Energy Generation

Thermally Stable Anthracene-Based 2D/3D Heterostructures for Perovskite Solar Cells

Daniel Morton — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 03:38:26 +0000

Thermally Stable Anthracene-Based 2D/3D Heterostructures for Perovskite Solar Cells Daniel Morton Fri, 12/27/2024 - 20:38

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024, ASAP

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Innovative Wind Turbine Control Earns Lucy Pao Prestigious IEEE Award

Daniel Morton — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:03:00 +0000

Innovative Wind Turbine Control Earns Lucy Pao Prestigious IEEE Award Daniel Morton Thu, 12/19/2024 - 08:03

Daniel Morton

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) Fellow Lucy Pao, from the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at ��«��Ƶ, is travelling to Milan, Italy, this December to receive the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award.

Find out more

IEEE Conference on Decision and Control

Read the Article

ForWind Center

Collaboration Highlight

Each year a panel reviews papers nominated from the past two years and selects an article of high significance. The paper, published in 2022, describes the first experimental implementation of Model Predictive Control of the pitch angles of the blades in wind turbines. The Award Ceremony will be held on December 18, 2024, as part of the 2024 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, held at the Milan Convention Centre in Italy.

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an established control technique that is popular in the general control systems community. One of the primary demonstrated applications for MPC is in process chemistry for the large-scale manufacture of pharmaceuticals and commodity chemicals. This paper describes, for the first time, the application of this technique in the blade pitch control of wind turbines. Control systems in wind turbines are essential for optimizing their performance, ensuring safety, and maximizing energy output. By monitoring key parameters such as blade pitch, rotor speed, yaw angle, and blade root bending moment, the control system can adapt to changing wind conditions, enhancing the efficiency of power generation and reducing mechanical stress on components, helping to extend the turbine’s lifespan.

“MPC is a very nice approach, but it is computationally complex,” explained Lucy. “There is an optimization that needs to be done at every time step, so getting it into a form where we could implement it, was a challenge”.

While MPC is a computationally intensive approach, the benefits for wind turbines are significant. Many wind turbine control systems are based on a feedback-only system, where the adjustments are based on feedback of what is happening now. MPC enables preview information to be included, so, for example, you can incorporate knowledge of a gust coming through and the controls can prepare the turbine ahead of time, which can reduce structural loading on that turbine. It changes the control system from simply being responsive to stimuli, to instead being proactive to knowledge of the conditions, essentially letting the wind turbine “see into the future”.

The MPC approach could have significant impacts on how wind turbines are controlled, not only improving their efficiency, but also reducing structural stress on the turbines and extending their lifetimes.

“We are really very excited about this award,” said Pao. “This has been a wonderful collaboration with our colleagues at the ForWind Center for Wind Energy Research in Oldenburg Germany. We started in 2016, with an experimental campaign in 2019 that led to this paper”. Misha Sinner, the lead author of the study, was a graduate student working with Lucy Pao and is now a Research Engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Misha travelled to Germany to lead this experimental campaign, and worked together with the team in Germany, led by Martin Kühn, to apply MPC to the turbines. “This was a complex experiment to run, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the team of experts and infrastructure at ForWind,” said Misha. “The collaboration has been a really symbiotic relationship; I really value Martin’s input, support, and feedback on the work,” said Lucy.

The collaboration was sparked over a meeting in Stuttgart in 2015. “Martin and I were both external evaluators on a PhD defense for a student at the University of Stuttgart. We had lots of opportunities to chat, and when I mentioned that I was coming up on a sabbatical, he suggested a fellowship that I could apply for that would enable me to work with them,” explained Lucy. This was the start of the long and fruitful collaboration among the team.

There is hope that the recognition that the award brings will accelerate adoption of advanced control systems by the wind energy industry. “MPC can take into account constraints on the wind turbine system, and it is flexible enough to incorporate preview wind information,” said Lucy. This could provide significant improvements in the efficiency and lifetime of future wind turbines. “It is a really nice control framework, and while it has been looked at in the simulation context, it had not been examined experimentally for blade pitch control, to our knowledge,” said Lucy. “We have heard that Industry is looking at MPC, but we don’t know whether it has made it into their actual controllers. The wind turbine industry can be quite secretive about what they are doing”.

The MPC approach could have significant impact on future, and existing wind turbines, by giving the control system the chance to effectively “see into the future” by a couple to tens of seconds so the turbine can prepare itself. “We are very excited and really touched by this award,” emphasized Lucy, with the hope that this will catch the attention of those in the wind turbine industry.

December 2024

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2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher Awards

Daniel Morton — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:12:12 +0000

2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher Awards Daniel Morton Tue, 11/19/2024 - 13:12

Find out more:

2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers

Five RASEI Fellows awarded the Highly Cited Researcher designation by Clarivate.

Each year Clarivate analyzes the citations of articles from researchers from across the sciences. From this analysis Clarivate highlights the researchers who have authored multiple highly cited papers which rank in the top 1% by citations for their field(s) and publication year in the Web of Science over the past decade.

