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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 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

End-Use Load Profiles for the U.S. Building Stock: Technical Advisory Group Meeting #11

A technical advisory group guided the End-Use Load Profiles dataset development to ensure that the direction and outcomes of the work were aligned with market needs. The technical advisory group included roughly 100 representatives from organizations that were likely to use the resulting load profiles in their work, including utility companies, utility program implementers, grid operators, consultancies, research centers, state regulatory agencies, and regional energy efficiency organizations. This is the presentation from TAG Meeting #11.

buildings↗
DOE OSTI2026

ComStock Measure Documentation: Thermostat Setbacks During Unoccupied Periods

This report assesses the potential for nationwide adoption of thermostat setbacks in appropriate applications. Building on the 3-year End-Use Load Profiles project to calibrate and validate the U.S. Department of Energy’s ResStock™ and ComStock™ models, this work produces national datasets that enable cities, states, utilities, and other stakeholders to answer a broad range of questions regarding their commercial building stock. ComStock is a highly granular, bottom-up model that uses various data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual sub-hourly energy consumption of the commercial building stock across the United States. The “baseline” model intends to represent the U.S. commercial building stock as it existed in 2018. The methodology of the baseline model is discussed in the ComStock Reference Documentation. The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures that cover market-ready technologies and study their mass-adoption impact on the baseline building stock. “Measures” refers to various “what-if” scenarios that can be applied to buildings. The results for the baseline and measure scenario simulations are published in public datasets that provide insights into building stock characteristics, operational behaviors, utility bill impacts, and annual and sub-hourly energy usage by fuel type and end use. This report describes the modeling methodology for a single ComStock measure scenario— Thermostat Setbacks During Unoccupied Periods—and briefly introduces key results. The full public dataset can be accessed on the ComStock data lake or via the Data Viewer at comstock.nrel.gov. The public dataset enables users to create custom aggregations of results for their use cases (e.g., filter to a specific county or building type).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

ComStock Measure Documentation: Fan Static Pressure Reset for Multizone Variable Air Volume Systems

This report assesses the potential for nationwide adoption of a duct static pressure reset in MZ VAV systems in appropriate applications. Building on the 3-year End-Use Load Profiles project to calibrate and validate the U.S. Department of Energy’s ResStock™ and ComStock™ models, this work produces national datasets that enable cities, states, utilities, and other stakeholders to answer a broad range of questions regarding their commercial building stock. ComStock is a highly granular, bottom-up model that uses various data sources, statistical sampling methods, and advanced building energy simulations to estimate the annual sub-hourly energy consumption of the commercial building stock across the United States. The “baseline” model intends to represent the U.S. commercial building stock as it existed in 2018. The methodology of the baseline model is discussed in the ComStock Reference Documentation. The goal of this work is to develop energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures that cover market-ready technologies and study their mass-adoption impact on the baseline building stock. “Measures” refers to various “what-if” scenarios that can be applied to buildings. The results for the baseline and measure scenario simulations are published in public datasets that provide insights into building stock characteristics, operational behaviors, utility bill impacts, and annual and sub-hourly energy usage by fuel type and end use. This report describes the modeling methodology for a single ComStock measure scenario—Fan Static Pressure Reset for Multizone Variable Air Volume (VAV) Systems—and briefly introduces key results. The full public dataset can be accessed on the ComStock data lake or via the Data Viewer at comstock.nrel.gov. The public dataset enables users to create custom aggregations of results for their use case (e.g., filter to a specific county or building type).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Energy Options Analysis Project (Final Report)

This Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria (BRB) Energy Options Analysis Project provides a rigorous and comprehensive near-term renewable energy implementation plan that aligns with the BRB’s long term strategic vision of “zero net annual utility energy consumption.” Final recommendations were arrived at by following four key project phases:A gas and electricity load assessment was conducted for all existing buildings using historic consumption data, and projected loads of new or anticipated buildings using building designs. A renewable energy resource assessment was conducted that estimated the gross generation potential of solar and wind, constrained to areas that could potentially be developed. Other renewable generation technologies were not considered feasible to meet the loads of the BRB. Demand-side efficiency and fuel switching opportunities were identified that can reduce electrical and gas consumption. These opportunities were not integrated into the load assessment in order to provide a conservative implementation plan, but are recommended to be pursued in order to cost-optimize projects during a feasibility assessment. A strategic vision advisory committee was organized and consulted when iterating on the viability of possible projects. These project phases resulted in finalizing the following three solar PV projects for the near term, which also lay the foundation for a future community-scale or multiple-facility microgrid for added resiliency. Additional solar PV on the hillside south of the Tish-Non Community Center. Solar plus battery storage microgrid at the Pump & Play fuel station. Solar PV at the Casino.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Remote Alaska Communities Energy Efficiency Competition: Energy Efficiency for the Gem of the Yukon (Final Report)

