Benchmarking Utility Clean Energy Deployment: 2014

This report assembles data from more than 10 sources, including state Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) annual reports, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 10-K filings and Public Utility Commission reports, to show how 32 of the largest U.S. investor-owned electric utility holding companies stack up on renewable energy and energy efficiency

Structural Analysis of the Mitten Park Reverse Fault and Related Deformation in Dinosaur National Monument, Northwestern Colorado and Northeastern Utah

An integrated field and structural analysis of the Mitten Park fault-fold structure, northwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah, examines its structural origin. The Mitten Park structure is a modified fault-propagation-fold. This new model incorporates faulting, folding, and fracturing in one deformational event to produce the Mitten Park fault and associated monocline. The largest structure in the study area is the Mitten Park fault and associated monocline. The Mitten Park fault has approximately 127 meters (415 feet) of net slip, strikes S28°W and dips 55°WNW. In the footwall, net shortening was accommodated by reverse and normal faulting. Faulting was the result of northwest-southeast directed shortening. Reverse faulting accommodated the majority of the fault-related strain along the fault\u27s trace and resulted in net shortening. However, normal faults in the overturned limb of the footwall of the Mitten Park fault also accommodated northwest-southeast directed shortening. Folds in the study area are asymmetrical and statistically cylindrical in both the footwall and the hanging wall. Folding facilitates northwest-southeast directed shortening. There is a direct correlation between changes in the strike and dip of the fault plane and changes in the trend and plunge of fold axis in the footwall. Fracture orientations show no significant variation in geometry from hanging wall to footwall. Fracture intensity increases with proximity to the Mitten Park fault. Balanced cross sections of the Mitten Park area use a modified fault-propagation- fold model and are also constrained by field observations and interlimb angles of folds. Total shortening in the study area is 13.5% and was accommodated by the hanging wall, the footwall, and the Mitten Park fault. The hanging wall accommodated 70.8% of total shortening, the footwall accommodated 14.9% of total shortening, and the Mitten Park fault accommodated 14.3% of total shortening. The significant amount of strain in the footwall of the fault is different from classical models of fault-propagation-folds, which depict a rigid undeformed footwall

A New Application of the Channel Packet Method for Low Energy 1-D Elastic Scattering

An algorithm is presented which uses the channel packet method (CPM) to simulate low-energy, wave-packet propagation and compute S-matrix elements. A four-by-four matrix containing the momentum, expansion coefficients of the reactants and products is introduced to account for initial and final states having both positive and negative momentum. The approach does not consider scattering from one side or the other, rather it considers both incoming and outgoing wave packets from the left and right simultaneously. Therefore, during one simulation all four S-matrix elements, and elements, S+k,-K, S-k, +k, S+k, +k and S-k,-k are computed. Numerical simulations of the algorithm are carried out on a conventional desktop computer and compared to the analytic solution of the transmission and reflection functions for a square well. The simulated results agree very well with the known solution up until very low energies, after which the results begin to oscillate about the theoretical values. The results indicate that if the correct Moller states are used the algorithm will produce the correct S-matrix elements across the entire energy range

A theoretical and experimental analysis of SBS suppression through modification of amplifier seed

Theoretical and experimental investigations of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) are conducted in Yb-doped fiber amplifiers when the amplifier is simultaneously seeded with multiple distinct frequencies or with a phase modulated signal. To this end, detailed models of the SBS process are developed consisting of both a steady-state approach described mathematically by a coupled set of ordinary differential equations and also transient effects described by a coupled set of partial differential equations. For the multi-frequency seeded case, the equations are solved in the steady-state limit and include the effects of four-wave mixing (FWM), intrinsic and external thermal gradients, and laser gain. In one configuration of the multi-seeded case, the signals are separated at twice the acoustic frequency of the fiber medium in order to create nonlinear Brillouin gain coupling between the seeds and Stokes signals, which suppresses the SBS process in the highest frequency seed. The concept is theoretically investigated for the two and three seeded cases. It is shown that for this scheme, FWM becomes quite significant making this concept unlikely in a practical application requiring single-frequency output. Alternatively, a novel concept is developed to suppress SBS in fiber amplifiers that relies on laser gain competition among multiple seeds to create both a favorable thermal gradient and a reduced effective length for the SBS process. In one configuration, the amplifier is simultaneously seeded with a broadband (Δ ) and single-frequency Δ seed. In this case, several experiments are performed to validate the theoretical predictions with experiments leading to a 203 W polarization maintaining (PM), co-pumped monolithic fiber amplifier demonstration. To the best of our knowledge, this output power is the highest reported in the literature to date for such an amplifier. A time-dependent model of the SBS process initiated from random thermal noise is also developed to study SBS suppression under phase modulated pump conditions. The SBS suppression is characterized for several phase modulation schemes. It is found that the SBS suppression for a white-noise phase modulation (WNS) which broadens the pump spectrum, depends significantly on the length of fiber and only in the long fiber limit follows the often quoted threshold enhancement formula of where , and describe the SBS threshold of the single-frequency case, the effective linewidth of the pump, and the spontaneous Brillouin linewidth respectively. In addition, the SBS threshold is characterized as a function of modulation amplitude and frequency for a single-sinusoidal phase modulation scheme

