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With U.S. Department of Energy Building America Program support, Home Innovation Research Labs partnered with K. Hovnanian Homes to demonstrate a new buried-duct design that is durable, energy efficient, and cost-effective in a hot-humid climate.
The submitted Roundtable discussion covers zero net energy (ZNE) buildings and their expansion into the market as a more widely adopted approach for various building types and sizes. However, the market is still small, and this discussion brings together distinguished researchers, designers, policy makers, and program administrations to represent the key factors making ZNE building more widespread and mainstream from a broad perspective, including governments, utilities, energy-efficiency research institutes, and building owners. This roundtable was conducted by the ASHRAE Journal with Bing Liu, P.E., Member ASHRAE, Charles Eley, FAIA, P.E., Member ASHRAE; Smita Gupta, Itron; Cathy Higgins, New Buildings Institute; Jessica Iplikci, Energy Trust of Oregon; Jon McHugh, P.E., Member ASHRAE; Michael Rosenberg, Member ASHRAE; and Paul Torcellini, Ph.D., P.E., NREL.
U.S. government agencies, particularly the Dept. of Energy, need robotic tools to handle and inspect high-consequence materials - materials for which mishandling would result in great risk to both application operators and the general public. The remediation and documentation of nuclear waste has become a problem of national significance and it cannot be addressed without robotic tools. The use of robots bypasses the danger and decreases the preparation time to handle harmful materials. In the 1980's and 90's, the US Dept. of Energy (DOE) invested heavily in robotic technologies as part of a comprehensive program of research and development aimed at enabling safer and more efficient cleanup of nuclear waste sites. For the next generation of harder, more complex clean-up problems, there is a clear need for more R and D. There is a clear need for flexible, quickly deployable robotic technologies that can be configured to respond to unforeseen situations -- or can be purpose-built for planned activities -- while keeping human workers safe, yet effective. Modularity and inter-operability are core capabilities for inspection tasks in contaminated facilities with a large variety of inspection problems. With any tool, familiarity breeds ingenuity, and ingenuity leads to new innovations in efficiency, effectiveness, safety, and performance. For example, the simple screwdriver can be held fourteen different ways by an experienced machinist who knows exactly what he or she wants to accomplish at any given moment. As a tool, robots are no different. To maximize the efficiency, effectiveness, safety and performance, redeployment and reuse of familiar tools is essential. Modularity can assist with re-deployment and modularity manifests itself in both hardware and software. In some applications of inspection of high-consequence materials, a common concern has been the simplicity of the tool -- often correlated with cost (which is not always accurate) -- in case it becomes unrecoverable. In the case of robots, which have complex user interfaces and complex dynamics of interaction, the lack of familiarity can lead to clumsy operations and reduced accumulation of knowledge. As a result, while incremental successes may be achieved with sequential uses of different robots, there often is little knowledge gain that is generalizable across multiple uses. Total cost often goes down when a more sophisticated, but more familiar tool, can be used more frequently.An example is the inspection of the H-Canyon Exhaust Air Tunnel at the Savannah River Site nuclear waste facility in the United States [1]. This is a particularly nasty environment, due to the acidic gases, large amounts of erosion and debris, and wet, mucky puddles. Over the past twelve years, six inspections have been attempted with five different robotic vehicles. In fact, these inspections have been successful with their limited, but progressively increasing objectives, although most robots have been abandoned in the tunnel. While each vehicle has cost less than $75,000 (the sacrificial part), the total costs of development have been much higher. The robots used to investigate changed much from iteration to iteration and it is not clear a strong body of generalizable expertise was built up across trials. The authors of this study demonstrated the combination of two types of modular, serpentine, re-configurable robots for locomotion over complex terrains and the inspection of hard-to-reach areas. The MOTHERSHIP is a tread/limb/serpentine hybrid robot design for locomotion over complex terrains, while the CMU snake robot provides highly articulated inspection of highly confined spaces. The demonstration at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant involves a combination of the two whereby gross locomotion is achieved with the MOTHERSHIP and the CMU Snake deploys a sensor package to gather data from behind and under obstacles. Although statically configured in its present state, the combined robot is built of individual modules for which reconfiguration has been demonstrated in both labs at Purdue and CMU. In future work, much higher degrees of reconfiguration and re-purposing of both software and hardware are easily achievable with these unique platforms. (authors)