Over the past decade, the City of Ruby has been proactive in working to reduce cost and energy use in the community. Ruby (Tl’aa’ologhe) is a remote city in Alaska located on the south bank of the Yukon River near the Kilbuck-Kuskokwim Mountains, about 50 air miles east of Galena and 230 air miles west of Fairbanks. As of 2019, the community has a population of over 150 people and most of Ruby’s residents are Koyukon Athabascan. Ruby has a long history of promoting local efficiency and clean energy in an effort to become more sustainable. Between 2007-2010, the community hosted Alaska’s first demonstration of an in-river hydrokinetic test project, sponsored by the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council. In 2011, a 5kW solar photo-voltaic (PV) array was installed by the Interior Regional Housing Authority. In 2012, the community had a new power plant constructed by the Alaska Energy Authority that supplies waste heat to the washeteria, clinic and public safety garage, saving the community more than 4,000 gallons of heating fuel per year. The clinic, constructed by the Tanana Chiefs Conference, is one of the most energy efficient buildings in the interior and utilizes new building efficiency standards that were passed by the tribes. It has a 5kW solar PV array that provides energy into the local electric grid and offsets approximately 20% of the annual energy use. Building on this legacy, the City of Ruby entered into Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Remote Alaska Communities Energy Efficiency Competition (RACEE) in 2016, pledging to reduce per-capita energy use 15% by 2020. During the second phase of the competition, 13 communities including Ruby were provided funding for tailored technical assistance to measure energy use and create energy efficiency plans.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

BETTER Together

The Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) and Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) platforms are both developed by the Department of Energy and work better together. SEED is a database to manage building characteristics and performance data from a variety of sources. BETTER provides simple energy efficiency measure analyses based on high level data about the building or portfolio of buildings. A demonstration of each platform and their integration will be provided. The inputs for BETTER are building type, floor area, location, utility data, and whether PV shall be included in the analysis. The BETTER analysis can be manually set up through the web application or data can be uploaded with a BuildingSync XML file either directly or through the API. SEED can be the source of this data and the data can be sent to BETTER through the SEED application after the BETTER API token has been entered. The benefit of utilizing SEED is that it has connections to many other sources of data such as ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, Audit Template, and Salesforce. Therefore, it is likely that a user of SEED will already have the required inputs for BETTER in SEED already and can create BETTER analyses across their whole portfolio in a couple mouse clicks. This is a major time savings and enables decision makers an easy path to identify buildings that should undergo more detailed audits or retrofit pathways.

ASHRAE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Unlocking Energy Efficiency: Debunking Myths on the Road to Decarbonization

Energy efficiency is widely recognized as the foundational and most critical strategy for decarbonizing the manufacturing sector. Misconceptions surrounding energy efficiency measures often hinder their widespread adoption. This article aims to debunk five common myths and provides data and resources to help implement efficiency projects faster and more effectively to achieve greater decarbonization. First, the article challenges the myth that organizations have exhausted all possible energy efficiency opportunities by achieving voluntary energy intensity goals or energy performance certification. Second, it also addresses the misconceptions that efficiency projects are capital-intensive, require many qualified specialists, and have long investment return periods. By presenting real-world case studies and referencing commonly found efficiency opportunities, the article illustrates that energy-savings opportunities are ubiquitous. Organizations can use various contracting mechanisms as well as financial and technical resources from utility companies and government programs to lessen their burden. The notion that efficiency measures can be implemented solely in proprietorship facilities is dispelled. This article emphasizes the importance of green leases and explains that aligning decarbonization goals between the lessor and lessee can help drive savings for both parties. Finally, using unbundled renewable energy certificates as the sole pathway to decarbonization is strongly discouraged. By debunking these prevalent myths, this article aims to foster a deeper understanding of energy efficiency’s potential as a cornerstone of decarbonization efforts and to embrace it as a critical pathway toward a sustainable future.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Performance Evaluation of District Energy Microgrids Planning Tool for Non-Technical Users

