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.
October 2022
Oct. 6, 2022
Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis Welcomes Elizabeth Doris as New Director
Elizabeth Doris officially takes the helm of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis. Get to know Doris and her vision for the institute moving forward.
Oct. 5, 2022
Integrating Carbon-Free Generation in the Carolinas
NREL and Duke Energy investigated the pathways to a decarbonized grid.
Oct. 3, 2022
The Right Data in the Right Way
Researchers at NREL are developing data-gathering tools to help accelerate the development of promising marine energy technologies.
Oct. 3, 2022
NREL's Sheila Hayter Selected as New Buildings Institute Senior Fellow
Pioneer. Visionary. Mentor. Buildings Champion. These are a few words that describe Sheila Hayter's impact during her 30-year career.
Oct. 3, 2022
Solutions Emerge for Decarbonizing Historically Difficult Off-Road Vehicle Sector
Nothing says "fossil fuel" like a 400-ton mining rig, but that reality may be fading behind in the dust as the off-road sector strives for carbon-free operation.
September 2022
Sept. 30, 2022
NREL Power Electronics Capabilities Primed for Innovation
With the modern transition to renewable energy and electrified transportation, power electronics have the potential to enable seamless integration of renewable energy resources with the electric grid. Take a virtual 360-degree tour of NREL's power electronics capabilities.
Sept. 29, 2022
Microgrids For Anyone
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has now published a description of the improvised controls that saved NREL during its own outage, which could make microgrids easy and low cost where they are needed most.
Sept. 29, 2022
The New Grids on the Block
NREL's validation capabilities range from lab to field, watt to megawatt, component to system, and nanogrid to microgrid.
Sept. 29, 2022
Science Needs the Right Attitude
"Science" was a class you probably took in school, but the subject matter you studied was not the only thing you learned.
Sept. 29, 2022
First Cohort of Innovators Enter West Gate
West Gate is a program that embeds innovators at NREL and pairs them with national laboratory scientists and capabilities over a period of two years, during which they have prime access to world-class national laboratory capabilities and expertise to significantly advance the development of their clean-energy technologies.
Sept. 27, 2022
News Release: International Heliostat Consortium Releases Roadmap and Solicitation To Improve Commercial Viability of Heliostats
NREL, joined by partners at Sandia National Laboratories and the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute, released its multiyear heliostat roadmap, which identifies research and deployment gaps in heliostat technologies as well as the strategies to overcome them during the next five years.
Sept. 26, 2022
Your Rechargeable Batteries Need Lithium. Geothermal Energy Could Soon Help
As product managers at NREL, Nicholas Gilroy and Haiku Sky help turn complex information into a compelling journey on the web. Their work allows users to interact with data, and even download information as the story of research unfolds.
Sept. 22, 2022
NREL and Cemvita Factory Team Up To Put Carbon Dioxide to Good Use
For some entrepreneurs, carbon dioxide is more than a greenhouse gas. It is an opportunity and a business case for decarbonizing fuel and chemical production.
Sept. 22, 2022
Matthew Beard Wins Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award
National Renewable Energy (NREL) Senior Research Fellow Matthew Beard accepted the prestigious Ernest Orlando (EO) Lawrence Award on Thursday at a hybrid awards ceremony held in Washington, D.C.
Sept. 22, 2022
Department of Energy Renews NREL's Center for Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy
Cutting-edge semiconductor research at NREL will continue at the Center for Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE) as part of funding announced last week.
Sept. 22, 2022
News Release: Catalytic Process With Lignin Could Enable 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Researchers at three institutions—NREL, MIT, and Washington State University—report success in using lignin as a path toward a drop-in 100% sustainable aviation fuel. Other parts of plants are used for biofuels, but lignin has been largely overlooked because of the difficulties in breaking it down chemically and converting it into useful products.
Sept. 21, 2022
Innovative Analysis Tool Opens Path Toward Better Mobility for All
Researchers at NREL have devised an innovative way to quantify and understand mobility quality and equity issues: the Mobility Energy Productivity (MEP) tool. MEP distills three major components of mobility--time, cost, and energy--into a simple, easy-to-read score.
Sept. 21, 2022
Considerations To Achieve a Sustainable U.S. Commercial Building Stock
New study led by the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis identifies drivers, barriers, and costs of adopting building sensors and controls systems.
Sept. 19, 2022
Patented Wave Energy Technology Gets Its Sea Legs
Distributed embedded energy converter technologies (or DEEC-Tecs) could eventually transform sources of everyday energy into electricity or other forms of usable energy.
Sept. 19, 2022
Electric Vehicle Battery Models Inform Crash Simulation Evaluations To Improve Real-World Safety, Reliability
As electric vehicle (EV) adoption increasingly gains momentum, NREL is collaborating with Hyundai Motor Company to ensure EV batteries can safely and reliably go the distance.
Sept. 15, 2022
NREL To Manage New Wind Energy Competition
The new FLoating Offshore Wind ReadINess (FLOWIN) Prize, administered by NREL, invites competitors to help drive down the costs of floating offshore wind energy by 70% by 2035.
Sept. 14, 2022
Buildings Researcher Ensures Energy Models Focus on the People
As a child growing up in suburban Nigeria, Opeoluwa Wonuola Olawale recalls when the portable fan in her room stopped working.
Sept. 14, 2022
Q&A With Avantika Singh: The Cautious Optimist Who Hates Waste (Like, Really Hates Waste)
As part of the Manufacturing Masterminds Q&A profile series, Avantika Singh shares why she hates waste and what she's doing to help combat it.
Sept. 14, 2022
NREL Authors Publish Quantum Computing First in Nature Communications
An NREL-led team demonstrated cellular automata on a quantum computer, teasing out the underlying nature of complexity.
Sept. 13, 2022
What's the Damage? New Customer Damage Function Calculator Estimates Costs of an Electric Grid Outage
Free online calculator helps quantify impacts to support resilience investments.
