Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s hpc4energy Incubator is producing real results for participating companies. “TIME: The HPC for Energy Advantage” displays the success of GE Energy, ISO New England, Robert Bosch LLC, and UTRC in dramatically reducing the time needed to develop new products. As these companies operate in the global marketplace, time savings from HPC notably reduce costs and increase competitiveness.
Supplying energy to the American people is an increasingly complex task. These complexities include not just the conversion of the various forms of energy (oil, gas, wind, hydropower, etc.) into useful forms (transportation fuel and electricity) but also moving the more useful form to where it can be used (transmission). Economics and government regulations complicate the matter further.
Let’s focus on electricity supply. The U.S. Electricity Grid, which could be considered the largest machine in the world, has innumerable moving parts. All elements must work together to provide a sufficient amount of electricity to homes, schools, businesses, and factories when its needed and at an affordable price. How do we know what is sufficient? How do we know when to supply it? How can we make it cheaper?
I believe we are at the forefront of a revolution here in California. We are fundamentally changing the way we live our lives. We are moving, awkwardly, but inevitably towards a more sustainable future. It began with the minds and hearts of the people: People who are committed to cleaner air, climate change mitigation, and renewable energy. People who vote for leaders committed to building a cleaner economy. People who vote with their pocketbooks to install roof top solar and drive electric vehicles. People who devote their careers to developing innovative clean technologies. And people who decide to live more frugally. While we haven’t found every policy and technology solution yet, and we haven’t built the infrastructure needed for this revolution to be successful, the revolution has begun.
Some HPC success stories are too powerful to ignore. Though HPC for Energy focuses on the advancement of energy technologies through HPC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and IBM’s recent efforts to model the human heart deserve recognition for demonstrating the new level of scientific accomplishment made increasingly possible through HPC capabilities here in the US.
To develop better therapies for heart disease, LLNL and IBM developed a new code known as “Cardioid” and ran simulations on Sequoia, a Blue Gene/Q supercomputer currently ranked 2nd in the world.
Cheap abundant natural gas has transformed US industry and global energy, with implications for energy security, geopolitics, manufacturing, environmental quality, and global climate change. Underlying this energy supply are new approaches to stimulation of tight hydrocarbon reservoirs all over the US, chiefly multi-stage stimulation and hydrofracturing (commonly called “fracking”). To understand and assess the longevity and continued impact of a gas-dominated energy future, the Howard Baker Forum and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hosted a two day symposium featuring experts from the commercial, industrial, research, and political worlds. The resounding conclusion is that abundant low-cost gas is here to stay, but the nation’s ability to use this resource depends on how technology, policy, and regulation interact.
In early August Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory hosted a “Workshop on the Grand Challenges of Advanced Computing for Energy Innovation” in partnership with the United States Department of Energy. The workshop brought together individuals from U.S. national laboratories, academia, industry and the federal government to discuss ways to leverage the nation’s HPC infrastructure to solve some of the country’s most pressing problems in energy innovation.
The workshop sessions produced several recommendations to increase the adoption of HPC in the U.S. research, development, and deployment cycle. I organized the session “Accessing Commercially Available Advanced Computing Resources and Expertise” that brought together individuals with a need for HPC and independent software vendors (ISVs) including Ansys, Nimbis Services, Accelrys, Dessault Systemes, and Altair to discuss HPC software and solutions.
How exactly does a company use HPC modeling and simulation to develop new technologies? HPC for Energy has produced “HPC in Action: Navistar” to give a behind the scenes look at one company’s HPC success story. This video explains how Navistar worked with a team of LLNL scientists to improve tractor trailer fuel economy across the country. The combination of wind tunnel testing and HPC enabled Navistar to optimize the design and significantly reduce the testing period for new drag-reduction technologies. By quickly identifying and deploying practical solutions, Navistar and LLNL improved tractor trailer fuel economy by 17%, which will save 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year in the U.S.
On July 31-August 2, 2012 Steven Ashby, the Deputy Director for Science & Technology at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Dana Christensen, Deputy Director for Science & Technology at National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Dona Crawford, Associate Director of Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory chaired the Workshop on Grand Challenges of Advanced Computing for Energy Innovation. The letter report, released in November 2012, provides a preliminary overview of the workshop, its findings, and recommendations from the Workshop Chairs. A full DOE report on the workshop will be released in early 2013.
