News and Feature Stories
The following news stories take an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at how NREL is advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
August 2020
Aug. 14, 2020
NREL Brings Expertise in Energy Resilience to New Organizational Planning Resource
The Technical Resilience Navigator, a resilience planning tool co-developed by NREL and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, helps organizations identify their resilience gaps and prioritize solutions that reduce risk from energy and water service disruptions.
Aug. 13, 2020
ARIES and RAIL Promise To Advance Renewable Energy Innovation and Integration
Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette introduced two new acronyms to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) lexicon on Aug. 12: RAIL and ARIES. RAIL stands for Research and Innovation Laboratory, while ARIES is short for Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems.
Aug. 13, 2020
Voyage into the Blue with the Ocean Observing Prize Winners
Ocean Observing Prize competitors are integrating marine renewable energy systems with ocean-observing platforms to collect ocean and weather data that can be used to better forecast natural disasters.
Aug. 11, 2020
New High-Rate Drilling System Could Revolutionize High-Temperature Power Electronics
NREL has joined forces with Tetra Innovation Institute to advance a high-rate drilling system that could transform the geothermal industry. This game-changing technology has the potential to increase geothermal drilling rates tenfold and reduce well drilling costs by 75%.
Aug. 11, 2020
Academic Teams Exhibit Strong Showing in Waves to Water Prize DESIGN Stage
Four academic teams emerge victorious in the DESIGN Stage of the U.S. Department of Energy's Waves to Water Prize. Next up, they'll validate their designs in the ADAPT Stage.
Aug. 7, 2020
NREL Floats New Offshore Wind Cost Optimization Vision
A study unveils a new strategic vision for floating offshore wind. NREL researchers identify barriers that must be overcome to bring down the overall cost of energy produced, then outline a vision for an integrated systems approach with the potential to significantly improve the market feasibility of floating wind plants.
Aug. 7, 2020
Two-for-One Energy from Photons, Now Better than Ever
NREL researchers have found a promising group of materials for tomorrow's super-efficient solar cells, demonstrating how a carefully designed molecule can efficiently split the energy imparted by one photon into two excited states and keep them separated for several microseconds.
Aug. 6, 2020
USAID and NREL Curate Resilience Solutions for International Power System Planners
Resilient Energy Platform develops resources, trainings, and tools to help developing nations identify power system vulnerabilities and plan for sustainable, secure power systems.
Aug. 3, 2020
Leading by Example: ITEAM Prize Recognizes Energy Saving at U.S. Manufacturing Plants
The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office and NREL announced the winners of the American-Made Challenges® Individuals Taking Energy Action in Manufacturing (ITEAM) Prize.
Aug. 3, 2020
DOE and NREL Launch STEM Hydropower and Marine Renewable Energy Portals
As part of an effort to recruit the best and brightest to the water power workforce, the U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office and NREL launched STEM education portals for water power technologies.
Aug. 3, 2020
Grid Coordination Opens Road for Electric Vehicle Flexibility
As electric vehicle sales continue to rev up in the United States, the power grid is in parallel contending with the greatest transformation in its 100-year history: the large-scale integration of renewable energy and power electronic devices. The changes will test the limits of grid integration, but NREL sees opportunity at the intersection of energy systems and transportation.
July 2020
July 30, 2020
Jeff Logan, Long-Standing JISEA Analyst, Has a World of Curiosity
For Jeff Logan, a curiosity came alive when he went to college. This curiosity has brought him around the world to study the clean energy transition.
July 29, 2020
Fei Ding: Helping Power System Industries Do the Real Work of Grid Resilience and Reliability
Fei Ding is an electrical engineering researcher at NREL who publishes a substantial number of reports and articles about her work on grid resilience and reliability.
July 29, 2020
Arrival of OptGrid: Advanced Technology of Grid Management Now Available to Industry
A new product developed at NREL has industry-shifting potential to help manage today's increasingly distributed energy infrastructure, and it has emerged as a commercial solution for real-time coordination of distributed energy resources.
July 29, 2020
Novel Research Highlights Critical Barriers to Extreme Fast Charging of Lithium-Ion Batteries
In a phenomenon called lithium plating, lithium attaches to graphite particles within the cell instead of inserting itself into the graphite for stable storage. Researchers used high-speed synchrotron X-ray diffraction to gain insight into the conditions that lead to lithium plating.
July 24, 2020
Tomorrow's Forecast: Sunny with a Strong Chance of Wind
Meteorologists, engineers, and geographic information system experts at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory are leading wind resource characterization efforts essential to the development of offshore wind.
July 23, 2020
NREL's Hydropower RAPID Toolkit Webinar Shows Stakeholders the Permitting Path Forward
During an NREL-led Hydropower Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit Webinar, NREL legal and regulatory analysts presented updated features and showcased highlights from NREL's latest Hydropower RAPID Toolkit publication.
July 22, 2020
Haiku Sky's Childhood off the Grid Inspired a Career on the Grid
Most of us do not remember the first time we experienced electricity. It has always been a given. But for Haiku Sky, it is a distinct memory. He was four years old—and was fascinated by the idea that you could flip a switch and there would be light.
July 22, 2020
NREL Researchers Set Sights on Commercializing Biotechnologies with Industry Partners
Researchers at NREL are set to launch four bioenergy projects with industry partners that have the potential to accelerate the commercialization of novel bio-based products and technologies.
July 21, 2020
Hats Off and Happy Trails to NREL Wind and Water Pioneer Bob Thresher
From his trademark black hat to his legendary one-liners and singing contributions to the Wind Weenie Wailers, Research Fellow Bob Thresher undoubtedly cuts a memorable, larger-than-life figure. When asked to describe him, Thresher's colleagues label him as everything from "pioneer" and "mentor" to "friend," "hero," and even "rock star." They are not all misty-eyed tributes, however.
July 21, 2020
Increasing Power Expands Research Capabilities at NREL's Flatirons Campus
Wind energy, water power, and grid integration research conducted at NREL's Flatirons Campus gained a boost with a recent upgrade to the power capacity at the facility.
July 17, 2020
Solar Energy Technologies Could Meet Industrial Process Heating Demands
Solar energy technologies could meet process heating demands, reduce carbon emissions, and improve heating efficiency in the U.S. industrial sector—for up to 15-50% energy savings.
July 17, 2020
Open-Source Renewable Energy Potential (reV) Model Offers Endless Potential
What can the Renewable Energy Potential (reV) model calculate when it comes to renewable energy potential? Just about everything.
July 16, 2020
New Process Turns Carbon into Cleaner, High-Performance Diesel Biofuel Blendstock
A new single-phase catalyst that enables the conversion of renewable and waste carbon into sustainable diesel fuels has been developed through a unique collaboration between NREL and two DOE consortia, Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy and the Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines initiative.
July 16, 2020
New Metric Quantifies Productivity of Freight Mobility Systems
Trends such as the rise in e-commerce, increased vehicle electrification, connected mobility, automation, and new forms of delivery are poised to bring a paradigm shift in freight movement. In addition to modeling and forecasting emerging freight trends, it is critical to have a metric to quantify their impacts on freight mobility. The new Freight Mobility Energy Productivity (F-MEP) metric does just that.
