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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 OSTI2025

Design, Optimization, and Control of Floating Offshore Wind Farms for Optimal Energy Production (Final report)

The uncertainty and irregularity of ocean waves and the ocean environment is a major factor in the development of commercial scale floating wind turbines as the operation of floating structures in such an environment can lead to irregular and unpredictable loading, fatigue, and ultimately a reduction in the operational life of the turbine system which affects energy production over the lifetime of the turbine. Control solutions that can limit float motions and mitigate stressful events on the structure become essential for extending lifetime and limiting the operational uncertainty of a floating wind turbine. Digital twins are computational replicas of physical systems that operate in parallel with the operation of the physical system. Given advanced knowledge of a systems input, digital twins have the ability to predict the behavior of a system in advance, which can be valuable in the control of that system. In this project, we developed and assessed potential digital twin models developed in house and openly available (OpenFast) for use in the real time control of the six degree of freedom response motions of a floating wind turbine in ocean waves. Coupling these models with near-field real time irregular sea surface (wve) measurement/sensings and prediction models, we used the digital twin to predict how the floating turbine will respond to the incoming waves. Applying this information to a motion control system of the float, one can limit and control float motions to prevent undesirable loading events/large angular motions, thus increasing system life and ultimately contributing to optimizing energy production. Due to the computational intensity of operating a digital twin in real time, we investigated the use of artificial intelligence techniques to speed-up the processes of the digital twin, as well as the wave reconstruction/prediction models. Model tank testing at the University of Rhode Island and University of Maine both validated and demonstrated the developed techniques on simple float geometries and a scale model of the NREL 15 MW reference turbine.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

A Physics-Based Digital Twin for Wave Elevation and Seabed Moment Estimation of Offshore Monopiles: Preprint

In this work, we present a proof of concept of a physics-based digital twin for a monopile structure (with overhead inertia) subjected to wave loading. The digital twin is formulated using reduced-order models derived from first principles and combined with a Kalman filter for state estimation. The proposed framework estimates the monopile top motion, the wave elevation, and the section forces and moments along the pile using primarily acceleration measurements at the monopile top. Key innovations include the use of a hydrodynamic shape function to represent distributed wave loading in a compact and computationally efficient manner, and the introduction of a shaping filter to augment the state-space with wave kinematics. Synthetic measurement data are generated using OpenFAST and used as a reference to assess the performance of the digital twin. Results demonstrate that the wave elevation can be accurately reconstructed without direct sea-state measurements as long as the wave regime is inertia-dominated. Under the ideal tested conditions, the total hydrodynamic force and sea-bed bending moment are estimated with relative errors on the order of 1% and correlation coefficients exceeding 96%. Future work will evaluate the estimator's performance under operational uncertainties and more complex loading conditions.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Comparison of wind-farm control strategies under realistic offshore wind conditions: wake quantities of interest

Wind-farm control strategies aim to increase the efficiency, and therefore lower the levelized cost of energy, of wind farms. This is done by using turbine settings such as the yaw angle, blade pitch angles, or generator torque to manipulate the wake that negatively affects downstream turbines in the farm. Two inherently different wind-farm control methods have been identified in the literature: wake steering (WS) and active wake mixing (AWM). As one of two companion papers focused on understanding practical aspects of these two wind-farm control strategies using large-eddy simulation (LES), we below analyze the wake quantities of interest for a single wind turbine performing WS and AWM, while the companion article (Frederik et al., 2025) focuses on turbine quantities of interest including power and structural loads for the same computational setup and also includes two-turbine arrays with full and partial wake overlap. The simulations, which are based in the LES solver AMR-Wind, are tailored to have inflow conditions representative of measurements from a site off the East Coast of the US, including with strong veer and low turbulence. The turbine, which is modeled in OpenFAST and coupled to the LES, is the IEA 15 MW, an open-source offshore design. After presenting an overview of the wake recovery for the different wake-control cases, the analysis probes the fluid-dynamic causes for the different performance of the arrays reported in the companion article by examining control volumes around the wakes and the budget of the mean-flow kinetic energy (MKE) within these volumes. In the high veer environment considered, the MKE recovery is dominated by mean convection, and this is shown to especially benefit the WS strategy when a neighboring turbine is directly downstream: there is ≈65 % more available power for a downstream turbine than in the baseline case, and this power is gained primarily through mean convection on the left-tip and top-tip faces of the control volume. However, the case with imperfect knowledge of the exact wind direction favors the pulse-type AWM strategy, largely because of ≈9 % increased turbulent entrainment from aloft versus the baseline that could be related to an apparent resistance to skewing in the pulsed wake. The general reduced effectiveness of helix-type and other individual-pitch-based AWM strategies for inflow with high veer and low turbulence as reported in the companion paper is due, in part, to low magnitudes of phase-averaged turbulent entrainment. Two main findings of this study are thus that veer has a significant impact on the effectiveness of different wake-control strategies and that pulse-type AWM may be a useful strategy when the objective is power maximization in realistic, offshore flow environments with imperfect knowledge of the exact wake overlap position on the downstream turbine.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Renewable-battery hybrid power plants in congested electricity markets: Implications for plant configuration

