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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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Resilient Disaster Recovery Logistics of Distribution Systems: Co-Optimize Service Restoration With Repair Crew and Mobile Power Source Dispatch

Repair crews (RCs) and mobile power sources (MPSs) are critical resources for distribution system (DS) outage management after a natural disaster. However, their logistics have not been well investigated. We propose a resilient scheme for disaster recovery logistics to co-optimize DS restoration with the dispatch of RCs and MPSs. A novel co-optimization model is formulated to route RCs and MPSs in the transportation network, schedule them in the DS, and reconfigure the DS for microgrid formation coordinately, etc. The model incorporates different timescales of DS restoration and RC/MPS dispatch, the coupling of transportation and power networks, etc. To ensure radiality of the DS with variable physical structure and MPS allocation, we also model topology constraints based on the concept of spanning forest. The model is convexified equivalently and linearized into a mixed-integer linear programming. To reduce its computation time, preprocessing methods are proposed to preassign a minimal set of repair tasks to depots and reduce the number of candidate nodes for MPS connection. Resilient recovery strategies thus are generated to enhance service restoration, especially by dynamic formation of microgrids that are powered by MPSs and topologized by repair actions of RCs and network reconfiguration of the DS. Case studies demonstrate the proposed methodology.

Disaster recovery logistics↗
DOE OSTI2026

Evaluating the role of green infrastructure features in post-disaster recovery – Case Study of Beaumont, Texas after tropical storm imelda

While green infrastructure (GI) can provide multiple environmental benefits, its role in post-disaster economic and social recovery remains relatively underexplored. This article investigates whether different characteristics of GI, such as size, shape, connectivity, and amenities, affect the resilience of local businesses following Tropical Storm Imelda in Beaumont, Texas. The study utilizes SafeGraph mobility data to analyze foot traffic patterns to local businesses before, during, and after the disaster. FRAGSTATS indices measure GI characteristics (e.g., area, shape index, fractal dimension, proximity) while park features such as sports facilities, playgrounds, water features, and accessibility are cataloged through manual observation. Ordinary Least Squares regression models assess the relationship between park characteristics and post-recovery business performance, controlling for demographic variables including income, race, and poverty levels. Results indicate that certain GI attributes significantly enhance business recovery. Points of interest within walking distance (0.5 miles) of parks demonstrated better post-recovery status compared to those beyond this range. Specifically, parks with larger areas (p < 0.01) and more complex shapes measured by fractal dimension index (p < 0.01) had the strongest positive impact on surrounding businesses' recovery. Interestingly, playgrounds showed a negative correlation with recovery (p < 0.05), likely due to flood damage rendering them unusable during the immediate recovery period. Social vulnerability factors, including higher poverty rates and minority populations, negatively affected recovery outcomes despite park proximity.

Economic resilience↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Closed-Loop Distribution System Restoration Tool for Natural Disaster Recovery. Final CRADA report

We propose to continue the development of the restoration algorithms and the tool’s user interface, both of which have been developed under the GMLC-0131 project. This project aims to develop a distribution restoration decision support tool that will assist utilities in performing distribution restoration after extreme weather events in an optimal and efficient manner. The tool will integrate the weather information/forecasts and system fragility assessment together with the field measurement data to improve the situational awareness and estimate the system damage status. Advanced optimization models will be leveraged to dispatch repair crews and associated resources. New resources (e.g., automatic switches and distributed generators (DGs)) enabled by distribution automation and smart grid development will be utilized to reconfigure distribution grids and pick up loads promptly to reduce the outage sizes and durations. The closed-loop feature of the tool will make the tool adaptive to the evolving weather events and varying restoration capabilities. In this CRADA, we will collaborate with S&C Electric Company (S&C) to refine ANL-1060 (07/17/2019) the restoration algorithms that can be potentially applicable for any utility systems and vendor products, including: 1) Customizable information from both utility users and vendor users; 2) User interface design.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Accelerated Assessment of Critical Infrastructure in Aiding Recovery Efforts During Natural and Human-made Disaster

