National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Summaries of Available Technologies
Read the following summaries about the technologies available to license from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Success Stories
Nexus BioEnergy Developing Enhanced Organic Waste Recycling Technology F...
Nexus BioEnergy
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
CSIRO
NREL has joined forces with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to develop a plug-and-play technology that will result in newly connected solar generation being automatically "discovered" and configured by the main generation control system. NREL will perform a review of communications protocols to identify important protocols that the plug-and-play solar microgrid controller must be compatible with. CSIRO will also collaborate with multinational engineering firm ABB on the project.
NREL will perform prototype testing of the microgrid controller in the ESIF to test the hardware's ability to manage the output power of a diesel generator in the presence of a load bank and solar simulator. The effort ultimately aims to simplify the integration, accelerate the deployment, and lower the cost of solar energy in hybrid distributed generation applications using this new plug-and-play solar technology.
For more NREL success stories visit http://www.nrel.gov/technologytransfer/success_stories.html
NREL Science Central to Success of New Biofuels Projects:
DuPont
NREL + GOOGLE
Google and the IEEE Power Electronics Society are working with NREL at the ESIF on the Little Box Challenge, an open competition challenging engineers to build smaller power inverters for use in photovoltaic (PV) power systems.
R&D STRATEGY
Up to 18 finalists in the Challenge will be invited to bring their inverter to the ESIF in 2015 for testing and evaluation against the contest parameters. NREL’s world-class researchers will use the state-of-the-art capabilities of the ESIF to evaluate each inverter’s efficiency and performance during tests spanning 100 hours under the same set of typical operating conditions. The test results will help Google and IEEE decide the winner of the $1 million prize, which in 2016 will go to the team that designs and builds a kilowatt-scale inverter with the highest power density and that meets the contest’s other specifications.
IMPACT
The goal of the Little Box Challenge is to create a smaller,more efficient power inverter. Currently, inverters are about the size of a picnic cooler, and Google would like to see the technology shrink to the size of a small laptop computer or smaller. Shrinking the current inverter by 10 times or more and making it cheaper to produce and install would enable more PV-powered homes and more efficient distribution grids, and help bring electricity to remote areas.
NREL + SOLECTRIA
Solectria
NREL is partnering with solar inverter manufacturer Solectria at the ESIF to develop 500- and 750-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) inverters with advanced features that can support the electric grid.
R&D STRATEGY
The ESIF’s utility-scale power hardware allows Solectria to test its inverters using simulated utility grid and solar PV emulation so researchers can see the impact of the inverter’s advanced features on power reliability and quality. The?ESIF’s grid simulator allows researchers to subject the solar inverter to practical abnormal grid conditions, and the solar PV simulator allows re-creation of solar variations due to weather. This unique testing capability allows Solectria to test its inverter’s controls and functionality at full power—and determine how its integration supports and impacts the grid under a variety of conditions.
IMPACT
This work supports the development of PV inverters that can provide bulk system support to utilities under fault conditions—which will ultimately allow for increased penetration of solar on the grid.
Partnerships Drive New Transportation Solutions
General Motors (GM), Chrysler, and Ford
Hybrid car sales have taken off in recent years, with a fuel-sipping combination of electric- and gas-powered technologies that simultaneously deliver energy efficiency, low emissions, and strong performance. The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)—which played a pivotal role in putting hybrids on the road—has applied a similar strategy to its talent base and partnerships, bringing together the best minds from the worlds of research and industry.
NREL's Transportation and Hydrogen Systems Center (THSC) provides just one example of how NREL partners with industry to address some of the toughest energy efficiency challenges. NREL's work with individual companies—from startups to established corporations—includes full collaboration, technical assistance, deployment guidance, research facility use, and technology licensing. The lab has also attracted national-caliber experts to its staff from the commercial sector, while continuing to bank on the intellectual capital of its research veterans.
For instance, THSC Director Chris Gearhart and Vehicle Technologies Laboratory Program Manager John Farrell joined NREL in 2013 after three collective decades in the automotive and fuels industries.
"We recruited Chris and John because we knew they could effectively steer our transportation team even further along in meeting the Energy Department's goals and the NREL mission," said Associate Lab Director for Mechanical and Thermal Systems Engineering Barbara Goodman. "Their ability to provide industry perspectives was essential for maintaining our relevance."
Gearhart led research and development (R&D) teams at Ford Motor Company for more than 16 years, as well as playing pivotal roles in product development, safety research, and quality assurance programs. Farrell came to NREL after 15 years at the ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research Lab, where he held R&D, technical, strategic planning, and program management positions, leading collaborations with Toyota, Caterpillar, and Ford.
"Even in my Ford days, reducing petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas production was my mantra," said Gearhart, who championed the company's fuel cell system, stack, and hydrogen storage research efforts. "Being able to focus 100% on sustainable transportation solutions was the logical next step."
Farrell might have spent most of his career in private industry, but he also draws on considerable experience working with Sandia, Oak Ridge, and Argonne national labs on Energy Department projects. He carried this spirit of public-private partnership with him to NREL.
"The government, automakers, component manufacturers—they're all our partners," Farrell said. "We're an Energy Department lab, responsible for moving forward energy-efficient solutions with the potential for significant market impact. That means our work must deliver the greatest possible energy savings, while being informed by private-sector realities."
For more NREL success stories visit http://www.nrel.gov/technologytransfer/success_stories.html
Crystal Solar and NREL Team Up to Cut Costs
Crystal Solar
A faster, cheaper way to manufacture silicon solar cells, partially funded by the Energy Department and fine-tuned at its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), has won a coveted R&D 100 award as one of the top technology innovations of 2013.
