46 Patents, One Fiscal Year

NREL Innovations Fuel New Energy Technologies

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What is your technology, what is innovative about it, and how will it change the world? These are the initial questions the innovation management team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) asks researchers when they have new inventions with commercialization potential.

Researchers submit their innovative ideas as records of invention (ROI) or software records, thus initiating a collaborative review and discussion with members of NREL’s Technology Transfer Office and Office of General Counsel. Technologies that pass muster and show potential for measurable market impacts may move on to the multiyear process with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to secure the patent rights necessary to bring yesterday’s ideas into today’s practical use.

In Fiscal Year 2024, researchers at NREL submitted a record-breaking 294 innovations, representing potentially patentable inventions or copyrightable software. This remarkable level of innovation productivity resulted in 46 awarded U.S. patents and 12 NREL-enabled startup companies—an unprecedented amount of growth for this DOE laboratory focused on integrated energy solutions for an affordable and secure energy future.

To Eric Payne, licensing executive lead for the tech transfer office, NREL’s record year signals that researchers are more engaged than ever before in the commercialization process as a means for their research to have impact.

“NREL scientists are among the most inventive in the national lab system, and this record year reflects their continued dedication to having commercial impacts in the U.S. energy economy,” Payne said.

A subtle, yet crucial, distinction about patents, Payne explained, is that they are “a snapshot back in time” of the research NREL was conducting three to five years ago.

“Patent issuances are actually a lagging indicator of innovation, because if you think about the timeline, a researcher will first file an ROI. We typically file a patent application about six to 12 months after that, and then the patent application is pending within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for at least two to five years,” Payne said.

The process can sometimes take even longer, partly due to the volume of applications received at the U.S. Patent Office and partly due to the complexity of the technology itself. The more complicated the technology, the more time it takes for a patent application to be examined, with NREL’s team of patent attorneys expertly navigating the prosecution process. Because research at the laboratory is often early stage, researchers will typically use this waiting period to continue developing their technologies toward market readiness.

In the case of FY 2024, the "oldest" awarded patent originated from an ROI submitted in 2014, though most patents were initiated in 2019 or later.

So, what was cutting edge at NREL five years ago? In short: NREL’s origins as a solar research institute still shine, accompanied by advances in wind, hydropower, geothermal, and bioenergy fields. The patents overwhelmingly represent improvements in the efficiency of energy systems and manufacturing processes to make technology easier to scale and cheaper to use. New materials and advanced composites were introduced, and methods that reduce the amount of energy needed to power everyday lives were proposed.

Protecting Power Grids From Cyberattacks

With the rise of new technologies, power grids are becoming more vulnerable to advanced malware capable of infiltrating a utility company and toggling the on/off switch of electricity for millions of customers at once, remotely.

Joshua Rivera and Vivek Kumar Singh, two researchers at NREL’s Cybersecurity Research Center, aim to get ahead of these threats by exploring how modern cybersecurity concepts—like cloud-based programs, process automation, and even artificial intelligence—can be applied to the energy grid to make it more resilient.

This thought led to the Cybersecurity Research Center’s first patent, issued in February 2024, titled “Network visualization, intrusion detection, and network healing.” Rivera and Kumar Singh are coinventors along with NREL’s Adarsh Hasandka and Joshua Van Natta.

The patent proposes a system that detects, visualizes, and mitigates anomalies in power grids automatically. The system’s rapid response lies in the rule-based, model-based, and AI-driven methods it was developed with. By comparing incoming data to preestablished models, plotted by the team, the system can immediately trigger corrective actions when disruptions are found.

The team’s ROI for the technology was initiated in 2019, “at the right place and the right time,” according to Rivera and Kumar Singh.

“In 2019, we were trying to capture the moment; we were forecasting that people were really going to care about AI,” Rivera added. “Terms like virtualization, software-defined networking, automation, and orchestration are common in IT and cloud security for ensuring resilience. So, we set out to adapt those philosophies with these new detection methodologies and apply them specifically to power systems. By combining them, we realized we could create something truly novel at the time."