Relief and recovery from disasters (both natural and human-made) require a coordinated approach across several federal and state government agencies. In order to achieve optimal resource allocation and deployment of first responders, accurate and timely assessment of the impact and extent of destruction are the cornerstones to any recovery effort. Ideally, this knowledge should be gathered and shared within the first 0-24 hours (termed as "Acute Phase" by the U.S. CDC guideline) for informed decision-making. But achieving this poses significant challenges for the data collection and data harmonization processes, particularly when voluminous data are being generated from diverse and distributed sources during the disaster responses. To this end, this work developed a scalable and efficient workflow to dynamically collect and harmonize crowd-sourced geographic multi-modal data, and then assess critical infrastructure (CI) damaged during disaster events. We demonstrate the application of our framework with two real-world experiences in addressing post-disaster recovery efforts - for the Bahamas (Natural - due to Hurricane Dorian, 2019) and Beirut (Human-made - due to explosion caused by the ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse, 2020). We have illustrated that a coordinated effort is needed for planning as well as for execution to achieve informed decision making.

Thakur, Gautam Malviya↗
DOE OSTI2024

Estimating Critical Customer Outages Resulting from Extreme Hurricanes

US power outage data has been collected by organizations such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) through Environment for Analysis Geo-Located Energy Infrastructure (EAGLE-I: freely available) and poweroutage.us (commercial data: available to purchase). However, these sources do not provide information specific to outages of critical customers. Critical customers include entities, facilities, and individuals whose continuous access to electricity is essential for public safety, emergency response, disaster recovery, the well-being of vulnerable populations, public safety and order, and public utilities such as natural gas, communications, water and sanitation. Identification and geolocation of critical customers is crucial for understanding and addressing the effects of power outages on essential services and ensuring that necessary measures are taken to maintain their operations during power disruptions. This work is a first step towards estimating the occurrences of critical customer outages and developing a critical customer power outage data repository. This work estimates outage incidents of critical customers through spatiotemporal mapping of power outage data, weather data, building data, and critical infrastructure network data. Our results show that critical customer effects vary across different counties. We provide appropriate mathematical explanations and simplifications to define and systematize the proposed approach.

Bhusal, Narayan [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000222752145)↗
DOE OSTI2023

Current UAS Capabilities for Geospatial Spectral Solutions

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are playing an increasingly pivotal role in advancing the remote collection of data. The various datasets collected by these cutting-edge systems provide near-real-time information and help inform end users on everything from disaster recovery efforts to monitoring atmospheric constituents. This chapter focuses on how the collection of imagery has progressed over time, including the pivotal role UAS play in building large-scale datasets driving data analysis. The authors report the findings of a 2018–2021 survey of the fields that use UAS, the UAS platforms most commonly used, and the sensor components users select to outfit their UAS. The chapter will also discuss the range of platforms currently available, with a specific focus on issues including battery life, data downlinks, data processing times, edge computing, and availability of new sensors. The authors will also discuss the future direction of UAS platforms as well as many of the problems associated with the high spatial and temporal resolution of modern geospatial datasets.

Cotten, David↗
DOE OSTI2021

Regulatory Mechanisms to Enable Investments in Electric Utility Resilience

In 2019, Sandia National Laboratories contracted Synapse Energy Economics (Synapse) to research the integration of community and electric utility resilience investment planning as part of the Designing Resilient Communities: A Consequence-Based Approach for Grid Investment (DRC) project. Synapse produced a series of reports to explore the challenges and opportunities in several key areas, including benefit-cost analysis, performance metrics, microgrids, and regulatory mechanisms to promote investments in electric system resilience. This report focuses on regulatory mechanisms to improve resilience. Regulatory mechanisms that improve resilience are approaches that electric utility regulators can use to align utility, customer, and third-party investments with regulatory, ratepayer, community, and other important stakeholder interests and priorities for resilience. Cost-of-service regulation may fail to provide utilities with adequate guidance or incentives regarding community priorities for infrastructure hardening and disaster recovery. The application of other types of regulatory mechanisms to resilience investments can help. This report: characterizes regulatory objective as they apply to resilience; identifies several regulatory mechanisms that are used or can be adapted to improve the resilience of the electric system--including performance-based regulation, integrated planning, tariffs and programs to leverage private investment, alternative lines of business for utilities, enhanced cost recovery, and securitization; provides a case study of each regulatory mechanism; summarizes findings across the case studies; and suggests how these regulatory mechanisms might be improved and applied to resilience moving forward. In this report, we assess the effectiveness of a range of utility regulatory mechanisms at evaluating and prioritizing utility investments in grid resilience. First, we characterize regulatory objectives which underly all regulatory mechanisms. We then describe seven types of regulatory mechanisms that can be used to improve resilience--including performance-based regulation, integrated planning, tariffs and programs to leverage private investment, alternative lines of business for utilities, enhanced cost recovery, and securitization--and provide a case study for each one. We summarize our findings on the extent to which these regulatory mechanisms have supported resilience to date. We conclude with suggestions on how these regulatory mechanisms might be improved and applied to resilience moving forward.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Navy Ratchets Up Resilience Through Agency/Utility Collaboration

The Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Mississippi Power Company (MPC) have integrated a 15-acre solar photovoltaic (PV) array, battery storage, and backup generation with an innovative microgrid. The Navy and utility teams are helping ensure mission readiness at NCBC while increasing renewable energy generation on the grid in MPC's service area. The NCBC/MPC resilience effort will allow the base to more effectively deploy disaster recovery activities in the event of a grid outage.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Navy Ratchets Up Resilience Through Agency/Utility Collaboration

Fact sheet describes how the Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Mississippi Power Company (MPC) have integrated a 15-acre solar photovoltaic (PV) array, battery storage, and backup generation with an innovative microgrid to ensure mission readiness at NCBC while increasing renewable energy generation on the grid in MPC's service area. The NCBC/MPC resilience effort will allow the base to more effectively deploy disaster recovery activities in the event of a grid outage.

battery storage↗
DOE OSTI2021

Energy Security and Resilience (ESR) Initiative

Central to achieving reduced carbon emissions and sustained economic recovery from the COVID pandemic is a national energy system based on low-carbon technologies and resistant to disruption from severe weather events and human attacks. NREL’s Energy Security and Resilience (ESR) Initiative applies NREL’s expertise in the design and operation of clean, highly distributed energy systems to the most pressing security and resilience challenges.

cybersecurity↗
DOE OSTI2021

Resilience of electric utilities during the COVID-19 pandemic in the framework of the CIGRE definition of Power System Resilience

Resilience is a vital concept in engineering, business, and natural sciences, and is a measure of the ability of an entity to withstand High Impact Low Probability (HILP) events. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in late 2019/early 2020, power system utilities around the globe have responded in effective and efficient ways to enhance the resilience of their organisations, both in terms of real-time operations and prudent management of its infrastructure, in order to continue their mandate in providing reliable supply to meet customer demands. Here, this paper presents the CIGRE definition for power system resilience, established by the C4.47 Working Group in 2018, and demonstrates the application of resilience-oriented thinking within the electrical sector. The response and recovery efforts are described, with respect to the key actionable measures integral to the power system resilience definition, taken before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A practical conceptual framework is also presented for thinking about resilience in terms of three key components of resilience strategies: organisational, infrastructure and operational resilience. The paper also discusses the different strategies adopted in response to COVID-19, based on the C4.47 members’ experiences during the pandemic. Finally, a case study is presented, which proves the effectiveness of a set of response measures, using graph theory and the characteristics of the staff-asset interactions.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Solar Photovoltaics in Severe Weather: Cost Considerations for Storm Hardening PV Systems for Resilience

Solar photovoltaic (PV) power has many advantages as a resilient power source, including the ability to provide power after a natural disaster. While solar arrays often survive severe weather events, systems are occasionally compromised and left unable to provide power. For PV systems to act as resilient power providers, they must remain operational. Building a system that is more likely to survive a storm comes at a cost, though. Previous efforts have identified various system measures and practices that can increase the likelihood of a PV system surviving a severe weather event. But what is the cost premium for a storm hardened PV system? This report provides initial estimates for the up-front cost premiums for various methods of storm hardening PV systems.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100): Six-Month Progress Update [Slides]

Puerto Rico has committed to meeting its electricity needs with 100% renewable energy by 2050, along with realizing interim goals of 40% by 2025, 60% by 2040, the phase-out of coal-fired generation by 2028, and a 30% improvement in energy efficiency by 2040, as established in Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act (Act 17). Since hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017, DOE and its national laboratories have provided Puerto Rico energy system stakeholders with tools, training, and modeling support to enable planning and operation of the electric power grid with more resilience against further disruptions. On February 2, 2022, DOE, FEMA, and six national laboratories launched the two-year Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100) to conduct comprehensive analysis of stakeholder-driven pathways to Puerto Rico's energy future. The robust and objective energy analysis entails five activities, with an emphasis on power system reliability, resilience, and generation planning. This presentation provides a six-month progress update on the study, including presentation of four initial scenario frameworks defined with extensive stakeholder input.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100) (Six-Month Progress Update) [Slides]

