For years, farmers in the United States have looked with envy on their European counterparts ability to profitably farm the wind through ownership of distributed, utility-scale wind projects. Only within the past few years, however, has farmer- or community-owned windpower development become a reality in the United States. The primary hurdle to this type of development in the United States has been devising and implementing suitable business and legal structures that enable such projects to take advantage of tax-based federal incentives for windpower. This article discusses the limitations of such incentives in supporting farmer- or community-owned wind projects, describes four ownership structures that potentially overcome such limitations, and finally conducts comparative financial analysis on those four structures, using as an example a hypothetical 1.5 MW farmer-owned project located in the state of Oregon. We find that material differences in the competitiveness of each structure do exist, but that choosing the best structure for a given project will largely depend on the conditions at hand; e.g., the ability of the farmer(s) to utilize tax credits, preference for individual versus cooperative ownership, and the state and utility service territory in which the project will be located.

The purpose of this note is to describe an algorithm resulting from the uniting of two ideas introduced and applied elsewhere. For many problems, AMG has always been difficult due to complexities whose natures are difficult to discern from the entries of matrix A alone. Element-based interpolation has been shown to be an effective method for some of these problems, but it requires access to the element matrices on all levels. One way to obtain these has been to perform element agglomeration to form coarse elements, but in complicated situations defining the coarse degrees of freedom (dofs) is not easy. The spectral approach to coarse dof selection is very attractive due to its elegance and simplicity. The algorithm presented here combines the robustness of element interpolation, the ease of coarsening by element agglomeration, and the simplicity of defining coarse dofs through the spectral approach. As demonstrated in the numerical results, the method does yield a reasonable solver for the problems described. It can, however, be an expensive method due to the number and cost of the local, small dense linear algebra problems; making it a generally competitive method remains an area for further research.

High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) applications require high line charge density ion beams. An efficient method to obtain this type of beams is to extract a long pulse, high current beam from a gun at high energy, and let the beam pass through a decelerating field to compress it. The low energy beam-bunch is loaded into a solenoid and matched to a Brillouin flow. The Brillouin equilibrium is independent of the energy if the relationship between the beam size (a), solenoid magnetic field strength (B) and line charge density is such that (Ba){sup 2} is proportional to the line charge density. Thus it is possible to accelerate a matched beam at constant line charge density. An experiment, NDCX-1c is being designed to test the feasibility of this type of injectors, where we will extract a 1 microsecond, 100 mA, potassium beam at 160 keV, decelerate it to 55 keV (density {approx}0.2 {micro}C/m), and load it into a 2.5 T solenoid where it will be accelerated to 100-150 keV (head to tail) at constant line charge density. The head-to-tail velocity tilt can be used to increase bunch compression and to control longitudinal beam expansion. We will present the physics design and …

Sediments found in waterways around the world may contain toxic compounds of anthropogeilic origin that can harm the environment and human health. As a result, it is often necessary to remove them and find disposal methods that are environmentally and economically acceptable. Here, we report on results obtained in an experimental program to characterize the nature of the sediment contamination. The objective was to gain a better understanding of the properties of the sediments to develop better methods for understanding the fate and transport of the contaminants and for improving methods for their removal from the sediments. Our investigations made use of x-ray facilities at the Brookhaven National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) at Grenoble, France. The experiments included: measurements of the microstructure of the sediments using computed microtomography, x-ray absorption, and fluorescence microscopy with resolutions as low as 0.2 micrometers to obtain information on the relationships of organic and mineral components of the sediments and on the distribution of contaminants on the surfaces of the sediment grains, investigation of functional groups of chemical compounds using x-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron probe …

