Brandon N Benton

Dr. Brandon N Benton

orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

17Years (2010-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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19 September 2024 in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
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Journal Article
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AKAndrew Kumler
Andrew Kumler
BKBen Kravitz
Ben Kravitz
CDCaroline Draxl
Caroline Draxl
LVLaura Vimmerstedt
Laura Vimmerstedt
BBBrandon N Benton
Brandon N Benton
LTLing Tao
Ling Tao


10 December 2010 in Physical Review A
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Journal Article
Open access
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Mark Andrew EdwardsMark Andrew Edwards
Mark Andrew Edwards
BBBrandon N Benton
Brandon N Benton
JHJeffrey Heward
Jeffrey Heward
CCCharles W. Clark
Charles W. Clark
We show how the momentum distribution of gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates can be shaped by applying a sequence of standing-wave laser pulses. We present a theory, whose validity was demonstrated in an earlier experiment [L. Deng et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 5407 (1999)], of the effect of a two-pulse sequence on the condensate wavefunction in momentum space. We generalize the previous result to the case of N pulses of arbitrary intensity separated by arbitrary intervals and show how these parameters can be engineered to produce a desired final momentum distribution. We find that several momentum distributions, important in atom-interferometry applications, can be engineered with high fidelity with two or three pulses.

16 July 2025 in Energies
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BBBrandon N Benton
Brandon N Benton
GBGrant Buster
Grant Buster
PPPavlo Pinchuk
Pavlo Pinchuk
AGAndrew Glaws
Andrew Glaws
RKRyan King
Ryan King
ICIlya Chernyakhovskiy
Ilya Chernyakhovskiy
With a potentially increasing share of the electricity grid relying on wind to provide generating capacity and energy, there is an expanding global need for historically accurate, spatiotemporally continuous, high-resolution wind data. Conventional downscaling methods for generating these data based on numerical weather prediction have a high computational burden and require extensive tuning for historical accuracy. In this work, we present a novel deep learning-based spatiotemporal downscaling method using generative adversarial networks (GANs) for generating historically accurate high-resolution wind resource data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting Reanalysis version 5 data (ERA5). In contrast to previous approaches, which used coarsened high-resolution data as low-resolution training data, we use true low-resolution simulation outputs. We show that by training a GAN model with ERA5 as the low-resolution input and Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit (WTK) data as the high-resolution target, we achieved results comparable in historical accuracy and spatiotemporal variability to conventional dynamical downscaling. This GAN-based downscaling method additionally reduces computational costs over dynamical downscaling by two orders of magnitude. We applied this approach to downscale 30 km, hourly ERA5 data to 2 km, 5 min wind data for January 2000 through December 2023 at multiple hub heights over Ukraine, Moldova, and part of Romania. With WTK coverage limited to North America from 2007–2013, this is a significant spatiotemporal generalization. The geographic extent centered on Ukraine was motivated by stakeholders and energy-planning needs to rebuild the Ukrainian power grid in a decentralized manner. This 24-year data record is the first member of the super-resolution for renewable energy resource data with wind from the reanalysis data dataset (Sup3rWind).

26 November 2024
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Report
Open access
PDF file
GBGrant Buster
Grant Buster
PPPavlo Pinchuk
Pavlo Pinchuk
LLLuke Lavin
Luke Lavin
BBBrandon N Benton
Brandon N Benton
NBNicola Bodini
Nicola Bodini
Many weather years of high-quality wind data are widely accepted in the grid integration community to be important for studying wind energy technical potential, energy system operations, and grid resilience. NREL makes high-quality wind and solar resource data available. NREL's Grid-Atmosphere workshop (March 2024) identified NREL National Solar Radiation Database as widely used in grid integration modeling, but there is less agreement on commonly used wind datasets. One important factor identified by ESIG's 2023 report 'Weather Dataset Needs for Planning and Analyzing Modern Power Systems' for gold standard wind data is regular updates. To address the need for regular updates, NREL's team can now process all currently available and regularly updated High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) outputs. HRRR is an hourly-updated operational forecast product produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (Dowell et al., 2022). One barrier to NREL using HRRR is systematic bias and consistency with NREL's existing wind datasets (e.g. WIND Toolkit, 'WTK') across weather years. To address this barrier, we show that the HRRR can be interpolated and bias-corrected to be consistent with NRE's existing datasets. We call the new dataset BC-HRRR (bias-corrected HRRR). As with historical datasets like the WTK, BC-HRRR is intended for use in grid integration modeling (e.g., capacity expansion, production cost, and resource adequacy modeling). BC-HRRR's (2015-present) consistency with WTK (2007-2013) allows NREL to extend internal grid integration tooling with 15+ weather years of wind data with low-overhead extensibility to future years as they are made available by NOAA. The rest of this slide deck documents the BC-HRRR processing methods, validation, and its implications for intended use.

6 May 2025 in Computing in Science & Engineering
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Journal Article
Closed access
AGAndrew Glaws
Andrew Glaws
RKRyan N. King
Ryan N. King
PEPatrick Emami
Patrick Emami
GBGrant Buster
Grant Buster
BBBrandon N Benton
Brandon N Benton
RMRichard Macwan
Richard Macwan
Energy systems are experiencing various changes that impact the distribution, use, and reliability of energy. Local utilities and municipalities must respond and adapt to these changes, moving towards a future energy system with modernized infrastructure and other targeted investments and policy decisions. However, planning for and enacting these advancements requires significant effort from experts and engineers to develop strategies that ensure a reliable and secure energy future. This includes characterizing the current energy infrastructure, identifying areas for development, and engaging with local community members. Emerging generative artificial intelligence techniques can alleviate pain points and help support the development of the next generation of energy systems. In this article, we highlight on-going generative AI work in the areas of atmospheric modeling, building energy management, and distribution network design, and we propose a vision for the role of generative AI that considers opportunities and identifies challenges inherent to this technology.