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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 OSTI2024

Planning Roadmap for DER Integration in India: Industry Best Practices and Resource Guide

Ensuring safe, reliable, cost-effective DER integration at scale requires holistic planning, broad stakeholder engagement, and should address key development areas such as standards adoption, equipment testing and certification, interoperability and cybersecurity, interconnection procedures, and advanced forecasting and DER management. Each of these areas currently represent significant challenges for utilities, regulators, OEMs, developers, and even consumers worldwide. India has already seen significant growth of DERs and has announced targets for substantial growth yet to come, with the potential for DERs to make up a non-negligible portion of the country's overall generation capacity. As such, it is of critical importance that Indian stakeholders consider the potential impacts of wide-spread adoption of DERs and take preemptive action related to the five development areas listed here, among others. India should consider strategies including the adoption of key DER standards related to interconnection, testing, and cybersecurity; enabling effective and secure communication channels for DER interoperability; testing and certifying DER equipment in accredited testing laboratories; building robust, streamlined interconnection procedures; and revamping legacy system planning structures to incorporate DERs in a holistic planning framework.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Designing Resilience for Advanced Energy Systems

Advancements in energy technologies are making the grid more powerful, more efficient, and cleaner. As these promising innovations flourish across our communities, it is essential that our nation's infrastructure also becomes more resilient. Natural disasters, cyberattacks, user error, and a changing climate all present risks that could have devastating consequences. Individual emergencies are unique, but holistic planning and proactive measures can harden the grid and help anticipate and respond to any number of threats. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is at the forefront of this transition, establishing a vision for resilient energy systems today, and in the future.

energy disruption↗
DOE OSTI2026

Plan It Together: Optimizing Across Generation, Transmission, Distribution, and Distributed Energy Resources

Integrated planning holds the promise of unlocking lower total system cost solutions by connecting previously siloed planning processes. This article summarizes the state of bulk and local grid planning today and details multiple new analytical approaches that can enable more holistic planning methods to develop comprehensive solutions to generation, transmission, distribution, and distributed energy resource needs. These include both iterative approaches as well as cooptimization techniques. In addition to the benefits of these methods, the technical and institutional challenges and associated solutions are also discussed.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Integrating Resilience Planning in Distribution System Planning

Electric utilities, regulators, and stakeholders face increasing risks of severe storms, freezes, floods, and heat waves damaging grid infrastructure and causing power outages—and increasing risks of utility equipment igniting wildfires. At the same time, customer electricity rates have risen substantially in recent years, due in part to replacing aging infrastructure and improving resilience to natural hazards and physical threats. To address these challenges, utilities are beginning to move beyond traditional, siloed planning processes to balance resilience with other fundamental grid objectives such as affordability, reliability, safety, and serving new loads. This study presents a framework for states and utilities that want to advance integration of resilience and distribution planning processes to improve planning efficiency, better prioritize cost-effective grid expenditures, and balance planning objectives. The framework includes 7 key integration points between these planning processes: -Strategy process -Data -Threat assessments -Solution identification and prioritization -Optimization opportunities -Consideration of other grid needs -Metrics Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reviewed utility distribution system plans and interviewed subject matter experts to identify emerging practices for each of the 7 integration points. This report presents these practices, which can be used as a guide toward more holistic planning and cohesive investment strategies. It also includes 3 case studies to provide practical examples of how utilities apply such integrated planning processes: two pole hardening programs and one microgrid planning effort. The report concludes by identifying opportunities for future research.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging generative AI for urban digital twins: a scoping review on the autonomous generation of urban data, scenarios, designs, and 3D city models for smart city advancement