Puerto Rico has committed to meeting its electricity needs with 100% renewable energy by 2050, along with realizing interim goals of 40% by 2025, 60% by 2040, the phase-out of coal-fired generation by 2028, and a 30% improvement in energy efficiency by 2040, as established in Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act (Act 17). Since hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017, DOE and its national laboratories have provided Puerto Rico energy system stakeholders with tools, training, and modeling support to enable planning and operation of the electric power grid with more resilience against further disruptions. On February 2, 2022, DOE, FEMA, and six national laboratories launched the two-year Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100) to conduct comprehensive analysis of stakeholder-driven pathways to Puerto Rico's energy future. The robust and objective energy analysis entails five activities, with an emphasis on power system reliability, resilience, and generation planning. This presentation was delivered in a public webinar on July 21, 2022, providing a high level summary of the progress in the first six months of the study, including presentation of four initial scenario definitions based on extensive stakeholder input.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Estudio de Resiliencia de la Red Electrica de Puerto Rico y Transiciones a Energia 100% Renovable (PR100): Actualizacion de Progreso de Seis Meses [Slides]

Puerto Rico se ha comprometido a satisfacer sus necesidades de electricidad con un 100% de energia renovable para 2050, junto con el cumplimiento de objetivos intermedios del 40% para 2025, el 60% para 2040, la eliminacion gradual de la generacion a base de carbon para 2028, y una mejora del 30% en la eficiencia energetica para 2040, segun lo establecido en la Ley de Politica Publica Energetica de Puerto Rico (Ley 17). Desde los huracanes Irma y Maria en septiembre de 2017, DOE y sus laboratorios nacionales han proporcionado a las partes interesadas del sistema energetico de Puerto Rico herramientas, adiestramiento y apoyo de modelaje para permitir la planificacion y el funcionamiento de la red electrica con mas resiliencia frente a nuevas interrupciones. El 2 de febrero de 2022, DOE, FEMA y seis laboratorios nacionales lanzaron el Estudio de Resiliencia de la Red Electrica de Puerto Rico y Transicion a la Energia 100% Renovable (PR100), de dos anos de duracion, para llevar a cabo un analisis exhaustivo de las vias impulsadas por las partes interesadas para el futuro energetico de Puerto Rico. El analisis energetico, solido y objetivo, comprende cinco actividades, con enfasis en la confiabilidad del sistema electrico, la resiliencia y la planificacion de la generacion. Esta presentacion se realizo en un seminario web publico el 21 de julio del 2022, proporcionando un resumen general del progreso en los primeros seis meses del Estudio, incluyendo la presentacion de cuatro escenarios iniciales definidos mediante un rol activo de las partes interesadas. This is the Spanish translation of NREL/PR-6A20-83431.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Estudio de Resiliencia de la Red Electrica de Puerto Rico y Transicion a Energia 100% Renovable (PR100): Actualizacion de Progreso de Seis Meses [Slides]

Puerto Rico se ha comprometido a satisfacer sus necesidades de electricidad con un 100% de energia renovable para 2050, junto con el cumplimiento de objetivos intermedios del 40% para 2025, el 60% para 2040, la eliminacion gradual de la generacion a base de carbon para 2028, y una mejora del 30% en la eficiencia energetica para 2040, segun lo establecido en la Ley de Politica Publica Energetica de Puerto Rico (Ley 17). Desde los huracanes Irma y Maria en septiembre de 2017, DOE y sus laboratorios nacionales han proporcionado a las partes interesadas del sistema energetico de Puerto Rico herramientas, adiestramiento y apoyo de modelaje para permitir la planificacion y el funcionamiento de la red electrica con mas resiliencia frente a nuevas interrupciones. El 2 de febrero de 2022, DOE, FEMA y seis laboratorios nacionales lanzaron el Estudio de Resiliencia de la Red Electrica de Puerto Rico y Transicion a la Energia 100% Renovable (PR100), de dos anos de duracion, para llevar a cabo un analisis exhaustivo de las vias impulsadas por las partes interesadas para el futuro energetico de Puerto Rico. El analisis energetico, solido y objetivo, comprende cinco actividades, con enfasis en la confiabilidad del sistema electrico, la resiliencia y la planificacion de la generacion. Esta presentacion provee una actualizacion de progreso del trabajo de seis meses sobre el Estudio, incluyendo la presentacion de cuatro escenarios iniciales definidos mediante un rol activo de las partes interesadas. This is the Spanish translation of NREL/PR-6A20-83432.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

