News & Feature Stories published between April and July

In this online engineering PDH course, recent news and research breakthroughs from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are described. NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for research on renewable energy and energy efficiency. NREL’s mission is to advance the science and engineering of energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, and renewable power technologies and provide the knowledge to integrate and optimize energy systems. Every year, in addition to publishing technical articles and reports, NREL publishes dozens of short articles (NREL News & Feature Stories) that take an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the latest news and research breakthroughs. The present course is Part 2 of a three-part series of courses based on excerpts of recently published News & Feature Stories. In general, all three courses should be of interest to anyone wanting to keep up with recent developments from a laboratory regularly recognized for national and global leadership in energy efficiency and renewable energy research and development. This course is intended for engineers interested in the latest developments in renewable energy and energy efficiency research.  This course is based on the course document, “Recent Developments in Renewable Energy Research at NREL Part 2.”

Learning Objectives:

At the successful conclusion of this course, you will learn the following knowledge and skills:

• Knowing that regions with the highest potential for distributed wind tend to have a combination of high-quality wind, relatively high electricity rates for behind-the-meter applications, higher wholesale power rates for front-of-the-meter applications, and siting availability
• Knowing that a study has been completed on the ability of New York City’s EV charging network and local utility to meet the eventual demands of more than 100,000 electric cars for hire
• Knowing that NREL has created the highest efficiency (39.5%) solar cell, of any type, measured using standard 1-sun conditions
• Knowing that thermophotovoltaics have been developed that capture light from heat at 40% efficiency and may be applicable to thermal energy storage systems
• Knowing that direct air carbon capture and sequester strategies are being studied
• Knowing that abandoned oil and gas wells could possibly be used for energy storage
• Knowing that data from mining companies’ unsuccessful exploratory drilling projects could be useful for geothermal companies looking for deep underground heat sources
• Knowing that NREL maintains two databases of state and local energy zoning laws and ordinances for siting wind and solar energy projects
• Knowing that an advanced pyrolysis process is being developed that converts biomass into refinery-ready biocrude oil for eventual use in producing sustainable aviation fuel
• Knowing that a new three-year consortium intended to accelerate the development of cadmium telluride technologies by lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency of the thin-film solar cells has been announced
• Knowing that an engineered bacteria will be sent into space as part of ongoing research into solving the problem of plastic waste mitigation on Earth.
• Knowing that NREL will analyze the electric-charging infrastructure at airports planning to support sustainable aircraft
• Knowing that NREL will research development of technologies that can transform buildings into carbon storage structures
• Knowing that the emissions generated by the manufacture of silicon and cadmium telluride photovoltaic technologies could become very significant as PV manufacturing increases in the coming decades.