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The Grid’s New Shock Absorber: ‘Droop-e’ Control tames frequency swings and keeps renewable energy flowing smoothly

Daniel Morton — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:00:00 +0000

The Grid’s New Shock Absorber: ‘Droop-e’ Control tames frequency swings and keeps renewable energy flowing smoothly Daniel Morton Tue, 12/09/2025 - 09:00

Daniel Morton

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Electricity is crucial to modern life. We rely on being able to plug devices in to the outlet in the wall, flipping a switch, and things working without a problem. But it is not that simple, the power grid, all of the infrastructure that delivers energy from the power plant to your home, is something of a balancing act.

In order for a grid to operate safely, supply must equal demand. The flow of electricity through the grid in the United States flows at a frequency of 60 Hz, if the supply increases more than the demand, the frequency will increase, while if the demand increases, or the supply dips, the frequency decreases. The vast array of hardware that makes up the grid and in electrical devices, such as transformers, motors, or electronics, have been designed to operate at a specific frequency. If the grid is unbalanced, and the frequency changes too much, equipment can be damaged, efficiency is reduced, and it can lead to overheating, system failures, and blackouts. Keeping the grid online, and safe, is a balancing act that requires sophisticated controls systems to make sure that supply always equals demand.

Think of the electric grid like a high-speed train system. In order for the train system to operate effectively all the trains need to maintain consistent speeds and keep to schedule, so passengers are not left waiting on the platform, or miss their trains because they left too early. Traditional power plants are like massive freight trains, that are super heavy and take a long time to speed up or slow down. These massive freight trains provide a kind of inertia to the whole system. They are hard to disrupt, which results in a consistent speed. Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are more like fast, light commuter trains, that can change speed essentially instantly. They lack the inertia of the massive freight trains, but they can change fast. If it were up to just human conductors and train line controllers to regulate how the trains are running, having the freight trains and the commuter trains on the same lines would be near impossible, the difference in speed and inertia would make it really hard to reconcile. This is where advanced computer-driven control systems come into play. In the train analogy the smart predictive system would predictively control the brake and throttle of the commuter trains to ensure a simple constant speed. How would the grid be impacted if we developed a smart control system?

This new report details work led by RASEI Fellow Bri-Mathias Hodge, and discloses a new approach for smart control in the grid. The grid is already full of control systems, with the standard way power generators respond to frequency events being via linear droop control. This would be like a simplistic cruise control for one of the Commuter Trains in the above analogy. If the frequency drops a little, the system increases the power proportionately. The problem with this approach is that it often doesn’t use the inverters full capacity fast enough. The innovation described in this work is an update called Droop-e, a non-linear control based on an exponential function. Think of it like replacing the trains cruise control, which previously had a simple on/off switch, with a smart responsive gas pedal, that can speed up, or slow down, on a curve.

This change, from an on/off control to a responsive curve, has the potential to have significant impacts on the grid. By using the available power reserves more effectively, Droop-e reduces the number of severe power swings in the system, and results in a slower rate of change of frequency (ROCOF), which can buy grid operators valuable time to react to changes in frequency.

The benefits from the ‘shock-absorber’ properties that Droop-e offers could help prevent blackouts before they start, help stabilize the grid and improve integration of renewable energy sources, and create a smarter, more responsive grid, future-proofing systems by replacing the software, and not the hardware, a significant cost saving.

The simulations from this study confirm that this new control approach could improve the stability of grids that include a combination of traditional power plants and renewable energy generators. If a major power plant trips offline, this sophisticated control system activates un-tapped power reserves in batteries and renewables, acting as a hyper responsive shock absorber to protect the entire grid system. For grid operators, it means more time to react. For everyone with devices plugged into a power outlet, it means improved stability, and less equipment damage. It also provides a more effective mechanism to integrate different power sources, improving reliability, security, and affordability.

December 2025

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Agami Zero Breaks Through with Magnetic Hydrogen Advance

Daniel Morton — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 22:50:11 +0000

Agami Zero Breaks Through with Magnetic Hydrogen Advance Daniel Morton Wed, 12/03/2025 - 15:50

A startup team led by RASEI Fellow Oana Luca, called Agami Zero, has just secured seed funding after winning the 2025 CU Lab Venture Challenge. Their winning idea? A new way to produce hydrogen fuel more efficiently, a key mechanism for decarbonizing our energy economy.