This year five RASEI Fellows featured in the 2024 Highly Cited Researcher list, which includes 6,886 researchers. This year Matt Beard, Joe Berry, Joey Luther, Mike McGehee and Mike Toney were selected. For Matt, Mike and Joey, this is the fifth year in the row, the fourth year in a row for Joe Berry and the third year in a row for Mike Toney.

Congratulation to everyone for the recognition of the impact of their research.

11/19/2024

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In situ formation of pseudohalide anions induced by humid air and light passivates formamidinium-based halide perovskites

Daniel Morton — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 03:16:52 +0000

In situ formation of pseudohalide anions induced by humid air and light passivates formamidinium-based halide perovskites Daniel Morton Thu, 11/14/2024 - 20:16

INFOMAT, 2024, e12643

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2024 TEAM PV Meeting

Daniel Morton — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:02:15 +0000

2024 TEAM PV Meeting Daniel Morton Mon, 11/11/2024 - 17:02

In November of 2024 RASEI hosted the 2024 TEAM PV Consortium meeting. This event brought together researchers from CU ��«��Ƶ, NREL, Humboldt University and Hemholtz-Zentrum Berlin.

The goals of this workshop was to develop nascent collaborative connections, discuss the best practices for collecting, sharing, and analyzing data around the parametrization of perovskites.

RASEI Fellows Steve Barlow, Joe Berry, Seth Marder, Mike McGehee, Laura Schelhas, and Mike Toney participated in the event that included many students and researchers both from Colorado and Germany.

11/11/2024

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Study of Photodegradation of Organic Solar Cells Under Brazilian Climate Conditions

Daniel Morton — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 03:27:21 +0000

Study of Photodegradation of Organic Solar Cells Under Brazilian Climate Conditions Daniel Morton Wed, 11/06/2024 - 20:27

ENERGIES, 2024, 17, 22, 5533

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2024 Earthshot Prize for Fix Our Climate

Daniel Morton — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:09:13 +0000

2024 Earthshot Prize for Fix Our Climate Daniel Morton Wed, 11/06/2024 - 12:09

Daniel Morton

Find out more about the award

Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems

ATS Award Press Release

The Earthshot Prize

ATS Award Information

RASEI Graduate Jake Perez (Shaheen Group) and Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems Team Win 2024 Earthshot Prize to Transform Our Planet

Pioneering Energy Solution Converts Industrial waste Heat into Clean Electricity, Revolutionizing Global Energy Use

The Earthshot Prize, inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon, was launched by Prince William in 2020 to search for, and scale, the most innovative solutions to the world’s greatest environmental needs. The aim is to unleash the urgent optimism required to accelerate and scale the environmental innovations that will repair and regenerate our planet. In 2024 there were over 5,000 nominations across five categories. One of the 20 winners was the Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) team, including Jake Perez, a RASEI alum.

The ATS team was awarded the distinguished 2024 Earthshot “Fix Our Climate” prize for their transformative efforts against climate change. Chosen from 5,342 nominations across 141countries, this prestigious award was recently celebrated at the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Cape Town, that brought together global stakeholders in the fight to save the climate, including Prince William and Sir David Attenborough.

Waste heat is everywhere. Globally, of the energy used to power the industries that the world needs, such as cement and steel, approximately 60% is simply lost as waste. This wasted heat is the equivalent of the energy used by 4 billion homes, twice the number of homes that are on the planet. It is a huge economic and environmental cost. ATS’s revolutionary technology has the potential to redefine the energy sector by tackling the colossal challenge of industrial waste heat, by changing perspectives and considering this ‘waste heat’ as an untapped resource.

ATS has developed a solid-state approach to harness electricity from waste heat, eliminating the resilience on moving parts. This is a shift from traditional turbine-approaches that are complex, have a lot of moving parts and can often rely on hazardous chemicals. The ATS cartridge system is designed for seamless integration across a wide range of industrial applications. You can learn more about the team and the technology that they are developing on this short video.

Congratulations to Jake Perez, who is a RASEI alumni from the Shaheen Group, and the whole team at ATS! Excited to see what is next!

11/06/2024

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Impact of Dilute DIO Additive on Local Microstructure of Fluorinated, pNDI-Based Polymer Solar Cells

Daniel Morton — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 17:46:31 +0000

Impact of Dilute DIO Additive on Local Microstructure of Fluorinated, pNDI-Based Polymer Solar Cells Daniel Morton Thu, 10/31/2024 - 11:46

ADVANCED MATERIALS, 2024, 2409502

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RASEI Fellows Collaboration in CHOISE Twists Halide Perovskites From a Distance

Daniel Morton — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:31:11 +0000

RASEI Fellows Collaboration in CHOISE Twists Halide Perovskites From a Distance Daniel Morton Fri, 10/25/2024 - 16:31

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Remote chirality transfer in low-dimensional hybrid metal halide semiconductors

Daniel Morton — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 17:43:34 +0000

Remote chirality transfer in low-dimensional hybrid metal halide semiconductors Daniel Morton Fri, 10/25/2024 - 11:43

NATURE CHEMISTRY, 2024

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