Examining coupled renewable-battery power plants (“hybrids”) in congested areas provides insights into a future of increased wind and solar penetration. Our study focuses on two types of congested regions, Variable Renewable Energy (VRE)-rich Areas and Load Centers, and explores likely plant configuration choices for developers and transmission network planners. Here, this paper examines how hybrid value, comprising energy and capacity value, varies by plant configuration and congested region type considering factors such as storage duration, battery degradation, and ability to charge from the grid. We select plant locations from across the seven main U.S. independent system operators (ISOs). Hybrid value for each configuration is computed based on profit-maximizing plant operation given perfect foresight, according to observed wholesale power market real time prices from 2018 to 2021. In VRE-rich Areas, the median increase in energy value from extending storage duration from one to 4h is 29.4% for solar and 26.8% for wind, assuming low battery degradation costs and storage sized to 100% of the plant's nameplate generation capacity. Increasing storage duration beyond 4h does not substantially increase its value from energy markets, even in VRE-rich Areas. We find that solar hybrids reach a 90% capacity credit with 4h of storage, while wind hybrids require 8h of storage, based on the capacity factor of each hybrid during the top 100 net load hours.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Verification and Validation of Flow Confinement Modeling using OpenFAST Source Panel Method

Blockage or flow confinement effects in scale wind and water turbine testing in experimental facilities, including wind and water tunnels and tow tanks, can significantly alter incident aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads, turbine performance (thrust, torque, power output), and wake dynamics compared to unconfined conditions. As scale model tests are key sources of OpenFAST model validation measurements, directly modeling flow confinement and its effects in OpenFAST enables improved model validat

Kim, Dongyoung [Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-↗
DOE OSTI2026

Idealized Offshore Low‐Level Jets for Turbine Structural Impact Considerations

Low-level jets (LLJs) describe conditions in which the wind speed reaches a local maximum with respect to altitude near the surface; they have been observed intermittently in the US mid-Atlantic offshore environment. LLJs pose unique operating conditions for future wind turbines operating in the region, such as negative shear and locally strong veer, but they are not typically considered in existing turbine standards. This work builds upon recent research that explains the formation and evolution of the US mid-Atlantic LLJs through a simple analytical governing equation. We generate several LLJ inflow conditions with varying jet characteristics based on this analytical model and create monotonically sheared (MS) analogues with matched veer to assess the impacts of the LLJ on turbine performance and loading. Using aeroelastic simulations with these inflow conditions on the International Energy Agency 15-MW reference turbine, we find that the LLJ leads to a greater range of tower-top pitching and yawing moments, which could contribute to larger accumulated structural fatigue in components compared to MS inflow. These preliminary results demonstrate a path toward a unified set of test cases for low-level wind maxima that can inform the International Electrotechnical Commission standards related to offshore wind turbine design.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

OpenFAST simulation of floating wind turbines with large heading change

Previous versions of OpenFAST, the physics-based wind turbine engineering and design tool developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, were limited to small rotations of the floating platform. This prevented OpenFAST from being used to simulate important events, such as the loss of a mooring line, or specific floater concepts that might experience large platform yaw motion. To overcome this limitation, we modify the structural dynamics and hydrodynamics modules of OpenFAST to allow unrestricted platform yaw motion. We apply the improved version of OpenFAST to simulate the drifting of a floating wind turbine system after the loss of a mooring line. The results, including both global motion and the internal structural loads at selected locations, appear credible and consistent with expectations.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Commercialization of Distribution System Load Modeling Tool for Improved DER Interconnection Studies

