Improvements in Batteries, Trains, and Wave Technology

New week, new discoveries! In today’s episode, you can: 

• Explore the evolving world of battery safety research—from new energy storage technologies to a strategic approach for evaluating safety at the electrode, pack, and cell levels. 
• Discover how self-propelled rail cars could make freight trains competitive in short-haul delivery for the first time. 
• Revisit the HERO-WEC, now redesigned to better withstand storms and powerful waves as it turns ocean energy into fresh drinking water. 

This episode was hosted by Kerrin Jeromin and Taylor Mankle, written and produced by Allison Montroy, Hannah Halusker, and Kaitlyn Stottler, and edited by Taylor Mankle, Joe DelNero, and Brittany Falch. Graphics are by Brittnee Gayet. Our title music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino of Drift BC. Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast is created by the U.S. Department of Energy’s NREL in Golden, Colorado. Email us at podcast@nrel.gov. Follow NREL on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and Facebook.

Transcript

[intro music, fades]  

Kerrin: Welcome to The NREL Podcast, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for energy systems research, development, and integration. We’re highlighting the latest in research and innovations happening at the lab. I’m Kerrin Jeromin. 

Taylor: And I’m Taylor Mankle. We’ve got a big episode today with lots of tech to talk through.  

Kerrin: It’s all about NREL’s contributions to improving technologies: improvements in battery safety, freight trains, and wave energy converter devices. 

Taylor: Let’s get right into it.  

[music] 

Kerrin: Lithium-ion batteries are quietly powering modern America. These batteries can be found in our phones, in critical infrastructure, in basically everything around us.   

Taylor: Yeah, I feel like you can’t look around a room without seeing at least one device that uses a lithium-ion battery these days. 

Kerrin: Exactly, exactly. So, as you can imagine, demand for these energy storage solutions continues to skyrocket.  

Taylor: To keep up with the demand, energy experts are exploring next-generation designs for higher-performing technologies. All while keeping safety as the north star.  

Kerrin: According to NREL’s senior energy storage scientist Donal Finegan, the behavior of next-generation batteries is not well understood yet, and we need to understand the risks in order to create safer designs.  

Taylor: And there’s no better place to do research into battery safety than here at NREL! We are a global leader in that area and offer cutting-edge characterization, advanced machine learning, and multiscale modeling to evaluate energy storage systems. Our researchers work closely with industry innovators to share knowledge and access to lab-scale capabilities, allowing them to overcome challenges in bringing new technologies to the market. 

Kerrin: Safer batteries increase energy availability to power everything from consumer electronics to national security systems. NREL uses a rigorous process to evaluate the safety of battery designs, which includes a holistic approach to characterize cells and materials to understand their responses to different conditions throughout their lifetime.  

Taylor: As you can imagine, it can take years to scale research from new materials to battery pack-level testing, but recent breakthroughs in modeling and artificial intelligence can accelerate that process. These techniques uncover new insights into the safety of emerging battery designs, predicting how they will behave in different applications, such as grid-scale storage. 

Kerrin: With all this expertise, Finegan and other NREL researchers published a perspective article in the journal Nature that takes a closer look at the landscape of battery safety research. The perspective emphasizes new risks and opportunities of up-and-coming energy storage technologies while also proposing a strategic approach to evaluating battery safety at the electrode, pack, and cell level.  

[music] 

[train sounds] 

Kerrin: All right, we’re boarding a train down to Georgia for this next story.  

[train horn sound] 

Taylor: It might not be the Midnight Train to Georgia, but a new kind of freight train has hit the tracks outside of Savannah, Georgia. In collaboration with U.S. manufacturer Parallel Systems, NREL researchers are working on a more flexible freight train system.  

Kerrin: But, let’s back this train up a little bit. Traditional freight trains transport a lot of the nation’s long-distance cargo – in fact, roughly 1.5 billion tons of raw materials and finished goods every year. That’s about 118,000 pounds of cargo per American human.  

Taylor: So much. But freight trains struggle to compete in the short-haul delivery market, where they carry just 4% of shipments, compared to the trucking industry’s 75%.   

Kerrin: 18-wheelers win the short haul journey, while trains win the long-hauls.   

