ORNL researchers modeled how hurricane cloud cover would affect solar energy generation as a storm followed 10 possible trajectories over the Caribbean and Southern U.S.
The 2023 top science achievements from HFIR and SNS feature a broad range of materials research published in high impact journals such as Nature and Advanced Materials.
Lee's paper at the August conference in Bellevue, Washington, combined weather and power outage data for three states – Texas, Michigan and Hawaii – and used a machine learning model to predict how extreme weather such as thunderstorms, floods and tornadoes would affect local power grids and to estimate the risk for outages. The paper relied on data from the National Weather Service and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environment for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information, or EAGLE-I, database.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are supporting the grid by improving its smallest building blocks: power modules that act as digital switches.