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

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Semantic Interoperability to Enable Smart, Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Achieving a widespread transition to grid-interactive, efficient buildings (GEBs) depends critically on there being sufficient interoperability among connected building systems. While many critical elements already exist at the technical interoperability level (TCP/IP, BACnet, etc.), a lack of interoperability in the semantic level hinders streamlined integration of interdependent applications. Semantics refers to expressing information about “things” in a way that can be consistently understood by applications. Key components of formalized semantics include identifying what a “thing” is (its “type”), defining general information about that “thing” (its characteristics or properties), and defining the appropriate relationships of that “thing” to other “things” (its function or role in a larger system). Although this might seem initially trivial, the success of smart building applications is highly dependent on maintaining consistent self-descriptive notions of the “things”. Without semantic interoperability, it is technically difficult, labor-intensive, and cost-prohibitive to enable three key objectives of GEBs: optimizing performance, automatically identifying and diagnosing faults, and delivering grid services. Industry, academia, and standards bodies have invested effort in developing information models to facilitate semantic interoperability, however, they have not been widely adopted across the U.S. commercial building portfolio. This paper will present a pathway to drive semantic interoperability through a three-pronged approach to be led by the DOE Building Technologies Office in partnership with NIST and multiple national laboratories comprising: 1) industry engagement and coordination across existing efforts; 2) a semantic interoperability standard that empowers building owners to identify and require interoperable attributes when procuring equipment and applications; 3) tools to assist in implementation and a test framework to verify compliance of products with semantic interoperability specifications. This approach is designed to accelerate the timeline for adoption of semantic interoperability specifications. The intent is to reduce soft costs associated with implementing advanced controls, fault detection and diagnostics, and other smart building technologies and use cases as a necessary step in achieving an energy efficient smart grid future.

Bergmann, Harry↗
DOE OSTI2020

Developing and Evaluating Metrics for Demand Flexibility in Buildings: Comparing Simulations and Field Data

Building demand flexibility (DF) has attracted significant attention in recent years among researchers, technology developers and control companies, aggregators, utilities, and many others. There are numerous challenges with today’s electricity systems such as managing peak demand capacity and integrating variable renewables into the grid. Flexible building loads can provide various grid services to help reduce electricity costs, smooth out renewables intermittency and balance supply and demand. Recognizing this, the US DOE is leading the Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) initiative which includes research to evaluate the potential, availability and timing of flexible loads. In this paper we present load shed metrics for three building types – medium office, large office and retail store – and compare prototype simulation results with measured data from 12 actual buildings that participated in hot summertime utility demand response (DR) events. The DR strategies included varying zone temperature and reducing light levels. The magnitude of a key DF metric, “demand decrease intensity” (or “shed intensity”) (W/ft2), between the simulation results and field data are similar (14-32% differences) for both mean and median values, though the field data show much larger variation among DR events. The coefficient p-values from linear regression model tests showed that outside air temperature is a significant variable for the whole building shed intensity when the resetting zone temperature strategy is deployed. These findings support the concept of using prototype building simulation to estimate building DF and expanding future simulation research to additional building types and climate zones.

