The Humpback Creek hydroelectric facility in Cordova, Alaska, was the site of an edge data center pilot project. Photos from Chelsea Haisman.
The U.S. Department of Energy Helped Cordova With Its Local Microgrid. Now the Remote City Is Localizing Its Data Too. For years, the Cordova Electric Cooperative in Alaska has worked to source its energy closer to home. Hydropower and battery energy storage now supply Cordova’s highly seasonal electric demand. This … [continued]
How a Decades-Long Partnership Is Unearthing Answers to That and Other Electric Questions By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, NLR In 2023, four members of Schneider Electric’s Global Research Team were touring a facility at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), formerly known as NREL, when one looked into a warehouse-sized lab … [continued]
RTES System Cuts Energy Consumption and Costs Over a Simulated 20-Year Period By Hannah Halusker, NLR The rise of artificial intelligence, cloud platforms, and data processing is driving a steady increase in global data center electricity consumption. While running computer servers accounts for the largest share of data center energy … [continued]
University of Hawaii at Manoa and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Teamed up To Analyze Feasibility of Geothermal Cooling Technologies By Justin Daugherty, NLR In areas with geologically recent volcanic activity and ample underground water flow, like the Hawaiian Islands, geothermal energy technologies present options to augment the electric grid. To … [continued]
Meet Taylor Uekert, the Gymnast-Turned-Nanoengineer Who Harnesses Molecular Machines To Remake Plastics, Chemicals, and More By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, NLR Three days after 9-year-old Taylor Uekert moved to the foothills outside San Diego, her parents woke her and her brother in the middle of the night. “Get up and get to the car,” … [continued]
I was debating whether to write this article or not. I discovered the news of NREL’s name being changed from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to the National Laboratory of the Rockies from Michael Barnard’s article about it yesterday. That article is a much more professional look at the situation … [continued]
ChatGPT generated: A solemn panoramic scene of the American flag at half-mast before the NREL building, marking the symbolic end of an era in U.S. renewable-energy leadership
The erasure of the word “Renewable” from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory marks the end—or hopefully just an interruption—of a long and consequential chapter in energy history. Renaming it as the National Laboratory of the Rockies doesn’t change the buildings in Golden or the servers in ESIF or the unfinished … [continued]
Developers typically use several computer models to assess new technology designs. Now, NREL researchers are building an all-in-one tool that makes it faster and easier to evaluate their designs in one platform. Photo by Gregory Cooper, NREL.
How a Forthcoming Modeling Tool Could Help Developers Rapidly Assess the Potential of Any Floating Device Can your technology triumph in the ocean? Ask SEA-Stack. True to its name, this one-of-a-kind, free, open-source tool combines (or stacks) multiple wave energy modeling capabilities into one user-friendly package. With SEA-Stack, wave energy … [continued]
This Year’s Startups Are Focused on Energy Efficiency and Reliability in Buildings Efficient buildings are the focus of this year’s Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) cohort. The $55 million energy technology program—funded by Wells Fargo & Company and coadministered by NREL—welcomed three startups to its next cohort in the Emerging Tech … [continued]
Latest HERO WEC Mission Status Update Examines How NREL’s Wave Tank Validates Computer-Generated Scenarios for Wave Energy Converters. NREL’s hydraulic and electric reverse osmosis wave energy converter (HERO WEC) surfed the laboratory’s wave tank, facing another round of trials and tribulations to advance wave energy research. Since 2024 the team … [continued]
