Typically, local weather change can appear to be such a frightening and insurmountable problem that even studying about seemingly small (however terrifying) temperature shifts, uncommon climate patterns, or shrinking water provides can really feel, effectively, exhausting.
That’s the reason we attempt to supply excellent news, in bite-sized nuggets, that present just some of the various options our Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory (NREL) specialists are arising with 12 months after 12 months. Primarily based on our viewers knowledge, readers such as you appear to love it.
So, in case you missed a juicy nugget, now we have tallied up the most well-liked occasions, information tales, and movies revealed during the last 12 months.
Local weather change could really feel overwhelming, however now we have the folks—and the water-powered applied sciences—to assist construct a carbon-free electrical energy grid by 2035 and win the struggle, one carbon molecule at a time.
January 2022
In January 2022, we counted down 10 significant water power accomplishments from 2021, which included a map of Alaska’s energetic Cook dinner Inlet (study extra in this video), sources to encourage the following era of water energy staff, and concepts to assist design extra productive, environmentally pleasant hydropower applied sciences.
We gathered video footage to create a huge, virtual 360-degree tour of NREL’s water power facilities. Now, you possibly can discover NREL’s Flatirons Campus from the consolation of wherever you’re employed these days, whether or not that’s your property workplace, an area espresso store, or a commuter prepare.
October 17, 2022 — Aerial view of the Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory’s Flatirons Campus, Constructing 251. The campus is the location of the ARIES venture. (Picture by Josh Bauer / Bryan Bechtold / NREL)
February 2022
NREL Mechanical Engineer Nathan Tom helped design a new kind of wave energy technology that could possibly be cheaper, produce extra vitality, and courageous the ocean’s brawn higher and for longer. Known as a variable-geometry, oscillating, surge wave vitality converter, the system creates home windows that enable waves to go by with out crashing full drive onto its hull.
Throughout a U.S. Senate committee listening to on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., policymakers cited NREL’s hydropower research, which helped inform discussions concerning the renewable’s big worth to america’ vitality system.
March 2022
With a freshly updated Marine and Hydrokinetic Toolkit—a searchable, open-source code library—marine vitality builders can now entry much more knowledge on U.S. ocean and river websites and analyze how effectively their applied sciences would possibly carry out in several situations associated to turbulence, sediment, excessive waves, and extra.
On a sunny winter day, a staff of NREL researchers visited Jennette’s Pier at North Carolina’s Nags Head seaside to deploy their novel wave-powered desalination device. “Getting up to now has required a variety of persistence and perseverance, however that’s a part of creating new renewable marine vitality applied sciences,” mentioned Scott Jenne, NREL’s marine vitality programs engineering and techno-economic lead and principal investigator for the U.S. Division of Power’s (DOE’s) Waves to Water Prize.
Scott Jenne prepares his wave-powered desalination system for its ocean outing. Picture from Andrew Simms, NREL
Rebecca Fao, a mechanical engineer at NREL, hosted the two-day 2022 Marine Energy Data and Instrumentation workshop for industry, university, and laboratory experts. Contributors helped establish what the marine vitality business wanted to gather higher knowledge on their expertise prototypes.
April 2022
For Earth Day, NREL celebrated DOE’s many prize competitions, which encourage groups from academia, business, and startups to compete to design improved applied sciences for photo voltaic vitality, water energy, inexperienced buildings, and extra.
The Waves to Water Prize—a contest designed to speed up the event of small, modular, wave-energy-powered desalination programs—introduced its grand prize winner and celebrated the finale of its final stage, DRINK.
In a brand new video launched in April, 2022 NREL Water Energy Technician Andrew Simms mentioned the lab’s marine vitality validation capabilities, which vary from theoretical testing all the best way to open water trials. Picture by NREL
In one other Earth Day celebration, we introduced 3 ways NREL’s water energy researchers are investing in tomorrow’s cleaner world—and how one can, too. Our specialists are, for instance, serving to cut back plastic air pollution, save water (and vitality together with it), and construct extra resilient communities.
Could 2022
NREL obtained within the water with SHARKS—no, not the predatory ocean hunters however reasonably a couple of of the novel applied sciences which have the potential to show tides and river currents into reasonably priced sources of renewable vitality.
“And another factor!” mentioned a younger Aaron Levine when negotiating for a shiny new toy, a special dinner, or a later bedtime. Now, Levine, a senior authorized and regulatory analyst at NREL, focuses on find out how to add extra protected, reliable hydropower to the U.S. electrical grid and, in doing so, fight climate change.
June 2022
A staff of NREL researchers together with Stuart Cohen mapped out how, the place, and at what value U.S. developers could build new pumped storage hydropower facilities, which might assist retailer sufficient clear vitality to help a future carbon-free electrical energy grid.
August 31, 2021 – NRELian Stuart Cohen joins in an Escapes: Volunteer Path Upkeep venture on the Olivine Path on South Desk Mountain in Golden, CO. The group volunteered their time to enhance path situations on STM path community. (Picture by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)
Twelve remote and island communities joined the journey to energy resilience due to the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project, which assists communities in reworking their vitality programs to incorporate hydropower, marine vitality, or different renewable vitality applied sciences and sources.