As electrical grids become more connected and vulnerable to online threats, cybersecurity is now a core component of energy systems rather than an afterthought. To refine and bring technologies like this patent to market, the team said that partnerships and collaborations will be essential.

“This patent required a diverse team of people with different domain expertise and different capabilities,” Rivera said. “The more collaboration and involvement we get from others, the more likely we can build something that will be successful.”

Matereal’s NIPU Foam Replaces Traditional Polyurethane

For retired NREL researcher Phil Pienkos, his renewable, nontoxic polyurethane product, trademarked as Polaris, came closer to commercialization in FY 2024 with a new patent for the technology.

Developed with Tao Dong and Lieve Laurens of NREL, Pienkos’ non-isocyanate polyurethane (NIPU) foam can be made from readily available oils, such as linseed or soybean oil, as well as oils derived from algae or food waste. It is synthesized without petroleum-based chemicals and isocyanates: hazardous chemicals that are known to cause irritation, asthma, and severe lung issues. And its end product offers both recyclable and biodegradable options for polyurethane used in everything from textiles, automotive interiors, mattress cushioning, and more.

This latest patent, “Non-isocyanate polyurethane products and methods of making the same,” specifically addresses the method of making NIPU foam. By increasing the reaction speed between amines and cyclic carbonates, the building blocks of the material, researchers have made NIPU foam synthesis more comparable to conventional polyurethane production, which is crucial for uptake by industry partners.

“It’s got regulation push. It’s got market pull,” Pienkos said of the opportunities for commercialization. “It’s got everything.”

As of summer 2024, Pienkos’ startup company, Matereal, had completed a round of seed funding, raising $4.5 million to continue Polaris’ development after early partnerships with brands like Patagonia, the outdoor company, and Tempur Sealy, the mattress company.

Ocean Wave Energy Converters Make a Splash

Two patents issued in the last fiscal year centered on marine energy and the conversion of the ocean’s waves into “something more useful,” said Blake Boren, a senior engineer on NREL’s water power research and development team—be it electricity or desalinating seawater into drinkable fresh water.

Boren was a lead researcher on the patent titled “Flexible wave energy converter,” also known as a flexWEC, a device that can bend, flex, and/or stretch to generate electricity from ocean waves. Where traditional wave energy converters are typically rigid and move within one degree of freedom, a flexWEC is innately able to move in several degrees of freedom and can therefore interact with a broader range of ocean wave periods and frequencies than what would otherwise be directly possible. With many small energy transducers embedded across the device, instead of concentrated at central point, the flexWEC can better adapt to changing wave environments and continue operating even if some transducers fail.

“If a couple of the smaller energy transducers fail, it's not ideal, but the overall energy conversion structure should largely still operate as intended, and in that way, flexible wave energy converters could be more robust than a more conventional WEC,” Boren said.

The flexWEC is an ocean wave energy converter based on distributed embedded energy converter technologies (DEEC-Tec), a new type of marine energy innovation that was patented in September 2022 by Boren and Jochem Weber, chief engineer for NREL’s water power program, also named on the new patent.

Dale “Scott” Jenne’s FY 2024 patent, “Inflatable pressure absorption wave actuated pump,” also described a wave energy converter, though based on a different mechanism than the flexWEC. After six years of working on desalination technologies, Jenne—a multidisciplinary research engineer on the water power team—noticed a common theme.

“Almost every wave energy converter that I had worked with or analyzed was, in some way, pumping a fluid. And a lot of companies earlier on were using what we call hydraulic systems: a piston that is pushing up and down, then that motion runs a motor, which can then run a generator,” Jenne said.

But hydraulic systems are expensive, prone to leaks, and rely on rigid parts like gearboxes that could break over time, leading Jenne to question, “How do you simplify that process and make a system that pumps water with the simplest mechanism possible?”

