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• This is a case study of a small modular reactor supplying steam and electricity to a pulp and paper mill. • Resulting steam conditions in the mill are analyzed using steady-state and dynamic models. • Models of the paper mill were built in Aspen HYSYS and Dymola, a Modelica Ecosystem. • Integrated SMRs with pulp and paper mills is feasible but may present cost limitations. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are reactor designs producing less than 300 MWe and are generally planned for deployment as multimodule nuclear power plants. The possibility of factory-manufactured, flexibly sized plants expands the opportunities for nuclear power to different communities and industries, including manufacturing plants that currently utilize fossil fuels to produce both steam and electricity. This paper examines the feasibility of coupling a NuScale SMR with a midsize pulp and paper mill in the Southeastern United States. A steady-state mill model was developed in Aspen HYSYS, based on real data from the operation of the mill, and modified it to include the SMR while maintaining steam quality requirements and making as few changes as possible to existing equipment. Dynamic plant models were also developed Dymola to demonstrate possible plant conditions, using three configurations. Preliminary results suggest that, while SMR coupling is physically feasible, its economic feasibility is limited by the differences in steam and electricity demands. Because of limitations in the amount of steam the mill can take from the SMR, sizing the SMR for the plant's steam demand may result in an electricity deficit, or vice versa. Dynamic analyses show that the addition of a thermal storage system could reduce such deficits, but this entails its own challenges. Each plant must determine the best configuration and control scheme for itself, based on its electricity and heat needs, including the peak duration and intensity for both. Ultimately, an implementation of SMRs with manufacturing processes would benefit from partnering with a local utility to purchase excess electricity generated by the SMR. This will help manufacturing facilities meet their environmental and cost-savings goals, in addition to meeting the need for cost-effective baseload power across the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across recent years, there has been a growing prevalence of extreme weather events throughout the United States, posing significant challenges to the reliable and resilient operation of power systems. Specifically, summer droughts threaten to severely reduce available generation capacity to meet regional electricity demand, potentially leading to power outages. This underscores the importance of accurate resource adequacy (RA) assessment to ensure the reliable operation of the nation's energy infrastructure. Accurately evaluating the usable capacity of regional generation fleets is a challenging undertaking due to the intricate interactions between power systems and hydro-climatic systems. This paper proposes a systematic and analytical framework to evaluate the impacts of extreme summer drought events on the available capacity of various generating technologies, incorporating both meteorological and hydrologic factors. The framework provides detailed plant-level capacity derating models for hydroelectric, thermoelectric, and renewable power plants, facilitating evaluations with high temporal and spatial resolution. The application of the proposed impact assessment framework to the 2025 generation fleet of the real-world power system within the PJM and SERC regions of the United States yields insightful results. By analyzing the daily usable capacity of 6,055 at-risk generators across the study region, it shows that the summer capacity deration is most significant for hydroelectric and once-through thermal power plants, followed by recirculating thermal power plants and combustion turbines. In the event of the recurrence of the 2007 southeastern summer drought event in the near future, the generation fleet could experience a substantial reduction in available capacity, estimated at approximately 8.5 GW, compared to typical summer conditions. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the usable capacity of the generation fleet would suffer an even more significant decrease under conditions of increasingly severe summer droughts. The proposed approach and the findings of this study provide valuable methodologies and insights, empowering stakeholders to bolster the resilience of power systems against the potentially devastating effects of future extreme drought events. [Display omitted] • A systematic summer droughts generating capacity assessment framework is developed. • Capacity derating models for various generation technologies are presented. • The impacts of summer droughts on generating fleet in PJM and SERC are studied. • Impact of extreme summer drought on usable capacity of generators is significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Energy simulation of AIS using experimentally validated thermal resistances. • AIS evaluation at varying orientations, climate zones, and switching ratios. • Investigation of AIS switching and wall thermal conductivity/heat transfer. • Application of freeze timer to reduce the number of switches of AIS. Active insulation