National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Energy Management

The ability to accurately predict risk and vulnerability to both natural and human influences on energy demand will improve decision making in energy use and conservation planning, trading and transmission infrastructure building and the use of renewable and non-renewable resources needed to generate energy.

Our nation is dependent on stable and reliable sources of energy to meet demand. Traditionally, much of this demand has been met by burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas, but in recent years, concerns have arisen about the environmental impacts of fossil fuel emissions, and alternative sources of fuel have been explored. Nuclear energy has been put forth as a cleaner alternative and used successfully in a few places, but this source is not without its own set of environmental concerns. Other alternatives to fossil fuels are now emerging, including renewable energy technologies (RETs) like solar energy and wind power, and biomass fuels such as corn-based ethanol and other species under development. These alternative fuel sources can help reduce mankind's dependence on fossil fuels and, at the same time, may help to improve our quality of air and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

However, for RETs to obtain their fullest potential, planners require very detailed climatic data. A traditional weather data report, consisting of air temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind, is no longer sufficient. Planners need to know precise details about the makeup of the incoming solar radiation and the actual temperature at the surface. Not only must the information be accurate and timely, it is most helpful if it can be collected on a global scale. To date, the energy sector has based their decisions on where to locate energy producing technology, such as RETs, on historical climatic information only--the idea being that the past conditions give some idea of how the location will fare in the future. However, it is much more desirable to know how the conditions at a chosen location are likely to vary and change with time. NASA and its partners at the Department of Energy (DoE), the DoE's National Energy Management Laboratory (NREL), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), are working to respond to these needs.

NREL has developed a decision support system (DSS) to help policy makers tackle these difficult questions. The simulation takes all of the environmental parameters provided by models run by NASA and other partners as input and outputs energy forecasts that can be used to plan for the optimal location of a new solar energy grid, optimal positioning of a new building to take advantage of incoming solar radiation, or other types of information related to energy resource planning. A complementary DSS called RETScreen, developed by Natural Resources Canada, is designed to reduce the cost of renewable energy pre-feasibility studies; and to better analyze the technical and financial viability of possible projects.

NASA makes significant contributions in providing input for these decision making tools. A major component of NASA Earth science is dedicated to understanding the Earth's energy and hydrological cycles on a global scale using remote sensing and modeling. The primary instrument used for these studies is Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) sensor (which flies on both Terra and Aqua). In addition to CERES, the Aqua mission carries an entire sensor package dedicated to studying water in the Earth/atmosphere system, and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) contributes extensive information on precipitation. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, planned for later this decade, will utilize a constellation of satellites to provide even more comprehensive information on global precipitation patterns than TRMM. Two recently-launched missions are also making important contributions to improved energy forecasting. CloudSAT collects a comprehensive inventory of clouds and studies their impacts on climate in unprecedented detail. CALIPSO is studying the role that aerosols play in regulating climate. Better understanding of the role clouds and aerosols play in regulating climate will have profound implications for energy forecasting efforts. With all of its current and future missions, NASA is able to collect data on important parameters for energy forecasting over the entire globe. This information can supplement existing surface measurement networks and data information products, providing data where none are available.

As more data from increasingly sophisticated NASA missions become available, weather and climate forecasting capabilities are expected to increase quite dramatically from current 1-2 day forecasts to 1-2 year forecasts within a decade, with a corresponding improvement in energy forecasts. This will result in increased capability to plan for and respond to the ever-increasing energy demands of our society.