The digital transformation of modern cities by integrating advanced information, communication, and computing technologies has marked the epoch of data-driven smart city applications for efficient and sustainable urban management. Despite their effectiveness, these applications often rely on massive amounts of high-dimensional and multi-domain data for monitoring and characterizing different urban sub-systems, presenting challenges in application areas that are limited by data quality and availability, as well as costly efforts for generating urban scenarios and design alternatives. As an emerging research area in deep learning, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) models have demonstrated their unique values in content generation. This paper aims to explore the innovative integration of GenAI techniques and urban digital twins to address challenges in the planning and management of built environments with focuses on various urban sub-systems, such as transportation, energy, water, and building and infrastructure. The survey starts with the introduction of cutting-edge generative AI models, such as the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), followed by a scoping review of the existing urban science applications that leverage the intelligent and autonomous capability of these techniques to facilitate the research, operations, and management of critical urban subsystems, as well as the holistic planning and design of the built environment. Based on the review, we discuss potential opportunities and technical strategies that integrate GenAI models into the next-generation urban digital twins for more intelligent, scalable, and automated smart city development and management.

3D city modeling↗
DOE OSTI2023

Community Resilience Options: A Menu for Enhancing Local Energy Resilience

This document highlights areas of potential community resilience improvements, especially those that relate to clean energy deployment for communities and municipalities. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) defines resilience as "a system's ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions through sustainable, adaptable, and holistic planning and technical solutions." This document introduces 10 categories of resilience-enhancing projects at a high level, intended for community members and decision-makers new to the topic to build their understanding of which solutions fit their community best. These categories focus primarily on community-scale measures and different options may be available at larger scales. Full implementation of the measures described here requires in-depth, site-specific considerations that go beyond the scope of this document.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

State Requirements for Electric Distribution System Planning

Utilities have conducted distribution planning since they first began building and operating electricity systems. But filing these plans for regulatory and stakeholder review is a relatively recent phenomenon. This report summarizes legislative and regulatory requirements for regulated electric utilities to file some type of distribution system plan in 20 U.S. jurisdictions. Some plans focus on expedited cost recovery for certain types of distribution system improvements; other plans focus on investments for grid modernization or distributed energy resources. Increasingly, states are adopting requirements for Integrated Distribution Plans. Such plans provide holistic grid investment strategies that address state and local policies and increasing complexity at the grid edge. The report covers the following topics for distribution system plans, highlighting advanced practices: -State goals and objectives -Procedural requirements -Forecasting loads and distributed energy resources -Hosting capacity analysis -Baseline information requirements -Grid modernization strategy -Grid needs assessment -Non-wires solutions -Reliability and resilience analyses -Stakeholder engagement -Equity -Pilots -Coordination with other planning processes The report includes links to legislation; regulatory requirements, proceedings, and orders; and filed utility plans. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity provided funding support.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Accelerating Resilience of the Community through Holistic Engagement and use of Renewables (ARCHER) Planning Framework

The primary objective of the Accelerating Resilience of the Community through Holistic Engagement and Use of Renewables (ARCHER) initiative was to identify and incorporate the unique variations in energy burden, social vulnerability, living conditions, and access to essential services that differ across communities. By accounting for these localized factors—down to the neighborhood level—the project supports more targeted and effective investments in community resilience. The framework seeks to establish practical planning guidance, methods, and performance measures for community energy resilience, integrate community-level and electric utility system resilience planning, and assess its effectiveness through comparison with conventional and operational planning approaches. A key component of the project was its data exchange platform, which is used to evaluate and demonstrate the tools, methodologies, and planning approaches developed through ARCHER. This open-source platform enables developers and vendors of distribution and outage management systems to build upon the research by incorporating its concepts into their own tools and workflows. This capability is enabled by the transparent availability of data, functional requirements, and the underlying information model. The project yielded several important insights. First, meaningful engagement with communities is essential to achieving comprehensive resilience outcomes. Second, resilience planning is most effective when electric grid considerations and broader community needs are addressed in a coordinated manner. Third, the use of platforms that allow for real-time input from communities can enhance utility responsiveness during restoration activities. Fourth, a structured and systematic planning approach can successfully translate ARCHER concepts into practice. Fifth, the development of an integrated metric that reflects both grid performance and community impacts provides a more holistic basis for evaluating resilience. Finally, incorporating community engagement and equity considerations into grid operations is critical, particularly during severe weather events that result in extended outages.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS2021

