Scientists have uncovered a root cause of the growth of needle-like structures—known as dendrites and whiskers—that plague lithium batteries, sometimes causing a short circuit, failure, or even a fire.

With support from DOE’s Office of Electricity and National Grid, PNNL led a groundbreaking study to accurately assess the full value of grid energy storage investments across a wide variety of use cases.

PNNL researchers have created a chemical cocktail that could help electric cars power their way through extreme temperatures where current lithium-ion batteries don’t operate as efficiently as needed.

New PNNL research shows that a pairing of humble minerals outshines other reactive materials when it comes to producing hydrogen.

Energy storage is slowly shifting utility planning practices from the current paradigm, which ensures grid reliability by building reserve generation resources, to ensuring grid reliability by optimizing grid services.

PNNL researchers are developing the only tool that can control large-scale distributed energy resources in real time.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories have joined forces to reduce costs and improve the reliability of hydrogen fueling stations.

PNNL researchers demonstrate how the excitation of oxygen atoms that contributes to better performance of a lithium-ion battery also triggers a process that leads to damage, explaining a phenomenon that has been a mystery to scientists.

A new PNNL tool makes it easy to see the differences across the country when it comes to the cost and affordability of electricity. Users can sort and compare nearly 100 metrics or variables and get individual county information.

PNNL researchers are developing and evaluating bat tagging and tracking tools that will help design solutions to protect the bat population from wind turbines.

PNNL’s self-healing cement outperforms conventional cement in a series of tests for strength, flexibility and mechanical stress.

When the weather heats up, so does power demand for air conditioners and refrigerators. But what if you could cool things down by using heat itself instead of electricity?

Many industries are increasingly looking at hydrogen as a relatively new but efficient, clean, and quiet power source.

Researchers at PNNL are developing a new class of acoustically active nanomaterials designed to improve the high-resolution tracking of exploratory fluids injected into the subsurface. These could improve subsurface geophysical monitoring.

Researchers at PNNL used key metrics to develop visualizations that show how the combined effects of climate change on hydropower and load influence the frequency, duration, and severity of power shortfalls.

A recent study pinpointed the reaction front where lithium (Li) dendrites can come into contact with cathode materials. It also detailed the Li propagation pathway and reaction steps that lead to cathode failure.