Residential and commercial buildings have huge potential to contribute value to improve grid resilience by participating grid services. To reveal the significant value, it is critical to estimate the grid service capability from these buildings. Unlike the large-scale distributed energy resources such as wind and solar farms, those buildings need to participate grid services in aggregation, not by individual. Therefore, it is important to appropriately group buildings for aggregation. The load profiles in the same group will have similar characteristics at the same time step, so grid operators can send the grid service signal to the customer group with a higher chance to respond at that time step. In this paper, we develop a load profile clustering method to classify the building-level load profiles for grid service capability estimation. In our two-step clustering approach, we first calculate the total load consumption for each building, clustering the load profiles based on energy consumption level. Then, we further cluster the load profiles in each energy cluster based on the load shape. The parameter selection for each clustering step is discussed. The proposed method is applied on actual building-level load profiles, and the results have proved the effectiveness of this method.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Grid Integration of Renewable Energy and Energy Storage

Grid integration of renewable energy and energy storage requires forward-looking planning process, and increased emphasizes on reliability, resilience, and equity. Power-electronics based energy generation including solar, wind, distributed energy resources (DERs), and various types of grid-tied energy storage and emerging loads, are reshaping grid operator's understanding on interconnection level performance and responses. This paper will present the ongoing work at PNNL related to power electronics R&D, energy modeling and analysis, and a wide spectrum of grid stability studies and technologies in support of grid integration of renewable energy and energy storage.

Power Electronics, grid integration of renewable e↗
DOE OSTI2025

Deployment Potential of Concentrating Solar Power Technologies in California

As states within the United States respond to future grid development goals, there is a growing demand for reliable and resilient nighttime generation that can be addressed by low-cost, long-duration energy storage solutions. This report studies the potential of including concentrating solar power (CSP) in the technology mix to support California’s goals as defined in Senate Bill 100. A joint agency report study that determined potential pathways to achieve the renewable portfolio standard set by the bill did not include CSP, and our work provides information that could be used as a follow-up. This study uses a capacity expansion model configured to have nodal spatial fidelity in California and balancing-area fidelity in the Western Interconnection outside of California. The authors discovered that by applying current technology cost projections CSP fulfills nearly 15% of the annual load while representing just 6% of total installed capacity in 2045, replacing approximately 30 GWe of wind, solar PV, and standalone batteries compared to a scenario without CSP included. The deployment of CSP in the results is sensitive to the technology’s cost, which highlights the importance of meeting cost targets in 2030 and beyond to enable the technology’s potential contribution to California’s carbon reduction goals.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development of an Optimal Variable-Pitch Controller for Floating Axial-Flow Marine Hydrokinetic Turbines

This article discusses the development of an optimal variable-pitch controller for floating, axial-flow marine turbines. Recently, OpenFAST, an open-source wind turbine modeling tool, has been extended to model marine turbines. A controller is necessary to simulate marine turbines for different load cases using OpenFAST, which greatly impacts the performance of the energy system. Previous studies have designed controllers using a linearized model of the marine turbine, which can be time-consuming and require the expertise of a control engineer. In this study, we use an automated approach that uses generic models of the marine turbine to identify the controller gains, which can expedite the process of designing a controller. Using an optimizer to identify the control system parameters can additionally improve the controller's performance. The optimal controller tuned using such an approach results in a 20% reduction in the tower-base damage equivalent loading and better tracking of the rated generator speed and power.

axial flow↗
DOE OSTI2024

Fitness-for-Service Analysis of Reactor Components under Flexible Load-Following Operating Conditions

Conventional power-generation plants, including nuclear plants, have been traditionally designed to provide a steady baseload energy capacity, optimizing output efficiency while minimizing variable costs. However, the growing adoption of large-scale renewable energy-generation systems, which rely on intermittent sources such as solar and wind, has introduced more variability into the energy supply in interconnected electricity grids. As a result, the next generation of power plants needs to operate in what is known as the load-following mode, requiring flexible adjustments in electricity production to align with the energy demand on the grid. This transition from the steady baseload operation to load-following operating conditions can significantly increase the number of times various plant components are exposed to transient stresses. This increased thermo-mechanical cycling can lead to accelerated material degradation, thereby elevating the risk of premature failure of a component. It becomes imperative to conduct a comprehensive analysis of fatigue, creep-fatigue, and stress corrosion cracking life, to assess the resilience of the various engineering components under these flexible load-following operating conditions. This study aims to develop a comprehensive numerical model of a light-water reactor pressure vessel (RPV) to investigate its degradation under various operating scenarios. This coupled thermo-mechanical finite element analysis evaluated the stress response of the RPV caused by considering fluctuations in thermal and mechanical loads caused by the varying pressure and temperature occurring during the load-following operation. Critical locations on the RPV are subsequently identified based on the stress response. The stress intensity factors for the postulated flaws at those locations are then calculated, followed by an evaluation of the reactor's life in accordance with the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section XI. This comprehensive life assessment covers a number of transients expected during the flexible load-following operation, providing invaluable insights into the RPV's structural integrity. Moreover, the development methodology can be adapted to other reactor components, as well as components of conventional power stations that are affected by varying operating conditions.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

