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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February 2016

Feb. 29, 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.

Feb. 29, 2016

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.

Feb. 23, 2016

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.

Feb. 22, 2016

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.

Feb. 22, 2016

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.

Feb. 22, 2016

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.

Feb. 18, 2016

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.

Feb. 11, 2016

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.

Feb. 9, 2016

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.

Feb. 8, 2016

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.

Feb. 5, 2016

News Release: NREL Explains the Higher Cellulolytic Activity of a Vital Microorganism

Researchers at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) say better understanding of a bacterium could lead to cheaper production of cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuels.

Feb. 4, 2016

News Release: NREL Patents Method for Continuous Monitoring of Materials During Manufacturing

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was recently issued a patent for a novel method that rapidly characterizes specialized materials during the manufacturing process. This approach significantly improves on standard quality control techniques by allowing for complete monitoring of materials without interrupting workflow.

Feb. 4, 2016

Claims for Solar Cell Efficiency Put to Test at NREL

Record numbers carefully vetted by scientists to assure accuracy.

January 2016

Jan. 28, 2016

NREL and Partners Demonstrate First-of-a-Kind Use of Utility-Scale PV for Ancillary Services

Demonstration project shows utility-scale photovoltaic plants that incorporate “grid-friendly” controls can contribute to grid stability and reliability.

Jan. 27, 2016

NREL Releases High-Penetration PV Handbook for Distribution Engineers

A new resource sponsored by the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative helps distribution engineers understand the challenges of high-penetration PV integration—giving them the information they need to ramp up their solar energy integration and deliver more clean, renewable power to consumers.

Jan. 26, 2016

NREL Describes to U.S. Senate Role National Labs Play in Sustainable Transportation Innovation

On Thursday, January 12, 2016, NREL’s Transportation and Hydrogen Systems Center Director Chris Gearhart provided a testimony on new technologies in the automobile industry before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Jan. 25, 2016

NREL Serves as the Energy Department's Showcase for Cutting-Edge Fuel Cell Cars

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently received a 2015 Tucson Fuel Cell vehicle on loan from Hyundai and a B-Class F-CELL on loan from Mercedes-Benz. NREL is partnering with Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai to evaluate the interaction of the vehicles' high-pressure hydrogen storage systems with NREL's hydrogen fueling system equipment and to test the user experience by refueling fuel cell electric vehicles at the lab's new state-of-the-art hydrogen fueling station.

Jan. 25, 2016

Driverless Cars and Fuel Efficiency Spotlighted in Scientific American

The potential to slow pollution through deployment of automated vehicles is gaining more and more traction in the news. In a recent Scientific American article, reporter Camille von Kaenel asked NREL’s Jeff Gonder for a transportation researcher’s thoughts on both the sustainability benefits and uncertainties that will accompany an increase in driverless cars.

Jan. 22, 2016

NREL Launches Sustainable Mobility Initiative, Joins CDOT Partnership

NREL initiative approaches sustainable transportation as an integrated system, where travelers and transportation resources are viewed as a dynamic network.

Jan. 21, 2016

NREL Study Predicts Fuel and Emissions Impact of Automated Mobility District

With emerging technologies, travel behavior may shift from personal vehicles to automated transit systems. An NREL study shows that a campus-sized-ranging from four to 10 square miles-automated mobility district has the potential to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 4% to 14% depending on various operating and ridership factors.

Jan. 19, 2016

NREL Engineers Accomplish Training for Participation in Pilot Lab-Corps Program

Katherine Dykes and Rick Damiani completed the six-week training as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's pilot Lab-Corps program. Lab-Corps seeks to "help move innovative technologies from national labs into the marketplace."

Jan. 14, 2016

News Release: DOE Announces New Projects to Modernize America’s Electric Grid

Today, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced up to $220 million in new funding for a consortium of DOE national laboratories and partners to support critical research and development over the next three years to help modernize our nation’s electrical power grid. The secretary also announced the release of DOE’s comprehensive new Grid Modernization Multi-Year Program Plan (MYPP), a blueprint for the Department’s research, development, and demonstration agenda to enable a modernized grid. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will be strongly supporting this effort, bringing its unique array of experts and resources together to participate in 48 of the 88 awarded projects announced today.

Jan. 12, 2016

News Release: NREL Theorizes Defects Could Improve Solar Cells

Scientists at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are studying what may seem paradoxical - certain defects in silicon solar cells may actually improve their performance.

Jan. 6, 2016

News Release: Renewable Energy used in State Renewable Portfolio Standards Yielded Sizable Benefits and Other Impacts in 2013

A new study by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) estimates that $2.2 billion in benefits came from reduced greenhouse gas emissions and $5.2 billion from reductions in other air pollution, in mid-range estimates, for state renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policies operating in 2013. RPS policies require utilities or other electricity providers to meet a minimum portion of their load with eligible forms of renewable electricity.

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