Over the past ten years, methods have been developed to construct discrete nanostructures using nanocrystals and biomolecules. While these frequently consist of gold nanocrystals and DNA, semiconductor nanocrystals as well as antibodies and enzymes have also been used. One example of discrete nanostructures is dimers of gold nanocrystals linked together with complementary DNA. This type of nanostructure is also known as a nanocrystal molecule. Discrete nanostructures of this kind have a number of potential applications, from highly parallel self-assembly of electronics components and rapid read-out of DNA computations to biological imaging and a variety of bioassays. My research focused in three main areas. The first area, the refinement of electrophoresis as a purification and characterization method, included application of agarose gel electrophoresis to the purification of discrete gold nanocrystal/DNA conjugates and nanocrystal molecules, as well as development of a more detailed understanding of the hydrodynamic behavior of these materials in gels. The second area, the development of methods for quantitative analysis of transmission electron microscope data, used computer programs written to find pair correlations as well as higher order correlations. With these programs, it is possible to reliably locate and measure nanocrystal molecules in TEM images. The final area of …

This is a final summary report of the research conducted under DE-FG03-01ER45946, which was a research program using metal nanostructures to examine quantum coherence of electrons in normal and ferromagnetic metals. This program was the PI's first federal research grant, and by augmenting with other funds (Packard Foundation), this grant supported two graduate students during its duration. In normal metal nanostructures, quantum coherence was assessed by two independent techniques: weak localization magnetoresistance, and time-dependent universal conductance fluctuations (TDUCF noise). This work found that, in AuPd nanowires, the coherence information inferred from these two techniques were quantitatively consistent, even in the presence of magnetic impurity and phonon scattering. This confirmed theoretical expectations. However, in Ag and Au wires, the two techniques disagree, with noise measurements indicating a lower coherence length at low temperatures than weak localization. We have a candidate explanation for this, and are finishing these experiments. This work shows that subtleties remain in our understanding of coherence processes even in normal metals, particularly those involving the tunneling two-level systems that produce low frequency noise; this has relevance for quantum information processing implementations using metal devices. We have also studied time-dependent universal conductance fluctuations in ferromagnetic metals for the first …

The rf R&D program for high-gradient, low frequency cavities to be used in muon cooling systems is underway in the Fermilab MUCOOL Test Area. Cavities at 805 and 201 MHz are used for tests of conditioning techniques, surface modification and breakdown studies. This work has the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) as its immediate goal and efficient muon cooling systems for neutrino sources and muon colliders as the long term goal. We study breakdown and dark current production under a variety of conditions.

Within the scope of conceptual research and development (R&D) activities in support of the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) facility, high priority is given to the development of high-power fragmentation beam dumps. A pre-study was made of a static water-cooled Cu beam dump that can meet requirements for a 400 MeV/u uranium beam. The issue of beam sputtering was addressed and found to be insignificant. Preliminary radiation transport simulations show significant damage (in displacements per atom, DPA) in the vicinity of the Bragg peak of the uranium ions. Experimental data show that defects in Cu following neutron or high-energy particle irradiation tend to saturate at doses between 1 and 5 DPA, and this saturation in defect density also results in saturation of mechanical property degradation. However, effects of swift heavy ion irradiation and the production of gaseous and solid transmutant elements still need to be addressed. Initial calculations indicate that He concentrations on the order of 400 appm are produced in the beam dump after several weeks of continuous operation and He embrittlement may be a concern. Recommendations are made for further investigation of Cu irradiation effects for RIA-relevant conditions.

We describe the fabrication and assembly of the first prototype 201. 25 MHz copper cavity for the muon ionization cooling experiment (MICE). This cavity was developed by the US MUCOOL collaboration and will be tested in the new MUCOOL Test Area at Fermilab. We outline the component and subassembly fabrication steps and the various metal forming and joining methods used to produce the final cavity shape. These include spinning, brazing, TIG welding, electron beam welding, electron beam annealing and deep drawing. Some of the methods developed for this cavity are novel and offer significant cost savings over conventional methods.

A minienvironment is a localized environment created by an enclosure to isolate a product or process from the surrounding environment. Minienvironments have been gaining popularity to provide effective containment for critical contamination control. The use of minienvironments can provide several orders of magnitude improvement in particle cleanliness levels, while energy intensity may be shifted from the conventional cleanroom systems to the minienvironments that enclose the specific process. The purpose of this paper is to study the energy performance of a minienvironment air system in a ballroom setting, to quantify power density of such a system, and to identify areas for energy savings from high-performance minienvironments.