March 2016
NREL Research Helps Convert Overabundant Methane into Useful Products
The biological production of fuels and chemicals from methane represents a means of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and, at the same time, utilizing an abundant-yet-underutilized, high-energy gas, making the process the subject of a promising new NREL study, published in Nature's Scientific Reports.
Eagles are Making Wind Turbines Safer for Birds
A bald eagle named Spirit and a golden eagle named Nova recently helped a team of researchers at the National Wind Technology Center collect terabytes of data for a project aimed at helping researchers make wind energy safer for birds.
News Release: NREL's Capabilities Boost a Wide Range of Innovative ARPA-E Research
The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will play key roles in a variety of projects recently funded by the Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). NREL's innovative approaches have received five awards across three different ARPA-E programs for advancing transformational technologies to generate, store, and use energy more efficiently, at lower costs and with reduced emissions.
NREL Kicks Off Next Phase of Advanced Computer-Aided Battery Engineering
On March 8, NREL hosted the first review meeting of the Advanced Computer-Aided Battery Engineering Consortium, initiating phase three of the collaborative Computer Aided Engineering for Electric Drive Batteries activity funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Vehicle Technologies Office.
NREL's Geothermal Experts Present at the 41st Annual Stanford Geothermal Workshop
NREL geothermal experts attend the 41st Annual Stanford Geothermal Workshop--one of the world's longest-running technical meetings on the topic of geothermal energy.
News Release: NREL to Collaborate with Small Clean Energy Businesses as Part of DOE Pilot Program
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will help the first group of small clean energy businesses advance their products under the Small Business Vouchers (SBV) pilot launched last July by DOE.
DOE Webinar March 14: DetecTape – A Localized Visual Detector for Hydrogen Leaks
This webinar will provide information about DetecTape, a color-changing, self-fusing silicone tape developed by Element One and Midsun Specialty Products and designed to detect hydrogen leaks in fuel cell, transmission, storage, and generation facilities. NREL has performed lab testing of DetecTape over the past 13 months and reports are available upon request.
Colorado School Earns Return Trip to National Science Bowl
Ridgeview Classical Charter School scores convincing victory at Colorado Science Bowl to secure trip to national competition.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management Looks to NREL for Geothermal Technical Support
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has entered into an interagency agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to provide technical support and assistance in the development of renewable energy from geothermal resources on public lands.
NREL Hosts PV Module Reliability Workshop for Industry
Nearly 200 researchers from more than 100 companies and representing 16 countries attended the 7th annual PV Module Reliability Workshop, Feb. 23–25, 2016, in Golden, Colo.
February 2016
News Release: NREL Collaboration Boosts Potential for CdTe Solar Cells
A critical milestone has been reached in cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cell technology, helping pave the way for solar energy to directly compete with electricity generated by conventional energy sources.
News Release: Belgium's Red Electrical Devils Win $1 Million for Innovative Inverter Design
Google and IEEE announced today that Belgium's Red Electrical Devils, a team from CE+T Power, has won the Little Box Challenge, a competition to invent a much smaller inverter for interconnecting solar power systems to the power grid. The success earned the team a $1 million prize while proving that inverters can be the size of a tablet or smaller rather than the size of a picnic cooler, more than a factor of 10 reduction in size. The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provided critical analysis of the 18 finalists teams’ inverters to help determine the winner.
News Release: NREL Seeks Participants for 2016 National Executive Energy Leadership Program
The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is now accepting applications for its 2016 Executive Energy Leadership Program.
News Release: Ridgeview Classical Charter Schools Wins 26th Colorado Science Bowl
Students from Ridgeview Classical Charter Schools won the Colorado High School Science Bowl. They will represent the state of Colorado at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Science Bowl in Washington D.C., April 28– May 2, where they will compete against more than 400 students from 70 high schools for the national title.
NREL Teams With ComEd on Microgrid-Integrated Storage Solution to Get More Solar on the Grid
NREL energy systems integration researchers are collaborating with one of the nation’s largest electric utilities to deploy a unique solar and battery storage solution at a microgrid demonstration site.
News Release: NREL analysis finds tax credit extensions can impact renewable energy deployment and electric sector CO2 emissions
The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) today released new analysis exploring the potential impact of recently extended federal tax credits on the deployment of renewable generation technologies and related U.S. electric sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
NREL Power Systems Engineering Researchers Publish 33 Articles in Last Year
NREL's Power Systems Engineering Center published 33 journal and magazine articles in the past year highlighting recent research in integrating renewable energy into power systems.
Potential of Perovskite Solar Cells Featured in Solar Today
In an interview published in Solar Today, Dr. Jao van de Lagemaat, director of the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at the National Renewable Laboratory (NREL), highlighted various aspects of perovskites, which have received considerable attention by solar cell researchers at NREL and other institutions.
News Release: Renewable Fuels from Algae Boosted by NREL Refinery Process
A new biorefinery process developed by scientists at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has proven to be significantly more effective at producing ethanol from algae than previous research.
News Release: NREL Helps Establish New PV Quality Standards for Manufacturers
Working with partners around the world, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have completed five years of work toward helping establish an international quality standard for manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) modules.
Last Updated May 28, 2025