Texas has for more than a decade led all other states in the U.S. with the most wind generation capacity on the U.S. electric grid. The State recognized the value that wind energy could provide, and committed early on to build out the transmission system necessary to move power from the windy regions in West Texas to the major population centers across the state. It also signaled support for renewables on the grid by adopting an aggressive renewable portfolio standard (RPS). The joining of these conditions with favorable Federal tax credits has driven the rapid growth in Texas wind capacity since its small beginning in 2000. In addition to the major transmission grid upgrades, there have been a number of technology and policy improvements that have kept the grid reliable while adding more and more intermittent wind generation. Technology advancements such as better wind forecasting and deployment of a nodal market system have improved the grid efficiency of wind. Successful large scale wind integration into the electric grid, however, continues to pose challenges. The continuing rapid growth in wind energy calls for a number of technology additions that will be needed to reliably accommodate an expected 65% increase in future wind resources. The Center for the Commercialization of Electric Technologies (CCET) recognized this technology challenge in 2009 when it submitted an application for funding of a regional demonstration project under the Recovery Act program administered by the U.S. Department of Energy1. Under that program the administration announced the largest energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, making available some $3.4 billion in grants to fund development of a broad range of technologies for a more efficient and reliable electric system, including the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. At that time, Texas was (and still is) the nation’s leader in the integration of wind into the grid, and was investing heavily in the infrastructure needed to increase the viability of this important resource. To help Texas and the rest of the nation address the challenges associated with the integration of large amounts of renewables, CCET seized on the federal opportunity to undertake a multi-faceted project aimed at demonstrating the viability of new “smart grid” technologies to facilitate larger amounts of wind energy through better system monitoring capabilities, enhanced operator visualization, and improved load management. In early 2010, CCET was awarded a $27 million grant, half funded by the Department of Energy and half-funded by project participants. With this funding, CCET undertook the project named Discovery Across Texas which has demonstrated how existing and new technologies can better integrate wind power into the state’s grid. The following pages summarize the results of seven technology demonstrations that will help Texas and the nation meet this wind integration challenge.
The Dynamic, Exascale Global Address Space programming environment (DEGAS) project will develop the next generation of programming models and runtime systems to meet the challenges of Exascale computing. Our approach is to provide an efficient and scalable programming model that can be adapted to application needs through the use of dynamic runtime features and domain-specific languages for computational kernels. We address the following technical challenges: Programmability: Rich set of programming constructs based on a Hierarchical Partitioned Global Address Space (HPGAS) model, demonstrated in UPC++. Scalability: Hierarchical locality control, lightweight communication (extended GASNet), and ef- ficient synchronization mechanisms (Phasers). Performance Portability: Just-in-time specialization (SEJITS) for generating hardware-specific code and scheduling libraries for domain-specific adaptive runtimes (Habanero). Energy Efficiency: Communication-optimal code generation to optimize energy efficiency by re- ducing data movement. Resilience: Containment Domains for flexible, domain-specific resilience, using state capture mechanisms and lightweight, asynchronous recovery mechanisms. Interoperability: Runtime and language interoperability with MPI and OpenMP to encourage broad adoption.
The Livewire Data Platform is a data storage and exchange platform. It provides: a platform, allowing data sharing and discovery by linking disparate data sources to a single website via application programming interfaces (APIs); a community, building partnerships and collaboration rather than competition; a system, allowing shared data to increase in size and complexity as EEMS evolves.
This fact sheet "Asheville, North Carolina: Reducing Electricity Demand through Building Programs & Policies" explains how the City of Asheville used data from the U.S. Department of Energy's Cities Leading through Energy Analysis and Planning (Cities-LEAP) and the State and Local Energy Data (SLED) programs to inform its city energy planning. It is one of ten fact sheets in the "City Energy: From Data to Decisions" series.
