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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 OSTI2015

DOE SEEDS Program

Forecasting and influencing technological progress in solar energy: A new theory looks at an entire technological ecosystem, and understands a given technology in the context of its position within the entire technological ecosystem. Research has shown a major source of improvements in photovoltaics in recent years was improvements in its component technologies. Our research demonstrates that inputs are the primary driver of progress, and not just for solar, improvements in any given component technology is passed through to all the technologies for which that component is an input, and this process is iterated indefinitely. Such iterative processes enable us to classify technologies into trophic levels, analogous to food webs in ecology, based on their distance from natural resources. This theory predicts that technologies higher up in the technology food chain make progress faster than those below, due to the fact that they benefit from all the improvements in the all component technologies below them, technologies such as computers or photovoltaics. This at least partially explains why some technologies make more rapid progress than others.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluating the effectiveness of a camera-based detection system to support informed curtailment and minimize eagle fatalities at wind energy facilities

The American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI – now Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute, REWI) – was appointed prime awardee of DOE award number DE-EE0007880 to lead a team of scientists, wind developers, and technology manufacturers in a collaborative evaluation of the effectiveness of a technology intended to help reduce eagle collisions with wind turbines. IdentiFlight, developed by Renewable Energy Systems (RES) in collaboration with Boulder Imaging, is an autonomous aerial monitoring and detection system. REWI partnered with ecological consultants, Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc. (WEST), to independently evaluate the performance of IdentiFlight reducing eagle collision risk under a suite of environmental conditions relative to the performance of a Biomonitor (human observer-based) Program. The project objectives were to 1) evaluate how IdentiFlight compared to biomonitors in detecting and identifying eagles under a suite of environmental conditions and 2) use the observation data to model how IdentiFlight and biomonitors reduced the eagle fatality prediction through informed curtailment. Field testing was to take place at two geographically distinct wind farms over two field seasons at each wind farm with a study design appropriate for meta-analyses across sites and years.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Metagenome-assembled genome extraction and analysis from microbiomes using KBase

Uncultivated Bacteria and Archaea account for the vast majority of species on Earth, but obtaining their genomes directly from the environment, using shotgun sequencing, has only become possible recently. In order to realize the hope of capturing Earth’s microbial genetic complement and to facilitate the investigation of the functional roles of specific lineages in a given ecosystem, technologies that accelerate the recovery of high-quality genomes are necessary. We present a series of analysis steps and data products for the extraction of high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from microbiomes using the U.S. Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) platform (http://www.kbase.us/). Overall, these steps take about a day to obtain extracted genomes when starting from smaller environmental shotgun read libraries, or up to about a week from larger libraries. In KBase, the process is end-to-end, allowing a user to go from the initial sequencing reads all the way through to MAGs, which can then be analyzed with other KBase capabilities such as phylogenetic placement, functional assignment, metabolic modeling, pangenome functional profiling, RNA-Seq and others. While portions of such capabilities are available individually from other resources, the combination of the intuitive usability, data interoperability and integration of tools in a freely available computational resource makes KBase a powerful platform for obtaining MAGs from microbiomes. While this workflow offers tools for each of the key steps in the genome extraction process, it also provides a scaffold that can be easily extended with additional MAG recovery and analysis tools, via the KBase software development kit (SDK).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Security by Design: A Plant Design and Component-Based Approach to Technical Solutions to Insider and Outsider Threat

Security costs for nuclear reactors have been shown to rise over the lifecycle of a nuclear facility as new threats, security weaknesses, and the generic threat profile of the plant location change over time. This paper conducts a review of the technological gaps that currently exist in Security by Design (SeBD) based on the literature available and attempts to close those gaps through proposing technological constructs and processes that can integrate safety and security in the design process of a plant, with a primary focus on SMR technology. Under the new modular and mass manufacturing regime, where plant designs attempt to reduce costs with potential economies of scale and modular construction, the current SeBD definitions focusing on state level regulators are not considered adequate since the licensing stage is often too late in the design process to integrate the true cost savings of SeBD. Thus, this paper attempts to remedy the current logic in order to allow for continuous implementation of security alongside the development of the safety concept for the plant. If adopted within the design process the establishment of this type of technology will allow for a technological ecosystem to evolve that will imbed security concepts into the physical design of the components of the plant.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

EVs-at-RISC: A Secure and Resilient Interoperable SCM Control System Architecture for Electric Vehicle’s-at-Scale (Final Technical Report)

