NREL Inventiveness Sets New Record for Patent Activity
For Greg Glatzmaier, the road between innovation and implementation runs along a dusty stretch of highway about a dozen miles south of Boulder City, Nevada, where his patented idea could solve an industry problem. The destination for his idea is Nevada Solar One, an outpost in the desert where 186,000 parabolic shaped mirrors tilt to capture the sun’s rays.
Greg Glatzmaier tests the high-temperature thermal/mechanical stability of sealants that are being used in equipment installed at the Nevada Solar One power plant. The process reduces trace levels of hydrogen in the power plant and maintains its original design efficiency and power production. Photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL
“When the plant first opened, there was nothing around it but open desert with mountains to the west and east,” said Glatzmaier, a senior engineer in the Thermal Energy Science and Technologies group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “The only other landscape feature is a dry lakebed north of the plant.”
Since Nevada Solar One began operations in the summer of 2007, other utility-scale solar power plants have opened in that lakebed. Nevada Solar One is the only concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the region, however, and the technology faces a unique set of challenges.
The CSP facility uses concentrated beams of sunlight to heat a fluid flowing through 20,000 tubes to as high as 752 degrees Fahrenheit. The process creates steam to spin a turbine that powers a generator and produces electricity. Over time, however, the heat transfer fluid begins to break down and form hydrogen, which reduces the effectiveness of the process. Tiny metal pellets in the tubes absorb the hydrogen, but after about seven years they become saturated and cannot be removed and replaced. Glatzmaier developed a method to address the hydrogen problem.
“To try to go in individually and address the situation for each tube is not really practical,” Glatzmaier said. “So, the method that I’ve developed, and what’s in that patent, and what this project has been all about, is to reduce and control the level of hydrogen that’s in the heat transfer fluid.”
NREL applied for a patent on Glatzmaier’s invention in the fall of 2017. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last May granted patent protection to what is simply called “Hydrogen sensing and separation.”
Laboratory Filed 188 Patent Applications
Glatzmaier’s patent was merely one of the 40 U.S. patents issued to NREL during fiscal 2020, a bump from the 32 issued during the prior fiscal year. Of the 269 disclosures filed with the laboratory’s Technology Transfer Office as the first step toward either patent or copyright protection, 153 fell in the category of a record of invention and 116 in the area of software.
“We continue to see strong engagement from researchers who submit their ideas for evaluation, with especially strong growth in software,” said Anne Miller, director of NREL’s Technology Transfer Office. “It’s great to see such growth because it tells us that the outreach to the lab to get people to report their innovations and work with us in getting them protected and deployed means that it’s working, that people know who to contact. Hopefully, it means that they have some confidence in our ability to be helpful and steer them in the right direction.”
Anne Miller, director of NREL’s Technology Transfer Office, speaks to laboratory employees at a 2019 event. Photo by Werner Slocum, NREL.
NREL filed 188 patent applications in FY20, up from 124 the year before.
Lance Wheeler, a research scientist at NREL, has about a dozen patent applications in the pipeline tied to the discovery several years ago of a way to turn windows into solar cells. The technology relies on perovskite solar cells that enable the glass to darken and generate electricity, and also switch back to a clear pane. The most recent patent approved, for “Energy-harvesting chromogenic devices,” was granted in November, or almost four years after the provisional application was filed.
“It’s much different than writing a paper because you can write a paper and get it published within months,” said Wheeler, who shares credit on the patent with colleagues Joey Luther, Jeffrey Christians, and Joe Berry. “You’ll never get a patent awarded in months. It’s usually at least a year, and three is not crazy.”
Buildings across the United States account for nearly two-thirds of energy used, so the notion of using these “smart windows” to take advantage of sunlight could bring that energy consumption down.
The patents issued so far for Wheeler’s dynamic photovoltaic windows cover foundational aspects of the technology and sprang from the initial research. A series of patent applications followed.
“When you write the first patent application, you don’t know everything,” Wheeler said. “As you learn more and especially for very particular market needs, or what a product might look like, you learn what’s important and you continue to protect the things that are working. Then you make more discoveries, and you patent more things, but they’re all aligned in the same area.”