FAD-Toolset (Floating Array Design Toolset) [SWR-26-056]

The Floating Array Design (FAD) Toolset is a collection of tools for modeling and designing arrays of floating offshore structures. It was originally designed for floating wind systems but has applicability for many offshore applications. A core part of the FAD Toolset is the floating array model, which serves as a high-level library for efficiently modeling a floating array, such as a floating wind array. It combines site condition information and a description of the floating array design, and contains functions for evaluating the array's behavior considering the site conditions. For example, it combines information about site soil conditions, mooring line loads, and an array's anchor characteristics to estimate the holding capacity of each anchor. The library works in conjunction with the tools RAFT, MoorPy, and FLORIS to model floating platforms, wind turbines, mooring systems, power cables, and array wakes respectively. Layered on top of the floating array model is a set of design tools that can be used for algorithmically adjusting or optimizing parts of the a floating array. Specific tools existing for mooring lines, shared mooring systems, dynamic power cables, static power cable routing, and overall array layout. These capabilities work with the design representation and evaluation functions in the floating array model, and they can be applied by users in various combinations to suit different purposes. In addition to standalone uses of the FAD Toolset, a coupling has been made with Ard, (https://github.com/NLRWindSystems/Ard) a sophisticated and flexible wind farm optimization tool. This coupling allows Ard to use certain mooring system capabilities from FAD to perform layout optimization of floating wind farms with Ard's more advanced layout optimization capabilities. The FAD Toolset works with the IEA Wind Task 49 Ontology (https://github.com/IEAWindTask49/Ontology), which provides a standardized format for describing floating wind farm sites and designs. See example use cases in our examples folder (https://github.com/NLRWindSystems/FAD-Toolset/blob/main/examples/README.md) For working with the library, it is important to understand the floating array model structure, which is described more here: https://github.com/NLRWindSystems/FAD-Toolset/blob/main/fad/README.md.

Sirkis, Leah [National Laboratory of the Rockies (↗
DOE OSTI2024

Synergistic Integration of Multiple Wave Energy Converters with Adaptive Resonance and Offshore Floating Wind Turbines through Bayesian Optimization

We developed a synergistic ocean renewable system where an array of Wave Energy Converters (WEC) with adaptive resonance was collocated with a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) such that the WECs, capturing wave energy through the resonance adapting to varying irregular waves, consequently reduced FOWFT loads and turbine motions. Combining Surface-Riding WECs (SR-WEC) individually designed to feasibly relocate their natural frequency at the peak of the wave excitation spectrum for each sea state, and to obtain the highest capture width ratio at one of the frequent sea states for annual average power in a tens of kilowatts scale with a 15 MW FOWT based on a semi-submersible, Bayesian Optimization is implemented to determine the arrangement of WECs that minimize the annual representation of FOWT’s wave excitation spectra. The time-domain simulation of the system in the optimized arrangement is performed, including two sets of interactions: one set is the wind turbine dynamics, mooring lines, and floating body dynamics for FOWT, and the other set is the nonlinear power-take-off dynamics, linear mooring, and individual WECs’ floating body dynamics. Those two sets of interactions are further coupled through the hydrodynamics of diffraction and radiation. For sea states comprising Annual Energy Production, we investigate the capture width ratio of WECs, wave excitation on FOWT, and nacelle acceleration of the turbine compared to their single unit operations. We find that the optimally arranged SR-WECs reduce the wave excitation spectral area of FOWT by up to 60% and lower the turbine’s peak nacelle acceleration by nearly 44% in highly occurring sea states, while multiple WECs often produce more than the single operation, achieving adaptive resonance with a larger wave excitation spectra for those sea states. The synergistic system improves the total Annual Energy Production (AEP) by 1440 MWh, and we address which costs of Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) can be reduced by the collocation.

