Innovation Pipeline

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable-energy and energy-efficiency research and development. NREL develops renewable-energy and energy-efficiency technologies and practices, advances related science and engineering, and transfers knowledge and innovations to address the nation’s energy and environmental goals. NREL’s goal, in partnership with its stakeholders, is to lead the U.S. to energy security, reliability and reduced environmental impact. NREL aims to set the standard for research and to be the preeminent institution for advancing innovative renewable-energy and energy-efficiency technologies from concept to adoption.

LOCATION
Golden, Colorado

FOUNDED
1974

MAJOR PROJECTS
NREL’s renewable-energy and energy-efficiency research spans fundamental science to technology solutions.

Renewable energy: biomass (biorefineries, biosciences), geothermal, solar (photovoltaics, concentrating solar power and solar thermal), wind.

Energy efficiency: advanced vehicle technologies and fuels (hybrid vehicles, fuels utilization), basic energy science (new materials, chemical and biological sciences), building technologies (building efficiency, zero-energy buildings), energy analysis.

Energy delivery and storage: distributed energy (distribution and interconnection, thermal systems, superconductivity), hydrogen and fuel cells (production, storage, delivery and end use).

LAB DIRECTOR
Dan E. Arvizu: Arvizu became NREL’s eighth director on January 15, 2005. Before NREL, Arvizu was an executive with CH2M Hill, where he was senior vice president and chief technology officer of the federal and industrial client groups. Before joining CH2M Hill, he was an executive with Sandia National Laboratories, where he worked for more than 20 years. He began his career at the AT&T Bell Telephone Labs Customer Switching Laboratory. Arvizu was appointed in 2004 to the National Science Board by President George W. Bush.

KEY RESEARCHERS
Desikan Bharathan: Bharathan is a principal engineer on NREL’s Advanced Power Electronics project. Over the past 20-plus years he’s worked on many renewable-energy technologies, including ocean thermal energy, building cooling, wind energy and geothermal energy. He’s currently working on thermal controls for power electronics and energy-storage systems for vehicular applications. He’s also involved in developing a thermal model of the human body to help reduce air-conditioning loads in automobiles.

Michael Deru: Deru is a senior engineer with the Center for Buildings and Thermal Systems. Most of his work is focused on improving the energy and environmental performance of commercial buildings. He’s the project leader on development of the U.S. Life-Cycle Inventory Database and on the Department of Energy’s Performance Metrics Project. He also develops models for building-energy simulations and directs projects for monitoring and verifying performance of integrated energy-efficiency measures in commercial buildings.

Rob Farrington: Farrington is a principal engineer who manages the Advanced Vehicle Systems Group in the Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems. The most recent efforts in his 26-year career at NREL have focused on the development of hybrid electric vehicles and their related subsystems. He led the Cool Car effort to reduce fuel used in vehicle climate control, which resulted in the development of ADAM–the Advanced Automotive Manikin–a 126-segmented, self-contained, sweating manikin controlled by a human thermoregulatory physiological model.

Walt Musial: Musial is a senior engineer at the National Wind Technology Center, where he has worked for 17 years. He developed NREL’s structural laboratories, which include facilities for testing wind turbine blades up to 50 meters long and wind turbine drive trains up 2.5 megawatts. Musial currently is responsible for offshore wind energy activities at NREL. He previously was employed in the wind industry by Kenetech Windpower and Energy Sciences.

ANNUAL R&D BUDGET
$229.8 million in 2003, $211.9 million in 2004. The majority of the laboratory’s funding comes from the DOE’s Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.

PAPERS AND PATENTS
NREL holds 264 issued patents and is recognized as the nation’s premier laboratory for research and development in renewable energy and energy efficiency. NREL received two R&D 100 awards for 2005. The awards, given by Research & Development magazine, recognized lab innovations as among the year’s most significant. That brings to 39 the number of R&D 100 awards earned by NREL.