A Geodetic and Positioning Thematic Layer - Identifying tools to connect the GGRF and IGIF

Effective and sustainable modernization of a nation’s geodetic framework relies on the ability of the relevant organizations and other stakeholders to communicate, integrate, and align both their strategic objectives and operational planning with the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN GGIM) Sub-Committee on Geodesy’s (SCoG) roadmap for a Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF) for Sustainable Development. In addition, to implement geodetic modernization initiatives through multiple government agencies, a holistic country action plan (CAP) for geospatial information management must incorporate pertinent geodetic outcomes and outputs. Presently, the CAP framework and principles used by nations is the UN GGIM Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF). From engagement with geospatial and survey communities across emerging nations in the Asia Pacific region, it is evident more assistance and coordination is necessary to articulate, integrate and connect geodetic organizational strategies with the requirements of the GGRF roadmap; the strategic pathways of the IGIF; and resourcing for a meaningful and relevant multi-faceted CAP. One of the supporting mechanisms for such planning or preparation, which representatives of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Asia Pacific Capacity Development Network (AP CDN) and the UN SCoG Education, Training and Capacity Building (ETCB) working group are considering, is a policy framework and guide for a “Geodetic and Positioning Thematic Layer” (GPTL). Essentially, this “thematic layer”, in terms of the GGRF and IGIF, aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of, and a toolbox for, the “why, what, how, and who” of geodesy and positioning. This discussion paper will provide background and insights for a GPTL dedicated to recognizing, and aligning the geodetic capacity development needs with broader geospatial information management issues and applications. The paper will also outline a rigorous, participatory, and inclusive consultation process for the design and development of a thematic layer. Furthermore, as the intention of the authors is to prepare a forthcoming “white paper” that will concisely describe the issues of a GPTL and initiatives for an appropriate guide and/or policy framework, this paper will seek feedback on: the potential scientific, social, environmental and political benefits of modernizing geodetic infrastructure and systems; the challenges associated with the GGRF roadmap; leveraging the geodesy-relevant elements of each IGIF strategic pathway; the importance of collaborative efforts; and the capacity development needs and resources in relation to governance, technology and people.

SARIB, Rob↗
NASA NTRS2022

Sky for All: Ushering in a New Era of Aviation

Today’s aviation system will be unable to keep pace with increasing market demand for new operations that capitalize on advancements in autonomy and other emerging technologies. Paradigm shifts are necessary to maintain U.S. leadership in the global aviation market, enhance the sustainability of operations, increase mobility, and provide publicly beneficial services. The Sky for All Vision provides an R&D framework that will support national strategic planning for a holistic airspace ecosystem to usher in a new era of aviation. NASA is in a unique position to tackle the most difficult R&D challenges and to convene the aerospace community towards a common vision.

Jeanne Yu↗
NASA NTRS2019

A Planning Pipeline for Large Multi-Agent Missions

In complex multi-agent applications, human operators are often tasked with planning and managing large heterogeneous teams of humans and autonomous vehicles. Although the use of these autonomous vehicles broadens the scope of meaningful applications, many of their systems remain unintuitive and difficult to master for human operators whose expertise lies in the application domain and not at the platform level. Current research focuses on the development of individual capabilities necessary to plan multi-agent missions of this scope, placing little emphasis on the integration of these components in to a full pipeline. The work presented in this paper presents a complete and user-agnostic planning pipeline for large multiagent missions known as the HOLII GRAILLE. The system takes a holistic approach to mission planning by integrating capabilities in human machine interaction, flight path generation, and validation and verification. Components – modules – of the pipeline are explored on an individual level, as well as their integration into a whole system. Lastly, implications for future mission planning are discussed.

