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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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This work includes, but is not limited to, research and development of joint technology development and certification efforts in the wind power sector; providing access to commercial wind farm and federal facilities to enhance R&D; identification of workforce development best practices. This work will be done at Contractor and Participant facilities.
This shared resources CRADA defines collaborations between the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and SWAY. Under the terms and conditions described in this CRADA agreement, NREL and SWAY will collaborate on the SWAY 1/5th-scale floating wind turbine demonstration project in Norway. NREL and SWAY will work together to obtain measurement data from the demonstration system to perform model validation.
The datasets being released consist of cavity configurations for which measurements were made in the Sandia Trisonic Wind Tunnel (TWT) facility. The cavities were mounted on the walls (ceiling/floor) of the wind tunnel, with the approach flow boundary layer thickness dictated by the run-length from the settling chamber of the tunnel. No measurements of the boundary layer for the different cases were made explicitly. However, prior measurements of the boundary layer have been made and simulations of the tunnel from the settling chamber on have shown that this method yields the correct boundary layer thickness at the leading edge of the cavity. The measurements focused on the cavity flow field itself and the cavity wall pressures. For each of the cases, the stagnation conditions are prescribed in order to obtain the correct inflow conditions upstream of the cavity. The wind tunnel contours have been approved for public release and will be made available also.
Attempt to obtain crystals of diffractable quality from protein sample provided by OPX and solve the structure of the aa-CoA synthase enzyme.
Under this Agreement, NREL will work with the Participant to characterize wind resource assessment measurement systems needed for the design, construction, and integration of wind energy conversion systems to produce electricity for utility grid applications. This work includes, but is not limited to, research and development of hardware and software systems needed to advance wind energy resource assessment technology at speed and scale for use by electric utilities and wind power system integrators.
Competing demands for U.S. biomass resources and resulting impacts on regional feedstock availability could have a significant impact on the ability of the biofuels industry to transition to lower cost feedstocks, such as wood, agricultural residues, and energy crops, as well as on the ability of U.S. electric utilities and consumers to meet Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and transition to lower carbon-footprint sources of electricity. Promulgation of regulations that place a cost on CO2 emissions from fossil fuels will also impact this situation as biomass to power applications become increasingly cost competitive. This increased competition for biomass feedstocks could create technical and economic risks for the Government, industry, and investors, and has the potential to impede commercialization of bio-energy in the U.S. at a meaningful scale.
We will leverage new building performance and daylighting simulation tools to characterize the performance of a new electrochromic (EC) glazing as well as perform a field evaluation of the same product installed in a DoD facility. The in situ data will be used to validate and calibrate the simulation model, which will then be used to extrapolate the performance of the product across all US climate zones. The property as part of this agreement will be installed at MCAS Miramar, California.
NREL will assist 3M in evaluating the application of 3M encapsulant materials on industry-supplied, flexible CIGS minimodules.
Since 2005 the NREL Native American Tall Tower Loan program has assisted Native American tribes to assess their wind resource by lending tall (30m - 50m) anemometer. This program has allowed tribes a lower risk way to gather financeable wind data for potential utility scale wind energy projects. These projects offer Tribes a significant economic development opportunity.
Site-specific, long-term, continuous, and high-resolution measurements of solar irradiance are important for developing renewable resource data. These data are used for several research and development activities consistent with the NREL mission: Establish a national 30-year climatological database of measured solar irradiances; Provide high quality ground-truth data for satellite remote sensing validation; Support development of radiative transfer models for estimating solar irradiance from available meteorological observations; Provide solar resource information needed for technology deployment and operations.