Multi-Formalism Modeling for Disaster Resilience, Forecasting, and Response

Disaster response preparedness, risk mitigation, and effective post-event response are critical for national security, public health, and economic integrity. For areas impacted by extreme events, timely and accurate impact assessments of lifeline infrastructures are critical. Traditional disaster management and situational awareness platforms are not capable of handling the massive influx of available information from traditional and non-traditional sources. Next-generation analytic assessment approaches, where use of dynamically sourced, heterogeneous data with near real-time availability are integrated into a continually-updated analytics framework. The objective of this research was to develop a foundational multi-formalism modeling platform to integrate novel data sources for use in improving situational awareness after a disaster event. Specifically, to 1) provide an architecture for machine-learning based data fusion various multi-sensor datasets; 2) classify, geolocate, and temporally bin novel data sources for use in spatially-enabled machine-learning based data fusion; and 3) derive confidence-based observation data with machine-learning based prediction to fill spatial and temporal observation gaps. This project developed a reusable cloud-based pipeline architecture for ingesting, storing, and analyzing relevant data, executing a range of deep-learning models, and visualize the information geographically. The pipeline development was informed by previous PNNL investments (StreamKit) and built upon leading-edge technologies consisting of: 1) a raw datastore; 2) a data enrichment pipeline with custom and third-party analytics; 3) enriched data storage; and 4) a custom UI to display the enriched data. Machine learning/deep learning models were selected and tested to classify social media images for relevancy and presence of flood waters. Our custom trained relevance models were run on a validation dataset and the overall accuracy of the relevance classifiers ranged from 65% to 90%. We found that convolutional neural network (CNN) models were both faster and more accurate than more traditional machine learning models. We applied the relevance classifier to remove non-relevant images and then undertook a limited training of CNN models to detect flood on ~1,800 labeled images. The testing accuracy of the flood detection models were ~88%. To improve the geographic location of both social media and oblique aerial images we tested a multi-step workflow built on a pre-trained deep-learning model. To identify similarity features from test and reference scenes, we applied the Xception and Faiss models to a set of test images with inaccurate spatial locations, as well and precisely-located reference scenes from the general area. Matching reference scenes to the test scenes with the closest similarity index had limited success in improving the precision of test scene location and additional methods have been identified for testing. Data fusion between authoritative geographic data (satellite imaging) and non-authoritative crowdsourced data is an underlying theme throughout this research and methods are tested bring these data to a common geographic form through feature matching and transformations. The automated extraction of supporting information for disaster response from oblique aerial images or ground-level social media images is accomplished through semantic image segmentation and transformation. The non-authoritative data are used to validate the authoritative data collections and processing and optionally, t+0 flood models. In addition, the common form geographic data are combined with other static landscape features to develop spatially-explicit training vectors used in deep generative statistical inference models to develop complex non-linear relationships in static and dynamic data and ultimately derive a spatially continuous and probabilistic assessment of flood damage with the event domain.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Designing the PR100 Study: Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transition to 100% Renewable Energy

Puerto Rico has committed to meeting its electricity needs with 100% renewable energy by 2050, along with realizing interim goals of 40% by 2025, 60% by 2040, the phaseout of coal-fired generation by 2028, and a 30% improvement in energy efficiency by 2040 as established in Act 17. [1] To meet these goals and support widespread end-use electrification, the territory must explore how renewable energy and other generation technologies can be developed with energy storage, distributed generation, distribution control, electric vehicles, and energy efficient and responsive loads in each of Puerto Rico's cities and communities. To support Puerto Rico in reaching its renewable energy goals; help ensure energy system resilience against future extreme weather events; improve energy justice; and provide inputs to LUMA Energy's walk, jog, and run approach in its coordinated planning roadmap, the U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories propose to evaluate 100% renewable energy pathways through an integrated analysis process. This talk will present steps in designing a two-year study entitled Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy (PR100). [1] U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). 2020. Puerto Rico Territory Energy Profile.

100% renewable energy↗