Chandarana, Meghan↗
DOE OSTI2022

Decarbonization in Climate Resilience Planning

Recent executive orders such as E.O. 14008 require federal agencies to address climate change by enhancing resilience and reducing emissions through decarbonization. Traditionally, federal agencies require their sites to develop preparedness plans, such as continuity of operations plans and/or more comprehensive resilience plans. When climate change is included in these plans, the focus tends to be on climate adaptation solutions such as hardening infrastructure and not on climate mitigation through decarbonization. However, with the ambitious emission reductions targets set out by the federal government, it is essential to provide resources and tools to support energy and water managers in achieving decarbonization goals. To achieve this, there is a need for decarbonization to be incorporated into existing resilience planning processes. We discuss a method of incorporating a decarbonization analysis into an existing resilience planning process to create a holistic framework that considers climate adaptation, climate mitigation, and risk reduction priorities when developing and prioritizing solutions for federal sites. Site managers and decision makers must be aware of potential opportunities and trade-offs in meeting energy and water performance goals, emission reductions goals, and climate adaptation goals when developing technological, operational, or institutional resilience solutions. By combining these processes, energy and water managers can minimize the additional level of effort to ensure that their sites are not only able to withstand climate-related energy and water disruptions, but also contribute to climate mitigation. A holistic approach can help federal agencies serve as a model for incorporating decarbonization strategies into site-level resilience planning for the rest of the nation.

Elliott, Douglas B.↗
DOE OSTI2024

The circular bioeconomy: a driver for system integration

Background: Human and earth system modeling, traditionally centered on the interplay between the energy system and the atmosphere, are facing a paradigm shift. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s mandate for comprehensive, cross-sectoral climate action emphasizes avoiding the vulnerabilities of narrow sectoral approaches. Our study explores the circular bioeconomy, highlighting the intricate interconnections among agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, technological advancements, and ecological recycling. Collectively, these sectors play a pivotal role in supplying essential resources to meet the food, material, and energy needs of a growing global population. We pose the pertinent question of what it takes to integrate these multifaceted sectors into a new era of holistic systems thinking and planning. Results: The foundation for discussion is provided by a novel graphical representation encompassing statistical data on food, materials, energy flows, and circularity. This representation aids in constructing an inventory of technological advancements and climate actions that have the potential to significantly reshape the structure and scale of the economic metabolism in the coming decades. In this context, the three dominant mega-trends—population dynamics, economic developments, and the climate crisis—compel us to address the potential consequences of the identified actions, all of which fall under the four categories of substitution, efficiency, sufficiency, and reliability measures. Substitution and efficiency measures currently dominate systems modeling. Including novel bio-based processes and circularity aspects might require only expanded system boundaries. Conversely, paradigm shifts in systems engineering are expected to center on sufficiency and reliability actions. Effectively assessing the impact of sufficiency measures will necessitate substantial progress in inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, primarily due to their non-technological nature. In addition, placing emphasis on modeling the reliability and resilience of transformation pathways represents a distinct and emerging frontier that highlights the significance of an integrated network of networks. Conclusions: Existing and emerging circular bioeconomy practices can serve as prime examples of system integration. These practices facilitate the interconnection of complex biomass supply chain networks with other networks encompassing feedstock-independent renewable power, hydrogen, CO 2 , water, and other biotic, abiotic, and intangible resources. Elevating the prominence of these connectors will empower policymakers to steer the amplification of synergies and mitigation of tradeoffs among systems, sectors, and goals.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Economic Risk-Informed Maintenance Planning and Asset Management (Final Report)

The proposed work will provide a holistic framework for cost-minimizing risk-informed maintenance planning, including inspection, in light water reactors (LWRs). Specifically, we develop a two-tier framework that (a) coarsely minimizes the total maintenance cost during the remaining normal operating cycle of the plant prior to the next scheduled outage (long-term), subject to safety requirements, and (b) uses the outputs of the first model to develop a secondary optimization model to finely schedule maintenance activities to maximize the financial impact of these activities in the next week (short-term).

