News

New Berkeley Lab energy storage website aims to expand collaborations with industry.A major automaker came to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently wanting to better understand battery degradation. After many months of intense collaborative research with a Berkeley Lab battery scientist, they gleaned some important insights into the conditions that may lead to battery failure, and even... Read more

New Berkeley Lab study finds lower greenhouse gas emissions on per-mile basis for driverless cars deployed as taxis.Imagine a fleet of driverless taxis roaming your city, ready to pick you up and take you to your destination at a moment’s notice. While this may seem fantastical, it may be only a matter of time before it becomes reality. And according to a new study from Lawrence Berkeley... Read more

Ravi Prasher, a former ARPA-E program director and expert on thermal energy processes, has been named the first director of the Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division (ESDR), in the Energy Technologies Area (ETA). Most recently, Prasher was the vice-president of product development at Sheetak Inc., a thermoelectric startup in Austin, Texas. Before that he spent nearly three years at... Read more

In June 2015, the Steering Committee met to review CERC's plans and progress to date and to discuss the future work and planning for the second phase (2016-2020) of the CERC program, CERC 2.0. The meeting was presided over by Secretary MONIZ, Minister WAN, and Vice Administrator SHI. Senior officials from DOE, MOST, NEA, and MOHURD; industry partners; and stakeholders participated in the meeting.... Read more

The Building Technology and Urban Systems (BTUS) Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Energy Technologies Area is starting a new research project on Healthy, Efficient, New Gas Homes (HENGH).The website showcases and supports Berkeley Lab’s project to collect and analyze indoor air quality (IAQ)-related field data and occupant perceptions from new natural gas... Read more

The biotech company Genentech is cutting the ribbon on a new building designed to maximize energy efficiency and employee comfort, thanks to some help from FLEXLAB® at Berkeley Lab.FLEXLAB provides a facility for testing and optimizing building systems under real-world conditions, allowing Genentech to make the best possible choices for its new 255,000-square-foot office building. Armed with a... Read more

ETA’s Gerald Robinson and Christopher Payne made important contributions to the partnerships announced by the EPA — including planning, recruiting, outreach, and financial analysis — which helped enable the launch of the Federal Aggregated Solar Procurement Project, the nation’s first federal partnership to purchase solar power.... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Anubhav Jain has been chosen to receive a financial award from the Early Career Research Program managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Jain is a Research Scientist/Chemist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Technology Area (ETA), where he focuses on new materials discovery using high-throughput computations.Jain... Read more

As part of Marin Elementary’s math and science festival, Jonathan Slack and Howdy Goudey helped students bake cookies with a solar oven that uses the focusing power of parabolas. The have researched how solar concentrating ovens can be used to bake bread inexpensively. They also demoed a sonic candy maker. Students watched and listened as cereals, cinnamon, cocoa powder, raisins, M&M’s and... Read more

On Friday, May 1, 2015, an official ceremony celebrating the collaboration between the Shandong Academy of Science and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) was held on-site at Berkeley Lab. This occasion furthered discussion on scientific and technical cooperation activities under the U.S.-China EcoPartnership and the 2009 U.S.-China Clean Energy Announcement.Honorary Shandong delegates... Read more

Venkat Srinivasan, Staff Scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Storage and Distributed Resources (ESDR) Division, acknowledged that it has often not been easy for private companies to work with national labs, with the sheer volume of paperwork involved being just one of the obstacles. But his message to representatives from more than 50 companies attending Berkeley Lab’s first Industry Day... Read more

What does it cost to save electricity?Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have conducted the most comprehensive study yet of the full cost of saving electricity by U.S. utility efficiency programs and now have an answer: 4.6 cents. That's the average total cost of saving a kilowatt-hour in 20 states from 2009 to 2013, according to a Berkeley Lab report titled, The... Read more

How Berkeley Lab project for computational screening of molecules could accelerate electrolyte discovery. A new breakthrough battery—one that has significantly higher energy, lasts longer, and is cheaper and safer—will likely be impossible without a new material discovery. And a new material discovery could take years, if not decades, since trial and error has been the best available approach.... Read more

Standards body approves Berkeley Lab’s method to mimic natural soiling of roofing materials.Cool roofs can help keep buildings cool, thus lowering the building’s energy use, while also mitigating the urban heat island effect by reflecting sunlight away from buildings and cities. But as cool roofs age and get soiled, how much of their reflectance do they lose?A collaboration led by scientists... Read more

The latest website from the Building Technology and Urban Systems (BTUS) Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Energy Technologies Area focuses on the Building Energy Data Exchange Specification (BEDES). BEDES (pronounced "beads") is a dictionary of terms, definitions, and field formats created to help facilitate information exchange on building characteristics... Read more

OPAL-RT TECHNOLOGIES is happy to announce that its RT15 Regional User Conference will be hosted by our partner, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, on May 13-14, 2015.RT15 brings together users and experts in power systems and power electronics to workshop ideas and application for real time simulation technologies. We invite all our users and any experts of the industry to join us and register to... Read more

Energy Technologies Area researcher Vi Rapp spoke at Build It Green’s 2014 Healthy Homes Conference in Berkeley, California on reducing carbon monoxide exposure risks. Tom White, Home Energy publisher, spoke with her to clear up misconceptions about combustion safety.See the link below to read the full story in Home Energy.... Read more

Berkeley Lab study finds EV batteries have a longer useful life than current standards suggest.In the first study of its kind, scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) quantitatively show that electric vehicles (EVs) will meet the daily travel needs of drivers longer than commonly assumed. Many drivers and much prior literature on the retirement... Read more

The Building Technology and Urban Systems (BTUS) Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Energy Technologies Area has developed a new website that focuses on High-Performance Buildings for High-Tech Industries. The website provides resources to increase the energy efficiency of laboratories, cleanrooms, and data centers. This comprehensive clearinghouse of tools,... Read more

A new peer reviewed study published in the Society of Automotive Engineers 2015 World Congress quantifies the flexibility for electric vehicles (EVs) to respond to demand response (DR) events. Within this study, a smart charging controller was developed and integrated into V2G-Sim to explore the flexibility for EVs to respond to DR signals. The smart charging controller considers the individual... Read more

The California Energy Commission recently announced an award to Berkeley Lab for a pilot project to demonstrate smart charging of plug-in electric vehicles at Alameda County's publicly accessible charging locations. The project, which was proposed in response to a proposal submitted for CEC PON-14-301, will leverage V2G-Sim to forecast the flexibility for vehicles to deliver smart charging... Read more

The California Energy Commission recently announced an award to Berkeley Lab for an analysis project that seeks to build a healthier and more robust future for California, by identifying low carbon energy scenarios for California through to the year 2050. V2G-Sim will be used alongside other simulation tools within the project. In particular, V2G-Sim will be applied to provide temporally and... Read more

The annual Philomathia Forum, organized by the Berkeley Energy & Climate Institute (BECI), was held March 18-19, 2015 on the campus of UC Berkeley. International experts in the ares of science and technology of energy production, smart manufacturing, policy innovations, and business leadership came to the Forum to present innovative ideas and discuss solutions to achieve energy and... Read more

Berkeley Lab’s story of designing a new stove for families in developing countries is the first in KQED’s new “Engineering Is…” series of e-books that focus on the intersection of engineering and science. The book is aimed at middle and high school students. The ebook is accessible for free on any device that can go online—computers, tablets, and smartphones.... Read more

The report, “A Vital Partnership: California and China Collaborating on Clean Energy and Combating Climate Change,” features the work of Berkeley Lab's China Energy Group as a successful example of collaboration with Chinese state agencies. The report was launched at an event featuring Jerry Brown, Steve Chu, and China Energy Group head Lynn Price.... Read more