Scientists at ORNL are looking for a happy medium to enable the grid of the future, filling a gap between high and low voltages for power electronics technology that underpins the modern U.S. electric grid.
Technology Transfer staff from Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory attended the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, in Las Vegas, Jan. 8–12.
Electric vehicles can drive longer distances if their lithium-ion batteries deliver more energy in a lighter package. A prime weight-loss candidate is the current collector, a component that often adds 10% to the weight of a battery cell without contributing energy.
The 2023 top science achievements from HFIR and SNS feature a broad range of materials research published in high impact journals such as Nature and Advanced Materials.
It would be a challenge for any scientist to match Alexey Serov’s rate of inventions related to green hydrogen fuel. But this researcher at ORNL has 84 patents with at least 35 more under review, so his electrifying pace is unlikely to slow down any time soon.
Ateios Systems licensed an ORNL technology for solvent-free battery component production using electron curing. Through Innovation Crossroads, Ateios continues to work with ORNL to enable readiness for production-quality battery components.
Lee's paper at the August conference in Bellevue, Washington, combined weather and power outage data for three states – Texas, Michigan and Hawaii – and used a machine learning model to predict how extreme weather such as thunderstorms, floods and tornadoes would affect local power grids and to estimate the risk for outages. The paper relied on data from the National Weather Service and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environment for Analysis of Geo-Located Energy Information, or EAGLE-I, database.
Used lithium-ion batteries from cell phones, laptops and a growing number of electric vehicles are piling up, but options for recycling them remain limited mostly to burning or chemically dissolving shredded batteries.
Researchers at ORNL have been leading a project to understand how a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, could threaten power plants.
In fiscal year 2023 — Oct. 1–Sept. 30, 2023 — Oak Ridge National Laboratory was awarded more than $8 million in technology maturation funding through the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF.