The photovoltaic (PV) breakeven price is the PV system price at which the cost of PV-generated electricity equals the cost of electricity purchased from the grid. This point is also called 'grid parity' and can be expressed as dollars per watt ($/W) of installed PV system capacity. Achieving the PV breakeven price depends on many factors, including the solar resource, local electricity prices, customer load profile, PV incentives, and financing. In the United States, where these factors vary substantially across regions, breakeven prices vary substantially across regions as well. In this study, we estimate current and future breakeven prices for PV systems installed on supermarkets in the United States. We also evaluate key drivers of current and future commercial PV breakeven prices by region. The results suggest that breakeven prices for PV systems installed on supermarkets vary significantly across the United States. Non-technical factors -- including electricity rates, rate structures, incentives, and the availability of system financing -- drive break-even prices more than technical factors like solar resource or system orientation. In 2020 (where we assume higher electricity prices and lower PV incentives), under base-case assumptions, we estimate that about 17% of supermarkets will be in utility territories where breakeven …

This report is a summary of the physical processes, primary governing equations, solution approaches, and historic testing related to brine migration in geologic salt. Although most information presented in this report is not new, we synthesize a large amount of material scattered across dozens of laboratory reports, journal papers, conference proceedings, and textbooks. We present a mathematical description of the governing brine flow mechanisms in geologic salt. We outline the general coupled thermal, multi-phase hydrologic, and mechanical processes. We derive these processes' governing equations, which can be used to predict brine flow. These equations are valid under a wide variety of conditions applicable to radioactive waste disposal in rooms and boreholes excavated into geologic salt.

This is a meeting overview of 'The Best Approach to Combustion Safety in a Direct Vent World', held June 28, 2012, in San Antonio, Texas. The objective of this Expert Meeting was to identify gaps and barriers that need to be addressed by future research, and to develop data-driven technical recommendations for code updates so that a common approach for combustion safety can be adopted by all members of the building energy efficiency and code communities.

The monitoring during 2012 focused on documenting the status of known burrows. Newly identified burrows were documented while examining historical locations, during ecological resource reviews, or discovered during other monitoring efforts. The timing of the monitoring effort allowed staff to perform the surveys without disrupting any breeding or hatching, while also allowing for easy discernment of adults from juveniles, which helped in determining burrow-use type.

This document highlights the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's investments and impacts in the state of California.

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has completed a comprehensive, multiyear project to demonstrate a hydrogen infrastructure in California. The specific primary objective of the project was to demonstrate a model of a “real-world” retail hydrogen infrastructure and acquire sufficient data within the project to assess the feasibility of achieving the nation’s hydrogen infrastructure goals. The project helped to advance hydrogen station technology, including the vehicle-to-station fueling interface, through consumer experiences and feedback. By encompassing a variety of fuel cell vehicles, customer profiles and fueling experiences, this project was able to obtain a complete portrait of real market needs. The project also opened its stations to other qualified vehicle providers at the appropriate time to promote widespread use and gain even broader public understanding of a hydrogen infrastructure. The project engaged major energy companies to provide a fueling experience similar to traditional gasoline station sites to foster public acceptance of hydrogen. Work over the course of the project was focused in multiple areas. With respect to the equipment needed, technical design specifications (including both safety and operational considerations) were written, reviewed, and finalized. After finalizing individual equipment designs, complete station designs were started including process flow diagrams and systems safety reviews. …

Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC), located in Charlotte, North Carolina, established the Carolinas Energy Career Center (Center) - a comprehensive training entity to meet the dynamic needs of the Charlotte region's energy workforce. The Center provides training for high-demand careers in both conventional energy (fossil) and renewable energy (nuclear and solar technologies/energy efficiency). CPCC completed four tasks that will position the Center as a leading resource for energy career training in the Southeast: • Development and Pilot of a New Advanced Welding Curriculum, • Program Enhancement of Non-Destructive Examination (NDE) Technology, • Student Support through implementation of a model targeted toward Energy and STEM Careers to support student learning, • Project Management and Reporting. As a result of DOE funding support, CPCC achieved the following outcomes: • Increased capacity to serve and train students in emerging energy industry careers; • Developed new courses and curricula to support emerging energy industry careers; • Established new training/laboratory resources; • Generated a pool of highly qualified, technically skilled workers to support the growing energy industry sector.

This technology pathway case investigates the catalytic conversion of solubilized carbohydrate streams to hydrocarbon biofuels, utilizing data from recent efforts within the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium (NABC) in collaboration with Virent, Inc. Technical barriers and key research needs that should be pursued for the catalytic conversion of sugars pathway to be competitive with petroleum-derived gasoline-, diesel-, and jet-range hydrocarbon blendstocks have been identified.

