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
The United States has 37 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar capacity—enough to power over 4,070,000,000 LED lights—with an impressive additional 112 GW of capacity currently under development.
Jul 21, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Researchers in the BOTTLE Consortium, including from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Portsmouth, have identified using enzymes as a more sustainable ...
Jul 20, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Heavy-duty trucks, or semi-trucks with a gross vehicle weight greater than 26,000 pounds, are responsible for around 15% of total U.S. transportation energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Electrifying these vehicles would ...
Jun 22, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Puzzling out and testing new ways to improve the efficiency of cadmium telluride (CdTe) polycrystalline thin-film photovoltaic materials is a typical day in the life of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) research ...
Jun 09, 2021
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Engineering
With variable renewable energy (VRE) expected to become a much larger share of the global energy mix, storage solutions are needed beyond short-duration timescales, such as standard commercial batteries, which are suitable ...
May 27, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Demand flexibility offers high value in supporting a highly electrified, renewables-based U.S. power system, according to the sixth and final report in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Electrification Futures ...
May 26, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
With recently announced federal emissions-reduction targets, a push for national power-sector decarbonization, and plummeting wind and solar costs, the United States is poised to deploy major amounts of renewables, and fast.
May 20, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Last year, average fuel economy for light-duty vehicles hit a new high, while the pandemic reduced time on the road, fuel consumption, and emissions. These short-term reductions have spurred efforts to cement even greater ...
May 19, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed a breakthrough in energy-efficient phototransistors. Such devices could eventually help computers process visual information ...
May 04, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
Rising penetrations of variable renewable energy (VRE) in power systems are expected to increase curtailment—the reduction of renewable energy delivered due to oversupply or lack of system flexibility. But while curtailment ...
Apr 29, 2021
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