The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located in Golden, Colorado, is the United States' primary laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is a government-owned, contractor-operated facility; it is funded through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This arrangement allows a private entity to operate the lab on behalf of the federal government under a prime contract. NREL receives funding from Congress to be applied toward research and development projects. NREL also performs research on photovoltaics (PV) under the National Center for Photovoltaics. NREL has a number of PV research capabilities including research and development, testing, and deployment. NREL's campus houses several facilities dedicated to PV research. Established in 1974, NREL began operating in 1977 as the Solar Energy Research Institute. Under the Jimmy Carter administration, it was the recipient of a large budget and its activities went beyond research and development in solar energy as it tried to popularize knowledge about already existing technologies, like passive solar, amongst the population.
Energy & Green Tech
An ultrathin protective coating proves sufficient to protect a perovskite solar cell from the harmful effects of space and harden it against environmental factors on Earth, according to newly published research from the U.S. ...
Jan 27, 2023
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Energy & Green Tech
The U.S. natural gas infrastructure is expansive, providing service for 32% of the nation's energy consumption in 2021. To reduce the emissions from natural gas service, blending hydrogen into natural gas pipelines could ...
Jan 25, 2023
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Engineering
In April 2022, a team of engineers hiked into California's Sierra Nevada mountains to hunt for snow. Instead, they found mostly bare, dry dirt and only a few of the snow patches that provide one-third of California's water ...
Jan 18, 2023
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Energy & Green Tech
So you have heard of solar power and wind energy, but what about their younger cousin, marine energy?
Jan 10, 2023
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Business
Demand for hydrogen in the United States is projected to increase severalfold by 2050 as its production becomes more cost competitive. Although hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, molecular hydrogen is ...
Dec 29, 2022
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Engineering
A new approach to manufacturing perovskite solar cells has addressed previous problems and yielded devices with high efficiency and excellent stability, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report ...
Dec 23, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
What do a T-shirt, a rug, and a soda bottle have in common? Many are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a ubiquitous plastic that revolutionized the materials industry after it was patented in the 1940s.
Dec 22, 2022
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Software
Standing among solar arrays and power grid equipment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), you might hear a faint, distorted melody buzzing from somewhere. You are not hallucinating—that gray box really is ...
Dec 14, 2022
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Business
Research and development (R&D) has been vital to developing new clean energy technologies. Yet for technologies to advance from the research lab to viable commercial products many obstacles must be overcome. To replicate ...
Dec 7, 2022
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Business
To meet U.S. goals of a 100% carbon-free electric grid by 2035, the wind energy workforce must keep pace with industry growth. This means closing its workforce gap. Now, two new reports from the National Renewable Energy ...
Dec 1, 2022
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