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.
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June 2019
June 19, 2019
NREL Supports Popular Kinetic Sculpture Camp, STEM Education
This summer, NREL supported a local camp that explores the intersection of art and science, giving campers the opportunity to make connections between creativity and future career paths.
June 18, 2019
New Analysis Adds Realism to Renewable Energy Research
Rebecca Hanes and team developed a new ground-breaking analysis, Quantifying Adoption Rates and Energy Savings over Time for Advanced Energy-Efficient Manufacturing Technologies, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
June 18, 2019
NREL Researcher Demonstrates 3D Chemical Imaging of Lithium-Ion Battery Electrodes
For the first time, researchers capture 3D images of the crystal structure inside of operating single electrode particles. The images revealed unexpected results, as detailed in a recent journal article.
June 17, 2019
Collaborative Research Charts Course to Hundreds of New Nitrides
A groundbreaking research effort involving scientists at NREL and at other laboratories around the country yielded the prediction of 203 new stable ternary nitride compounds.
June 17, 2019
First-ever Spatial Estimate of Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) Reveals Abundant, Cost-Competitive Potential for Wind and Solar PV Across Southeast Asia
New Mapping Application Visualizes Costs of Developing Renewable Energy Resources
June 13, 2019
Scalable Solutions: NREL Researchers to Help ExxonMobil Slash Biofuels Emissions
As part of its partnership with ExxonMobil, NREL researchers will take a closer look at air pollutant emissions from the entire biofuels supply chain, as well as the resulting impacts on air quality.
June 12, 2019
News Release: NREL Announces Participants for 2019 Executive Energy Leadership Program
The four-month program offers executive decision-makers an in-depth opportunity to learn from some of our laboratory's most prominent scientists, engineers and professionals, tour our research facilities, and visit local renewable energy installations.
June 12, 2019
NREL Accelerates the Development of Wave Energy Water Desalination Technologies in New Prize Competition
The Waves to Water Prize invites competitors to help accelerate early-stage technologies through a series of contests. Participants will demonstrate small, modular, cost-competitive desalination systems that use the power of ocean waves to supplement existing technologies that can provide drinking water to remote and coastal communities.
June 7, 2019
NREL Hosting the12th Annual Beyond Lithium-Ion Symposium Focused on Transformational Advances in Energy Storage Technologies
Scientists and Engineers to Discuss Ways to Surpass Current State-of-the-Art for Transportation and Electrical Grid Applications
June 7, 2019
Shining Light on Best Practices for Global Renewable Portfolio Standard Policies
Renewable portfolio standards, or RPSs, can be designed in numerous ways. New research details best practices for ensuring RPS policies meet their desired objectives, highlighting examples from around the globe.
June 7, 2019
NREL Announces Finalists in Round 1 of American-Made Solar Prize
The range of innovations represented by the competitors include cell and device-related concepts as well as module and application hardware.
June 6, 2019
From Goldfish Blood Cells to SIMB President-Elect, Microbiology Is Steve Decker's Passion
The seeds of microbiology were planted in the inquisitive mind of a young Steve Decker when a microscope—gift-wrapped with his name on it—arrived on a cold Wisconsin morning.
June 6, 2019
Small-Scale Images May Hold the Key to Large-Scale Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling
By looking closely at battery cells, researchers hope to unlock the secret to scalable lithium-ion battery recycling.
June 5, 2019
'Nothing' technology creates less expensive thin-film solar cells
Solar cells made from elements in the third and fifth columns of the periodic table have been shown to be highly efficient at converting sunlight into energy, but their high costs pose a drawback and limited their use to niche applications.
June 3, 2019
The Man Behind the Goggles: Meet NREL's Visualization Guru, Kenny Gruchalla
Gruchalla's experience working on an icebreaker helps him design, build NREL's visualization lab, show researchers their projects in new ways.
May 2019
May 30, 2019
News Release: Solar District Cup Challenges College Students to Reimagine How Energy is Generated, Managed, and Used
The Solar District Cup challenges student teams across the U.S. to design and model the most reliable, resilient, and cost-effective distributed energy system possible for campuses, urban areas, and other developments in a common electrical distribution network.
May 28, 2019
NREL Delivers Industry-Shifting Software for Visualizing Wind Power Forecasts
We need the ability to plan our power, whichever way the wind blows. This means that system operators need real-time information--easily navigable and visually coherent--to truly build an intuition around wind power. They now have access to such a tool with WindView, a tool for visualizing wind power forecasts, created by NREL, Argonne National Laboratory, and University of Texas-Dallas.
May 28, 2019
$3M Solar Prize Round 2 Plans to Drive Innovation in U.S. Solar Manufacturing
The Solar Prize program supports entrepreneurs as they develop transformative technology ideas into concepts and then into early-stage prototypes ready for industry testing.
May 24, 2019
NREL's Advanced Manufacturing Projects Front and Center at InnovationXLab
NREL's recent groundbreaking advanced manufacturing work was on display at the InnovationXLAB Advanced Manufacturing Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on May 7-8.
May 21, 2019
Aquarius HPC Cooling System Yields Impressive Energy Efficiency Results After NREL/Sandia Test
NREL and Sandia completed a performance evaluation study, determining the Aquarius, high-performance computing cooling system provides a very high percentage of heat capture direct to water--as high as 98% when evaluation computer nodes only.
May 20, 2019
Researchers Help Build Wind's Momentum at AWEA Conference
NREL experts are helping continue the momentum of U.S. wind power at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) WINDPOWER 2019 by making presentations, building industry connections, and sharing their research in a top DOE publication developed for conference attendees.
May 17, 2019
NREL Releases Improved Controls-Oriented Wind Farm Modeling Tool
NREL’s wind plant performance optimization software framework, FLORIS, has been enhanced to provide greater usability and additional representation of flow physics.
May 14, 2019
NREL Supports Agtech Innovation Through IN2
New cohort of five agtech companies will validate their innovations with Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
May 10, 2019
Top Cleantech Innovators Announced at the Industry Growth Forum
Five startups shine among some of the world's best cleantech entrepreneurs.
May 9, 2019
New Study Compares and Contrasts Cleantech Incubators and Accelerators
In an effort to help stakeholders keep up, NREL has recently published a first-of-its kind comparison of some of the nation's most notable cleantech incubators and accelerators.
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