Community Microgrids are increasingly gaining popularity worldwide for their efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and local resilience improvement. Microgrid planning tools play a crucial role in their deployment. In the process, tentative designs of the microgrid are simulated, analyzed, and optimized. Due to the complexity of the problem, planning tools must carefully balance computational efficiency while seeking the most optimal solutions. This paper investigates the impact of algorithm selection on CPU and memory utilization of a Community Microgrid planning tool that is specifically designed for non-technical users. We compare two version of the code with two alternatives for Community Microgrid planning tools: a Greedy Algorithm, and a Linear Programming Approach. This comparison examines scenarios spanning from 2 to 50 buildings. Our findings revealed a significant difference in performance between the two algorithms, underscoring the critical role of algorithm selection in optimizing the efficiency of Community Microgrid Planning Tools.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Sensitivity Analysis of Occupant Preferences on Energy Usage in Residential Buildings: Preprint

Residential buildings, accounting for 37% of the total electricity consumption in the United States, are suitable for demand-side management (DSM) programs to support effective and economical operation of the power system. A home energy management system (HEMS) enables residential buildings to participate in such programs. It is important to account for occupant preferences in HEMS to ensure occupant satisfaction while participating in DSM programs. For example, people who prefer a higher thermal comfort level are likely to consume more energy. In this study, we used foresee™, a HEMS developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), to perform a sensitivity analysis of occupant preferences with the following objectives: minimize utility cost, minimize carbon footprint, and maximize thermal comfort. To incorporate the preferences into the HEMS, the SMARTER method was used to derive a set of weighting factors for each objective. We performed week-long building energy simulations using a model of a home in Fort Collins, Colorado, where there is mandatory time-of-use electricity rate structure. The foreseeTM HEMS was used to control the home with six different sets of occupant preferences. The study shows that occupant preferences can have a significant impact and is important to consider when modeling residential buildings. Results show that the HEMS could achieve energy reduction ranging from 3% to 21%, cost savings ranging from 5% to 24%, and carbon emission reduction ranging from 3% to 21%, while maintaining a low thermal discomfort level ranging from 0.78 K-hour to 6.47 K-hour in a one-week period during winter. These outcomes quantify the impact of varying occupant preferences and will be useful for controlling the electrical grid and developing HEMS solutions.

carbon footprint↗
DOE OSTI2024

ResStock Dataset 2024.1 Documentation

Public ResStock datasets provide credible, relevant, and accessible information on energy use and related non-energy metrics to a variety of stakeholders in the residential buildings space. The current public datasets include baseline building characteristics, timeseries (15-minute) energy consumption, and timeseries carbon emissions for the baseline (existing) U.S. housing stock and the U.S. housing stock with 10 "what-if" energy measure packages applied. This report documents a new public ResStock dataset to complement and build upon the existing public datasets. This dataset is specifically intended to be a resource for state and local decision-makers considering options for energy retrofits for their housing stock to reduce carbon emissions, energy use, and/or utility bills. These data consist of housing stock characteristics and modeled full-year energy consumption, carbon emission, energy bill, and energy burden data for the baseline U.S. housing stock as well as the U.S. housing stock with 260 "what-if" energy measure packages applied. These measure packages include measures related to the building envelope, appliances, pools and spas, lighting, water heating, and HVAC (including efficiency improvements and fuel switching with equipment at a range of performance levels) in a variety of combinations. This report provides methodology information on the generation of this dataset and serves as a key part of the dataset's public documentation.

buildings↗
DOE OSTI2022

A High-Granularity Approach to Modeling Energy Consumption and Savings Potential in the U.S. Residential Building Stock: Preprint

Building simulations are increasingly used in various applications related to energy efficient buildings. For individual buildings, applications include: design of new buildings, prediction of retrofit savings, ratings, performance path code compliance and qualification for incentives. Beyond individual building applications, larger scale applications (across the stock of buildings at various scales: national, regional and state) include: codes and standards development, utility program design, regional/state planning, and technology assessments. For these sorts of applications, a set of representative buildings are typically simulated to predict performance of the entire population of buildings. Focusing on the U.S. single-family residential building stock, this paper will describe how multiple data sources for building characteristics are combined into a highly-granular database that preserves the important interdependencies of the characteristics. We will present the sampling technique used to generate a representative set of thousands (up to hundreds of thousands) of building models. We will also present results of detailed calibrations against building stock consumption data.