Liu, Jingjing↗
DOE OSTI2021

GT Flex: A Coordinated Multi-Building Pilot Study

Buildings are a significant and untapped resource for providing utility electric grid services. Recent studies have estimated that buildings could reduce the peak demand on the electric grid in the U.S. by almost 25% through effective combinations of energy efficiency (EE) measures and load flexibility strategies (Langevin et al. 2021). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has established a goal to triple energy efficiency and demand flexibility in both residential and commercial sections by 2030 compared to 2020 levels (Satchwell et al. 2021). Such findings place buildings alongside electric vehicles, photovoltaics, electric batteries, and other distributed energy resources (DERs) as primary technologies needed for supporting high renewable energy generation grids. Coordinating and optimizing multiple buildings and other DERs is more beneficial and valuable when compared with individual buildings and DERs operating as siloed resources, uncoordinated with others (Olgyay et al. 2020). A pilot study at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) was conducted to evaluate value propositions of a multi-building scale project seeking carbon reduction, energy efficiency and grid-interactive capabilities, by demonstrating the means by which stakeholders can determine the technical and financial merits of grid-interactivity and energy efficiency technologies coordinated across multiple assets. The study focused on analyzing technical feasibility of deploying thermal load flexibility strategies at the multi-building scale, coordinated to not exceed existing infrastructure constraints at the pilot site. Results show that campus can provide 3-3.5 MW of potential load shed over a 4-hour event window through coordinated dispatch of thermal cooling load flexibility without exceeding existing infrastructure capacities. Under future high renewable scenarios, this thermal flexibility resource is also valuable when coordinated to reduce curtailment of intermittent renewables. Economic analyses were performed to effectively communicate various value propositions of grid-interactive and efficient building (GEB) thermal flexibility strategies. Load flexibility presents a financial value proposition to the campus today. By conducting rationalized, coordinated dispatch in response to real time price (RTP) fluctuations, the campus can benefit materially from daily price arbitrage. The RTP signal acts as an aggregating mechanism between the utility and customer to call on demand flexibility resources, with a large portion of the benefit deriving from a relatively small number of days. Realizing and maximizing this benefit with thermal load flexibility requires careful attention to the timing of pricing signals and parameterization of dispatch to overcome efficiency penalties. Grid value and signals are expected to evolve over time, and thermal load flexibility shows potential to adapt dispatch logic to support intermittent renewable generation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

DER as a service-ecoLong and VOLTTRON (Abstract)

The project goal is to commercialize the VOLTTRON-hosted “DER as a Service” (DaaS) application and make it an “out-of-the-box” solution for ecoLong to use as a secure residential energy management system that allows 1.) distributed energy resources (DERs) to participate in wholesale markets and provide services to the grid and 2.) intelligently control the energy in the residential buildings to the desired level while maintaining occupancy comfort. The product will be field deployed onto multiple Solar Liberty sites in New York state to demonstrate wide-scale participation of DERs in wholesale markets to provide services to the grid and validate the effectiveness of the solution. The integrated management of DERs and buildings increases the penetration of solar resources by managing its variability, providing grid services, and solving the evening ramping challenges. Ultimately, the DaaS platform will make buildings and DERs smarter by unlocking grid-interactive efficient buildings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantification of Energy Savings and Demand Reduction for a Heat Pump Integrated with Thermal Energy Storage (Final Report)

To mitigate the variation in demand on the electric grid, thermal energy storage (TES) is an alternative to electric batteries or installing new peaking power plants. Stakeholders and policy makers across the United States have expressed interests in promoting TES, as demonstrated by the US Department of Energy’s Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings program and the efforts of various state legislatures. However, the cost value provided by TES are unclear. If reliable cost benefits were determined, stakeholders would have a clearer picture of the financial returns that can be gained from their investment in TES. The study in this report is conducted by ORNL with collaboration with Emerson the Helix Innovation Center. In the first part of this report, EnergyPlus was used to perform whole-building simulations for two residential buildings in Indianapolis and Atlanta. The HVAC system in both buildings were equipped with phase change material TES. The TES tank was charged in off-peak hours and discharged in peak hours to perform load shifting. First, the economic value implied by existing time-of-use (TOU) rates offered by utility companies was analyzed via whole-building simulation. Second, existing demand reduction (DR) incentives sourced from 3 different electrical grid administrators (i.e., California, Texas, and New England region) were surveyed to determine their implied value. The study suggests that the traditional value analysis that focuses on ROI for the building owner significantly undervalues TES technology making economic viability difficult. A more comprehensive value analysis that includes peak demand management and deferred capital for peaking power plants shows that TES should be economically viable but here the value is greater for the utility and requires large market penetration and aggregation to fully realize the benefits. Therefore, to facilitate commercialization, new business models are needed that include a broader range of stakeholders and distribute the value of TES proportionally. In the 2 nd part of this project, the benefits of a novel phase change material (PCM) integrated heat pump configuration were evaluated via detailed component based simulation. A one-dimensional PCM heat exchanger model which discretizes the PCM tank and refrigerant tubes into small control volumes is developed. Each control volume can have different PCM temperatures, PCM properties, and heat transfer coefficients. The PCM tank is charged by a wrapped tank condenser and discharged by an internal refrigerant coil. The PCM heat exchanger model is integrated into DOE/ORNL Heat Pump Design Model for heat pump system simulation. To demonstrate the performance of the PCM integrated heat pump, a case study in Chicago was performed. A Time-of-Use utility structure-based control strategy is implemented to schedule the PCM tank charging and discharging mode switching. Compared with a conventional electric heat pump, the PCM integrated heat pump shows superior performance on load shifting and utility cost reduction. As a result, the proposed system demonstrates 24.6% utility saving for cooling application and 25.8% utility saving for heating application.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Energy Northwest — Advanced Grid Interactive Load Efficiency (AGILE) : A Techno-economic Assessment

