The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will play key roles in a variety of projects recently funded by the Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). NREL's innovative approaches have received five awards across three different ARPA-E programs for advancing transformational technologies to generate, store, and use energy more efficiently, at lower costs and with reduced emissions.
"We have great laboratory capabilities that align with the work of ARPA-E and are excited to continue to make an impact," Associate Laboratory Director Bill Farris said. "As the nation's energy system transforms to be more resilient, with energy efficiency and renewable energy playing an increasingly larger role, it is important that NREL continue to support these types of advancements in helping the United States reach its energy goals."
ARPA-E announced its OPEN 2015 program awards under a highly competitive, open solicitation. Awards fund a broad spectrum of projects from across the country, each intended to achieve transformational advancement in a variety of energy technologies. NREL received two awards under this program: one to lead the development of a novel process in solar cell manufacturing; another to support the advancement of extreme-scale, offshore wind turbines.
Also, under its Network Optimized Distributed Energy Systems (NODES) program, ARPA-E announced a total of 12 innovative projects, including two at NREL. NODES seeks to address the challenges of optimal grid operation under an increasing diversity of distributed energy resources such as residential solar, as well as evolving energy-use patterns. The NODES program has a goal of enabling renewable penetration at a level of 50 percent or greater.
And under its GRID DATA program, ARPA-E announced seven project awards. GRID DATA will develop open-access, power system models and associated data repositories. NREL received one award, partnering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Comillas-IIT and GE Grid Services (formerly Alstom Grid).
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NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
Visit NREL online at http://www.nrel.gov