KY Space Grant GF-22-030: Spatio-temporal Planning of Sustainable Future Electric Power System and Synergistic Transportation Infrastructure for Kentucky Employing Green Hydrogen and NASA Technologies

US national and regional plans are under development by government agencies, research organizations and the utility sector for largely increased penetration of renewable energy generation and accelerated reduction of carbon emissions. Regions such as Kentucky, which experience a relatively large variation of seasonal climate, would require substantial energy storage to bridge the gap in between the renewable energy generation and electric load. Green hydrogen for generation with dual-fuel capable turbines in electric power plants and for distributed use, including airplane and terrestrial transportation systems, may provide an alternative. The proposed research will systematically study how NASA technologies may be employed to contribute to the future infrastructure. New methods for multi-year, high-temporal resolution, and regionally aggregated power generation economic dispatch considering gradual deployment of solar PV and wind turbines will be developed based on novel computational intelligence methods with differential evolution algorithms. The study will utilize NASA weather big data and large-scale high-performance computing (HPC). The unmet electric power load demand will be quantified using advanced AI machine learning LSTM-based techniques, and then optimization will be conducted to establish a preferred combination of batteries and hydrogen-fueled turbine generation facilities. A study of the spatio-temporal synergies between the use of hydrogen for electric power generation, airplane and terrestrial transportation will be conducted. This will include an example for a very large airport in Kentucky, flying NASA- developed electric airplanes as possible in the future, and also serving as a regional green hydrogen hub with NASA-type storage technologies. A second case-study will be for possible applications of hydrogen as a distributed energy resource (DER) based on NASA inspired technologies in a large distribution electric power system with approx. 5,000 buildings. The proposed research aligns with the mission of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), and benefits of big data on weather and earth geography available from NASA. The study will provide recommendations and conclusions to support the ongoing initiatives of the Kentucky Energy and Environment and Transportation Cabinets.