Perovskite Composition Earns Patent Protection
Alignment, as it turns out, is a key part of making perovskites most effective in capturing the sun’s energy. Unlike widely used silicon, which is a naturally occurring mineral, perovskites used in solar cells are grown through chemistry. The crystalline structure of perovskites has proven exceptionally efficient at converting sunlight to electricity.
NREL researchers have explored possible combinations for perovskite formulas to find the best. That work resulted in a patent issued in April 2020 for “Oriented perovskite crystals and methods for making the same.” The process begins with a small crystal that’s attached to another crystal and then another and on and on. The crystals are also oriented in the same direction. Kai Zhu, a senior scientist and one of the inventors, uses bricklaying as an analogy.
“You lay one layer down, you put one next to another, you align them perfectly,” he said. “You have to do this in order to build a very large wall. But if you have some randomness in it, your wall will collapse.”
The patent, which covers the composition of the perovskite, was issued to Zhu, Berry, and Donghoe Kim of NREL and to a scientist in Japan. NREL filed the patent application in 2017. Compared to a perovskite solar cell made of crystals allowed to grow randomly instead of in a specific orientation, the NREL-developed composition has been proven to have fewer defects and able to move charge carriers quickly. The result is a perovskite solar cell capable of reaching the highest efficiency.
“This represents the current best performing perovskite composition for the single-junction solar cell,” Zhu said.
Software Filings Reach New Record
NREL’s Technology Transfer Office received 116 software record (SWR) disclosures in fiscal 2020, establishing a new record and marking a big increase from 72 the prior year. The growth in submittals is partly due to more software being developed and authorized for free open-source release. One software record approved for closed-source licensing last year and now available for commercial users is the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Projection tool, or EVI-Pro. A simplified, open-source version, known as EVI-Pro Lite, also has been released.
The core of EVI-Pro allows users to forecast the demand for electric vehicle charging infrastructure in a particular area. The predictive nature of the software also enables users to determine in advance how an influx of electric vehicles might affect the grid and energy demand. EVI-Pro relies on real-world information.
Eric Wood, the NREL researcher who oversaw the development of EVI-Pro, said it is not enough to simply consider how many charging stations were installed in an area previously and make an educated guess based on that information.
“That misses some key points,” he said. “The vehicle technology is evolving. The charging technology is evolving. And the behavior of individuals that own these vehicles is evolving.”
Early adopters of electric vehicles could charge them at home, in their garage. As the market expands, Wood said, people living in apartments or who have to park on the street need to have a place to plug in.
“The role of public charging infrastructure is going to continue to elevate as the market grows,” he said. “Continuing to develop the software with an eye on reflecting the latest situation in the market is one of the challenges that we face, so keeping EVI-Pro relevant and current is important.”
From the Laboratory to the Outside World
For Glatzmaier, the journey to see how well his invention could perform at isolating and removing hydrogen from the concentrating solar power plant was not a quick one. Grounded from flying because of the pandemic, last year he made four trips to the Nevada site by car. Each trip took about 13 hours one way.
Scientists typically keep close to their laboratory space, with companies able to license ideas that sprang from the inventive minds at NREL. Often, with license in hand, a company will conduct research using its own people. In Glatzmaier’s case, Nevada Solar One signed cooperative research and development agreements that have kept the scientist and company working closely together since 2015.
Glatzmaier initially planned to address the hydrogen buildup using two processes: one to measure the amount of the gas, and a second to extract it. Laboratory-scale tests showed his ideas would work, but he still expected some hesitation from company executives when it came time to trying out the devices on a much larger scale.
“I was thinking, they’re going to be very reluctant because companies tend to not want to make changes to their power plants once they are up and running,” he said. So he proposed installing the mechanism to only measure hydrogen buildup. Instead, the company wanted him to move ahead and tackle both problems at once. From the initial idea to installation has been a long road, but it does not end in Nevada.
Glatzmaier said 80 concentrating solar power plants exist around the world, and talks are in their final stages to license the technology for its use in these plants.
Learn more about licensing NREL-developed technologies.
—Wayne Hicks
Article courtesy of the NREL, The U.S. Department of Energy.
Europe is pressing ahead with plans to ban Russian gas imports by the end of 2027, effectively capping Moscow’s energy future in the region and leaving a bevy of stranded assets in its wake.
The dual Nord Stream 1 and 2 subsea pipelines were early casualties of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the infrastructure being sabotaged in late 2022 and the latter pipeline — costing $11 billion to build and aimed at doubling cheap Russian gas flows to Germany — never being certified for use.
