In August, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the delivery of $377 million in funding for 46 new Energy Frontier Research Centers. The centers will be hosted by universities, national laboratories, non-profit organizations, and private companies. The research domains that were chosen offer a good sampling of those technologies the US Department of Energy (DOE) sees as potentially important in the energy landscape of the future. The funded projects are focussed on:
Improving the efficiency of photovoltaic systems; with particular projects dedicated to hybrid inorganic/organic PV cells and nanometre-sized PV cells
Advanced nuclear techniques
Carbon capture and geological storage (CCS)
Hydrogen, including the production of hydrogen as well as hydrogen fuel cells
Biomass, including energy-rich plants and the conversion of biomass into chemicals and fuels
Energy storage systems
Superconductivity (1 project)
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Hans De Keulenaer on 15 Jan 10"This paper describes the performance of the network of a typical future residential concept area, as has been studied in the Intelligent E-Transportation Management project. Several scenarios have been elaborated by load flow simulations. The study investigated what level of introduction of electric vehicles, heat pumps, photovoltaic systems and micro- combined heat and power plants is feasible in this network. Possible overload situations are examined and the opportunities of demand side management for the power grid are investigated. In general load-flow simulations show that transformer overloads will occur when electric heat pumps and electric vehicles are introduced together in this specific grid. In that case extension of the grid or of the transformer capacity is necessary. Alternatively, demand side management can be applied successfully to mitigate the overload."