Taylor: Right. And the company Parallel is working on railcars that mimic the flexibility and speed of trucks – while using railcars that power and control themselves using batteries, onboard control systems, and a suite of sensors.  

Kerrin: NREL researchers come into play with the Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System, also known as ALTRIOS. ALTRIOS operates, in some ways, like a very high-resolution camera. Researchers can use it to see a crisp operational rendering of an entire rail system, including the movements of multiple train fleets. Or they can use it to zoom into the fine details of a single train’s operation and even individual components like a powertrain or a set of brakes. 

Taylor: Using ALTRIOS, researchers simulated railcars traveling along multiple routes, then determined the right battery size, and how many of these specialized railcars could be added to the rail network without overloading it.  

Kerrin: After getting that in place, researchers at NREL and the University of Texas at Austin built a new module to understand even the tiniest movements of containers and equipment.  

Taylor: Here’s Jason Lustbader, NREL’s principal investigator for the project, explaining the software,  

Jason: I think it gives us the right resolution and simulation speed to simulate the terminal and rail system at high fidelity. That allows us to simulate, interrogate, and optimize it as a system while still accounting for the detailed steps and operations that happen on both the terminal and rail side. And I think that kind of unified framework that has both the level of detail on both the terminal and rail side but also has a system level perspective is unique and, and really powerful because it allows us to look at the full system together and how that's going to impact real world operations.  

Taylor: So, what does all this mean? It means with faster, more flexible dispatching to more areas of the country, freight trains could become more competitive with trucks! 

Kerrin: Exactly. ALTRIOS helps researchers figure out how Parallel can intelligently dispatch railcars as fast as possible. Together with Parallel’s new rail cars—and a dispatching strategy NREL researchers created—container delivery times could get 70% faster. 

Taylor: And shifting more freight from trucks to trains can also create benefits, like reducing traffic and collisions on highways and lowering the cost of deliveries.  

[train noises, traveling away] 

[music]    

Taylor: NREL’s HERO-WEC device recently went through another round of trials and tribulations to advance wave energy research.   

Kerrin: Listeners, you may remember we’ve talked about the HERO-WEC device before; episode 45 and all the way back in early episode 9. HERO-WEC is short for hydraulic and electric reverse osmosis wave energy converter – so the device uses energy from ocean waves to desalinate water and produce fresh drinking water.  

Taylor: Exactly. Since 2024 the team has been improving the HERO WEC’s robustness, reliability, and deployability by modifying different components on the device and testing the revised design. Now researchers are focusing on the WEC’s outer body and structure.  

Kerrin: Changing the WEC’s outer body to a more durable material can help it withstand storms and intense wave conditions. There are other changes to move components to more accessible places to make maintenance easier. But before solidifying these changes, the team wanted to ensure the accuracy of the computer simulations they used to evaluate the new shell’s efficiency and survivability. 

Taylor: NREL marine energy researchers used those simulations to develop real-world scenarios to test in our wave tank – or the Sea Wave Environmental Lab. In the tank, researchers tracked a scaled-down version of the HERO WEC’s movement, position, and force on the anchor. The tank test data validated the computer-generated simulations and confirmed their accuracy. 

Kerrin: NREL researcher Scott Jenne, shares what the plan is now: 

Scott: So now that we've had this testing done, we're going to go back, we're going to revisit our numerical models, or simulations. And we’re going to then start really digging into the mechanical design of the system. 

Taylor: The more tests that the HERO WEC team runs, the more they help uncover the best approaches for WEC testing at large. By developing, refining, and standardizing an efficient testing process, NREL can help guide the marine energy industry as it develops energy conversion devices that are reliable and cost competitive. 

 [music] 

Kerrin: All right [imitates train horn] – this train is pulling out of the station on another episode, Taylor, well done!   

Taylor: And it was a good one. We hope you all enjoyed the insights into some of the most recent happenings here at the lab. Thanks for listening and please leave us a review on your favorite podcast player.  

Kerrin: Yes, five stars, always necessary. Or, you can also send us an email to podcast@nrel.gov. We’ll be back soon with more news from the lab.    

[music] 

Taylor: This episode was adapted from NREL news articles from September 2025 written by Rebecca Martineau, Anna Squires, and Brittany Enos. Our theme music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino, of Drift B-C. This podcast is produced by NREL’s Communications Office.