In support of the Bioenergy Technologies Office, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are undertaking studies of biomass conversion technologies to hydrocarbon fuels to identify barriers and target research toward reducing conversion costs. Process designs and preliminary economic estimates for each of these pathway cases were developed using rigorous modeling tools (Aspen Plus and Chemcad). These analyses incorporated the best information available at the time of development, including data from recent pilot and bench-scale demonstrations, collaborative industrial and academic partners, and published literature and patents. This technology pathway case investigates the catalytic conversion of solubilized carbohydrate streams to hydrocarbon biofuels, utilizing data from recent efforts within the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium (NABC) in collaboration with Virent, Inc.. Technical barriers and key research needs that should be pursued for the catalytic conversion of sugars pathway to be competitive with petroleum-derived gasoline, diesel and jet range hydrocarbon blendstocks have been identified.

With an average herd size of 113 mature cows, Cayuga County is home to 280 dairy farms and 31,500 dairy milking cows producing approximately 855 million gallons of milk per year. The Cayuga Dairy industry is a major contributor to the countys economy, employing nearly 1200 people, while generating $140,000,000 of revenue from sale of milk alone. At the same time, the Cayuga County dairy industry also produces 5.7 million gallons of manure daily: a) Nearly 34% of this manure is produced on smaller farms. b) Digesters are expensive pieces of equipment and require attention and care. c) The on-farm digester systems have fairly long payback (>10 years) even for larger CAFO farms (>1000 milking cows). In 2005, Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District (The District), a Public Agency under Cayuga County, decided to undertake a centralized community digester project. The primary goal of the project was to develop an economically sustainable model, under the auspices of The District to address manure management issues facing the smaller dairies, improve the water quality and improve the quality of life for Cayuga County residents. It is believed that the District has accomplished this goal by completing construction of Cayuga County Regional …

This is the manual for the Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative (CCSI) Technology Readiness Level Likelihood model based on PNNL velo.

As part of the pyrometallurgical treatment of used Experimental Breeder Reactor-II fuel, a metal waste stream is generated consisting primarily of cladding hulls laden with fission products noble to the electrorefining process. Consolidation by melting at high temperature [1873 K (1600 degrees C)] has been developed to sequester the noble metal fission products (Zr, Mo, Tc, Ru, Rh, Te, and Pd) which remain in the iron-based cladding hulls. Zirconium from the uranium fuel alloy (U-10Zr) is also deposited on the hulls and forms Fe-Zr intermetallics which incorporate the noble metals as well as residual actinides during processing. Hence, Zr has been chosen as the primary indicator for consistency of the metal waste. Recently, the first production-scale metal waste ingot was generated and sampled to monitor Zr content for Fe-Zr intermetallic phase formation and validation of processing conditions. Chemical assay of the metal waste ingot revealed a homogeneous distribution of the noble metal fission products as well as the primary fuel constituents U and Zr. Microstructural characterization of the ingot confirmed the immobilization of the noble metals in the Fe-Zr intermetallic phase.

The objective of the ARM Science Board is to promote the Nation’s scientific enterprise by ensuring that the best quality science is conducted at the DOE’s User Facility known as the ARM Climate Research Facility. The goal of the User Facility is to serve scientific researchers by providing unique data and tools to facilitate scientific applications for improving understanding and prediction of climate science.

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This fact sheet provides an overview of the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Cities program, which builds partnerships to reduce petroleum use in transportation in communities across the country.

Energy, water and land are scarce resources, critical to humans. Developments in each affect the availability and cost of the others, and consequently human prosperity. Measures to limit greenhouse gas concentrations will inevitably exact dramatic changes on energy and land systems and in turn alter the character, magnitude and geographic distribution of human claims on water resources. We employ the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), an integrated assessment model to explore the interactions of energy, land and water systems in the context of alternative policies to limit climate change to three alternative levels: 2.5 Wm-2 (445 ppm CO2-e), 3.5 Wm-2 (535 ppm CO2-e) and 4.5 Wm-2 (645 ppm CO2-e). We explore the effects of two alternative land-use emissions mitigation policy options—one which taxes terrestrial carbon emissions equally with fossil fuel and industrial emissions, and an alternative which only taxes fossil fuel and industrial emissions but places no penalty on land-use change emissions. We find that increasing populations and economic growth could be anticipated to almost triple demand for water for agricultural systems across the century even in the absence of climate policy. In general policies to mitigate climate change increase agricultural demands for water still further, though the largest changes …

This fact sheet describes the tablet-based simuwatt Audit tool, which uses NREL's advanced energy modeling framework and building energy audit processes, collaboration tools, in-app media, and private company concept3D's geometric capture software combined with real-time connections to large sets of standardized data to perform building energy audits faster than traditional methods. By integrating the NREL Building Component Library, utility rates, weather information, and energy conservation measures, the tool provides investment-grade audits that cost 75% less than traditional audits and stores the data in a consistent and reusable format.