Engineering↗
DOE OSTI2024

Control Co-Design Studies for a 22 MW Semisubmersible Floating Wind Turbine Platform

We present a control co-design software framework that can be used to optimize floating wind turbines and their controllers. Because this framework has many options for design variables, constraints, and merit figures, along with modeling fidelity levels, we seek to demonstrate best practices for using the tool while designing a floating platform for the new 22 MW offshore reference wind turbine developed within the International Energy Agency Wind Technology Commercialization Programme 55 on Reference Wind Turbines and Farms. During these studies, we evaluate the use of different simulation fidelity levels, the effect of using different load cases for controller tuning, and the difference between sequential and simultaneous control co-design solutions. Based on these efforts, we suggest using an algorithm that performs an initial search of the design space before optimization. We find that solving smaller optimization problems, in a sequential manner, leads to more reliable outcomes in fewer iterations than larger, simultaneous control co-design solutions. However a simultaneous CCD solution produces a platform with a 2% lower mass than the sequential CCD outcome.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Closed-Loop Wind Turbine Controllers for Active Wake Mixing Strategies

Wind turbine active wake mixing (AWM) is an exciting new field of research where dynamic actuation, usually on the blade pitch angles, is used to increase wind farm-wide power production. From a controls perspective, the current state-of-the-art AWM strategies are very simple: a dynamic, usually periodic, reference signal is prescribed to actuators in an open-loop (OL) fashion. The actuation is then presumed to have a certain desired effect on the system, i.e., the wind turbine and the flow it affects. However, this system is highly nonlinear and experiences disturbances in the form of wind variations that are not known a priori. As a result, the OL approach might not yield optimal results. In this article, a novel approach is presented, which closes the loop on AWM controllers. A feedback loop is implemented, which uses measurements of the individual blade bending moments that are widely available on modern wind turbines to determine the individual blade pitch angles. A proof of concept of this implementation is presented in this article, and a thorough comparison with the OL method is executed using high-fidelity flow simulations. These simulations show that the novel closed-loop controller does not substantially increase wake mixing but achieves similar performance as the OL controller while reducing fatigue loads on the controlled turbine.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

OC6 Phase IV: Validation of CFD Models for Stiesdal TetraSpar Floating Offshore Wind Platform

ABSTRACT With only a few floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) farms deployed anywhere in the world, FOWT technology is still in its infancy, building on a modicum of real‐world experience to advance the nascent industry. To support further development, engineers rely heavily on modeling tools to accurately portray the behavior of these complex systems under realistic environmental conditions. This reliance creates a need for verification and validation of such tools to improve reliability of load and dynamic response prediction and analysis capabilities of FOWT systems. The Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration, Continued with Correlation and unCertainty (OC6) project was created under the framework of the International Energy Agency to address this need and considers a three‐sided verification and validation between engineering level models, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and experimental results. In this paper, a novel floating offshore wind platform, the Stiesdal TetraSpar, is simulated using CFD under the load conditions defined by Phase IV of the OC6 project. The comparison of these CFD results against the experimental results demonstrated the ability to predict the platform response to waves when imposing the measured wave signals as input. Although validation versus experiment was largely successful, the damping behavior was impacted by uncertainties likely originating from the mooring system and sensor umbilical cable. This extensive comparison effort with multiple CFD practitioners offers insight into best practices to achieve reliable results.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Pitch Bearing Rating and Service Life Analysis

Pitch bearings are an essential component in wind turbines used to connect the blade root to the hub. They support the resulting simultaneous radial, axial, and overturning moment loads while allowing relative rotation of the blade to the hub. The most recent evidence indicates the replacement rate for pitch bearings on 3+ MW turbines can be several percent per year, reaching 10% by year 5. This is a far higher replacement rate than both older 1.5 to 2 MW turbines and 2 to 3 MW turbines, which only reach a 10% replacement rate by 14 to 24 years compared to the expected design life of at least 20 years. Typical pitch bearing replacements require the use of a large, expensive crane and removal of the blade(s) or rotor, with a significant amount of downtime. Given the most recent developments in pitch bearing reliability and the publication of the updated NREL and Fraunhofer IWES pitch bearing design guide, the purpose of this report is to update the performance and rating analysis of the example 1.9-meter diameter pitch bearing representative of that installed on a 1.5 MW wind turbine, compare the rating life to the observed service life of similar pitch bearings, and validate the service life modification factor with this large population of bearings. The report will also summarize the pitch bearing contact conditions, thereby serving as a guide for planned bench-level fretting wear tests at Argonne National Laboratory.

17 WIND ENERGY↗