The EVs-at-RISC project was a five-year research, development, and demonstration initiative to create foundational tools for utility-scale fleet aggregation and Smart Charge Management (SCM) of Electric Vehicles (EV), Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (EVCI), and related Distributed Energy Resources (DER). Rather than seeking to develop and demonstrate highly perfected SCM algorithms and control strategies, this project instead focused on creating foundational software solutions that enable unprecedented digital interoperability across the communications technologies and vendor platforms used to manage EV , EVCI, and DER, as well as existing energy management infrastructure operated by utilities, grid operators, and aggregators. This project then extends these novel interoperability capabilities to develop and deploy powerful middleware abstractions across grid edge networks and EVCI/DER fleet aggregations incorporating modern software tools and best practices, such as CI/CD, to bring the immense capabilities of infrastructure-as-code and policy-as-code to modern grid edge network environments. This addresses the foremost systemic issues preventing realization of any net operational benefits from scaled deployment of behind-the-meter EV, EVCI, and DER assets in electric power grids and markets today. The results of this approach and project unlock massive potential for new SCM capabilities to be easily prototyped, evaluated, and deployed at-scale within the existing grid edge network infrastructure and EVCI/DER technology ecosystem. The EVs-at-RISC project achieves this by extending Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB), a conceptual model for digital interoperability and distributed intelligence in traditional front-of-meter utility SCADA networks, validating our hypothesis that OpenFMB could be similarly used to solve systemic digital interoperability issues in behind-the-meter environments and unlock real-world utility-scale SCM capabilities without requiring any new proprietary vendor solutions or significant infrastructure reconfiguration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2018

Digital Engineering Ecosystem for Innovative Nuclear Technologies

The construction, aerospace, and automotive industries have achieved considerable cost and schedule savings by utilizing virtual design. This program will develop a connected ecosystem of tools to support the design of innovative nuclear technologies. This ecosystem will develop a formal representation of information (data ontology) and systems software to facilitate digital engineering.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Validating Greater Sage-Grouse Individual-based Model (IBM) Tool (Final Report)

The project focused on validating the previously developed Greater Sage-Grouse Individual-based Model (GrSG IBM; LaGory et al. 2012, 2021). The objective was to transform this predictive, spatially and temporally explicit model into a portable resource to assist siting/resource managers in proactively assessing the cumulative impacts of wind energy development on the greater sage-grouse. Utilizing a bottom-up, individual-based approach, the GrSG IBM accounts for landscape context and species behavior, aiming to reduce uncertainty in estimating development impacts and support ecologically mindful land-based wind energy development. The validation effort covered approximately 6,540 km 2 near the Seven Mile Hill Wind Project in Wyoming. The GrSG IBM tool, built on the NetLogo platform (Tisue and Wilensky 2004), was executed over a 50-year period, with the analysis focusing on years following a 10-year initialization phase. Key results demonstrated the tool’s biological soundness across five key biological metrics: non-chick age class distribution (older than 10 weeks), adult sex ratio, life expectancy, population size, and overall population growth. For instance, the tool estimated that 58.6% of the non-chick population was reproductively immature, while the reference ranges from 51.4% to 57.8% (Patterson 1952, Rogers 1964). Experts confirmed the tool’s estimate was within a reasonable range for the species. The tool estimated average life expectancy of 1.43 years, while the reference ranges from 0.9 years to 1.1 years (Ammann 1957, Hamerstrom 1949). Experts also supported the model’s life-expectancy estimate as ecologically sound for the species in the study area. In terms of population change, the model estimated an annual shift between a 0.6% decline and a 1.0% increase over 50 years. While the reference suggests 2.9% annual decline in range-wide populations (Cortes et al. 2023), that includes many at-risk populations in South Dakota and Washington, for example. Our study area—in the northeastern part of Carbon County and western-edge of Albany County, Wyoming—is one of the remaining greater sage-grouse habitats supporting some of the most stable populations. Experts confirmed that the range of the annual population change spanning from a 0.6% decline to a 1.0% increase estimated by the tool was reasonable for our study area for this reason and confirmed that aligned with population estimates from existing studies on the greater sage-grouse and wind energy development in the study area (LeBeau et al. 2017a, Smith et al. 2024). Furthermore, the project showed that temporally explicit biological metrics generated by the GrSG IBM tool can complement the USGS’ Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET; Duchardt et al. 2021) by incorporating habitat restoration strategies into seasonal habitat suitability models to visualize population responses over time.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Migratory Strategy is a Key Factor Driving Interactions at Wind Energy Facilities in At-Risk North American Bats

