Defining Research and Development Needs at the Energy-Water Nexus

Currently, electric power generation is one of largest water withdrawal and use sectors in the U.S. On the other hand, water distribution, treatment, and transmission is one of the largest energy use sectors. As future demands for energy and water continue to increase, competition for water between the energy, domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors, could significantly impact the reliability and security of future energy production and electric power generation. To address these growing concerns, Congress directed the Department of Energy (DOE) to assess current and emerging national issues associated with the interdependencies between energy and water. As part of these efforts, DOE initiated the development a National Energy-Water Science and Technology Roadmap. The purpose of the Roadmap is to establish a longrange research, development, and demonstration program to support the efficient use of water and energy resources and sustainable and cost-effective future energy production and electric power generation in the U.S. To support these efforts, representatives from the DOE national laboratories, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and the Utton Transboundary Resources Center of the University of New Mexico School of Law, helped assess emerging energy-water interdependencies and support the Roadmap efforts. This paper provides a short overview of some of the emerging energy-water issues and summarizes the major Roadmap efforts to assess regional and national technical issues and needs associated with the interdependencies of energy and water. The Roadmap process was needs driven and a major element was the use of three needs assessment workshops – East, Central and West Regions - to review regional water and energy use trends and identify emerging major energy and water needs and issues. The workshops were held from November 2005 through January 2006 and included regional and national energy and water experts, representatives from national, state, tribal, and local governments, universities, private industry, and non-government organizations to solicit input on suggested improvements or changes in energy and water technology application, natural resource management, and natural resource use policies that could be implemented to ensure future energy supplies are reliable, secure, and sustainable

Why Do Electricity Policy and Competitive Markets Fail to Use Advanced PV Systems to Improve Distribution Power Quality?

The increasing pressure for network operators to meet distribution network power quality standards with increasing peak loads, renewable energy targets, and advances in automated distributed power electronics and communications is forcing policy-makers to understand new means to distribute costs and benefits within electricity markets. Discussions surrounding how distributed generation (DG) exhibits active voltage regulation and power factor/reactive power control and other power quality capabilities are complicated by uncertainties of baseline local distribution network power quality and to whom and how costs and benefits of improved electricity infrastructure will be allocated. DG providing ancillary services that dynamically respond to the network characteristics could lead to major network improvements. With proper market structures renewable energy systems could greatly improve power quality on distribution systems with nearly no additional cost to the grid operators. Renewable DG does have variability challenges, though this issue can be overcome with energy storage, forecasting, and advanced inverter functionality. This paper presents real data from a large-scale grid-connected PV array with large-scale storage and explores effective mitigation measures for PV system variability. We discuss useful inverter technical knowledge for policy-makers to mitigate ongoing inflation of electricity network tariff components by new DG interconnection requirements or electricity markets which value power quality and control

Workshop Report: Developing a Research Agenda for the Energy Water Nexus

The energy water nexus has attracted public scrutiny because of the concerns about their interdependence and the possibility for cascading vulnerabilities from one system to the other. There are trends toward more water-­‐intensive energy (such as biofuels , unconventional oil and gas production, and regulations driving more water consumption for thermoelectric power production ) and more energy-­‐intensive water (such as desalination, or deeper ground water pumping and production). In addition demographic trends of population and economic growth will likely drive up total and per capita water and energy demand, and due to climate change related distortions of the hydrologic cycle, it is expected that the existing interdependencies will be come even more of a concern. Therefore, developing a research agenda and strategy to mitigate potential vulnerabilities and to meet economic and environmental targets for efficiently using energy and water would be very worthwhile. To address these concerns, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a workshop on June 10-­‐11, 2013 in Arlington, VA (at NSF headquarters) to bring together technical, academic, and industry experts from across the country to help develop such a research agenda. The workshop was sponsored by NSF Grant Number CBET 1341032 from the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems. Supporting programs were: Thermal Transport Processes, Environmental Sustainability, and Environmental Engineering.Center for Research in Water Resource

National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation

Practical metropolitan-scale positioning for gsm phones

Abstract. This paper examines the positioning accuracy of a GSM beaconbased location system in a metropolitan environment. We explore five factors effecting positioning accuracy: location algorithm choice, scan set size, simultaneous use of cells from different providers, training and testing on different devices, and calibration data density. We collected a 208-hour, 4350Km driving trace of three different GSM networks covering the Seattle metropolitan area. We show a median error of 94m in downtown and 196m in residential areas using a single GSM network and the best algorithm for each area. Estimating location using multiple providers ’ cells reduces median error to 65-134 meters and 95 % error to 163m in the downtown area, which meets the accuracy requirements for E911. We also show that a small 60-hour calibration drive is sufficient for enabling a metropolitan area similar to Seattle.