Renewable Energy Technologies

The ASES National Solar Conference – now in its 42nd year – brings the intellectual resources of the clean energy community together for a crucial cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas. Soliciting peer-reviewed scientific papers from engineers, chemists, physicists, social sciences and other disciplines, ASES taps the the nation’s best universities, the Department of Energy’s national laboratories and the private sector, to showcase the latest innovations in renewable energy research. The ASES conference is  a comprehensive survey of photovoltaics, solar thermal, concentrating solar, small wind, hydro, energy related software and other critical research tools.

Highlights from the technical sessions:

• New techniques for making high-performance quantum-dot and nanoparticle photovoltaic cells.
• The status of the High Definition PV Project, and industry-wide program to reduce the cost of solar installations through plug-and-play standardization.
• Several new techniques to reduce the cost of dispatchable power from utility-scale concentrating solar (CSP) thermal plants, a key development in providing cheap, clean solar power to run municipal grids through the night.
• Solar-powered furnaces that generate hydrogen or syngas fuels at high efficiency.
• A wide variety of simplified techniques for minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour forecasting of solar farm output, useful for balancing loads across geographical regions.
• Efficient new ways to store solar-heated hot water – and use solar heat to drive air-conditioners.
• Low-cost feedstocks to make cheap biodiesel.
• Hybrid light rail that runs when the grid goes down.
• Driving large desalinization and waste-water recovery systems with renewable energy.

Photovoltaics ・Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) ・ Solar Thermal ・Hydro ・Small-Scale, Distributed Wind ・Hydro ・Forecasting & Modeling ・Sustainable Transportation ・Water – Energy Nexus