systems (AISs) in buildings are envelopes that integrate thermal insulation, thermal energy storage, and controls. Although different designs for AISs have been proposed in the literature, a comprehensive analysis of feasible AISs is lacking. This paper discusses the energy performance, peak demand reduction potential, and performance characteristics of an AIS that uses a concrete wall as thermal mass sandwiched between two solid-state thermal switches (STSs). These STSs change their thermal conductivity using an on/off metal switch to create or break a thermal bridge across the STS. This paper first describes the experimental setup, used to determine the ratio of thermal resistance during R-high (low thermal conductivity) and R-low (high thermal conductivity) states of the STSs. This ratio was then used in whole-building energy simulations to evaluate the performance of AIS walls across different climate zones with/without a freeze timer of 60 min. The timer was added to reduce the number of switches of STSs from one state to another, and hence the energy needed for these switches. Analysis of the switching frequency and interval of STSs, thermal conductivity of walls, impact of wall orientation, and heat transfer through the wall from the use of AIS at different climate zones/locations were performed. The simulation results show that the AIS can achieve energy savings ranging from ∼ 980 to 2,290 kWh in a single-family home with a floor area of ∼ 220 m2 compared with an IECC 2018 baseline. The energy savings was higher in dry climate zones which represent 17% of residential buildings in the United States, compared to humid or marine climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Backup capability of solar and storage differs by region in the U.S. • Small batteries can meet a limited set of critical loads in most counties. • Electric cooling and heating loads are typically hardest loads to backup. • Household building attributes like efficiency can impact results up to 20% • Resiliency value needs to be high to motivate adoption of solar-plus-storage. Customer concerns over electric system resilience could drive early adoption of behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage (BTM PVESS), especially as wildfire, hurricane, and other climate-driven risks to electric grids become more pronounced. However, the resilience benefits of BTM PVESS are poorly understood, especially for residential customers, owing to lack of data and methodological challenges, making it difficult to forecast adoption trends. In this paper, we develop a methodology to model the performance of BTM PVESS in providing backup power across a wide range of customer types, geography / climate conditions, and long duration power interruption scenarios, considering both whole-building backup and backup of specific critical loads. We combine novel, disaggregated end-use load profiles across the continental United States with temporally and geospatially aligned solar generation estimates. We then implement a PVESS dispatch algorithm to calculate the amount of load served during interruptions. We find that PVESS with 10 kWh of storage can meet a limited set of critical loads in most United States counties during any month of the year, though this capability drops to meeting only 86% of critical load, averaged across all counties and months, when heating and cooling are considered critical. Backup performance is lowest in winter months where electric heat is common (southeast and northwest U.S.) and in summer months in places with large cooling loads (southwest and southeast U.S.). Winter backup performance varies by roughly 20% depending on infiltration rates, while summer performance varies by close to 15% depending on the efficiency of the central air-conditioning system. Differences in temperature set-points in Harris County correspond to a 40% range in winter backup performance and a 20% range in summer performance. Economic calculations show that a customer's resilience value of PVESS must be high to motivate adoption of these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A framework identifies energy contexts where racial injustice is more likely. • The 2019 American Housing Survey is used to assess five energy outcomes. • Housing-wealth explains 37% of racial inequality in solar uptake by US homeowners. • Racial differences exist for having washing machines, dryers, or broken equipment. • Black-alone households in public housing may have lower access to solar panels. This paper presents a framework to identify which household-energy outcomes are more likely to display injustice. Inequity is more likely when variation is pronounced at the lower end of wealth distributions. This paper compares solar-panel uptake with four other energy outcomes using the 2019 American Housing Survey. Analysis shows that solar-panel uptake in the United States has mainly been by high-wealth homeowners, across racial groups. Housing wealth explains around 37% of the solar-uptake difference between "Black alone" and other homeowners. In contrast, there are large racial differences for having washing machines or dryers. In addition, uncomfortably cold home temperatures and broken equipment are more likely for "Black alone" homeowners. Similar patterns are mostly observed for renters. However, "Black alone" households in public housing may have been less likely to