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Taylor: Welcome to the very first episode of Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We’re highlighting the latest in clean energy research happening at the lab. It’s Wednesday, July 12. I’m Taylor Mankle.
Kerrin: And I’m Kerrin Jeromin. We are so excited to bring you this brand-new podcast from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, also known as NREL. Opened 46 years ago this month, this national lab has been a leader in clean-energy research, development, and deployment—and the only Department of Energy laboratory dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. As NREL continues to chart the course for a clean-energy future, Taylor and I will be your guides to all the groundbreaking research and innovation happening here at the lab.
Taylor: Let’s jump in! We’ve got four stories to share with you today, covering electric vehicle charging stations, as well as hydrogen, hydropower, and geothermal technologies.
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Kerrin: It’s summer, the sun is shining, and you know what that means: It’s road trip season!
Taylor: You headed on any fun road trips this summer, Kerrin?
Kerrin: Oh yeah! I love a good road trip. I’ve already explored parts of Colorado and Arizona and I’m heading to Vermont later this summer, which is home-sweet-home for me! Of course I can’t travel without some road snacks, music and podcasts. How about you, Taylor?
Taylor: Love those road trip essentials Kerrin! And one of the many beauties of living in Colorado has to be the accessibility to some amazing road trips. I know I’ll be pushing to make some happen this summer!
Taylor: Speaking of road trips, get this: By 2030, analysts anticipate that somewhere between 30 million to 42 million of cars on the road will be light-duty electric vehicles, like sedans, small SUVs, and other lighter passenger vehicles.
Kerrin: Wow! That’s incredible considering how many electric vehicles —or EVs—we’re already seeing on the road today. All of the road trip snacks, none of the fossil fuel emissions.
Taylor: That’s one of my life mottos ... more snacks less emissions, haha. But with all those electric cars on the road, you have to wonder if there will be enough charging stations to keep up.
Kerrin: I know, this is something you hear a lot in the EV conversation. But, NREL is working on that actually. Our researchers just released a quantitative needs assessment that estimates the number, type, and location of the chargers we’ll need to support this anticipated transition to EVs before the end of the decade. They collaborated with the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, as well as the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office.
Alex Schroeder: I think it just provides a bigger picture perspective on what is gonna be needed over time. I think everyone's trying to figure out, how does this network evolve over time? What do we need to be thinking about down the road that we're not thinking about now? So I think it's a really helpful framework to kind of forecast out and answer the question that states have of, you know, are we gonna have more EVs on the road? And if so, how many? And what does that mean for our infrastructure? I think this just gives them a little foresight with how to make sure these investments are building for the future.
Taylor: So as Alex Schroeder, the chief technology officer for the Joint Office, explained, this study helps answer the questions of how the country can create an electric vehicle charging network that will reach the farthest corners of the nation and help make charging convenient, reliable, and affordable for all Americans.
Kerrin: Yep! And as drivers continue to have more and more interest in electric vehicles (like me – I would love one) we now have estimates of the infrastructure we’ll need in order to keep up with that projected growth.
Taylor: So according to the study, that likely looks like…
Kerrin: Any guesses?
Taylor: A lot?
Kerrin: A lot, yes. About 28 million charging ports.
Taylor: That makes sense especially when you’re looking at potentially more than 30 million EVs on the road by 2030. With so many people interested in charging their cars overnight, though, most of those will likely come from private residential chargers.
Kerrin: Right. But we’ll also need fast-charging and publicly-available ports in places like neighborhoods, office buildings, and retail outlets—and combined, those will make up a little over one million of the projected charging ports. What I think is really cool about this study is it didn’t just take a one-size-fits-all approach to charging, but considered all realities of life in the United States: for instance, how the climate in Arizona is different from North Dakota, or how Southern California will likely have busier charging stations. This region-specific analysis even considered city-to-city differences in demographics, travel patterns, housing, and charging preferences.
Taylor: That’s incredible. The future of EV-powered road trips is looking brighter—and cleaner—every day.
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Taylor: Kerrin, this next story is actually a superhero story that’s basically right out of a comic book.
Kerrin: Okay, I’m listening …
Taylor: It starts with a hero, clad in a brilliant blue coat, who travels the streets in near silence, providing reliable power to disaster recovery sites, helping emergency response efforts using hydrogen-powered strength—all while saving the planet from fossil fuel emissions on four wheels!
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Kerrin: Wait—four wheels? Taylor, are you talking about H2 Rescue, the hydrogen fuel-cell powered truck?
Taylor: Yup! The Batmobile has nothing on this disaster-relief vehicle.
Kerrin: Well, I mean the Batmobile is cool, but yeah, I have to agree with you there. This 33-thousand-pound, heavy-duty truck is seriously impressive. Its hydrogen-based system allows it to drive 180 miles and power essential appliances in 20 homes for 72 hours before needing to refuel.
Taylor: And to do that it carries a substantial amount of hydrogen—or H2—fuel cells that only emit water, so while the vehicle supplies all this power like a diesel or gasoline generator, it is zero-emission and is also much, much quieter. Plus, it has a climate-controlled truck bed, so the vehicle can also serve as a mobile command center for coordination and communication at the same time that its providing essential emergency services.
Kerrin: You know, I haven’t seen the rescue truck just yet, but I did hear it was on NREL’s campus recently.
