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 2020
June 23, 2020
MECC Invites Competitors To Make a Splash With Their Blue Economy Brainstorms
Challenging the best and brightest to unlock the power of the ocean, in August, the MECC will begin accepting applications for the 2021 competition.
June 22, 2020
News Release: Research Determines Financial Benefit from Driving Electric Vehicles
Motorists can save as much as $14,500 on fuel costs over 15 years by driving an electric vehicle instead of a similar one fueled by gasoline, according to a new analysis conducted by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's NREL and Idaho National Laboratory.
June 22, 2020
Lowering Atmospheric CO2 in Large-Scale Renewable Energy Electrochemical Process
What if carbon dioxide (CO2), a prevalent greenhouse gas, could be transformed into higher-value fuels and chemicals using low-cost, renewable electricity? Recent results from NREL may enable the scale-up of an electrochemical process to reduce CO2 that has not been possible until now.
June 19, 2020
How Janine Freeman Got Where She Wanted to Be
Some soul-searching and road-tripping set her on the right route to her goal of working with NREL's System Advisor Model.
June 18, 2020
Tapping the Entrepreneurs of the Waves to Water Prize DESIGN Competition
Eight of the 17 winning teams in the DESIGN stage of the Waves to Water Prize received awards for their entrepreneurial wave-powered desalination designs.
June 18, 2020
NREL Supports Innovators as They Pursue New Ideas for Rural and Commercial-Scale Solar
Eight teams from across the United States are working with NREL to develop and test novel applications of solar energy in rural communities and commercial-scale settings as part of the second round of the Solar Energy Innovation Network.
June 16, 2020
From Space Travel to Fisheries: Wave Energy Modeling Tool Helps Design Tomorrow's Tech
NASA is using WEC-Sim (Wave Energy Converter SIMulator), an open-source code developed by NREL and Sandia National Laboratories, to ensure NASA’s Orion Crew Model uprights and remains upright upon landing in the ocean.
June 12, 2020
Concentrating Solar Power Best Practices Report Is First of Its Kind
NREL experts and industry leaders focus their knowledge on focused sunlight—an on-demand, renewable power source.
June 11, 2020
National Oceans Month: Celebrating Careers in Marine Energy
During National Oceans Month, we celebrate water power researchers who are discovering innovative ways to harness marine energy to generate electricity.
June 10, 2020
Scientific Collaboration Buoys Future of Offshore Wind
Offshore wind, with its potential for domestic electricity-generating capacity of more than 2,000 gigawatts, could supply enough electricity to meet the needs of the entire United States twice over. NREL researchers are working with partners to make reliable, affordable, and accessible offshore wind energy a reality.
June 10, 2020
MHKiT Offers Marine Renewable Energy Mavens Tools for Success
NREL has launched MHKiT, an open-source software designed to support marine and hydrokinetic R&D through data processing and analysis.
June 9, 2020
News Release: Waves to Water Prize Announces DESIGN Winners, Selects Jennette's Pier for Finale
This week, the U.S. DOE and NREL announced the winners for the DESIGN Stage and the location for the final DRINK Stage of the American-Made Challenges Waves to Water Prize: Jennette's Pier on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
June 8, 2020
News Release: NREL, CCHRC Combine Forces to Increase Research in Arctic Region
NREL is growing its mission space through an expanded collaboration with Alaska's Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC), based in Fairbanks, Alaska. CCHRC has 20 years of experience designing energy efficient, healthy, culturally appropriate homes in some of the harshest conditions on Earth.
June 8, 2020
Fuel and Engine Research Brings Cleaner, More Efficient Cars and Trucks Closer to Finish Line
Passenger cars and light-duty trucks typically account for 55% of U.S. transportation energy use. Recently, sharp increases in demand for deliveries have pressed some commercial trucks—which usually account for more than 25% of transportation-related fuel consumption—into overtime.
June 5, 2020
NREL Wind Experts Lead Global Efforts
Global Wind Day, celebrated worldwide on June 15, offers an opportunity to highlight NREL's leadership in wind energy research. On behalf of the U.S. DOE, NREL represents the United States by participating in 16 of the 18 International Energy Agency Wind Technology Collaboration Programme research tasks.
June 5, 2020
NREL Projects Headline Energy Department Wind R&D Newsletter
From workforce development programs that prepare young people for jobs in the wind industry to a new reference wind turbine that expands capabilities to assess offshore designs, NREL led some exciting projects featured in the Wind Energy Technologies Office's biannual Research and Development Newsletter.
June 1, 2020
NREL's Sandra Loi Receives 2020 DOE Distinguished Achievement Award
Sandra Loi, project leader with the Technology Integration section in NREL's Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences, has been awarded the 2020 U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle Technologies Office Distinguished Achievement Award for her outstanding service to technology integration partners.
June 1, 2020
Daniel Bennett: Retired U.S. Army Colonel Brings His Cybersecurity Experience to NREL
Daniel Bennett, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former director of research for the U.S. Army Cyber Institute at West Point, joined NREL in September 2019 as the senior technical advisor for NREL's Energy Security and Resilience Center.
June 1, 2020
Transforming Power Systems Cybersecurity with NREL's Cyber-Energy Emulation Platform
A new National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) technical report details a milestone capability at NREL to develop, emulate, and visualize interconnected power and communications systems for the study of cybersecurity and distributed energy.
June 1, 2020
Learn About the Revised IEEE Standard 1547-2018 on NREL's New Website
NREL has launched a new website featuring information on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standard 1547-2018 for integrating distributed energy resources (DERs) into the modernized electrical grid.
June 1, 2020
IEEE Publishes NREL-Led Standard for DER Evaluation
The new standard, IEEE 1547.1-2020, clarifies the test and evaluation procedures to ensure distributed energy resources comply with established standard 1547-2018.
May 2020
May 28, 2020
Inertia and the Power Grid: A Guide Without the Spin
A new video and report explain the historical role of inertia in maintaining a reliable power system—and how this role is changing as the grid evolves.
May 28, 2020
ARPA-E Awards NREL To Study Risk and Reward of Energy Resource Flexibility
The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has announced $3.4 million in project funding for an NREL-led team in a new program designed to assess the delivery risk of grid assets' ability to provide expected power.
May 28, 2020
Scientists Pinpoint Pathways for Carbon Dioxide Uptake of Cyanobacteria
Research performed by the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI)—a joint effort between NREL and the University of Colorado, Boulder—shows how RASEI researchers traced the growth of individual cyanobacteria, providing new insights into the biological pathways that enable efficient photosynthetic growth, and ultimately high-value renewable fuels and chemicals.
May 22, 2020
HydroWIRES Pinpoints Key Design Elements of Tomorrow's Power System
Hydropower may be the missing puzzle piece that offers the flexibility and storage necessary to effectively bridge the gap between traditional and renewable resources on the grid.
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