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

UAM Decision Making

NASA, in collaboration with the industry and FAA, is conducting research on Urban Air Mobility (UAM). UAM introduces unique and evolving operational characteristics unaccounted for within current transportation planning tools. This evolving modality requires a unique and comprehensive tool that integrates new and existing planning methodologies to provide a holistic solution for decision makers. NASA has identified a number of barriers and research areas related to aircraft, airspace, and communities as well as infrastructure requirements. The research will identify requirements related to urban capable aircraft and airspace technologies. While civil aviation authorities are responsible for safety and structure of operations through the air, the local and regional authorities are responsible for decisions related to location of vertiports, helipads, and airports. The implementation of UAM vertiports will consider diverse regional system categories such as weather, airspace restrictions, noise acceptability, surface traffic, availability of power, vertipad locations, routes, impact on surface traffic, safety and risks, economic impact, ingress/egress for electric/hybrid VTOL aircraft, applicable fire codes, evacuation strategy, zoning requirements, emergency preparedness, interactions with surface traffic, and community acceptance. Therefore, regional implementation bodies need a decision making tool to assess systemic dependencies in preparation for UAM impact on the region. We are developing a simulation and modeling tool that allows regional authorities to consider many factors while deciding the location of vertiport and UAM operations. The objective of this paper is to present the conceptual design of a comprehensive decision making tool to assist planning bodies in developing UAM infrastructure. Specifically, the UAM planning tool will simultaneously consider all relevant local/regional considerations to identify for vertiport locations and UAM operations for a region.

Parimal Kopardekar↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Impacts and Conclusions of NASA DEVELOP’s Environmental Justice Landscape Analyses and Feasibility Studies

The NASA DEVELOP National Program builds dual capacity in their partner organizations and participants (students and early or transitioning career professionals) to apply Earth science and remote sensing for decision making about environmental and policy issues. The first iteration of projects at DEVELOP’s Environmental Justice (EJ) node conducted landscape analyses to identify geospatial understandings and needs of organizations working at the intersection of EJ and disasters and air quality. Their findings about collaboration, community engagement, networking, and holistic approaches to justice informed the planning and structures of the EJ node’s successive feasibility projects, which leverage NASA Earth observations and sociodemographic and economic data to provide geospatial analyses tailored to partner concerns. This poster provides an overview of DEVELOP’s approach to conducting EJ feasibility projects, use of Earth observations, end products, project outcomes, challenges, and impacts.

Julianne Bo-Heen Liu↗
DOE OSTI2021

Beyond DERMS: Platform Development, Flexibility, Prediction, and Value Measurements

This report describes the results from the “Beyond DERMS” project that aims to build, deploy, and demonstrate - at megawatt scale with thousands of devices - a holistic platform that supports the integrated operation and planning of future power distribution networks with bi-directional power flows, many diverse distributed energy resources (DERs), and inverter-based resources. The results demonstrate how emerging ‘internet of energy’ technologies can be leveraged to simultaneously solve the grid problems of today and prepare for the challenges of tomorrow in a way that goes beyond the capabilities of existing distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS).

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Beyond DERMS: Demonstration of Automated Grid Services, Mode Transition, and Resilience

This report describes the results of more advanced use cases including Ancillary Services, Black-sky-day operation, and Mode Switching from Phase 3 of the “Beyond DERMS” project aiming to build, deploy, and demonstrate a holistic platform that supports the integrated operation and planning of future power distribution networks with bi-directional power flows, many diverse distributed energy resources (DERs), and inverter-based resources. These test results demonstrated how a Beyond DERMS platform can fuse together AMI, SCADA, and DER data to provide a utility with deep insights into distribution network operations and planning, extending the value of DERMS and BTM DER resources.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