benefit from solar panels than other public-housing tenants. There are three main implications. Solar policies targeting low wealth, rather than income, have greater potential for reducing racial inequality. Also, policymakers could focus more on equality in solar-panel access for public housing. Further, there are larger racial differences to address in non-solar contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term Load Forecasting (LTLF) plays a vital role in the planning of electric utilities. In the long run, utilities face various uncertainties caused by economic and environmental factors. These uncertainties have made LTLF more complex and inaccurate, thus, amplifying financial risks of utilities. A potent contributor to such losses in LTLF accuracy is economic shocks. This study proposes two probabilistic Time-Varying (TV) approaches to capture such shocks in LTLF and minimise accuracy loss, namely TV-XGB-X and TV-PR, and their combinations considering economic policy uncertainty. Both eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) and Polynomial Regression (PR) are extended to include the long-run TV effects of economic shocks as eXogeneous predictors in this paper. These models and their combinations are compared with various non-TV approaches through experiments on the monthly electricity consumption of eight energy-intensive states in the United States. The results reveal that the proposed combined approaches outperform stand-alone models on all datasets. The findings of this study can help utilities in hedging financial risks under shocks. • Proposed Time-Varying framework to detect and capture economic shocks for LTLF. • Framework includes probabilistic TV-PR, TV-XGB-X, their variants and combinations. • Compared the point and probabilistic accuracies of proposed and benchmark models. • Proposed models outperform existing benchmark models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• More accurate and explanatory model is proposed for natural gas storage deliverability. • A hybrid Sparse Autoencoder and Random Forest model shows on average of 5.7% increase in prediction accuracy. • The first use of machine learning and explanatory methods (XAI) in deliverability prediction for natural gas storage. Numerous subsurface factors, including geology and fluid properties, can affect the connectivity of the storage spaces in depleted reservoirs; hence, fluid flow simulations become more complicated, and predicting their deliverability remains challenging. This paper applies Machine Learning (ML) techniques to predict the deliverability of underground natural gas storage (UNGS) in depleted reservoirs. First, three baseline models were developed based on Support Vector Regression (SVR), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Random Forest (RF) algorithms. To improve the accuracy of the RF model as the best-performing baseline model, a unified framework, referred to as SARF, was developed. SARF combines the capabilities of Sparse Autoencoder (SA) and that of Random Forest (RF). To achieve this, the internal representations of the SA, which constitute extracted features of the input variables, are used in RF to develop the proposed SARF framework. The predictive capabilities of the baseline models and the proposed SARF model were validated using 3744 real-world storage data samples of 52 active storage reservoirs in the United States. The experimental result of this study shows that the proposed SARF model achieved an average 5.7% increase in accuracy on four separate data partitions over the baseline RF model. Furthermore, a set of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods were developed to provide an intuitive explanation of which factors influence the deliverability of reservoir storage. The visualizations developed using the XAI method provide an easy-to-understand interpretation of how the SARF model predicted the deliverability values for separate reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to quantify the performance of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for a typical commercial building heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system across a wide range of climate and weather conditions. The motivation of the study comes from the fact that although there is a large body of work on MPC for HVAC systems, there is a lack of studies that examine the range of possible performance of MPC, in terms of both energy savings and maintaining indoor climate (temperature and humidity) as a function of outdoor weather. A challenge in conducting such a study is developing an MPC controller that can be used in a wide range of weather. The root cause of this challenge is the need for a tractable cooling and dehumidification coil model that can be used by the MPC controller, since the coil may operate in quite distinct modes depending on weather. We present such an MPC controller, and then leverage it to conduct an extensive simulation campaign for fourteen climate zones in the United States and four weather conditions (winter, spring, summer, and fall) in each climate zone. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with not only a rule-based baseline controller but also with a simpler MPC controller that ignores humidity and latent heat considerations. There are several results the arise from this comparative study. One such result is that energy savings from MPC over baseline can vary dramatically based on climate and season. Another is that the effect of ignoring humidity in the MPC formulation can lead to poor indoor humidity control more in milder weather rather than in hot weather. The results from this study can help practitioners and researchers assess costs and benefits of proposed MPC formulations for HVAC control. • Performance of two MPC controllers for HVAC systems is studied. • The study spans a wide range of climate and weather conditions, a first of its kind. • MPC controller can perform poorly unless latent heat is considered in design. • Poor performance occurs typically in moist and marine climate zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, buildings account for 35% of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, making them important contributors to decarbonization. Carbon intensities in the power grid are time-varying and can fluctuate significantly within hours, so shifting building loads in response to the carbon intensities can reduce a building's operational carbon emissions. This paper presents a rule-based carbon responsive control framework that controls the setpoints of thermostatically controlled loads responding to the grid's carbon emission signals in real time. Based on this framework, four controllers are proposed with different combinations of carbon accounting methods and control rules. To evaluate their performance, we performed simulation studies using models of a 27-home, all-electric, net zero energy residential community located in Basalt, Colorado, United States. The carbon intensity data of four future years from the Cambium data set are adopted to account for the evolving resource mix in the power grid. Various performance metrics, including energy consumption, carbon emission, energy cost, and thermal discomfort, were used to evaluate the performance of the controllers. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to determine how the control thresholds and intervals affect the controllers' performance. Simulation results indicate that the carbon responsive controllers can reduce the homes' annual carbon emissions by 6.0% to 20.5%. However, the energy consumption increased by 0.9% to 6.7%, except in one scenario where it decreased by 2.2%. Compared to the baseline, the change in energy cost was between −2.9% and 3.4%, and thermal discomfort was also maintained within an acceptable range. The little impact on energy cost and thermal discomfort indicates there are no potential roadblocks for customer acceptance when rolling out the controllers in utility programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Developed a publicly available high temperature (60–200 °C) heat pump model. • Heat pump performance was coupled to economics using US energy prices. • Energy prices applicable to international audiences with low fossil energy prices. • Model comparison includes heat pump and an equivalent gas-boiler economic analysis. • Model produces levelized cost of heat, payback period, and internal rate of return to demonstrate the economic competitiveness of heat pump systems for industrial decarbonization. Heat pumps represent an important opportunity for energy savings and decarbonization. This work investigates the techno-economic performance of high-temperature heat pumps (HTHPs) for use in the U.S. dairy industry. The studied heat pump performs a 50 °C temperature lift on a waste heat stream of cleaning water and applies the upgraded heat stream to a fluid milk pasteurization process. This work involved the creation of a HTHP model that estimated the coefficient of performance (COP), internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV), and payback period (PBP), and emissions saved for a heat pump replacing a natural gas boiler. Capital costs, operations, and maintenance (O&M) cost, heat pump lifetime, electricity prices, natural gas prices, and a cost of carbon were varied to perform a parametric study on the factors affecting the break-even price of HTHPs. The results show that HTHP economics are highly sensitive to COP and energy price environment, and less sensitive to capital and O&M cost variance, leading to a large scatter of positive and negative NPVs based on U.S. location. PBPs demonstrate a defined threshold, based on energy price environment, below which favorable two-to-three-year PBPs predominate. This work is focused on the U.S. dairy industry, but international application in relation to fossil vs. electricity price regimes. Heat pumps have seen wider adoption in regions with a high ratio of fossil energy to electricity prices ($/MMBTU vs. $/kWh). The U.S. has plentiful natural gas resulting in lower fossil energy prices which has reduced heat pump adoption. This paper identifies potential first mover industries for HTHP adoption and their associated price regimes even in regions with lower ratios of fossil energy to electricity prices that exist many places globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• COVID-19 modified when, where, and how we use electricity. • The impact of COVID-19 varied across spatiotemporal scales. • There are multiple offsetting effects that can mask the impact of COVID-19 on electricity demand. Shelter-in-place orders and business closures related to COVID-19 changed the hourly profile of electricity demand and created an unprecedented