The Advanced Grid Interactive Load Efficiency project team, led by Energy Northwest, was awarded funding as part of the fourth round of the Clean Energy Fund program to investigate, co-create, and complete a preliminary design for grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) for a number of schools served by Grays Harbor PUD. The project team has evaluated different combinations of systems at selected school buildings and the potential to respond to grid and customer needs, and develop a preliminary system technical design, including specifying desired GEB technology options, determining communication and electrical interface requirements, assessing control software sensor requirements, and interfacing with building management systems. PNNL led the techno-economic assessment efforts, leveraging its advanced modeling and analytical methods and tools developed for building-to-grid integration. This report documents the economic assessment for different GEB design options, encompassing an in-depth examination of use cases and value propositions, assumptions and inputs, models, methods, case studies, as well as key findings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Demand Response in Residential Energy Code: Technical Brief

As buildings account for over 75% of U.S. electricity use, effectively managing their loads can greatly facilitate the transition towards a clean, reliable grid. Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) combine efficiency and demand flexibility with smart technologies and communication to provide occupant comfort and productivity while serving the grid as a distributed energy resource (DER). In turn, GEBs can play a key role in ensuring access to an affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern U.S. electric power system. Their national adoption could provide $\$$100-200 billion in U.S. electric power system cost savings over the next two decades. The associated reduction in CO 2 emissions is estimated at 6% per year by 2030 (DOE 2021). Building codes represent standard design practice in the construction industry and continually evolve to include advanced technologies and innovative practices. Historically, national model energy codes establish minimum efficiency requirements for new construction (ICC 2020). Expanding codes to support GEB capabilities is a pivotal step towards realizing demand flexibility in support of a clean grid by addressing capabilities to improve interoperability between smart building systems, the grid, and renewable energy resources. Realizing GEBs requires buildings with automated demand response (DR) capabilities that enable standardized communication with or control of, subject to explicit consumer consent, energy smart appliances or home energy management systems. This is achieved through direct or indirect (i.e., via an aggregator) communication between appliances and the electric grid. Energy codes can also support DR communication standardization and advance the deployment of building-integrated DERs such as energy storage, generation, and electric vehicles (EVs). Incorporating automated DR capabilities in energy codes provides many benefits to the consumers. Specifically, it aligns building electric load demand with intermittent renewable energy source availability, decreases peak load on the electric grid, allows buildings to respond to utility price signals, supports electrical network reliability and market growth of products and processes aligned with clean economic growth. The incorporation of DR into the model residential energy codes was considered for both the 2021 and 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) code development cycles. The approved DR measures in the 2021 cycle were removed in response to appeals (ICC 2020). Updated language was presented for consideration again for the 2024 IECC, where it was negotiated and again approved, and again removed in response to appeals (ICC 2024). This resulted in many sections, including sections on demand responsive controls, being moved to the credits options or an appendix as a voluntary application. This technical brief updates the proposed DR components such that they can be considered by states and local governments for direct incorporation into their codes, as well as for future IECC energy code development. The proposal refinements are intended to support consistency in approach and provide a degree of certainty for building owners, designers, contractors, manufacturers, and building and fire safety professionals. The scope of this technical brief includes three strategies for DR in residential buildings: 1) smart thermostats with demand-responsive control, 2) electric water heating incorporating demand-responsive controls and communication and 3) grid Integrated solar and energy storage systems.

