IHTC18-0178 — Thermal analysis of a power-to-heat-to-power system using repurposed oil wells for energy storage. Younghyun Ko, Jader R. Barbosa, Jr. The group’s first paper authored entirely at LSU.

IHTC18-0117 — Thermal performance comparison of annular enclosure geometries for subsea power electronics. Lucas Militão, Marcelo Lobo Heldwein, Jader R. Barbosa, Jr.

IHTC18-0176 — Dimensionless characterization of porous electrode electrochemical systems using modified Hatta and Wagner numbers: a PEM fuel cell case study. Paulo Vitor de Faria, Marcus Vinícius Pedron Carneiro, Tamayo Zanforlin Pires de Almeida Motta Dias, Jader R. Barbosa, Jr., Jaime Andres Lozano Cadena.

The meeting disseminated Phase 1 results on facility-level cooling system modeling, data center load projections, and grid impact analysis of Cold UTES deployment at scale, alongside stakeholder perspectives on borehole and aquifer thermal energy storage. Louisiana State University was one of ten invited stakeholder organizations.

The award supports a five-week research residency at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, to be completed by December 2026, building on the group’s work on subsurface thermal energy storage.

The lecture traced six decades of wellbore heat transfer modeling — from the analytical solutions of the 1960s through multiphase and thermo-structural extensions — and argued that the same foundations now serve a different purpose. More than two million wells in the United States are idle, unplugged, or abandoned, representing a multibillion-dollar liability. Repurposing a portion of that infrastructure for subsurface thermal energy storage turns those liabilities into distributed, long-duration storage assets.