One concept for collecting solar energy is to use large solar collectors and then use lasers as energy converters whose output beams act as transmission lines to deliver the energy to a destination. The efficiency of the process would be improved if the conversion could be done directly using solar pumped lasers, and the possibility of making such lasers is studied. There are many applications for such lasers, and these are examined. By including the applications first, the requirements for the lasers will be more evident. They are especially applicable to the Space program, and include cases where no other methods of delivering power seem possible. Using the lasers for conveying information and surveillance is also discussed. Many difficulties confront the designer of an efficient system for power conversion. These involve the nature of the solar spectrum, the method of absorbing the energy, the transfer of power into laser beams, and finally, the far field patterns of the beams. The requirements of the lasers are discussed. Specific laser configurations are discussed. The thrust is into gas laser systems, because for space applications, the laser could be large, and also the medium would be uniform and not subject to thermal stresses. Dye and solid lasers are treated briefly. For gas lasers, a chart of the various possibilities is shown, and the various families of gas lasers divided according to the mechanisms of absorbing solar radiation and of lasing. Several specific models are analyzed and evaluated. Overall conclusions for the program are summarized, and the performances of the lasers related to the requirements of various applications.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies and Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Offices (VTO and HFTO) support research and development of efficient and sustainable transportation technologies that will improve energy efficiency, minimize emissions, and enable America to use less petroleum. VTO and HFTO regularly revisit and update relevant research and development goals and areas of emphasis in response to the latest technological advancements and in alignment with current national priorities. As such, analyses of expected benefits resulting from VTO and HFTO investments and anticipated goal achievements are updated periodically and will be again for 2021 in the context of the latest national-level transportation decarbonization goals. The analysis in the present report is based on technical progress goals established in VTO and HFTO in the years immediately prior to and including 2020, and it summarizes the estimated energy and emissions benefits corresponding to achievement of those goals. The goals span research activities on batteries, electric drive technologies (EDT), combustion, lightweight materials, fuel cells, and hydrogen storage. The evaluation includes detailed analyses into the benefits of technology improvements on the U.S. light-duty (LD) vehicle fleet and separately on the U.S. medium- and heavy-duty (MDHD) vehicle fleet. This report summarizes the outcomes from each of these analyses both independently and in combination.
Description of an accurate three-dimensional mathematical model and computer program for calculating electronic interaction, electron trajectories, beam interception, and efficiency in the output cavity of a klystron amplifier. The highest computed efficiency for an optimally bunched beam was 80.3% with 6% ideal interception. Efficiency is shown to increase initially with interception.
The U.S. pulp and paper industry is the third-largest energy consumer in manufacturing, accounting for roughly 10% of sector energy use. Improving energy efficiency reduces operating costs and strengthens competitiveness. To support this effort, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), through Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), launched the Energy Intensive Industries (EII) Initiative. A two-year pilot across 45 industrial sites identified more than 4 trillion Btu/year in potential energy savings. This presentation outlines plans for a follow-up technical assistance program tailored to pulp and paper mills. Available resources include a cost-savings scoping tool, implementation planning guidance, and technical support for applying advanced methods such as Pinch Analysis for integrated process-utilities optimization. The session introduces key Pinch Analysis principles and highlights case studies demonstrating measurable improvements. ORNL also seeks industry feedback on barriers to efficiency improvements, including technology gaps and resource needs. DOE’s broader objective is to accelerate productivity and economic competitiveness across U.S. energy-intensive industries.
Nuclear energy is an important part of supplying our nation’s energy—safely, dependably, and economically—with reduced carbon dioxide emissions. The United States (U.S.) Department of Energy-Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) supports a strong and viable domestic nuclear industry. In collaboration with industry programs, the Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program supports the continued operation of the commercial fleet of nuclear power plants. DOE’s role in this program focuses on enhancing the safe, efficient, and economical performance of the nation’s nuclear fleet. This report describes the accomplishments of the LWRS Program during Fiscal Year 2019. DOE-NE’s0F primary mission is to advance nuclear power as a resource capable of making major contributions in meeting the nation’s energy supply, environmental, and energy security needs. Under the guidance of three research objectives, NE resolves barriers to technical, cost, safety, security, and proliferation resistance through early stage research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to: • Enhance the long-term viability and competitiveness of the existing U.S. reactor fleet • Develop an advanced reactor pipeline • Implement and maintain national strategic fuel-cycle and supply-chain infrastructures.