2021 IECC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Forecasting Commercial Building Electricity Consumption, Zone Airflow and Zone Temperature: Update - Development of a Generalized Machine Learning Approach

The U.S. power grid is being transformed to make it smarter, more efficient, and cleaner. This transformation is leading to the addition of a significant of energy generated by distributed, variable, and renewable resources. Because of the variable nature of renewable generation, the short- and long-term supply and demand imbalances are less predictable, and conventional approaches to mitigating the imbalances will be less efficient or cost effective. To address this challenge and to support the mission and the vision of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Building Technologies Office has developed a Grid-Interactive Efficient Building Strategy. The strategy focuses on simultaneously improving building energy efficiency and supporting reliability and resilience of the electric grid more efficiently and at a lower cost. In addition, EERE and DOE’s Office of Electricity created an initiative led by DOE and supported by the national laboratories under the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium structure to enhance grid modernization. The work reported in this document is part of the first set of projects funded under the initiative to design, develop, and validate scalable transactive control technologies for the commercial buildings sector. Transactive controls requires the ability of individual end-use loads to express flexibility as a function of a transactive signal (e.g., price). Empirical grey- and black-box models have been widely used to express flexibility. Although this approach is generally easy to construct and simple to use, it does not capture non-linear behavior that some end-use loads represent. Therefore, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with support from Western Washington University conducted this research to explore the use of deep machine learning (ML) techniques. The work reported in this document is limited to forecasting whole building electricity consumption, the zone airflow and the zone temperature predictions.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Smart Energy Storage Integration and Management Platform for Buildings (SESIMP-B)

This project involved the design, development, and testing of a commercial smart service panel. It includes an innovative AI-driven control method to manage smart functions of the panel and a technical-economic feasibility assessment for enhancing building energy resilience and grid-edge technology integration.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Semantic Interoperability to Enable Smart, Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Achieving a widespread transition to grid-interactive, efficient buildings (GEBs) depends critically on there being sufficient interoperability among connected building systems. While many critical elements already exist at the technical interoperability level (TCP/IP, BACnet, etc.), a lack of interoperability in the semantic level hinders streamlined integration of interdependent applications. Semantics refers to expressing information about “things” in a way that can be consistently understood by applications. Key components of formalized semantics include identifying what a “thing” is (its “type”), defining general information about that “thing” (its characteristics or properties), and defining the appropriate relationships of that “thing” to other “things” (its function or role in a larger system). Although this might seem initially trivial, the success of smart building applications is highly dependent on maintaining consistent self-descriptive notions of the “things”. Without semantic interoperability, it is technically difficult, labor-intensive, and cost-prohibitive to enable three key objectives of GEBs: optimizing performance, automatically identifying and diagnosing faults, and delivering grid services. Industry, academia, and standards bodies have invested effort in developing information models to facilitate semantic interoperability, however, they have not been widely adopted across the U.S. commercial building portfolio. This paper will present a pathway to drive semantic interoperability through a three-pronged approach to be led by the DOE Building Technologies Office in partnership with NIST and multiple national laboratories comprising: 1) industry engagement and coordination across existing efforts; 2) a semantic interoperability standard that empowers building owners to identify and require interoperable attributes when procuring equipment and applications; 3) tools to assist in implementation and a test framework to verify compliance of products with semantic interoperability specifications. This approach is designed to accelerate the timeline for adoption of semantic interoperability specifications. The intent is to reduce soft costs associated with implementing advanced controls, fault detection and diagnostics, and other smart building technologies and use cases as a necessary step in achieving an energy efficient smart grid future.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Semantic Interoperability to Enable Smart, Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings

Achieving a widespread transition to grid-interactive, efficient buildings (GEBs) depends critically on there being sufficient interoperability among connected building systems. While many critical elements already exist at the technical interoperability level (TCP/IP, BACnet, etc.), a lack of interoperability in the semantic level hinders streamlined integration of interdependent applications. Semantics refers to expressing information about “things” in a way that can be consistently understood by applications. Key components of formalized semantics include identifying what a “thing” is (its “type”), defining general information about that “thing” (its characteristics or properties), and defining the appropriate relationships of that “thing” to other “things” (its function or role in a larger system). Although this might seem initially trivial, the success of smart building applications is highly dependent on maintaining consistent notions of the “things” being self-descriptive. Without semantic interoperability, it is technically difficult, labor-intensive, and cost-prohibitive to enable three key objectives of GEBs: optimizing performance, identifying faults, and delivering grid services. Industry, academia, and standards bodies have invested effort in developing information models to facilitate semantic interoperability, however, they have not been widely adopted across the U.S. commercial building portfolio. This paper will present a pathway to drive semantic interoperability through a three-pronged approach to be led by the DOE Building Technologies Office in partnership with NIST and multiple national laboratories comprising: 1) industry engagement and coordination across existing efforts; 2) a semantic interoperability standard that empowers building owners to identify and require interoperable attributes when procuring equipment and applications; 3) tools to assist in implementation and a test framework that can verify compliance of products with semantic interoperability specifications. This strategic approach is designed to accelerate the timeline for adoption of semantic interoperability standards. The intent is to reduce soft costs associated with implementing advanced controls, fault detection and diagnostics, and other smart building technologies as a necessary step in achieving an energy efficient smart grid future.