source of uncertainty for the grid. The potential for continued shifts in electricity profiles has implications for electricity sector investment and operating decisions that maintain reserve margins and provide grid reliability. This study reveals that understanding this uncertainty requires an understanding of the underlying drivers at the customer-class scale. This paper utilizes three datasets to compare the impacts of COVID-19 on electricity consumption across a range of spatiotemporal and customer scales. At the utility/customer-class scale, COVID-19-induced shutdowns in the spring of 2020 shifted weekday residential load profiles to resemble weekend profiles from previous years. Total commercial loads declined, but the commercial diurnal load profile was unchanged. With only total loads available at the balancing authority scale, the apparent impact of COVID-19 was smaller during the summer due in part to phased re-opening and spatial variability in re-opening, but there were still clear variations once total loads were broken down zonally. Monthly data at the state scale showed an increase in state-level residential electricity sales, a decrease in commercial sales, and a small net decrease in total sales in most states from April-August 2020. Analyses that focus on total load or a single scale may miss important changes that become apparent when the load is broken down regionally or by customer class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Detailed cost estimation of advanced nuclear plants methodology extended to HTGRs. • Large HTGRs shown to have 32% overnight capital costs than recent LWRs. • The HC-HTGR reduced overnight capital costs 20% from large HTGR costs. • Discussion of required engineering of new systems for the HC-HTGR. • Low-carbon high temperature process heat in the range of $6.13–12.48/GJ. In 2018, nuclear energy generated 55% of United States' and one third of the world's carbon free electricity, making nuclear energy a key tool in efforts to mitigate climate change before 2050. However, the current nuclear technology, light water reactors (LWRs), is limited to 300°C, so it cannot be used to decarbonize industrial process heat which accounts for 12% of US greenhouse gas emissions. High temperature gas reactors (HTGRs) can meet the high temperature demand with carbon free nuclear heat. The estimated cost of HTGRs, such as the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), are even higher than state-of-the-art LWRs. In this paper, we expanded our nuclear cost estimating tool to include HTGRs and find that the NGNP overnight capital costs were 32% higher than an advanced LWR per unit capacity. The higher cost will naturally result in larger risk to cost overrun as recently experienced by larger LWRs in western nations. With a design-to-build mindset to minimize cost and construction risk, we introduce the horizontal, compact HTGR (HC-HTGR). The reactor core and steam generator are mounted horizontally on rails and in-line with one another, decreasing the size of the reactor building relative to the power capacity four times when compared to traditional HTGRs. The HC-HTGR reduced overnight civil structure costs by 42%, indirect costs by 38%, and total capital costs by 20% from NGNP. We discussed the required engineering of new systems for the HC-HTGR including vessel supports, the reactor cavity cooling system, and steam generator design. Finally, we estimated the fuel and operations costs of the HC-HTGR, and a survey of low-carbon industrial process heat technology showed the HC-HTGR can deliver a highly competitive levelized cost of heat in the range of $6.13–12.48/GJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A new convolutional recurrent neural network is used for spatiotemporal prediction. • A new probabilistic deep learning model is proposed for solar radiation prediction. • A data preprocessing method for solar radiation uncertainty assessment is proposed. • The developed model performs very well in accuracy and uncertainty. High-quality and reliable solar radiation spatiotemporal probabilistic prediction is very significant for the planning and management of solar energy. In this paper, convolutional shared weight long short-term memory network is proposed to deal with solar radiation spatiotemporal prediction problems. The model can minimize the training time of model without significantly reducing prediction accuracy. Furthermore, a spatiotemporal probabilistic prediction model that combines convolutional shared weight long short-term memory network and deep ensemble method is proposed to deal with the solar radiation probabilistic prediction problem. The model obtains the uncertainty estimation of predictands by adjusting the network structure and optimizes the uncertainty by employing a proper scoring rule. In addition, a combination of ensembles are used in the model to improve the robustness of probabilistic prediction. The new spatiotemporal probabilistic prediction model is applied to predict solar radiation in a real area of the United States. Five state-of-the-art models and seven evaluation indicators are used for comparation. The comparation results show the proposed model is able to provide accurate point prediction, reasonable prediction interval and reliable probabilistic prediction results for a whole area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Renewable