Behind-meter application for a recently invented hydropneumatic Ground-Level Integrated Diverse Energy Storage (GLIDES) is focused in this research. Considering possible uncertainties from solar radiation and electricity load in a building microgrid, two-stage stochastic programming is adopted for 15-min operation and a mixed-integer nonlinear stochastic model is built with integrated energy systems of GLIDES, solar panel and power generating unit. In order to make the model computationally tractable, we use sample average approximate method to decrease associated complexity with sample size and improve solving efficiency. The experimental results in deterministic and stochastic operation indicate that best candidate solution from SAA are superior to the solution from expected value problem in terms of optimality gap and variance.
The NASA In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) program is planning near-term missions to Mars that will include chemical processes for converting the carbon dioxide (CO2) and possibly water from the Martian environment to propellants, oxygen, and other useful chemicals. The use of indigenous resources reduces the size and weight of the payloads from Earth significantly, representing enormous cost savings that make human exploration of Mars affordable. Extraterrestrial chemical processing plants will need to be compact, lightweight, highly efficient under reduced gravity, and extraordinarily reliable for long periods. Microchemical and thermal systems represent capability for dramatic reduction in size and weight, while offering high reliability through massive parallelization. In situ propellant production (ISPP), one aspect of the ISRU program, involves collecting and pressurizing atmospheric CO2, conversion reactions, chemical separations, heat exchangers, and cryogenic storage. A preliminary system design of an ISPP plant based on microtechnology has demonstrated significant size, weight, and energy efficiency gains over the current NASA baseline. Energy management is a strong driver for Mars-based processes, not only because energy is a scarce resource, but because heat rejection is problematic; the low pressure environment makes convective heat transfer ineffective. Energy efficiency gains are largely achieved in the microchemical plant through extensive heat recuperation and energy cascading, which has a small size and weight penalty because the added micro heat exchangers are small. This leads to additional size and weight gains by reducing the required area of waste heat radiators. The microtechnology-based ISPP plant is described in detail, including aspects of pinch analysis for optimizing the heat exchanger network. Three options for thermochemical compression Of CO2 from the Martian atmosphere, adsorption, absorption, and cryogenic freezing, are presented, as well as three options for water decomposition, low temperature electrolysis, high temperature electrolysis, and thermochemical decomposition. Other elements of the plant include Sabatier and reverse water gas shift reactors, water recovery, chemical separations, and cryogenic storage. Data are presented supporting preliminary sizing of components, and results of the system design are compared to the existing NASA baseline that is based on conventional technologies.
With support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Building Technologies Office (BTO), the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (ICAST) recently completed a three-year cooperative agreement to scale energy efficiency retrofits (EER) on small multifamily (MF) buildings. ICAST EER strategies ranged from low-hanging “direct install” of measures such as LED lighting, low-flow showerheads and aerators, and smart thermostats to major strategies such as HVAC replacement with high-efficiency boilers or heat pumps. As feasible, some projects also included the addition of renewable energy sources such as photo voltaic (PV) solar. When ICAST began the BTO project, it operated in two states and oversaw EER at approximately 80 MF buildings per year. With assistance from BTO, ICAST has grown significantly and now has staff in six states with MF EER projects in another seven, and performed EER on 956 MF buildings. ). ICAST was able to successfully execute this project by 1) Improving viability and efficiency of its processes, 2) Launching two new services and 3) Creating an affiliate program. For the most part, ICAST focused on a specific type of MF property: naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH), because it is a significantly underserved market within the hard-to-serve MF market. NOAHs are typically smaller properties (5 to 64 units), owned by small organizations or individual investors looking for positive cash flow. ICAST believes the NOAH market can be successfully served with a one-stop-shop approach that makes it easy, hassle-free, and cost-effective for owners to acquire green upgrades for their property(ies). With the assistance of BTO funding, ICAST successfully used the cited EER methods and strategies to scale-up its OSS approach to service a greater number of MF housing and expand into new geographies. Additionally, support from BTO helped ICAST create self-sustaining programs which will not need to rely on on-going funding.