There had been speculation that the major energy infrastructure could eventually be resurrected if, or rather when, the war between Russia and Ukraine ends and there’s a peace agreement between the parties.
However, talks to try to establish the grounds for a ceasefire have been moving at a snail’s pace with neither side willing to cross “red lines” regarding the permanent surrender of territory, be it sovereign or occupied. Speaking with British news website UnHerd, Vance said Monday that while the U.S. is going to “try to get this thing solved,” he “wouldn’t say with confidence that we’re going to get a peaceful resolution.”
Hopes of a deal have led to questions over what economic and energy links between Russia and the rest of the world could be re-established and, when it comes to Europe, whether a ceasefire could lead to a reintegration of Russian gas and the resurrection of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Such a move would be highly contentious and divisive on the continent, given Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and attempts in the region to wean itself off cheaper Russian gas.
In 2021, before the war, Russian imports accounted for about 45% of the European gas consumption. This year, estimates expect imports of 13%.
Ukraine would be outraged by any move that benefited its invader, and Poland has called for the pipelines — one of which has never been used — to be “dismantled.”
That said, Ukraine itself benefited from an older pipeline that passes through the country as it collected transit fees. The Russia–Ukraine gas transit agreement expired at the end of 2024, with the two countries opting not to renew it given the war. The Nord Stream pipelines were specifically designed to circumvent Ukraine and avoid such fees, but the transit agreement could be one of many levers to use during negotiations if the tap is turned back on.
The U.S. would likely baulk at the return of Nord Stream as it has hoped to muscle out Moscow and increase its market share of liquefied natural gas (LNG) sales to Europe. But Germany, which is directly connected to the pipeline and whose industries are struggling with high energy costs, might find the lure and return of Russian gas supplies hard to resist.
The European Council and Parliament in December struck a provisional agreement on regulation to phase out imports of Russian gas. It is set to implement a full ban on liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pipeline gas imports from the end of 2026 and autumn 2027, respectively.
Is Nord Stream salvageable?
The Danish Energy Agency in January granted permission for Nord Stream 2 to carry out preservation work on its damaged pipelines that are located within Denmark’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Baltic Sea.
“The purpose of the works is to prevent further gas blowout and the ingress of oxygenated seawater, that could potentially lead to corrosion,” the agency told CNBC, although the preservation works on Nord Stream 2 have not commenced yet.
The permit has been granted on a number of conditions, the agency said, that are intended to ensure safe operation of the pipeline. It added that, among other conditions, the company must submit an annual plan for the pipeline facility “so that the Danish Energy Agency can continuously monitor the company’s plans for the facility’s future.”
“Furthermore, all conditions in such permits would have to be fulfilled before the pipelines can be put into operation. The Danish Energy Agency has not received any such applications,” it said.
But are the Norstream pipelines even salvageable now?
Sergey Vakulenko, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told CNBC that the pipeline that was damaged in the sabotage incidents would need replacing in part, and the remaining undamaged one would not cost “much money at all” to resurrect.
“I think they’re still repairable, salvageable. So you could have to cut a few miles of [the damaged] pipeline and replace it. But this could be done,” he told CNBC in October.
“It could easily cost $1 billion or something like that, but there’s still one [pipeline] at operational strength so that could be used,” he said. Asked if the pipelines — which are filled with stagnant gas — are being looked after currently, Vakulenko said: “They’re not looked after at all.”
Can Europe stomach Russian gas, again?
Whether Europe could resume purchases from Russia again is the big question.
“Each of the Nord Streams [pipelines] were 55 million cubic meters. So that one remaining is 27.5 million cubic meters … and that’s probably the top of what Europe would be prepared to buy from Russia,” Vakulenko said.
He said that if there was a change of government in Russia and Putin was no longer president, Europe would be “quite willing to buy some Russian gas,” but not if the same amounts it was buying before.
“Then Nord Stream would come in handy. But that’s [a] very big ‘IF,'” he added.
“On the one hand, Europe, or at least there are parties [countries] in Europe, who wouldn’t mind having at least some Russian gas in the European energy mix for a number of reasons, to not be too reliant on U.S. supply. Russia is the lowest cost supplier to Europe,” he said.
