Advanced Energy Management System

The Advanced Energy Management System (AEMS) project is developing an autonomous energy management capability for future lunar and Martian surface power networks. As surface operations expand beyond isolated, self-sufficient systems, AEMS continues to provide the controls, communications, and interoperability needed to manage complex power generation, storage, distribution, and system constraints with minimal to no human intervention.

AEMS will:

• Coordinate power sharing among surface elements, including bidirectional transfer for Moon‑to‑Mars architectures.
• Manage survival-power distribution during extended darkness using dedicated backup sources.
• Integrate and control multiple power sources and loads across large-scale commercial and exploration power grids.
•  Automatically incorporates new power sources, switchgears, and loads without operator input.
• Predict future power needs and take corrective actions—such as prioritized load shedding—to ensure critical systems remain powered.
•  Optimize energy storage operations to reduce losses and enhance system resilience, security, and reliability.

The project implements real-time control of heterogeneous power assets, including Vertical Solar Array Technology (VSAT) units, Fission Surface Power (FSP) systems, and energy storage devices such as batteries and fuel cells. AEMS ensures robust, continuous operation and effective contingency management, particularly during lunar night and other extended darkness periods, while maintaining system health and operational constraints.

AEMS reduces the impact of insufficient power or energy—especially during faults or failures—and limits disruptions to critical and high‑priority loads, such as blackouts and brownouts. These benefits are measured through three key performance metrics: Hours of Load Shed, Hours of Unserved Energy, and System Reliability.

Hours of Load Shed
The total time the power system must deviate from the approved schedule and reduce power to loads that were planned to receive it. Load shedding may occur due to:

• an incorrect power budget provided to the scheduler.
• an inaccurate load‑flow analysis that overestimates allowable power and underestimates distribution losses.
• A failure that causes a reduction in available power.

Hours of Unserved Energy
The total time when sufficient energy was available but not scheduled. This metric captures cases where the control algorithm under‑allocates power, helping ensure power budgets accurately account for usage and distribution losses.

System Reliability
The availability of power to critical loads (roughly the top 20% of loads). Following a fault or failure, the system must automatically reconfigure to maintain power to these loads.

• A reliability of 99.99% (“four nines”) corresponds to less than 53 minutes of lost power per year.
• The Mars performance target of 99.999% (“five nines”) corresponds to less than 5 minutes per year.

For deep‑space vehicles—such as a Mars transit spacecraft with up to a 45‑minute communication latency—any single failure affecting a critical load could significantly reduce system reliability due to operator notification, diagnosis, and recovery time.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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