Cyber-Attack Drone Payload Development and Geolocation via Directional Antennae

The increasing capabilities of commercial drones have led to blossoming drone usage in private sector industries ranging from agriculture to mining to cinema. Commercial drones have made amazing improvements in flight time, flight distance, and payload weight. These same features also offer a unique and unprecedented commodity for wireless hackers -- the ability to gain ‘physical’ proximity to a target without personally having to be anywhere near it. This capability is called Remote Physical Proximity (RPP). By their nature, wireless devices are largely susceptible to sniffing and injection attacks, but only if the attacker can interact with the device via physical proximity. A properly outfitted drone can increase the attack surface with RPP (adding a range of over 7 km using off-the-shelf drones), allowing full interactivity with wireless targets while the attacker can remain distant and hidden. Combined with the novel approach of using a directional antenna, these drones could also provide the means to collect targeted geolocation information of wireless devices from long distances passively, which is of significant value from an offensive cyberwarfare standpoint. This research develops skypie, a software and hardware framework designed for performing remote, directional drone-based collections. The prototype is inexpensive, lightweight, and totally independent of drone architecture, meaning it can be strapped to most medium to large commercial drones. The prototype effectively simulates the type of device that could be built by a motivated threat actor, and the development process evaluates strengths and shortcoming posed by these devices. This research also experimentally evaluates the ability of a drone-based attack system to track its targets by passively sniffing Wi-Fi signals from distances of 300 and 600 meters using a directional antenna. Additionally, it identifies collection techniques and processing algorithms for minimizing geolocation errors. Results show geolocation via 802.11 emissions (Wi-Fi) using a portable directional antenna is possible, but difficult to achieve the accuracy that GPS delivers (errors less than 5 m with 95% confidence). This research shows that geolocation predictions of a target cell phone acting as a Wi-Fi access point in a field from 300 m away is accurate within 70.1 m from 300 m away and within 76 meters from 600 m away. Three of the four main tests exceed the hypothesized geolocation error of 15% of the sensor-to-target distance, with tests 300 m away averaging 25.5% and tests 600 m away averaging at 34%. Improvements in bearing prediction are needed to reduce error to more tolerable quantities, and this thesis discusses several recommendations to do so. This research ultimately assists in developing operational drone-borne cyber-attack and reconnaissance capabilities, identifying limitations, and enlightening the public of countermeasures to mitigate the privacy threats posed by the inevitable rise of the cyber-attack drone

Narrow-escape-time problem: the imperfect trapping case

We present a master equation approach to the \emph{narrow escape time} (NET) problem, i.e. the time needed for a particle contained in a confining domain with a single narrow opening, to exit the domain for the first time. We introduce a finite transition probability, $\nu$, at the narrow escape window allowing the study of the imperfect trapping case. Ranging from 0 to $\infty$, $\nu$ allowed the study of both extremes of the trapping process: that of a highly deficient capture, and situations where escape is certain ("perfect trapping" case). We have obtained analytic results for the basic quantity studied in the NET problem, the \emph{mean escape time} (MET), and we have studied its dependence in terms of the transition (desorption) probability over (from) the surface boundary, the confining domain dimensions, and the finite transition probability at the escape window. Particularly we show that the existence of a global minimum in the NET depends on the `imperfection' of the trapping process. In addition to our analytical approach, we have implemented Monte Carlo simulations, finding excellent agreement between the theoretical results and simulations.Comment: 9 page