The continent has not fully recovered from the energy crisis stemming from the full-scale invasion of its neighbour. The Dutch Title Transfer Facility, Europe’s main benchmark for natural gas prices, was double its pre-war prices in early 2025, per the IEA. Energy constraints are compounded further by the AI race, which has shifted public narratives from energy transition to energy addition.
“So if you’re not too squeamish to buy Russian gas, if you don’t have to hold your nose too tight by buying it, then sure, there’s a lot of commercial and economic reasons as to why [to do it]. If it becomes politically, ethically palatable, then there will be quite a lot of stimuli to do so, but that’s again for the time when there is indeed some rapprochement between Russia and Europe, and that’s [a] big ‘if’,” Vakulenko said.
However, Tancrede Fulop, utilities and renewables analyst at Morningstar, told CNBC that it would be too difficult to reintegrate Russian gas, at least in the short term, because of the fresh European legislation. He noted, however, that the legislation does include some exceptions for Hungary and Slovakia in emergency situations.
The policy shift was also rooted in a drive for energy independence after Russia’s “weaponisation of gas supplies,” the EU said. As a result, member states are likely to stay clear of an overreliance on one state going forward and instead invest in boosting overall domestic capacity.
Does Russia want European business?
Whether Russia would want to sell its gas to Europe is another looming question.
“Everybody thinks the energy crisis started with war in Ukraine, but it actually started in 2021,” Fulop said, noting several drivers of a cold winter, low wind speeds, and therefore high gas consumption.
Adding to the crisis was the fact that the EU was late to clear Nord Stream 2 for operations. “And so Russia started to reduce the flows of gas sent to the EU,” before the war started, he said. This suggests that the move from Russia may have been intended to add pressure on Europe to pick up the pace with Nord Stream 2.
On the other hand, “Russia is not in a very strong negotiating position,” according to Vakulenko. “For Russia, that gas is a stranded resource. So you could expect [that Europe] could negotiate a good deal.”
Russia has also looked to Asia as an alternative partner to Europe and has deepened ties with China via the Power of Siberia pipeline.
Even if a peace deal with Ukraine is reached, “the message is quite alarming” around another potential conflict with Russia, Fulop said, given the flouting of European airspace in recent months.
Ultimately, a renewed embrace of Russian gas “doesn’t seem like the most realistic scenario.”
It helps that gas prices have fallen lately, he added, perhaps with market watchers pricing in a peace deal. The EU will also benefit from the new export terminals in the U.S.
“This is bearish for gas prices, positive for Europe, and that could offset the end of Russian gas imports,” Fulop said.
A former coal mine in western Maryland is now generating solar power – and it’s the largest solar farm in the state. Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) has brought Maryland’s largest solar project online in Garrett County, turning reclaimed coal mine land into a source of clean electricity.
CPV Renewable Power, an affiliate of CPV, and investment partner Harrison Street Asset Management have started commercial operations at CPV Backbone Solar, a 160-megawatt solar project in western Maryland. The site sits on a reclaimed, decommissioned coal mine, turning previously disturbed land into a new source of clean power.
Construction of the project was handled by Vanguard Energy Partners, a solar engineering, procurement, and construction firm.
The project comprises approximately 324,000 solar panels and is expected to generate enough electricity to power around 30,000 homes. For Maryland, it adds new in‑state generation while giving former fossil fuel land a second life.
CPV says that the project aims to demonstrate the role of brownfield redevelopment in the energy transition. The company’s CEO, Sherman Knight, said Backbone Solar shows “how brownfield redevelopment, innovative engineering, and strategic partnerships can meet complex project challenges and deliver new power generation in Maryland.”
Local officials have welcomed the project. Garrett County Board Chairman Paul Edwards said bringing the solar facility to the county helps protect the region’s natural landscape while also creating economic value for local residents.
CPV Backbone Solar also includes a community and environmental investment tied to the project. CPV has committed $100,000 over four years to the Deep Creek Watershed Foundation.
Backbone Solar becomes part of CPV’s growing renewable portfolio, which includes four operating wind and solar projects. The company also says it has a 4.8-gigawatt renewable development pipeline.
A second phase of the Backbone Solar project is already under construction. Once completed, it’s expected to increase the site’s total installed capacity from 160 MW to 175 MW.
Read more: Fast charge your EV while grabbing Royal Farms fried chicken
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