semantic interoperability, Semantic modeling, inte↗
DOE OSTI2022

AI-Driven Smart Community Control for Accelerating PV Adoption and Enhancing Grid Resilience

Rapid deployment of residential photovoltaic (PV) systems helps decarbonize our electricity supplies, but under certain circumstances, high-penetration PV may pose challenges to the electrical distribution grid. In a project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office and Building Technologies Office, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and its partners studied how flexible building loads and battery storage, when coordinated at home-level and community-level scales, can be used to address those challenges and enhance grid resilience. In this webinar, we will discuss the methodology, simulation and field pilot results, insights from partners, and lessons learned from the project.

artificial intelligence↗
DOE OSTI2024

Alfalfa Virtual Building Service: Software Engineering Best Practices Applied to Runtime Interaction with Building Energy Models

Buildings are active participants in increasingly complex energy systems. Building Energy Modeling (BEM) has a key role to play in planning and de-risking an equitable energy transition, with BEM-backed "virtual buildings" critical path for diverse applications that include workforce training tools, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) experimentation to study equipment performance under a range of conditions, Control-Hardware-in-the-Loop (CHIL) experimentation to de-risk commercial control implementations at equipment through grid orchestration levels, and integration of dynamic load profiles into grid modeling tools for energy system experimentation at the urban scale. Modeling requirements vary across these applications, but many software engineering tasks do not. The Alfalfa Virtual Building Service (AVBS, see https://github.com/NREL/alfalfa/wiki) is an open-source web service that solves these common tasks robustly in one place, providing a foundational platform for power users to bootstrap their own applications. AVBS abstracts the specifics of runtime interaction with OpenStudio, Modelica, and Spawn of EnergyPlus models behind a unified REST API. Additionally, AVBS provides resources for cloud deployment and scaling to 100s of parallel simulations, a growing library of modular Operational Technology (OT) integrations for emulation of real-world interfaces, and scripts to automate the population of communities of virtual buildings from URBANopt, ResStock and ComStock.

building automation↗
DOE OSTI2022

‪A Novel Methodology for Longitudinal Studies of Home Thermal Comfort Perception and Behavior

Human-building interactions significantly influence building energy consumption and affect peak energy demand. For example, heating and cooling contribute 46% of daily peak residential energy demand. Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) can potentially increase energy-demand flexibility and accelerate the adoption of renewables. However, traditional demand response (DR) programs focused on shedding peak loads disregard the human-building interactions leading to occupant thermal frustration. Specifically, they do not model occupants’ ability to override thermostat controls, nor how indoor environmental conditions and sociocultural factors affect the timing and magnitude of overrides. Studies have found 20% of occupants override thermostat setpoints during DR events longer than 6 hours yet lack detail about the motivation that might guide more successful efforts. Balancing energy-demand flexibility with occupant thermal comfort requires understanding dynamic occupant behavior, the underlying psychophysiological drivers, in the context of homes. This paper presents methods for scalable longitudinal studies of residential occupant behavior dynamics to inform the development of psychophysiological occupant-centric building models. Smart sensors were installed to measure local environmental conditions in 20 homes in two regions of the United States. Just-in-time ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) provided qualitative data on occupant thermal comfort and local environmental conditions not captured in Internet-of-Things (IoT) based studies or existing datasets. Participant interviews provided insight into environmental attitudes, mental models, and the role of economics in comfort and behavior, which in turn may affect thermostat interactions. Based on these data, interventions in the next phase of the study will collect data and monitor occupant behavior during simulated DR events.

Kane, Michael↗