The result, a prototype Jenne built in his garage with $150 of supplies, is a modified version of a diaphragm pump that relies on the kinetic energy of a moving wave to pressurize a bag. Squeezing the bag then forces air through a column to generate electricity. The inflatable pump has no moving parts and reduces the complexity of mechanical systems with hydraulic seals. And the prototype’s low-cost build implies the technology could be scaled inexpensively.

In December 2024, Jenne’s team applied for a Technology Commercialization Fund grant from DOE to advance the inflatable pump for high-pressure scenarios, like those needed for desalination.

In both cases, the flexWEC and the inflatable pump hold promise for generating energy from the harsh environment of ocean waves, particularly in areas affected by hurricanes or in remote coastal areas that lack reliable infrastructure. Ocean wave energy has unique advantages in niche applications like those, filling in gaps where wind and solar renewables are less effective. Demonstrating that WECs can succeed in smaller-scale systems—such as powering oceanographic sensors for data collection, desalinating seawater, or supplying energy to microgrids in island communities—could build momentum for larger-scale applications of marine renewable energy technologies in the future.

Solar Panels, Minus the Lengthy Setup

Innovations in solar energy technologies represented a majority of the patents NREL acquired in FY 2024, mirroring the growing role solar plays in the global electricity market at-large. As the most abundant renewable resource, solar is predicted to account for 40% of the U.S. electricity supply by 2035 and 45% by 2050. 

One standout solar technology comes from researchers Bryon Larson and Obadiah Reid of NREL’s chemistry and nanoscience program. Their patent, “Microwave photoconductance spectrometer and methods of using the same,” describes a technique to analyze materials used in photovoltaics (PV) quickly and efficiently, without needing to build a full solar panel device first.

The device could help solar panel manufacturers implement real-time quality control monitoring on production lines and facilitate more efficient research on PV materials beyond silicon. Where traditional silicon solar panels have established metrics for quality, new materials, such as perovskites, are less well characterized and require more meticulous processing to achieve optimal performance.

Reid and Larson’s spectrometer works by aiming microwaves at a film of semiconducting material. When the waves bounce back, they are carrying information about the material’s quality at high speed, allowing manufacturers to adjust factors to improve the material’s conductivity in real-time. The spectrometer is built to incorporate into a future where solar panels are manufactured on a roll-to-roll press akin to a newspaper printing press.

“The technique is contactless, so you are essentially pointing a probe at a running web of material that is moving very rapidly,” Larson said. “The faster you run the printing press, the higher the yields in solar panel production—per hour, day, or year. That's important because, in a manufacturing setting, the less downtime you have, the more likely you'll be profitable.”

After the ROI was filed in 2018, DOE selected Reid and Larson’s spectrometer for its Small Business Innovation Research grants where industry competed to advance the technology. Oregon-based Tau Science Corporation adapted the team’s research tool into a commercial prototype, and along the way, Reid and Larson made the technology even better. Though their original spectrometer is 1,000 times more sensitive than traditional methods, today’s version is even more precise, enabling research into higher-quality perovskites, cadmium telluride, and other trending semiconducting materials.

Reid predicts that as the solar industry adopts roll-to-rolling printing—projected to be a $50 billion annual market in the next two decades—the microwave spectrometer will naturally transition to industrial applications.

“I have pretty high hopes that it will be adopted by research laboratories because it is super useful as a way of characterizing the material you're making before going all the way to a full device,” Reid said. “If that happens, if the people developing the materials are trained with this particular technique, they're going to want that same feedback in their systems when they join industry.”

These and NREL’s remaining patents from FY 2024 have been added to an ever-expanding portfolio of technologies that Payne’s office is managing, including 750 patented technologies and 700 commercial and open-source software records. Each invention is available for licensing through NREL’s Technology Transfer Office.