Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem As California approaches its goal of 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030 (Brown, Executive Order B-48-18), there is an increasing need to find alternative applications for the vehicle batteries after they have reached the end-of-life in the vehicle application. However, the cost-effectiveness of reusing second-life EV batteries is hindered by lengthy and costly processes of logistics and repurposing, compromised system performance, and long-term safety and reliability concerns.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem In 2018, California signed into law Senate Xxxx 100 (SB-100), committing to 100% clean energy by 2045. Achieving the goals of SB-100 requires full decarbonization of the building stock. Further, following the turn of the new year, California instituted the 2020 solar mandate, requiring new residential homes to be equipped with photovoltaic systems, subsequently pressuring the grid to mature to become a flexible asset. To accommodate these ambitious energy goals means transformative improvements are necessary to the statewide Title 24 (T24) building code to assist zero net electric energy construction techniques.
Problem/ Solution Statement. 1 Please see subtask 1.3 in Part III of the Scope of Work (General Project Tasks) for a description of Critical Project Review (CPR) Meetings. Problem Disadvantaged communities, such as Oak View, tend to suffer disproportionally to environmental impacts of energy conversion (e.g., poor air quality). Technologies that can combat poor air quality also have the potential to, when designed properly, improve grid performance, and improve resiliency through the creation of a microgrid. Currently, no other organization is examining how to design a microgrid that improves air quality, while also improving grid reliability and resiliency. In addition, there is a dearth of design methods that simultaneously consider microgrid technologies, electrification, and building energy efficiency retrofits for improving both air quality and grid impact at a reasonable cost.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem A significant step towards realizing the State of California’s goal of decarbonization of energy by 2045 is to strategically decommission natural gas infrastructure. Many cities in California have already adopted building codes that limit the utilization of natural gas in new developments. However, natural gas transmission and distribution lines presently provide service to more than 11 million meters and span more than 100,000 miles. The process of decommissioning must be safe, intentional, environmentally just, and cost-effective. At present there is no strategic integrated decision-making tool that balances the concerns of the state’s IOUs, cities and municipalities, community stakeholder groups, developers, regulators, and technology vendors. Furthermore, quantitative tools need to be developed for collecting, analyzing, and integrating the data required by decision-makers to actualize this energy transition efficiently, effectively, and equitably. Such an integrated decision-making tool will need to be inherently inter- disciplinary and must possess the ability to combine heterogeneous data types and sources, spanning technological, engineering, financial and social factors. Some of the challenges currently facing decision makers include: • Scope, diversity, and security requirements of data and the need for data processing, • Necessity to engage subject matter experts (SMEs) across natural gas, grid services, and community stakeholders, • Lack of a quantitative, analytic approach for integrating disparate data sets and sources, • Absence of summary metrics that descriptively and evocatively capture total risks and benefits related to economic, environmental, health, safety and equity impacts.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem As a result of increased wildfire intensity and frequency, the State of California, and California Energy Commission (CEC) have identified the need to broaden and improve emergency response to support the safety and health of affected communities. Critically, this includes electrical utility outages caused by either wildfire damage or preemptive de-energization by electrical utilities. Mobile Renewable Backup Generation Systems (MORBUGs) are an innovative technical solution to support electrical outages, provide emission reduction benefits during emergency and non- emergency events, and increase the resilience of California’s electrical generation and distribution grid to the harmful effects of climate change and extreme weather events.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem As more electric vehicles (EVs) are purchased, EV fast charging (EVFC) stations will be built to meet demand, further exacerbating the issues of grid connectivity, stability, and consumer costs. Managed charging without the support of energy storage dedicated to EV charging will not address the major cost barriers for public and workplace charging. Energy storage has not yet been widely adopted for the EVFC market due to costs, lifetime, and performance issues of currently available Li-Ion technology. EVFC stations need a battery technology that has long cycle life of at least 5 years under strenuous daily charge and discharge cycling. Thus a long lifetime, high rate of discharge relative to capacity (C-rate), and temperature resilient battery is needed. This type of technology has not been available to the market until now.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem Blending pipeline gas with hydrogen is still in the early stages of development and use. Research is required to evaluate hydrogen compatibility with pipeline materials, ensure system safety and integrity of the gas grid and hydrogen transport.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem By a large margin, the highest cost of next-generation, high-efficiency SiC-on-SiC power electronics is the cost of the conductive SiC material. The conductive SiC wafer, which is the base substrate that the individual power electronics are fabricated from, currently accounts for roughly 50% of the device end cost. Due to the high technical complexity associated with developing a process to replace the costly, traditional methods used in state-of-the-art wafer manufacturing, there have been no substantial, successful technological advances to reduce this wafer cost and enable large scale adoption of these next-generation power electronics. Currently, SiC power electronics cost roughly 3x traditional silicon electronics in large part due to the inefficient wire saw method for wafering SiC boules which wastes nearly half of the mass of the original workpiece as irrecoverable saw dust, damages the material as it cuts requiring substantial efforts to remove the defect-ridden SiC and furthermore takes many hours to slice while continuously using expensive consumables.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem California finds itself in a historic housing crisis, and climate crisis, both of which are disproportionately impacting low-income residents. The building industry lacks experience with all-electric, low-income residential construction needed for zero carbon strategies. The industry lacks experience with the grid-integrated distributed energy systems needed to enable widespread electrification without costly infrastructure upgrades. Technologies such as centralized heat pump water heating systems, with or without sewer heat recovery, are a promising solution, but have not seen widespread adoption. Container construction promises to offer significant cost savings but has not seen widespread adoption. Lack of experience with these technologies tends to result in lower adoption rates. Lack of experience also forces general contractors to inflate costs in order to mitigate the risk of the unknown.
Problem/ Solution Statement. Problem California is experiencing unprecedented levels of tree die-off. Factors that are contributing to the die-off include several consecutive years of drought, warmer temperatures, and an infestation of bark beetles. The U.S. Forest Service estimated in 2016 that there were more than 102 million dead trees over 7.7 million acres in California, the majority of which are located in the central and southern Sierra Nevada.2 The dead tree population in California greatly exceeds the level expected for healthy forests, and this overabundance of forest fuel increases the risk of catastrophic wildfires that threaten property and lives. Open pile burning is the conventional approach for treating dead trees. However, open pile burning creates unwanted air pollution and generates no useful output from the biomass resource. An alternative to open pile burning is to utilize a bioenergy facility that generates electricity3 using dead trees as a fuel source. There is a substantial shortage, however, of existing bioenergy facilities that can address the tree mortality crisis in California.