July 2022
In a brand new video, we shared how the NREL water energy staff is pondering large about hydropower’s role in the fight against climate change. Spoiler alert: Our specialists can mannequin any grid on the planet to find how hydropower amenities can finest help an evolving clear vitality grid.
This month, NREL researchers attended the 2022 HydroVision International Conference in Denver, Colorado, and introduced two panels. In a single, specialists mentioned how hydropower and pumped storage hydropower—which might retailer big quantities of vitality for hours and even days—might help a clear vitality grid. And within the second, one other group mentioned challenges going through the hydropower workforce.
August 2022
In New Hampshire, NREL’s Aidan Bharath, a analysis engineer, labored to assist advance a “living bridge” to clean energy, which might assist tidal vitality go international. “It’s not very nice,” Bharath mentioned of his former job as a welder within the oil sands of northern Canada—one purpose why he shifted his consideration to renewable marine vitality.
And in a second video, we highlighted how NREL is helping marine energy progress toward commercialization. Marine vitality has the potential to play a key position in a 100% clear vitality future, and NREL researchers are working exhausting to get us there.
In the summertime 2022 problem of The Present, our water energy publication, readers realized find out how to take a digital 360-degree tour of our water energy analysis amenities, discover convention recaps and different information, and examine NREL Analysis Engineer Ritu Treisa Philip’s life on the ocean and on stage.
NREL researchers introduced a webinar to clarify the Marine Power Atlas’ many new options on Aug. 30, 2022. The net-based interactive mapping instrument now contains wave knowledge going again 42 years as effectively improved filtering capabilities, the flexibility to avoid wasting queries, and instruments to course of large quantities of knowledge in home.
September 2022
“The DEEC-Tec area has legs and is rising,” mentioned Blake Boren in an article about his newly patented wave vitality expertise, distributed embedded vitality converter applied sciences (or DEEC-Tec, pronounced deck-tech, for brief). With DEEC-Tec, particular person vitality converters work collectively (like muscle cells) to create a bigger, versatile construction (like a sea snake) that may generate vitality from even slow-moving waters.
A newly patented expertise area might construct massive, versatile constructions from particular person vitality converters to create more cost effective, extremely environment friendly instruments for producing clear vitality from the ocean (and past). Illustration by Besiki Kazaishvili, NREL
NREL’s customizable knowledge acquisition instruments, referred to as Modular Ocean Knowledge Acquisition Methods, are designed to evaluate marine vitality applied sciences within the lab or within the water. With these programs, our specialists (and plenty of extra world wide) can shortly and affordably acquire knowledge on their early-stage designs. In September, we produced a video to clarify how these programs work.
NREL hosted a webinar to share latest updates to the Hydropower Regulatory and Allowing Info Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit, which distills various federal, state, and tribal necessities for hydropower venture growth (and far, rather more) into one easy-to-use database.
October 2022
For individuals who missed the 2022 parade of Manufacturing Masterminds, we revealed a recap of how six specialists in renewable vitality manufacturing constructed careers cleansing up greenhouse gases, plastics, and waste with assist from child-sized zucchinis, toy crops, rickety energy grids, a landfill epiphany, and a wee island with no stoplights. Learn extra about water power’s Robynne Murray, who’s a insurgent with a trigger—and an ice axe.
NREL researchers launched a brand new evaluation instrument for people working to design small—or smaller—wave energy converters, which have to be designed for various ocean variables than their bigger cousins, to precisely assess their efficiency at sea.
On the 2022 Clear Currents convention, NREL specialists joined a global cohort of water energy researchers, business members, and policymakers to debate new funding and workforce alternatives, the latest pumped storage hydropower craze, hydropower’s keystone position for a 100% clear vitality grid, and extra.
November 2022
On Nov. 4, 2022, NREL hosted colleagues from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Western Space Energy Administration to debate potential analysis partnerships in, for instance, analyzing local weather change and drought results for hydropower plant operations, how hydrogen might play a task within the energy-water-food nexus, and the feasibility of floating photo voltaic panels on hydropower reservoirs.
NREL researchers released a report on hydropower workforce diversity in addition to different workforce gaps the business might want to fill to assist the nation obtain the purpose of transitioning to a carbon-free electrical energy sector by 2035.
With a newly updated Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy, everybody—from small startups to large universities—can entry the info they should advance the marine vitality business. “You might have the best innovation on the planet, however if you happen to maintain it to your self, there’s no worth to it,” mentioned Jon Weers, NREL’s lead technologist and knowledge programs architect.
December 2022
In the newest Beneath the Surface profile, we featured Kerry Strout Grantham, who’s negotiating sustainable human progress (and a few smelly hikers) whereas partnering with communities, researchers, and expertise builders throughout america.
Kerry Strout Grantham grew up close to (and in) the ocean, scuba diving and swimming in any respect hours besides at daybreak or nightfall when Nice White sharks hunted seals in Cape Cod’s waters. Now, she helps different coastal communities harness the ocean’s energy and transition to scrub vitality. Picture from Kerry Strout Grantham
Article courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Associated story: NOAA: 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report & Useful Interactive Tools
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