Animal migration remains poorly understood for many organisms, impeding understanding of movement dynamics and limiting conservation actions. We develop a framework that scales from movements of individuals to the dynamics of continental migration using data synthesis of endogenous markers, which we apply to three North American bat species with unexplained high rates of fatalities at wind energy facilities. The two species experiencing the highest fatality rates exhibit a "pell-mell" migration strategy in which individuals move from summer habitats in multiple directions, both to higher and lower latitudes, during autumn. We link movements to higher latitudes to encounters with wind energy facilities and report that the timing of pell-mell migration strongly overlaps with that of fatalities at the continental level. These findings support the hypothesis that migration distance and strategy are drivers of increased interactions with wind energy facilities, highlighting the significance of understanding migratory strategy to achieve conservation goals.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2016

Analysis of Fuel Cell Markets in Japan and the US: Experience Curve Development and Cost Reduction Disaggregation

Fuel cells are both a longstanding and emerging technology for stationary and transportation applications, and their future use will likely be critical for the deep decarbonization of global energy systems. As we look into future applications, a key challenge for policy-makers and technology market forecasters who seek to track and/or accelerate their market adoption is the ability to forecast market costs of the fuel cells as technology innovations are incorporated into market products. Specifically, there is a need to estimate technology learning rates, which are rates of cost reduction versus production volume. Unfortunately, no literature exists for forecasting future learning rates for fuel cells. In this paper, we look retrospectively to estimate learning rates for two fuel cell deployment programs: (1) the micro-combined heat and power (CHP) program in Japan, and (2) the Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) in California. These two examples have a relatively broad set of historical market data and thus provide an informative and international comparison of distinct fuel cell technologies and government deployment programs. We develop a generalized procedure for disaggregating experience-curve cost-reductions in order to disaggregate the Japanese fuel cell micro-CHP market into its constituent components, and we derive and present a range of learning rates that may explain observed market trends. Finally, we explore the differences in the technology development ecosystem and market conditions that may have contributed to the observed differences in cost reduction and draw policy observations for the market adoption of future fuel cell technologies. The scientific and policy contributions of this paper are the first comparative experience curve analysis of past fuel cell technologies in two distinct markets, and the first quantitative comparison of a detailed cost model of fuel cell systems with actual market data. The resulting approach is applicable to analyzing other fuel cell markets and other energy-related technologies, and highlights the data needed for cost modeling and quantitative assessment of key cost reduction components.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Maps of Arctic vegetation leaf nitrogen concentration, albedo and plant functional type (PFT) derived from imaging spectroscopy data, Council watershed, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, 2019

Remote sensing maps of surface albedo, leaf nitrogen content, and plant functional types (PFTs) derived from NASA's Airborne Visible / Infrared Imaging Spectrometer Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Technology (TEST) group at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The AVIRIS-NG imaging spectroscopy data (380 ~ 2510 nm) was collected as a part of the collaboration between NASA's Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE; Miller et al., 2019) and DOE's Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment in the Arctic (NGEE-Arctic). This package includes maps for the NGEE-Arctic Council watershed created using AVIRIS-NG imagery collected on July 9th, 2019. The map data and metadata are provided as image (ENVI, *.png) and text (*.txt, *hdr) formats. Additional supporting map quicklooks are provided as *.png files and GIS *.kml files. Detailed description of the methods for each map are provided in this document. These datasets are provided in support of Figure 6 in Nelson et al., (2022), "Remote Sensing of Tundra Ecosystems using High Spectral Resolution Reflectance: Opportunities and Challenges". The full citation can be found within the references section. Note that the AVIRIS-NG leaf nitrogen product included in this dataset is a preliminary product and is provided for demonstration purposes only. It is not recommended that the map be used for scientific applications. For future updates on these products, please contact the authors.The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments: Arctic (NGEE Arctic), was a research effort to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research.The NGEE Arctic project had two field research sites: 1) located within the Arctic polygonal tundra coastal region on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and the North Slope near Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and 2) multiple areas on the discontinuous permafrost region of the Seward Peninsula north of Nome, Alaska.Through observations, experiments, and synthesis with existing datasets, NGEE Arctic provided an enhanced knowledge base for multi-scale modeling and contributed to improved process representation at global pan-Arctic scales within the Department of Energy's Earth system Model (the Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM), and specifically within the E3SM Land Model component (ELM).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