This shared resource CRADA defines research collaborations between the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Principle Power, Inc. and its subsidiaries (“Principle Power”). Under the terms and conditions described in this CRADA agreement, NREL and Principle Power will collaborate on the DEMOWFLOAT project, a full-scale 2-MW demonstration project of a novel floating support structure for large offshore wind turbines, called WindFloat. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the longterm field performance of the WindFloat design, thus enabling the future commercialized deployment of floating deepwater offshore wind power plants. NREL is the leading U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory for the development and advancement of renewable energy and has a strong interest in offshore wind and the development of deepwater offshore wind systems. NREL will provide expertise and resources to the DEMOWFLOAT project in assessing the environmental impacts, independent technical performance validation, and engineering analysis. Principle Power is a Seattle, Washington-based renewable energy company that owns all the intellectual property associated with the WindFloat. In return for NREL’s support of the DEMOWFLOAT project, Principle Power will provide NREL with valuable test data from the project that will be used to validate the numerical tools developed by NREL for analyzing offshore wind turbines. In addition, NREL will gain experience and knowledge in offshore wind designs and testing methods through this collaboration. 2 This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications. NREL and Principle Power will work together to advance floating offshore wind technology, and demonstrate its viability for supplying the world with a new clean energy source.
The purpose of the project is to demonstrate and quantitatively compare performance of CPV systems installed in Japan and in the United States. The deployment conditions (e.g. spectrum and temperature) are site dependent and the optimal design of the system may vary with location. The CPV systems will use multi-junction concentrator cells for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. The optimal design of the cell may depend on the location at which a CPV system is installed. Thus, the systems in Japan and in the U.S. will all use a combination of concentrator cells obtained from three different vendors. This CRADA pertains only to the equipment that will be installed in the U.S. This effort is a collaborative project between AIST and NREL.
The primary objective of this effort is to develop the capability to apply new single molecule imaging methods to the study of plant cell structure and the dynamics of cellulase enzyme activity.
We will synthesize and screen solid catalysts for the depolymerization of lignin to monomeric and oligomeric oxygenated species, which could be fractionated and integrated into refinery intermediate streams for selective upgrading, or catalytically upgraded to fuels and chemicals. This work will primarily focus on the synthesis and application of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) as recyclable, heterogeneous catalysts for depolymerization of lignin model compounds and softwood lignin. LDHs have been shown in our group to offer good supports and catalysts to promote base-catalyzed depolymerization of lignin model compounds and in preliminary experiments for the depolymerization of lignin from an Organosolv process. We will also include additional catalyst supports such as silica, alumina, and carbon as identified in ongoing and past efforts at NREL. This work will consist of two tasks. Overall, this work will be synergistic with ongoing efforts at NREL, funded by the DOE Biomass Program, on the development of catalysts for lignin depolymerization in the context of biochemical and thermochemical conversion of corn stover and other biomass feedstocks to advanced fuels and chemicals.
The objective of this project is to use field verification to improve DOE’s ability to model and understand the impacts of, as well as develop solutions for, high penetration PV deployments in electrical utility distribution systems. The Participant will work with NREL to assess the existing distribution system at SCE facilities and assess adding additional PV systems into the electric power system.
During the duration of this CRADA, V-Glass and NREL will partner in testing, analysis, performance forecasting, costing, and evaluation of V-Glass’s GRIPWELD™ process technology for creating a low cost hermetic seal for conventional and vacuum glazing. Upon successful evaluation of hermeticity, V-Glass’s GRIPWELD™ will be evaluated for its potential use in highly insulating window glazing.
Long-term, high-resolution wind turbine and wind power plant output data are important to assess the impact of wind power on grid operations and to derive meaningful statistics for better understanding of the variability of wind power. These data are used for many research and analysis activities consistent with the Wind Program mission.
The project under this CRADA will analyze field data of various flat-plate and concentrator module technologies and cell measurements at the laboratory level. The field data will consist of current versus voltage data collected over many years on a latitude tilt test bed for Si, CdTe, amorphous silicon, and CIGS technologies. The concentrator data will be for mirror- and lens-based module designs using multijunction cells. The laboratory data will come from new measurements of cell performance with systematic variation of irradiance, temperature and spectral composition. These measurements will be labor-intensive and the aim will be to cover the widest possible parameter space for as many different PV samples as possible. The data analysis will require software tools to be developed. These tools will be customized for use with the specific NREL datasets and will be unsuitable for commercial release. The tools will be used to evaluate different translation equations against NREL outdoor datasets.