building stock↗
DOE OSTI2022

Industrial Assessment Center Program. Final Progress Report

In the past five years, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) has established a high reputation in Wisconsin through the dedicated, continuous, and extraordinary efforts made by the WM IAC team. Our center has developed a broad range of partners in Wisconsin to promote and support our IAC program. We have established a partnership with We Energies, the primary utility company in Wisconsin, to provide high-quality energy assessments for their customers. We also acquired comprehensive support from Focus on Energy, the state energy agency, to promote the IAC among their state-wide networks. We have partnered with Wisconsin State Government agencies, the Office of Energy Innovation, and the Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy. We have been working on our best to make UWM IAC an outstanding program in Wisconsin. WM-IAC attracted the US Administration, and US Vice President, Kamala Harris, visited UWM IAC in May 2021 and conducted a Round Table discussion. In addition, in March 2021, one of the WM IAC student members was invited to the Round Table on supporting America's Manufacturing, and Industrial Workers arranged by the US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, on March 8, 2021.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Novel Functional Thermal Energy Storage Materials for Buildings Applications

The leakage of solid-liquid phase change materials (PCMs) tremendously limits their long-term application in thermal energy storage (TES). In this work, we present durable and form-stable shape-stabilized PCMs (ss-PCMs) for TES in building envelopes. These ss-PCMs are fabricated by encapsulating polyethylene glycol (PEG) consisting of different molecular weights within mesoporous magnesium oxide and silica dioxide. For the first time, the phase transition temperature (Tt) of ss-PCMs has been fine-tuned synthetically to be comfortable to building occupants by utilizing PEG blends with molecular weights of 600 and 800 g/mol. Several parameters, including surface hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, surface area, and PCM loading percentage, have been studied to maximize the latent heat enthalpy for high energy efficiency and maintain form stability. The best ss-PCM candidate with suitable Tt and appreciable latent heat enthalpy exhibits a repeatable phase change behavior for up to 1,000 thermal cycles without leakage, which provides a promising solution for durable TES in buildings. The Tt tunability extends its application over a wider temperature range beyond buildings.

building envelope↗
DOE OSTI2023

LA100 Equity Strategies. Chapter 7: Housing Weatherization and Resilience

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 housing weatherization and access to cooling as means to achieve more equitable resilience to heat waves during unplanned power outages. Specifically, NREL used weather, housing, and socioeconomic data to characterize LA's residential building stock. We?developed a residential building stock model to simulate the energy use of 50,000 dwellings representing the diversity of housing types, appliances, climate zones, and household incomes across Los Angeles. We then simulated and evaluated the impacts of 10 building envelope and cooling upgrades on indoor temperature - a main cause of heat-induced health risks-over a 4-day power outage during a heat wave. We examined occupant exposure to extreme heat and how heat exposure changes with each upgrade across income, tenure (renter/owner status), building type, and disadvantaged community (DAC) status. We also examined upgrade costs and utility bills. Based on the results of our analysis and community guidance, we identified building envelope upgrades and cooling strategies that could save lives and maintain safe home temperatures for LA's low-income households in the event of a planned or unplanned power outage during a summer heat wave. Research was guided by input from the community engagement process, and associated equity strategies are presented in alignment with that guidance.

building envelope↗
DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging NREL's ResStock & ComStock Dataset to Evaluate Building Stock Electrification: Preprint

Residential and commercial buildings accounted for 40% of U.S. energy consumption in 2022 and represent a significant opportunity for decarbonization through energy efficiency and electrification, and for grid planning. Building stock energy modeling is a powerful tool that can evaluate what-if scenarios as utilities, municipalities, policymakers, building owners and others work towards equitable building decarbonization and climate goals. This presentation will highlight several high-impact use cases of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)'s highly granular, bottom-up building stock energy modeling tools, ResStock and ComStock. These use cases cover a wide range of project scale, from neighborhood electrification analysis and municipality long-term energy planning, to state energy code development and national policy evaluation. This presentation will showcase specific real-world applications for which ResStock and ComStock have been utilized across the country, including California codes and standards cost-effectiveness analysis, New York City affordable housing electrification cost gap analysis, and California targeted electrification and gas decommissioning analysis. For each use case, this presentation will illustrate how ResStock and ComStock played a crucial role in accurately characterizing regional building stocks, providing discrete and aggregated end-use load shapes, and calculating lifecycle consumption, emissions, and costs for a variety of building electrification strategies and scenarios. Finally, this presentation will demonstrate how the data provided by ResStock and ComStock can help unlock significant outcomes for these use cases, including but not limited to, customer bill impact, incentive and program design, and energy equity analyses.

building stock modeling↗
DOE OSTI2022

Utilizing commercial heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems to provide grid services: A review