Crystal Solar's approach to growing high-quality, high-efficiency silicon wafers at 100 times the usual throughput and half the cost could be a game-changer, creating American jobs and stemming the flow of solar cell manufacturing overseas, says T.S. Ravi, chief executive officer of the Santa Clara, California-based company.
For more NREL success stories visit http://www.nrel.gov/technologytransfer/success_stories.html
Even before he founded Crystal Solar, Ravi set a goal to speed up the manufacturing process. In 2011, his nascent company applied for the Energy Department's SunShot Initiative's Photovoltaic (PV) Incubator Program, which at that time was run out of NREL. The PV Incubator Program has a very competitive selection process, searching for ideas that are truly disruptive in terms of lowering costs.
"We applied for the program and were selected in late 2011," Ravi said, recalling a conversation he had several years ago with NREL's Harin Ullal. "I knew that if I could bunch a lot of wafers together, and find a way to remove the epitaxial wafer with a simple mechanical process, it could actually change the game in the solar industry."
Crystal Solar's direct gas-to-wafer method is epitaxial, which means it grows a layer of material on top of another material that has the same crystal structure. In the direct gas-to-wafer method—the official name is Direct Monocrystalline Silicon Wafer Growth by High-Throughput Epitaxy—gaseous layers of semiconducting silicon material are grown directly on reusable silicon substrates. The method has several advantages, including eliminating the waste incurred in the traditional approach, which involves sawing thin slices from a large ingot or block of silicon. In the new approach, wafers can be made thinner without compromising their quality or efficiency.
However, semiconductor material using the epitaxial approach typically grows very slowly—about two wafers an hour for the thickness needed for solar wafers. That's much too slow—and therefore costly—for solar cells. The Energy Department's SunShot Initiative has set a goal for solar energy of less than $1 per watt system price by 2020, as a way of making it cost competitive with fossil-fuel-based electricity.
Fore more NREL success stories visit http://www.nrel.gov/technologytransfer/success_stories.html
Award-Winning Etching Process Cuts Solar Cell Costs
Natcore Technology Inc.
Optimizing solar-cell technology can be a complex job, requiring expertise in material science, physics, and optics to convert as much sunlight as possible into electricity. But despite this complexity, a simple fact is key to making a high-performance solar cell: any sunlight reflected off the cell can’t possibly be converted into electricity.
Manufacturers have tried to minimize the reflection of sunlight off of solar cells by first chemically etching micrometers-deep structures into the surface of solar cells and then depositing one or more thin anti-reflection layers. Unfortunately, the equip- ment and processes for these conventional methods add significant cost to the solar cell, and the cells still absorb only 93%–97% of the sunlight.
To address this problem, scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have invented the “black silicon” nanocatalytic wet-chemical etch, an inexpen- sive, one-step process that literally turns the solar cells black, allowing them to absorb more than 98% of incident sunlight. The process costs just a few cents per watt of solar-cell power-producing capacity.
To etch the silicon, a wafer is immersed in a solution that contains chloroauric acid, which is composed of hydrogen, chlorine, and gold. Tiny nanoparticles of gold instant- ly form and act as a catalyst for chemical reactions, producing a nanometer-scale porous surface on the cell wafer. The nanoscale pores—on the order of a billionthof a meter in diameter—are much smaller than the wavelength of the incident light, so they suppress reflection across the full spectrum of sunlight. As the tiny holes deepen, they make the metallic gray silicon appear increasingly dark until it becomes almost pure black, absorbing nearly all frequencies of sunlight. The surface becomes riddled with minute pores of varying depths with no sharp interfaces that would reflect light, creating a highly absorbent silicon wafer.
Using a closely-related process that employs less-expensive silver nanoparticles, NREL has made a black silicon cell with a validated 18.2% conversion efficiency—about the same efficiency as a typical crystalline silicon solar cell with a more costly antireflec- tive coating.
At 100°F, NREL’s black silicon etching process takes less than a minute. In contrast, the etching process that prepares silicon wafers for conventional antireflective coatings takes 8–30 minutes, and applying the coatings adds even more processing time.
Fore more NREL success stories visit http://www.nrel.gov/technologytransfer/success_stories.html
NREL and SkyFuel Partnership Reflects Bright Future for Solar Energy
SkyFuel Inc.
Huge parabolic mirrors catching the sun's rays could crisscross America's deserts soon, thanks to a breakthrough that may greatly lower the cost of solar power.
A small solar company has teamed with scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop massive curved sheets of metal that have the potential to be 30 percent less expensive than today's best collectors of concentrated solar power.
The SkyTrough Parabolic Trough Solar Concentrating Collectors will be longer than football fields and look like fun-house mirrors, but could be the game-changers in solar energy's bid to out-muscle gas and coal in providing electricity for America's homes.
The breakthrough recently was honored by R&D Magazine as one of the top 100 technical innovations of the year, and by the Federal Laboratory Consortium with a 2009 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award.
Solar power has been nipping at the heels of fossil fuels for decades, but hasn't yet found a way to be cost-competitive on a large scale.
For more NREL success stories visit http://www.nrel.gov/technologytransfer/succes_stories.html
Patents
Patents associated with this Lab are reviewed and updated quarterly. Some patents may no longer be maintained or available for licensing.
Experts
The following experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are available to answer questions about technologies of interest to innovators and investors.
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Robert M. Baldwin
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Daniel Friedman
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Robert Tenent
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Judith Vidal
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