UAS remote sensing (3DR SOLO platform): multispectral reflectance and normalized difference vegetation index, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, 2022

Airborne remote sensing data collected using a Parrot Sequoia+ multispectral sensor installed on a 3DR SOLO unoccupied aerial system (UAS) – operated by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Technology group https://www.bnl.gov/envsci/testgroup/ at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This package includes data from 19 flights flown over the NGEE-Arctic, Kougarok Mile Marker (MM) 80, Kougarok Fire Complex (KFC) and Teller MM 27 sites in July 2022. Derived image products include point cloud, ortho-mosaiced multispectral image, a digital surface model (DSM) using the structure from motion (SfM) technique, and a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) map. Unprocessed and processed data products are included in this package (processing levels 0-2). Data and metadata are provided as text (*.txt, *.json, *hdr,), tabular (*.dat, *.csv), point cloud (*.laz), Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG, *.tif), and image (*.jpg, *.tif, *png) formats.The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments: Arctic (NGEE Arctic), was a research effort to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research. The NGEE Arctic project had two field research sites: 1) located within the Arctic polygonal tundra coastal region on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and the North Slope near Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and 2) multiple areas on the discontinuous permafrost region of the Seward Peninsula north of Nome, Alaska. Through observations, experiments, and synthesis with existing datasets, NGEE Arctic provided an enhanced knowledge base for multi-scale modeling and contributed to improved process representation at global pan-Arctic scales within the Department of Energy's Earth system Model (the Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM), and specifically within the E3SM Land Model component (ELM).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

UAS remote sensing (3DR SOLO platform): multispectral reflectance, canopy height model, normalized difference vegetation index, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, 2021

Airborne remote sensing data collected using a Parrot Sequoia+ multispectral sensor installed on a 3DR SOLO unoccupied aerial system (UAS) - operated by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Technology group at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This package includes data from 10 flights flown over the NGEE-Arctic Council Mile Marker (MM) 71, Kougarok MM64, and Teller MM27 sites on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska, in August 2021. Derived image products include point cloud, ortho-mosaiced multispectral image, ortho-mosaiced RGB image, a digital surface model (DSM) using the structure from motion (SfM) technique, a canopy height model (CHM), and a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) map. Unprocessed and processed data products are included in this package (processing levels 0-2). Data and metadata are provided as text (*.txt, *.json, *hdr,), tabular (*.dat, *.csv), point cloud (*.laz), Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG, *.tif), and image (*.jpg, *.tif, *png) formats. The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments: Arctic (NGEE Arctic), was a research effort to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research. The NGEE Arctic project had two field research sites: 1) located within the Arctic polygonal tundra coastal region on the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) and the North Slope near Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska and 2) multiple areas on the discontinuous permafrost region of the Seward Peninsula north of Nome, Alaska. Through observations, experiments, and synthesis with existing datasets, NGEE Arctic provided an enhanced knowledge base for multi-scale modeling and contributed to improved process representation at global pan-Arctic scales within the Department of Energy's Earth system Model (the Energy Exascale Earth System Model, or E3SM), and specifically within the E3SM Land Model component (ELM).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Pollinator habitat in solar facilities has potential to support high diversity of bee species

Conversion of agricultural and degraded lands to solar energy production provides opportunities to support diverse bee communities—and their pollination services—by creating habitat at solar facilities. Habitat restoration for bees at solar facilities follows the general principle of installing a diverse flowering plant community and assuming bees will come. However, selecting seed mixes for solar facilities is challenging because selected plants need to establish in the unique abiotic conditions of solar facilities and not interfere with solar energy production (tall plants may shade panels). Recent research tested commercially available and bespoke pollinator mixes for establishment success in Minnesota solar facilities and identified 14 forb species that established successfully over three years of the experiment. We ask an important follow-up question: how many native bee species, and which bee species, are these 14 plant species capable of supporting? We used a plant-bee interaction data set from Minnesota to calculate the number of bee species that would be supported by the 14 plant species for the duration of their flight seasons using a published bee species richness function. We found 122 unique bee species (24% of Minnesota diversity) may be supported for their entire flight seasons by the 14 focal plants.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

