Battery cost, calendar life, and cycle life are three important challenges for those commercializing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; battery life is sensitive to temperature and solar loading.

NREL worked with GM and demonstrated equivalent performance in the Saturn Vue Belt Alternator Starter (BAS) hybrid vehicle whether running with its stock batteries or a retrofit ultracapacitor system.

This presentation outlines NREL's multi-physics simulation study to characterize an internal short by linking and integrating electrochemical cell, electro-thermal, and abuse reaction kinetics models.

The conclusions from this report are: (1) hydrogen has several important advantages over competing technologies, including - very high storage energy density (170 kWh/m{sup 3} vs. 2.4 for CAES and 0.7 for pumped hydro) which allows for potential economic viability of above-ground storage and relatively low environmental impact in comparison with other technologies; and (2) the major disadvantage of hydrogen energy storage is cost but research and deployment of electrolyzers and fuel cells may reduce cost significantly.

Presentation on NREL's integrated biomass conversion capabilities. Presented at the 2009 Advanced Biofuels Workshop in Denver, CO, Cellulosic Ethanol session.