Taylor: That’s right! it was just recently. In order for this truck to be created, the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy teamed up with the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. They awarded approximately one million dollars to an energy tech company called Accelera by Cummins to create H2Rescue. And NREL was tapped to showcase the rescue truck’s capabilities, which we did through a weeklong demonstration on our two Colorado campuses.
Kerrin: That’s pretty cool!
Taylor: It’s more than cool, Kerrin: It’s super. [sung to Batman tune] : Na-na-na-na na-na-na-na H2!
Kerrin: Folks listening at home, this is what you get- we’ll nerd out from time to time. But guess what, Taylor? That’s not the only superhero-worthy innovation coming out of NREL recently. Only instead of H2, this research team is focused on H2O: harnessing moving water to power the planet. Chemistry class coming back at you here.
As an affordable, steady renewable energy source, hydropower has potential to be the backbone of our power grids, but the improvement of its massive, complex facilities has been hindered by a big challenge: How to test something you cannot build.
Taylor: Because unlike building a new solar photovoltaic system, for instance, building a hydroelectric prototype is often time consuming, and expensive. Like you mentioned, hydropower plants can be massive—and to operate they also depend on specific geographies—sometimes whole mountains. And tinkering with operational facilities is risky, because tests could cause irreversible damage.
Kerrin: Exactly. So NREL’s water power, or hydropower, research team has designed what they call a Real-Time Hydropower Emulation Platform – basically, a tool that uses field data from real hydropower plants, mathematical models, and even hardware to allow researchers to recreate hydropower plants in a virtual lab setting. This way, they can test out new hydropower tech and grid configurations, in a low risk, low-cost way.
Taylor: So, this platform enables research that could, for example, eventually allow for hydropower plants to jumpstart the grid if a severe winter storm knocks out power across the Midwest, saving stranded residents from dangerously cold temperatures.
Kerrin: Or, it could also help save a remote city cut off from power by an avalanche. For example, the Alaskan city of Cordova, which is about an hour from Anchorage by plane, already uses hydropower to power its grid in the summer. But once the water freezes in winter, power can get cut off—usually when temperatures hit their lowest or an avalanche happens--times when it’s really bad to not have power.
Taylor: I feel like Cordova is such a great example of how until we know more about how to best create hydropower facilities, cities won’t be able to fully harness hydropower’s potential to integrate into the grid.
Kerrin: Yep! Like you mentioned earlier, its ability to support a future clean energy grid is just not as well understood as technologies like solar and wind.
Taylor: That’s what makes NREL’s Real-Time Hydropower Emulation Platform so exciting and important. This tool can really help expand researchers’ understanding of hydropower and accelerate change.
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Kerrin: Our final story this episode is a pretty hot topic: geothermal energy. See what I did there, Taylor? Sorry, okay. This clean energy resource has the ability to provide a flexible and reliable source of renewable electricity.
Taylor: But geothermal projects go through numerous permits, authorizations, and regulations before development can begin—and that can really slow down deployment.
Kerrin: Exactly, and these steps are very important: They address things like potential environmental impacts. But a big question right now is, what exactly is stopping clean geothermal energy from rapid expansion? NREL is working on finding the answer.
Taylor: Of course we are. A recent study examined the nontechnical obstacles that might be impacting geothermal timelines, budgets, and approvals in the states of California and Nevada, which are the largest producers of geothermal energy in the United States. NREL’s Aaron Levine was one of the analysts who conducted the research for this study and presented the findings in a webinar with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory earlier this summer.
Aaron Levine: Both in California and Nevada we saw site-specific challenges due to the presence of sensitive resources which may include species or cultural resources, and these ultimately can lead to project delays and increase project costs and risks.
Taylor: The complications Levine mentioned could be related to protecting water quality and resources, sensitive and endangered species, or cultural sites. Levine also added that the scenarios for geothermal energy adoption vary drastically between California and Nevada due to differences in permit regulations, and this report pinpointed areas to eliminate duplicative permitting requirements and reviews so that geothermal projects could happen on a faster timeline, without sacrificing quality or the ability to honor community concerns.
Kerrin: With the guidance of this report, it’s looking like we have the knowledge we need for geothermal energy expansion to move full steam ahead!
Taylor: Those geothermal puns are just too easy!
Kerrin: I know, I know. I couldn’t help myself. Well! This is what you get folks! Thanks for listening to the very first episode of Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast.
Taylor: As this podcast grows, Kerrin and I are excited to continue sharing the latest news and happenings from the lab.
Kerrin: We also want to hear your comments and thoughts as listeners with the opportunity to weigh in. There’s much more to come: we're just getting started.
Taylor: Can’t wait! I’m Taylor Mankle.
Kerrin: I’m Kerrin Jeromin. Join us again in two weeks for more news from NREL.
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Taylor: This episode was adapted from NREL news articles from June 2023 authored by Anna Squires, Natasha Headland, Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, Ryan Horns, and Kelly MacGregor. Our theme music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino, of Drift BC. This podcast is produced by NREL’s Communications Office and recorded at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. We express our gratitude and acknowledge that the land we are on is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. We recognize and pay respect to the Indigenous peoples from our past, present, and future, and are grateful to those who have and continue to be stewards of this land.
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