Ever since Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter in 1928, it has excited our collective imagination. Seventy-four years later, two collaborations at CERN, ATHENA and ATRAP, created the first slow antihydrogen. This was a stunning achievement, but the most important antimatter experiments require trapped, not just slow, antihydrogen. The velocity, magnetic moment, and internal energy and state of the antihydrogen depend strongly on how it is formed. To trap antihydrogen, physicists face two broad challenges: (1) Understanding the behavior of the positron and antiprotons plasmas from which the antihydrogen is synthesized; and (2) Understanding the atomic processes by which positrons and antiprotons recombine. Recombination lies on the boundary between atomic and plasma physics, and cannot be studied properly without employing tools from both fields. The proposed collaborative research campaign will address both of these challenges. The collaboration members have unique experience in the relevant fields of experimental and theoretical non-neutral plasma physics, numerical modeling, nonlinear dynamics and atomic physics. This expertise is not found elsewhere amongst antihydrogen researchers. The collaboration members have strong ties already, and seek to formalize them with this proposal. Three of the four PIs are members of the ALPHA collaboration, an international collaboration formed by most …

This document highlights the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's investments and impacts in the state of Colorado.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and GrafTech International have collaborated to develop and demonstrate the performance of high temperature thermal insulation prototypes made from lignin-based carbon fibers. This project will potentially lead to the first commercial application of lignin-based carbon fibers (LBCF). The goal of the commercial application is to replace expensive, Chinese-sourced isotropic pitch carbon fibers with lower cost carbon fibers made from a domestically sourced, bio-derived (renewable) feedstock. LBCF can help recapture jobs that were previously exported to China while resolving a supply chain vulnerability and reducing the production cost for GrafTech s high temperature thermal insulation. The performance of the LBCF prototypes was measured and found to be comparable to that of the current commercial product. During production of the insulation prototypes, ORNL and GrafTech demonstrated lignin compounding/pelletization, fiber production, heat treatment, and compositing at scales far surpassing those previously demonstrated in LBCF R&D or production. A plan was developed for the commercialization of LBCF thermal insulation, with key milestones including qualification of multiple scalable lignin sources in 2013, tons-scale production and field testing by customers in 2014, and product launch as soon thereafter as production capabilities can be constructed and commissioned.

This document summarizes the results from a level 3 milestone study within the CASL VUQ effort. We compare the adjoint-based a posteriori error estimation approach with a recent variant of a data-centric verification technique. We provide a brief overview of each technique and then we discuss their relative advantages and disadvantages. We use Drekar::CFD to produce numerical results for steady-state Navier Stokes and SARANS approximations. 3

This paper describes 2-D imaging measurements of plasma turbulence made in the scrape-off layer of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak simultaneously at two different poloidal locations, one near the outer midplane and the other near the divertor X-point region. These images were made with radial and poloidal resolution using two gas puff imaging (GPI) diagnostics, which were not directly connected along a B field line. The turbulence correlation structure has a significantly different tilt angle with respect to the local flux surfaces for the midplane and X-regions, and a slightly different ellipticity and size. The time-averaged turbulence velocities can be different in the midplane and Xregions, even within the same flux surface in the same shot, and in most cases the fluctuations in poloidal velocity in these two regions were not correlated. These structures are partially consistent with a magnetic flux tube mapping model, and the velocities are compared with various poloidal flow models.

To explore ways to reduce customer barriers and increase home retrofit completions, several different existing home retrofit models have been implemented in the state of Wisconsin. This study compared these programs' performance in terms of savings per home and program cost per home to assess the relative cost-effectiveness of each program design. However, given the many variations in these different programs, it is difficult to establish a fair comparison based on only a small number of metrics. Therefore, the overall purpose of the study is to document these programs' performance in a case study approach to look at general patterns of these metrics and other variables within the context of each program. This information can be used by energy efficiency program administrators and implementers to inform home retrofit program design. Six different program designs offered in Wisconsin for single-family energy efficiency improvements were included in the study. For each program, the research team provided information about the programs' approach and goals, characteristics, achievements and performance. The program models were then compared with performance results -- program cost and energy savings -- to help understand the overall strengths and weaknesses or challenges of each model.