Energy storage can dramatically improve the efficiency of the nation’s existing fleet of fossil fuel-fired power plants, reduce emissions of greenhouse gas and help ensure a secure grid as more intermittent renewables (solar and wind power) are added to it, according to NETL Technology Manager Briggs White, Ph.D.

According to the latest rankings by TOP500, NETL’s Joule 2.0 supercomputer remains among the most powerful in the world, securing a position of 24th in the United States and 70th in the world.

NETL Technology Manager Briggs White, Ph.D., will share his expertise about challenges facing the nation’s fleet of fossil fuel-burning power plants and how energy storage can address them during an ELECTRIC POWER Expo 2020 webinar at 9:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, June 24, 2020.

A new NETL report explores opportunities to leverage high-performance alloy (HPA) research supported by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) beyond coal-fired power plants and expand into industrial gas turbines as well as adjacent markets that require similar materials, such as the aerospace, industrial and chemical processing and automotive industries.

Today’s U.S. electricity grid consists of millions of miles of transmission lines that bring power to hundreds of millions of electricity customers across the country, so ensuring the security and reliability of this vital infrastructure is a top concern for NETL. The Lab continues to advance energy storage technologies for future deployment, but grid reliability also requires an understanding of the interaction between various sources of electrical power, especially during periods of increased demand like severe weather events.

An NETL-supported collaboration demonstrated favorable results that showed potential toward developing an environmentally benign and economically sustainable process for generating rare earth element (REE) products from domestic coal ash sources, marking a step forward in enabling a domestic supply of these critical materials.

Committed to its goal of developing new energy technologies while retaining environmental integrity, NETL manages a vast portfolio of carbon capture research and development projects that are successfully reducing costs to ensure the availability of clean, reliable and affordable power from America’s abundant domestic resources.

NETL-led research shows the possibilities and benefits of developing magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) power generation such as improved efficiency for fossil fuel power plants and reducing the costs of implementing carbon capture.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and NETL have selected 11 projects to receive approximately $17 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects for carbon utilization. The projects will develop and test technologies that can utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) from power systems or other industrial sources as the primary feedstock.

The first of three webinar sessions hosted by NETL starting June 23 will detail the upcoming U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) InnovationXLab CarbonX Summit. Scheduled for Sept. 22-23 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, the InnovationXLab CarbonX Summit showcase DOE technologies and the Lab’s capabilities which are transforming the domestic energy economy by enabling value-added products, environmentally conscious storage, and economical carbon dioxide capture.