On October 15, 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) released the Performance Targets for Perovskite Photovoltaic Research, Development, and Demonstration Programs Request for Information (RFI) for public response and comment. The RFI sought feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders on efficiency, stability and replicability performance targets for perovskite (PVSK) photovoltaic devices that could be utilized to align community efforts, ensure relevance of potential future funding programs, and accelerate technical and commercial development and de-risking of perovskite technologies. The RFI included the following proposed target matrix for power conversion efficiency (PCE), area, stability, and sample sizes, and included questions on relevance, completeness, and challenges.
The overall goal of this U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored project is the development of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) cell and stack technology suitable for use in highly-efficient, economically-competitive central generation power plant facilities fueled by coal synthesis gas (syngas). This program incorporates the following supporting objectives: • Reduce SOFC-based electrical power generation system cost to $700 or less (2007 dollars) for a greater than 100 MW Integrated Gasification Fuel Cell (IGFC) power plant, exclusive of coal gasification and CO 2 separation subsystem costs. • Achieve an overall IGFC power plant efficiency of at least 50%, from coal (higher heating value or HHV) to AC power (exclusive of CO 2 compression power requirement). • Reduce the release of CO2 to the environment in an IGFC power plant to no more than 10% of the carbon in the syngas. • Increase SOFC stack reliability to achieve a design life of greater than 40,000 hours. At the inception of the project, the efforts were focused on research, design and testing of prototype planar SOFC power generators for stationary applications. FuelCell Energy, Inc. successfully completed the initial stage of the project by meeting the program metrics, culminating in delivery and testing of a 3 kW system at National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Subsequently, the project was re-aligned into a three phase effort with the main goal to develop SOFC technology for application in coal-fueled power plants with >90% carbon capture. Phase I of the Coal-based efforts focused on cell and stack size scale-up with concurrent enhancement of performance, life, cost, and manufacturing characteristics. Also in Phase I, design and analysis of the baseline (greater than 100 MW) power plant system—including concept identification, system definition, and cost analysis—was conducted. Phase II efforts focused on development of a ≥25 kW SOFC stack tower incorporating multiple stack building blocks of scaled-up cells, suitable for integration into a large-scale fuel cell power module. Activities in Phase II also included the development of the baseline system, factory cost estimate for the baseline plant’s power block, and conceptual design of a natural gas fueled sub-MW system to be used for testing and verification of the fuel cell stacks in a system environment. The specific objective for Phase III was the validation of the performance and robustness of stacks and scaled stack arrays suitable for use in large-scale power generation systems such as an IGFC with reliable, fail-safe operation being of paramount importance. The work culminated in the verification tests of a 60 kW SOFC stack module in a power plant facility. This final technical report summarizes the progress made during the project period. Significant progress was made in the areas of cell and stack technology development, stack module design, sub-scale module tests, Baseline Power Plant system development and Proof-of- Concept Module unit design. The development of this technology will significantly advance the nation’s energy security and independence interests while simultaneously addressing environmental concerns, including greenhouse gas emissions and water usage.
In some communities, local government and non-profit entities have funds to purchase and renovate distressed, foreclosed homes for resale in the affordable housing market. Numerous opportunities to improve whole house energy efficiency are inherent in these comprehensive renovations. BA-PIRC worked together in a multiyear field study making recommendations in individual homes, meanwhile compiling improvement costs, projected energy savings, practical challenges, and labor force factors surrounding common energy-related renovation measures. The field study, Phase 1 of this research, resulted in a set of best practices appropriate to the current labor pool and market conditions in central Florida to achieve projected annual energy savings of 15%-30% and higher. This report describes Phase 2 of the work where researchers worked with a local government partner to implement and refine the "current best practices". A simulation study was conducted to characterize savings potential under three sets of conditions representing varying replacement needs for energy-related equipment and envelope components. The three scenarios apply readily to the general remodeling industry as for renovation of foreclosed homes for the affordable housing market. The new local government partner, the City of Melbourne, implemented the best practices in a community-scale renovation program that included ten homes in 2012.