Solar researchers across country join forces with industry to boost U.S. solar manufacturing

The University of Washington, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Toledo have formed the U.S. Manufacturing of Advanced Perovskites Consortium to accelerate the domestic commercialization of perovskite technologies.

University of Utah exceeds federal energy reduction commitment

The U.S. Department of Energy confirmed the University of Utah has exceeded its goal to reduce energy use by 20 percent by 2020, as part of the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge. The U achieved energy savings of 25% across 17 million square feet of building space since 2008, the base year for the commitment.

Solar Power Plants Get Help from Satellites to Predict Cloud Cover

Cloud cover is often characterized in simple terms, such as cloudy, partly cloudy or clear. This does not provide accurate information for estimating the amount of sunlight available for solar power plants. In this week’s Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, a new method is reported for estimating cloud optical properties using data from recently launched satellites. This new technique is known as Spectral Cloud Optical Property Estimation, or SCOPE.

Preparing for exascale: Eliminating disruptions on the path to sustainable fusion energy

With the world’s most powerful path-to-exascale supercomputing resources at their disposal, William Tang and colleagues are combining computer muscle and AI to eliminate disruption of fusion reactions in the production of sustainable clean energy.

Argonne researchers focus on grid cybersecurity to pave the way for a clean energy future

Distributed energy resources use electronics to communicate with each other or with a control center. Yet this presents opportunities for cyber attacks that could become real threats to the electric power system. Argonne experts are developing ways to protect power systems from these threats before they can occur.

How to Make it Easier to Turn Plant Waste into Biofuels

Researchers have developed a new process that could make it much cheaper to produce biofuels such as ethanol from plant waste and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Their approach, featuring an ammonia-salt based solvent that rapidly turns plant fibers into sugars needed to make ethanol, works well at close to room temperature, unlike conventional processes, according to a Rutgers-led study in the journal Green Chemistry.

Tests Measure Solar Panel Performance Beyond Established Standards

In testing solar panels, the sun’s intensity, the spectral composition and the angle of light are important factors in understanding why certain panels are successful and others degrade more quickly. To address the knowledge gap in degradation mechanisms for various photovoltaic types, researchers performed tests over five years in which they collected weather data and panel performance information. The results are published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

Supporting Structures of Wind Turbines Contribute to Wind Farm Blockage Effect

Much about the aerodynamic effects of larger wind farms remains poorly understood. New work in this week’s Journal of Renewable and Sustainably Energy looks to provide more insight in how the structures necessary for wind farms affect air flow. Using a two-scale coupled momentum balance method, researchers theoretically and computationally reconstructed conditions that large wind farms might face in the future, including the dampening effect that comes with spacing turbines close to one another.

Saving Bats from Wind Turbine Death

Wind energy holds great promise as a source of renewable energy, but some have wondered addressing climate change has taken precedence over conservation of biodiversity. Wind turbines, for example, kill some birds, and the fatality rate for bats is even higher. In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, scientists report the results of a survey of stakeholders in the wind energy field about attitudes toward the relative emphasis on climate change versus biodiversity issues.

Go With the Flow: Scientists Design New Grid Batteries for Renewable Energy

Scientists at Berkeley Lab have designed an affordable ‘flow battery’ membrane that could accelerate renewable energy for the electrical grid.

ECS President Congratulates 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Winners

Christina Bock, ECS Board president, congratulated John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino on receiving the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.” The long term Society members published important research papers in the ECS Journal. Goodenough and Whittingham are ECS Fellows.

Which Climates Are Best for Passive Cooling Technologies?

If you guessed locations with drier atmospheres and frequent clear skies, you’re right. WASHINGTON, D.C., June 25, 2019 — A group of University of California­, San Diego researchers set out to gain a better understanding of the thermal balance of…