PNNL and collaborators developed new models—recently approved by the U.S. Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC)—to help utilities understand how new grid-forming inverter technology will enhance grid stability.
Recycling polyolefin materials is challenging. One waste management strategy is plastic upcycling. New work demonstrates a single-step upcycling route coupling cracking and alkylation, recycling carbon and keeping valuable resources active.
PNNL’s patented Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE™) technique is an advanced manufacturing technology that enables better-performing materials and components while offering opportunities to reduce costs and energy consumption.
PNNL helps deliver efficiency-related rules and requirements that steadily improve performance of America’s buildings, saving energy and costs and reducing carbon emissions.
Mandy Mahoney, director of the DOE Building Technologies Office, visited PNNL in late November. One key agenda item involved meeting with staff for a discussion of effective equity and justice integration in buildings-related research.
Understanding the risk of compound energy droughts—times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow—will help grid planners understand where energy storage is needed most.
PNNL’s Andrea Mengual co-chaired a working group that produced Building Performance Standards: A Technical Resource Guide. PNNL’s Kim Cheslak, Bing Liu, and Jian Zhang contributed to the effort.
PNNL led one of five Pathway Summer School programs nationwide, with a specific focus on engaging students from Native American or Indigenous backgrounds.
The PNNL-managed Building America Solution Center translates research into actionable considerations for homeowners and builders to provide two solutions in one: increasing energy efficiency while also enhancing disaster resistance.
A PNNL team’s analysis of new-housing data concludes that single-family homes in lower-income counties are less energy-code-compliant than in higher-income counties, a finding that could shape strategies for enhanced code adoption.
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers has given its 2022 Journal Paper Award to Jamie Kono, a PNNL building research engineer.
PNNL receives a 2023 Federal Laboratory Consortium Far West Regional Award for a technological innovation that could help make the U.S. a producer of critical minerals used in electronics and energy production.
A PNNL innovation uses steam to recover heat from the high-temperature reactor effluent in the HTL process, substantially reducing the propensity for fouling and potentially reducing costs.
Staff at PNNL recently completed a report highlighting commercial products enabled through projects funded by the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office.
The Simple Building Calculator, developed at PNNL, meets a need for a quick, interactive, and economic method to evaluate energy use—and potential savings from efficiency measures—in simple commercial buildings.
