New Research Endeavors Underway At Argonne National Lab

The Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) around the Chicagoland area in Illinois is getting a large amount of funding to research some unconventional methods used in THIN FILM SOLAR CELLS.

I was just at ANL last Thursday (January 24th, 2013) attending a speech given by Roger Blomquist, a nuclear engineer at ANL, hosted by the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). The speech was quite compelling discussing fast water and light water reactors.

I didn't know that any solar research was going on at ANL and am quite excited to see what results come out of these research funds!

New Year, New Resources!

So the year 2013 is upon us. What does this mean for America? What does this mean for the world? What does this mean for the renewable energy industry? One thing we can do is see how the year will play out in terms of RECs (renewable energy certificate credit). A tradeable commodity that represents 1 MWh (1,000 kWh) of energy produced from a renewable resource. A real time map of the United States wind resource shows the potential of North and South Dakota, Montana, and the eastern portion of the Mid-West.

This area being a large concentration of the best wind resource in the country however, isn't taken advantage of. There are no sufficient transmission lines available in these areas to move the wind power to where it is needed. However independent interests supporting efforts such as Rock Island Clean Line are acting to extract this untapped wind energy resource!