions of the input space leading to system failure, and using dynamic super- vised learning techniques. New users should consult the RAVEN Tutorial to get started.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

RAVEN Theory Manual

RAVEN is a software framework able to perform parametric and stochastic analysis based on the response of complex system codes. The initial development was aimed at providing dynamic risk analysis capabilities to the thermohydraulic code RELAP-7, currently under development at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Although the initial goal has been fully accomplished, RAVEN is now a multi-purpose stochastic and uncertainty quantification platform, capable of communicating with any system code. In fact, the provided Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow RAVEN to interact with any code as long as all the parameters that need to be perturbed are accessible by input files or via python interfaces. RAVEN is capable of investigating system response and explore input space using various sampling schemes such as Monte Carlo, grid, or Latin hypercube. However, RAVEN strength lies in its system feature discovery capabilities such as: constructing limit surfaces, separating regions of the input space leading to system failure, and using dynamic supervised learning techniques. The development of RAVEN started in 2012 when, within the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program, the need to provide a modern risk evaluation framework arose. RAVEN’s principal assignment is to provide the necessary software and algorithms in order to employ the concepts developed by the Risk Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) program. RISMC is one of the pathways defined within the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program. In the RISMC approach, the goal is not just to identify the frequency of an event potentially leading to a system failure, but the proximity (or lack thereof) to key safety-related events. Hence, the approach is interested in identifying and increasing the safety margins related to those events. A safety margin is a numerical value quantifying the probability that a safety metric (e.g. peak pressure in a pipe) is exceeded under certain conditions. Most of the capabilities, implemented having RELAP-7 as a principal focus, are easily deployable to other system codes. For this reason, several side activates have been employed (e.g. RELAP5-3D, any MOOSE-based App, etc.) or are currently ongoing for coupling RAVEN with several different software. The aim of this document is to provide a set of commented examples that can help the user to become familiar with the RAVEN code usage.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Frequency Emitter Geolocation Using Signal Strength Fingerprinting Informed By 3D Propagation Modeling

This work focuses on the problem of RF geolocation in complex multipath environments. Using 3D electromagnetic propagation modeling to characterize environments of interest will enable more accurate RF geolocation. Specifically, a path-loss radio map can be generated in simulation for use in received signal strength indicators (RSSI) fingerprinting, or pattern matching. RSSI fingerprinting is an example of data-based method that takes site specific information into account which should allow for better performance than other model-based methods that use a generalized model of electromagnetic propagation. This modeling capability will also be used to evaluate the relative performance of RSSI fingerprinting, pathloss model based RSSI methods such as differential received signal strength circles (DRSS), RSSI joint gaussian estimation, and time-difference of arrival (TDOA). New methods using this simulation derived electromagnetic characterization could improve the efficacy of currently deployed and future RF spectral monitoring solutions. Wireless InSite developed by Remcom is used as the simulation tool of choice in this work. An indoor location is simulated with a grid of fixed receivers and a grid of transmit locations. Using the output of the Wireless InSite simulation the response from a given transmit location to a given receive location can be generated. During the first year of the project various geolocation methods evaluated on purely synthetic, but realistic, data. The second year focused on testing and validating the efficacy of simulation informed RF geolocation using two physical testbeds. This work has shown that data-based approaches are more accurate than model-based ones at the expensive of requiring measured or simulated site-specific training data.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

The Use of the High-density UN Fuel in Heat-pipe Microreactors

Heat-pipe microreactors (HPMRs) are very small-scale nuclear reactors that employ heat pipes for heat removal. HPMRs can be easily integrated with other forms of renewable energies, used for emergency responses to disaster relief zones, deployed in remote locations not connected to the grid, and removed from sites and replaced by new ones. HPMRs can also be used for space missions as heat pipes do not rely on gravity for heat transfer. Conventional fuel materials, such as UO 2 and UCO, are currently considered in most existing HPMR designs, but ceramic UN fuel that has high uranium density, high thermal conductivity, and a high melting point may become a better fuel candidate.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