The project description is R and D activities at NREL and Sandia aimed at lowering the delivered energy cost of parabolic trough collector systems and FOA awards to support industry in trought development. The primary objectives are: (1) support development of near-term parabolic trought technology for central station power generation; (2) support development of next-generation trought fields; and (3) support expansion of US trough industry. The major FY08 activities were: (1) improving reflector optics; (2) reducing receiver heat loss (including improved receiver coating and mitigating hydrogen accumulation); (3) measuring collector optical efficiency; (4) optimizing plant performance and reducing cost; (5) reducing plant water consumption; and (6) directly supporting industry needs, including FOA support.

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Describes NREL's work on next-generation vehicle cooling technologies (jets, sprays, microchannels) and novel packaging topologies to reduce costs and increase performance and reliability.

Presentation explains the Alternative Compliance option under the U.S. Department of Energy's State and Alternative Fuel Provider program.

The overview of changes in protein levels or states in response to a growth condition, stress, mutation or metabolic engineering is invaluable in understanding the physiology of a microbial system. The lipid profile of the cell is similarly a valuable diagnostic of the cellular response and health, especially in context of survival in a fluctuating environment. To obtain comprehensive cellular models, post-transcriptional cell wide surveys at the levels of proteins and lipids are required. Both these fields have been greatly bolstered by the development of high throughput methods using mass spectrometry. Multiple strategies now exist for the identification of proteins, and numerous workflows to quantify protein abundance have also been developed. Cellular profiling such as these allows us to assess the potential of a microbial system for environmental applications such as bioremediation and bio-energy.

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This presentation's summaries: a convenient truth, comparison of three concentrator technologies, value of high efficiency, and status of industry.

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The project overview of this presentation is: (1) description--(a) laboratory R and D in advanced heat transfer fluids (HTF) and thermal storage systems; (b) FOA activities in solar collector and component development for use of molten salt as a heat transfer and storage fluid; (c) applications for all activities include line focus and point focus solar concentrating technologies; (2) Major FY08 Activities--(a) advanced HTF development with novel molten salt compositions with low freezing temperatures, nanofluids molecular modeling and experimental studies, and use with molten salt HTF in solar collector field; (b) thermal storage systems--cost analysis and updates for 2-tank and thermocline storage and model development and analysis to support near-term trought deployment; (c) thermal storage components--facility upgrade to support molten salt component testing for freeze-thaw receiver testing, long-shafted molten salt pump for parabolic trough and power tower thermal storage systems; (d) CSP FOA support--testing and evaluation support for molten salt component and field testing work, advanced fluids and storage solicitation preparation, and proposal evaluation for new advanced HTF and thermal storage FOA.

This presentation by Keith Wipke at the 2008 DOE Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review Meeting provides information about NREL's Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Analysis Project.

The objectives are: (1) To achieve a high long-term performance reliability for the thin-film CIGS PV modules with more stable materials, device structure designs, and moisture-resistant encapsulation materials and schemes; (2) to evaluate the DH stability of various transparent conducting oxides (TCOs); (3) to identify the degradation mechanisms and quantify degradation rates; (4) to seek chemical and/or physical mitigation methods, and explore new materials. It's important to note that direct exposure to DH represents an extreme condition that a well-encapsulated thin film PV module may never experience.

ZnO is a promising material for short wave-length opto-electronic devices such as UV lasers and LEDs due to its large exciton binding energy and low material cost. ZnO can be doped easily n-type, but the realization of stable p-type ZnO is rather difficult. Using first-principles band structure methods the authors address what causes the p-type doping difficulty in ZnO and how to overcome the p-type doping difficulty in ZnO.

NREL and NASA developed a thermal-electrical model that resolves PTC and cell behavior under external shorting, now being used to evaluate safety margins of battery packs for spacesuit applications.

The motivation for this presentation is that growing inverted cells may enable technological advances in solar cell fabrication, leading to higher efficiencies. Differences in dopant diffusion during inverted vs. upright growths may lead to differences in atomic depth profiles; changes in carrier concentrations; higher contact resistance and lower overall performance. This presentation summarizes that excellent performance is achievable in both upright and inverted configurations with proper consideration; subtle differences in depth profile QE and JV between upright and inverted growths due to dopant diffusion; and GaInAsN contact layer is resilient to length annealing and more work is necessary to determine why.

The area of transcriptomics analysis is among the more established in computational biology, having evolved in both technology and experimental design. Transcriptomics has a strong impetus to develop sophisticated computational methods due to the large amounts of available whole-genome datasets for many species and because of powerful applications in regulatory network reconstruction as well as elucidation and modeling of cellular transcriptional responses. While gene expression microarray data can be noisy and comparisons across experiments challenging, there are a number of sophisticated methods that aid in arriving at statistically and biologically significant conclusions. As such, computational transcriptomics analysis can provide guidance for analysis of results from newer experimental technologies. More recently, search methods have been developed to identify modules of genes, which exhibit coherent expression patterns in only a subset of experimental conditions. The latest advances in these methods allow to integrate multiple data types anddatasets, both experimental and computational, within a single statistical framework accounting for data confidence and relevance to specific biological questions. Such frameworks provide a unified environment for the exploration of specific biological hypothesis and for the discovery of coherent data patterns along with the evidence supporting them.

The summaries of this report are: (1) charged defects produce 10{sup 15}-10{sup 17} cm{sup -3} free carriers; (2) treatment with nucleophiles decreases p{sub f} and {sigma} while treatment with electrophiles does not change p{sub f} but increases {sigma}; (3) both treatments increase {mu}{sub p}, L{sub ex} and stability against photo-degradation; (4) charged defects can improve OPV by increasing conductivity and creating interfacial electric fields but they hurt {mu}{sub p}, L{sub ex} and chemical stability; and (5) a better way--synthesize materials without covalent defects and dope with purposely added, bound dopants.

Presentation prepared for the May 12, 2008 Alternative Fuels and Vehicles Conference that describes DOE's current hydrogen fuel cell technology validation projects.

Presentation covers new content available on the Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicle Data Center regarding diesel vehicles, diesel exhaust fluid, and selective catalytic reduction technologies.

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This project supports the Solar America Initiative by: (1) assistance to SAI Incubators (Primestar Solar, AvA Solar); (2) providing industry with baseline understanding of CdS/CdTe device formation and reliability--incorporation of low-cost, high quality TCOs, functionality and options for buffer layers, effect of various CdS options, effect of and importance CdSTe alloy formation, effect and options for CdCl{sub 2} treatment, effect and options for back contact, and effect of residual impurities during all stages of device formation; (3) understanding modes and mechanisms of cell-level stability; and (4) establishment of CdTe PDIL Tool for rapid material and process screening.

This project supports the Solar America Initiative by carrying out work on target topics identified for Photovoltaic Systems: (1) Improving cell and module efficiency of thin film Cu(In,Ga)Se2 materials; (2) Implementing the Science and Technology Facility (S&TF) and the Process Development and Integration Laboratory (PDIL) to facilitate laboratory/industry interaction in developing PV manufacturing technologies; (3) Addressing industrial issues in materials and manufacturing processes with the objective to lower the cost of PV power; (4) Providing technology transfer efforts to accelerate transition of thin film PV technology to market and deployment; (5) Assisting R&D efforts to asses and improve reliability and stability of thin film PV products; and (6) Assist the SAI TPPs in technical matters related to CIGS PV technology.

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