hydrogen can compete with lithium-ion batteries for seasonal storage. • Hydrogen's competitiveness depends on heat rate of plant it is replacing. • Net present value of hydrogen-fired gas turbine varies based on operation of plant. • Lack of infrastructure will impede demand growth for hydrogen in the United States. Non-emitting variable renewable energy (VRE) resources are needed on the power grid if the United States is to "deeply decarbonize" the power sector. The intermittent nature of these resources makes them difficult to integrate into the power system. Existing energy storage technologies, such as lithium-ion (LI) batteries, could be used to aid the integration of these resources, but these technologies are sized to produce power for hours at a time before needing to be charged again. While these energy storage technologies could address daily imbalances between supply and demand for electric power, they cannot address the seasonal nature of power production of VREs. This paper details a methodology to estimate the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of meeting this seasonal imbalance with either a hydrogen-fired gas turbine (HFGT) or lithium-ion battery system (LI) as a measure of economic efficiency of the technologies. Applying our model, we find the average LCOE associated with meeting this seasonal imbalance is $2400/MWh using a HFGT fueled with green hydrogen and $3000/MWh using a LI. If we allow the model to operate the HFGT with blue hydrogen the average LCOE decreases to $1560/MWh. However, we find the power prices required to justify investment in an HFGT to replace a natural gas-fired gas turbine are considerably higher than those seen in the market today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Temporal characterization of marine energy resources, at varying time scales. • Characterized wave, tidal, and ocean currents, and compared to wind and solar. • Data based exposition of grid benefits for wave power at high renewable scenarios. • Data based exposition of higher capacity adequacy and stability for wave power. • Detailed discussion on market implications of grid integration of marine energy. In this paper, the applicability of marine renewable energy (MRE) for potential grid applications is presented. We show that many of the unique value streams from marine-based electricity generation resources stem from their inherent temporal characteristics, especially when compared to wind and solar. Specifically, in this work, we evaluate the timing value for three types of MRE resources: (a) tidal, (b) wave, and (c) ocean currents. First, through a suite of novel metrics, such as resource availability, persistence, and versatility, we evaluate the temporal value characteristics of these resources. Second, through a more grid-oriented numerical study, we comment on the potential ramifications of those temporal characteristics in context of energy balancing and effective load carrying capability for one marine-based resource i.e., wave. Finally, we further our understanding of the relative advantages that may be leveraged by operating wave-based generation in tandem with more established renewable resources, such as wind and solar. Our results indicate that compared to wind and solar, MRE resources are consistently more available and persistent on an hourly level throughout an entire year of operation. In addition, wave resources are also seen to reduce the balancing requirements within the power system. Our work focuses on sites specific to the United States (US) and a parallel study for a location in Great Britain (GB). Results are found to be consistent for sites in both the US and GB, implying that the grid benefits discussed in this work could apply to a number of locations globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to segment solar panels in a satellite image containing solar arrays, and extract associated metadata from the arrays. A novel unsupervised technique is introduced to estimate the azimuth of each individual solar panel from the predicted mask of the convolutional neural network. This pipeline was developed with the aim of extracting necessary metadata for a solar installation, using only a set of latitude–longitude coordinates. Azimuth prediction results for 669 individual solar installations associated with 387 sites located across the United States are provided. A mean average error and median average error of 21.65 degrees and 1.0 degrees were obtained, respectively, when predicting the azimuth of the solar fleet data set, with about 80% of the results within an error of zero degrees of the ground truth azimuth value and about 85% within an error of 25 degrees. The predicted azimuth was then used to estimate the energy conversion of the solar arrays. Results show a 90.9 and 90.6 R-squared value for estimating alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) energy, respectively, and a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 1.70% in estimating the alternating current (AC) energy using the fully automated algorithm. [Display omitted] • A novel unsupervised technique is used to estimate the azimuth of solar arrays. • Segmentation of solar panels in the satellite image, using transfer learning and a CNN. • The proposed approach is can be used with high resolution satellite or aerial imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]