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Kerrin: Welcome to 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 26. I’m Kerrin Jeromin.
Taylor: And I’m Taylor Mankle.
Kerrin: You know Taylor, we’re getting into the dog days of summer. It’s hot out there! It makes me want to be near the water, maybe you too? Maybe on a lake. I can just hear the waves going now.
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Taylor: I can hear it now Kerrin, the bubbling brook, an ocean breeze maybe while sitting under a tree. A cold drink in hand, maybe while floating in a pool.
Kerrin: I like where we're going with this: Just relaxing the day away—it reminds me of this great piece of research all about floating … solar panels, that is.
Taylor: Floating solar panels huh? Sounds like my second favorite piece of floating technology.
Kerrin: Your second, okay—what’s the first?
Taylor: It's got to be those giant donut pool floaties . That's got to be innovation at its finest.
Kerrin: Innovation at its finest, of course.
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Kerrin: Alright, let’s float right into this story on floating solar.
Taylor: Let's do it.
Kerrin: Floating solar, also known as floating photovoltaics— an amazing tongue twister — you want to try it?
Taylor: Floating photovoltaics.
Kerrin: Do it again.
Taylor: Floating photovoltaics.
Kerrin: Okay, very good, we've all got this down. Try that five times fast at home. Floating photovoltaics might just be the solution for countries with abundant solar resource potential but limited land availability to generate clean energy. Floating arrays, which are groups of solar panels, can be situated on lakes, reservoirs, or water treatment ponds – and can be combined with hydropower dams.
Taylor: In a first-of-its-kind assessment, NREL has completed an analysis of floating solar potential for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The report estimates the technical potential for floating solar photovoltaic across 10 Southeast Asian countries.
Kerrin: NREL’s Evan Rosenlieb noted that while we can’t generalize about Southeast Asia as a whole, it’s basically universal that the the region does pretty much have an established network of hydropower generation sites, and floating solar could support both hydropower and solar resource potential, helping to boost grid stability in the region when water levels fluctuate.
Taylor: Not to mention, floating solar means renewable energy generation without deforestation and altering the rainforest ecosystems that are in much of the region.
Kerrin: And it could be used for farming! Aquaculture, raising fish and crustaceans, alongside floating solar can bolster food security. It’s like the triple threat of clean energy technology.
Taylor: No kidding. Sika Gadzanku, who led this assessment, is really an emerging expert on floating solar research and development. Gadzanku’s work over the last four years is the basis for this new assessment. Gadzanku believes this data will lead to more discussion and inform decisions on the role floating solar can have in the region.
Kerrin: Which is vital to meeting the renewable energy goals that many countries across Southeast Asia have set. Together, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has set a target of 35% renewable energy installed power capacity by 2025, which has spurred these countries' interests in aggressive and creative solutions, like floating solar development.
Taylor: 2025? That’s right around the corner Kerrin! I’m so glad NREL is looking into these creative solutions to help meet that goal. It’s always exciting to see our research inform real world strategy.
Kerrin: Absolutely. Gadzanku, and the research team’s work was in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development, better known as U-S-AID. NREL and USAID have been working together for quite a while and this research is just part of their initiative, called the Advanced Energy Partnership for Asia.
Taylor: Yeah, and all this information is publicly available! Anyone can get access to it through the Renewable Energy Data Explorer tool, a toolkit made available by the USAID-NREL Partnership. So the information is out there for people to use and learn from to move their communities to more clean energy.
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Taylor: You know, speaking of publicly available data, Kerrin...
Kerrin: Oh, I love how excited we are to talk about publicly available data.
Taylor: You better believe it. But publicly available data is important to making the clean energy transition happen and one of the most anticipated releases of data from NREL is the Electricity Annual Technology Baseline, or A-T-B, report. The Electricity ATB is a realistic and timely set of technology costs and performance data for the electric sector.
Kerrin: The Electricity ATB’s data enables analysis of renewable and conventional energy resources, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, biopower, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and battery storage.
Taylor: Is that all?
Kerrin: I think so, yeah that’s everything. Pretty comprehensive! It provides consistent, freely available, technology-specific cost and performance parameters across a range of scenarios, resource characteristics, and sites for electricity-generating technologies for present, and also projections through 2050.
Taylor: And this year, the Electricity ATB got a face lift. There are, of course, general updates to all technologies, but there’s also technology-specific updates. This maintenance accounts for economic shifts and technological advancements in the past year. The updates are vital to making sure the Electricity ATB is as accurate and useful as possible. Let’s run through some of the updates. Ready, Kerrin?
Kerrin: Ready. Let's do this.
Kerrin: Okay, we’ve got the addition of retrofit technologies for carbon capture and storage for coal and natural gas plants—
Taylor: The introduction of four representative wind turbine technologies to show variation in design by wind class—
Kerrin: New learning curves—or in other words ways of estimating how much the cost of a technology decreases as deployment increases— for enhanced geothermal systems—
Taylor: Photovoltaic capacity factors that consider bifaciality, or a measure of how much energy the rear of the panel will produce compared to the front of the panel —
Kerrin: And new financial insights on the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.
