Electricity Generation and Delivery

Inlyte Energy will engineer robust cyclability of the sodium metal halide (NaMx) battery’s iron chemistry for next-generation grid storage. The NaMx iron chemistry’s raw storage materials are table salt and iron, two of Earth’s most abundant and low-cost materials. The NaMx battery displays excellent safety, high efficiency, and a long life. Limited research on the sodium/iron chloride battery chemistry has shown variable cycling performance, the number of charge/discharge cycles it can complete before losing performance.

VEIR aims to enable the cost-effective transfer of bulk electric power (up to 400 MW) at a single voltage (10 kV) from generation to grid using high temperature superconducting (HTS) overhead and underground power lines. The team proposes to integrate VEIR’s existing distributed, evaporative liquid nitrogen cooling architecture for HTS lines with breakthroughs in two key areas (1) high ampacity (maximum current) low-loss conductors and (2) ultra-low heat leak insulation systems.

Siemens and its partners will develop innovative protection schemes consisting of fundamentally new control and protection (C&P) functions for inverter-dominated renewable systems. These new functions do not represent simple evolution of prior engineering practices when analyzing and optimizing system-level protection schemes. Rather, new Protection Inverter Co-Design (PICo-Design) tools will be developed that automatically analyze and optimize C&P functions to achieve higher protection reliability.

North Carolina State University (NC State) will radically change how future microgrids are designed by developing a suite of microgrid control/coordination co-design tools capable of performing systematic design of an optimized microgrid, given a set of design objectives and performance constraints.

The Makai Ocean Engineering team will develop novel mooring and anchoring methods to reduce the costs of offshore renewable energy. Makai will enable grid-scale FOWT and MHK systems to be deployed in areas that would otherwise be inaccessible or too expensive with current mooring and anchoring technologies. At the center of this program is Makai’s Remote Anchoring and MicroPiling (RAMP) system, which can remotely install micropiles on the seafloor.

The University of Michigan and Southwest Research Institute will use state-of-the-art methods to eliminate methane emissions from oil and gas (O&G) flares, vents, and other equipment. The approach will quantitatively characterize high- and low-volume methane sources at an actual O&G field site and demonstrate Systems of Advanced Burners for Reduction of Emissions (SABRE) technology for high-efficiency (> 99.5%) methane conversion of the high- and low-volume sources of methane. The SABRE approach leverages site resources and customizes flare technology to local equipment needs.

Texas Tech will develop boron nitride (BN) fast neutron detectors (FND) for energies up to tens of mega-electron volts based on their recent development of hexagonal BN semiconductor thermal neutron detectors with record efficiencies of >59%. BN FNDs have unique advantages, including compact size, high gamma rejection ratio, low voltage operation, and low fabrication and maintenance costs. These neutron detectors can operate in high temperatures and harsh environments and detect thermal and fast neutrons simultaneously.

Fervo Energy has developed proprietary geothermal technology—FervoFlex™—capable of delivering in-reservoir energy storage and dispatchable generation attributes. At the same time, the team will develop a fiber optics-based diagnostic platform to monitor and optimize dynamic subsurface processes that currently pose major barriers to flexibly operating geothermal facilities. Fervo’s horizontal well design connects subsurface wells with a set of hydraulically conductive fractures surrounded by impermeable rock.

Polymath Research will enable the use of longer-wavelength lasers for IFE. This project seeks to control LPI using pulses composed of Spike Trains of Uneven duration and Delay (STUD), a sequence of precisely timed laser pulses designed to disrupt LPI growth and memory build up in the plasma due to persistent self-organization of the plasma undergoing continuous and undisrupted laser energy deposition.

Using a computationally-guided approach, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed carbide strengthened alloys in small laboratory-scale trials that show good resistance to corrosion by fluorides but with significantly improved strength and/or creep rupture life at temperatures up to 850°C compared with Hastelloy® N.