New Horizons for High-Performance Computing

Here we provide an overview of the past, present, and a diverse collection of future computer architecture alternatives for HPC. The end of Moore’s Law influenced the current HPC architecture focus on accelerated compute nodes composed of CPU and GPU computing components integrated into massively parallel processor architecture systems. There are many alternatives for future HPC directions, with different technologies, computing ecosystems, opportunities for lead user application-driven customization, and the role of open innovation business models. This paper provides an overview of these different new horizons for HPC, an organizing principle to focus future computing research, different public-private partnership models, and the critical role of workforce development.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Species-specific acoustic responses by bats to ultrasonic stimuli used for reducing bat-wind turbine interactions

An unintended consequence of wind energy generation is bat fatalities caused by wind turbine blade strikes. One potential approach to reduce collision risk is to use ultrasound to create an uncomfortable or disorienting airspace around wind turbine blades. Ultrasonic deterrents (UDs) have produced mixed results in experimental field studies at commercial wind energy facilities, with effectiveness varying by species and location. It is possible that some species can alter their normal echolocation characteristics to counter the signal of UDs. Our broad objective was to maximize the effectiveness of a UD by comparing changes in echolocation characteristics during three UD frequency emissions among species, between seasons, and between sex. We hypothesized that UD emissions with frequencies most similar to each species’ echolocation characteristics would be more likely to alter the bats’ echolocation, and bat responses would vary between seasons and sex for each species. We released wild-captured bats into a 60 m × 10 m × 4.4 m (length × width × height) flight cage located in San Marcos, Texas, USA, from July to October 2020 and March to May 2021 and monitored echolocation frequencies with ultrasonic microphones. We conducted trials on Brazilian free-tailed bats ( Tadarida brasiliensis ; n = 54), cave myotis ( Myotis velifer ; n = 44), red bats ( Lasiurus blossevilli , Lasiurus borealis ; n = 41), evening bats ( Nycticeius humeralis ; n = 32), and tricolored bats ( Perimyotis subflavus ; n = 8). We found that species with high-frequency echolocation calls altered their echolocation signatures more commonly during high-frequency UD emissions, whereas low-frequency bats altered their echolocation signatures more commonly during low-frequency UD emissions. Additionally, echolocation responses varied between seasons and sexes for several species. Variations in responses may be dependent on species migratory status, differences in mating behavior and mating season, hormonal differences between sexes and seasons, and/or constraints on echolocation adaptability. Our results offer insights into the variable effectiveness of UDs at reducing bat fatalities at wind turbines and provide information for potential adjustments to UDs for improved success.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Advanced Data Science Model for Detecting Intelligent Malware

This study focused on developing a robust artificial intelligence (AI) model capable of detecting and characterizing advanced malware in Internet of Things (IoT) devices using network data. By analyzing network traffic with various machine learning (ML) models, our AI model can identify and characterize malicious activities to significantly improve malware detection accuracy and reliability as compared to traditional methods. The developed AI/ML model was trained using network data from IoT devices, leveraging classifiers such as Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, AdaBoost, and others to optimize detection performance. This project demonstrates a scalable framework for real-time malware detection and characterization in IoT networks, capable of identifying infected devices and facilitating the necessary steps to remove or isolate them, thereby preventing further infections. Although digital twin (DT) integration is not yet implemented in the current model, it represents a promising future enhancement. By creating a virtual replica of physical IoT devices, DT technology would allow for real-time monitoring and analysis without directly accessing operational technology, thus reducing the risk of compromising or reducing the performance of actual devices. This integration would further enhance the security of IoT ecosystems, combining AI technology to better flag and detect indications of malware-infected devices within a nuclear system environment.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Support for the Core Research Activities and Studies of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (DE-SC0020446 Final Technical Report)

Supported the core operations of the National Academies' Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB). Helped support planning and conducting of board meetings, identification of priority topics in computer science and other areas of computing and communications technologies, and oversight for CSTB's portfolio of studies and convenings. Activities shaped and overseen included: a workshop on Al for scientific discovery; collaborative work with other Academies units on a study on foundational research gaps and future directions for digital twins; a study on current capabilities, future prospects, and governance of facial recognition technologies, a study on post- exascale computing; a study on fostering responsible computing research, collaborative work with other Academies units on automated research workflows for accelerated scientific discovery; a study on meeting federal cybersecurity workforce needs, and a study of the ecosystem driving information technology innovation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