Taylor: Whew and that’s just the new stuff!
Kerrin: Take a breather and reset here. There's a lot of great information in there.
Taylor: I know, I know. NREL’s Brian Mirletz, the technical lead of the Electricity ATB, said that a lot of the technologies saw big changes between 2022 and 2023 due to higher interest rates and supply chain constraints.
Kerrin: The Electricity ATB report is basically the go-to source for electricity sector data. Prior releases of the Electricity ATB have had over 100,000 users in the past five years, including federal agencies, state energy offices, consultants, utilities, grid operators, nonprofits, academia, and international institutes.
Taylor: It’s hard to know just how far the reach of the Electricity ATB is but with 100,000 users, it’s definitely a valuable resource to help all those groups make informed decisions on all things electricity. And that’s the power of publicly available data, Kerrin.
Kerrin: Gotta love it.
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Kerrin: You know, Taylor, NREL’s work goes from A, as in ATB, all the way to Zedd.
Taylor: Zedd huh?
Taylor: My alphabet song always ended in “Zee”.
Kerrin: Don’t go questioning your education yet Taylor. ZEDD, or Zero Energy Design Designation, follow that acronym there, is a Department of Energy program recognizing post-secondary academic programs that prepare students for building careers.
Jamie Van Mourik: The Zero Energy Design Designation recognizes institutions that demonstrate a commitment to preparing students by offering building science education curriculum which showcases best practices in zero energy strategies and technologies.
Taylor: Ah, that ZEDD. Got it. As you just heard Jamie Van Mourik with the Department of Energy explain in a webinar for ZEDD, the program encourages colleges and universities to get students ready for the new building world, with a focus on zero-energy building.
Kerrin: Howard University is one of the schools that received the ZEDD recognition and Nea Maloo, assistant professor in the Architecture Department of Howard University, played a big role in that. And so did the Solar Design Challenge, which is a competition NREL hosts for students to innovate high-performance, low-carbon, affordable buildings.
Nea Maloo: So all this started because last year was the first time Howard University participated in the Solar Design Challenge. We did it just as an extra curricular activity last year. The experience really enriched both me and my students that I wanted somehow to institutionalize it within the education system so every year my students can get to do something like this.
Kerrin: So Howard University’s participation in the Solar Design Challenge inspired them to participate in the ZEDD program!
Taylor: We love that! The Solar Design Challenge is a part of the Solar Decathlon here at NREL and it is such a unique experience. The Solar Decathlon Design Challenge brings collegiate teams together to create residential or commercial building designs that are evaluated on how well they meet the nation's rapidly evolving demand for innovative, quick-to-build, high-quality, resilient, grid-interconnected, efficient buildings that respond to targeted community needs.
Kerrin: The Solar Decathlon has challenged more than 25,000 students to create efficient, affordable buildings that are powered by renewables, since it’s start in 2002. And, good news for any college students out there listening: Registration for the 2024 Design Challenge is now open!
Taylor: Awesome! Sign up today and help us as we’re building the future.
Kerrin: Eh, building the future… I see you.
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Kerrin: Our final story, Taylor, is just a celebration!
Taylor: That’s right, congratulations are in order for NREL researchers Bryan Pivovar and Jeff Blackburn. They have been recognized by the Electrochemical Society for their contributions to the field.
Kerrin: The Electrochemical Society said it selected Pivovar as a fellow in recognition of his technical contributions in the areas of fuel cells and electrolyzers and global leadership in the promotion and adoption of hydrogen as a carbon-free energy carrier.
Taylor: And the organization said it named Blackburn a fellow for his contributions to redox chemistry, charge transfer and transport, and dynamic (photo)electrochemical processes in single-walled carbon nanotubes, graphene, monolayer semiconductors, and other low-dimensional materials.
Kerrin: My brain can't even process that—what is that? It's amazing. Both Blackburn and Pivovar are longtime NRELians…
Taylor: Folks out there, NRELians is what we call our fellow NREL employees.
Kerrin: Oh right, right. These NRELians have both been at the lab for more than 15 years and are leaders in their field.
Taylor: Love that. Pivovar is a senior research fellow at the lab and fuel cell group manager in the Chemistry and Nanosciences Center, while Blackburn is a senior scientist and group manager leading projects on fundamental and applied research topics.
Kerrin: It’s nice to close out on such a high note.
Taylor: It certainly is, Kerrin. Congratulations to both. And congratulations to YOU for tuning in to our second episode!
Kerrin: Thank you for listening to Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast. We hope you'll join us again in two weeks to hear more news from the lab.
Taylor: This episode was adapted from NREL news articles from June and July 2023 authored by Holly Darrow, Brooke Van Zandt, Patrick Hayes, and David Glickson. Our theme music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley , and Mark Sanseverino, of Drift B-C. 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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