The modern power grid faces multiple challenges due to an increase in the adoption of renewable generation, such as dynamically balancing supply and demand at different time scales. Demand side management in buildings plays a vital role in achieving this balance because buildings can provide grid services through a variety of building assets. However, the development of grid-interactive, efficient buildings is still in its infancy, and a systematic and holistic understanding of grid service delivery strategies in terms of energy efficiency, load shifting, load shedding and load modulating is still limited. This paper is a comprehensive review of the development and application of building-level control strategies for utilizing heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems to provide grid services. These strategies have been investigated through numerical and experimental studies. Control algorithms, such as heuristic rule-based control and model-based control, have been used to enable the automatic control delivery of grid services. The advantages and disadvantages of the strategies are summarized and discussed. Finally, research trends are also identified, which include considering predicted mean vote-based and occupant-based thermal comfort, modeling of occupant behavior, integrating power grid operations with building control, and combining different demand flexibility modes in the control design.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Thermal Reservoir Networks for Modularly Expandable Thermal Microgrids

The Department of Defense (DoD) faces the substantial challenge of cost-effectively retrofitting one to two installations per month, each comprising approximately 1,000 buildings, to improve resilience, reduce energy consumption, and enhance energy supply security. Achieving these objectives requires optimal system selection and effective risk mitigation during system integration. To address this need, we introduce Platform-Based Design (PBD), a structured, hierarchical methodology adapted from other industrial sectors to the domain of energy system retrofits. We demonstrate the effectiveness of PBD through a techno-economic feasibility study comparing geothermal-coupled thermal energy networks (TENs) with conventional energy systems for heating, cooling, and powering 17 buildings at Joint Base Andrews (JBA) in Maryland. Our analysis illustrates that the PBD approach enables rigorous, data-driven, sequential decision making, resulting in a family of Pareto-optimal systems, among which the TEN emerged as the most promising solution. The selected TEN design integrates geothermal borefields, heat recovery heat pumps, photovoltaic (PV) arrays, and battery storage. Compared to the baseline system – gas heating combined with air-source chillers – the proposed TEN reduces annual imported energy by 74% and peak electricity demand by 45%, achieves a levelized cost of energy of $\$0.210$/kWh, and substantially enhances resilience. Life-cycle costs increase by approximately 6%, and initial investment costs are about 2.5 times higher than the baseline. However, if central plant infrastructure, district loops, and utility-scale PV and battery systems are privately funded and operated, the initial investment would fall below the baseline system cost. Critical to achieving these significant performance improvements were detailed nonlinear dynamic simulations coupling geothermal heat transfer, energy system operation, and realistic feedback control logic. These simulations identified essential design modifications and control strategy refinements that substantially reduced energy use, peak demand, and compressor shortcycling, thereby improving durability and reliability—issues that would have been significantly more expensive to resolve during operation. Additionally, the verification step highlighted sensitivities to key design parameters that could reduce initial investment by approximately $\$2$ million and reduce annual life-cycle costs more than $\$300,000$. We recommend adopting the PBD methodology for future feasibility studies and TEN pilot projects to gain valuable operational experience. Furthermore, we recommend that DoD invest in transferring and scaling the PBD methodology to other installations. This entails developing standardized computational frameworks and component libraries as well as training industry in conducting PBD. Such investments would enable rapid, robust, reliable, and cost-effective retrofits, supporting DoD’s ambitious energy system modernization goals.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Future of Zero Energy Buildings: Produce, Respond, Regenerate: Preprint

The zero energy buildings concept is more than 20 years old, and the paradigm shift from buildings as energy consumers to buildings as energy producers is underway. Buildings also consume land and material resources, however, with attendant environmental impacts. Another paradigm is emerging: a built environment that produces energy and is environmentally responsive and regenerative. This paper investigates an updated framework for thinking about zero energy buildings that includes discussions of prioritizing renewables; determining on-site versus off-site generation; exploring how and when buildings should use energy; and balancing renewables, storage, and energy efficiency. Buildings are typically connected to the utility grid and the utility grid develops largely in response to the built environment. If more buildings’ real time electricity use aligned with renewable generation, more renewables would be added to the grid. Ultimately, the goal for zero energy buildings will be to use 100% renewables, 100% of the time, matching loads with energy storage and renewable generation at each discrete timestep over a year. This target is beyond the current zero energy definitions, which focus on an annual balance of renewable supply and energy demand and use the grid to “store” excess production to make up for hours without sufficient on-site renewable generation. This paper expands this upgraded concept and outlines simple metrics to evaluate the alignment of renewable sources and storage with building loads. This process can provide insights on building design considerations, including the use of flexible loads and optimal resource management.

ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION↗