Hydrogen is an essential puzzle piece in removing carbon from our energy economy and reducing pollution, but it is not without its challenges. While the overarching goal is to electrify as much of the economy as possible (like swapping gas central heaters for heat pumps), there are some critical areas, including sectors such as long-haul shipping, aviation, and heavy industry (steel / cement production), that are extremely difficult to power with electricity alone. While there are many researchers that are innovating in this space, and exciting discoveries that could lead to future alternatives, Hydrogen, which is an energy-dense, zero-emission fuel, is one of our most promising solutions for decarbonization.

What color is my hydrogen? There is a whole rainbow of hydrogen classifications, with over 10 different colors in total. Each color is defined based on how the hydrogen is produced. While we are not going to take a deep dive into each class here, there are some great resources where you can learn more.

Currently, most hydrogen produced today is Gray Hydrogen. This means it is produced from fossil gas using a process called Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR). The SMR process is a significant contributor to industrial carbon emissions globally, (95% of hydrogen produced in the United States is from SMR), the role of fossil gas in this process means that gray hydrogen is actually a contributor to the pollution problem, not a solution.

Blue Hydrogen is a little bit better, but still not a sustainable solution. Blue Hydrogen is generated using the same processes as Gray Hydrogen, using fossil gas, but the carbon emissions are captured and then sequestered or used in other processes. The use of fossil gas as the feedstock, and the energy required to capture the carbon emissions, also means that this is not a sustainable solution for decarbonized energy.

The real goal is to produce Green Hydrogen. Green Hydrogen is produced using carbon-free renewable electricity (such as wind and solar). The process uses renewable energy to power an electrolyzer, which separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. Green Hydrogen production does not emit any carbon pollution, but there are still challenges associated with this process. This is the area where Agami Zero team are focused, using a clever application of fundamental physics, the Lorentz Force.

A key challenge with the Green Hydrogen process is one of efficiency. Standard electrolysis of water requires a lot of energy. Gas bubbles that form on the electrodes often create electrical resistance, which forces the system to work harder, reducing the overall efficiency. The innovation from Agami Zero is to introduce a technology originally invented, and proven, in space(!), something called magnetically enhanced electrolysis (MEE). In the electrolysis process, an electrical current is used to split the water molecules. When the electrical current passes through the water (which conducts the current), the movement of these charged particles (ions), near the electrode surfaces is affected by the presence of a magnetic field. The force exerted on the ions by the magnetic field is called the Lorentz Force. Researchers found that when a magnetic field is applied to the electrolysis cell, the bubbles forming at the electrode, the ones that cause an increase in the electrical resistance, detach from the electrodes much faster.

The movement of the ions at the surface of the electrode, caused by the magnetic field, trigger the bubbles to detach. Think of it like the magnetic field providing a subtle, but continuous, “nudge”, moving the bubbles, and clearing the way for the electric current. Through careful control and tuning of the magnetic field the Agami Zero team can considerably improve the overall efficiency of the process. This clever technique reduces the systems electrical resistance, enabling a higher rate of hydrogen generation for the same amount of power.

The team is comprised of Oana Luca, RASEI Fellow, Hunter Koltunski, chemistry graduate student and scientific lead and Jafar Makrani (Agami Zero) and Lyle Antieau (Agami Zero) who bring extensive business and industry expertise to the Agami Zero team. The collaboration also includes Prof. Rich Noble, member of National Academy of Inventors and experienced entrepreneur as a mentor and Prof. Ankur Gupta, a modeling expert who will be assisting in scaleup work.

“Early in May 2025, Jafar and Lyle reached out to discuss the idea of magnetohydrodynamic electrolysis (MHD) for hydrogen production.” Explains Luca. “Jafar and Lyle had put together a business case for why the MHD approach would be successful. After reading more about the Lorentz force and quite a few email exchanges among the various team members. I remember going to group meeting and asking Hunter what he thinks about magnetic effects in electrolysis reactions and he was immediately intrigued.” Within a week Hunter was in the lab building some apparatus called Halbach arrays, the effects of which were substantial, and the rest is history. The team came together quite organically. Rich Noble is a long-term collaborator and mentor for Oana, who had engaged in many field-effect-related discussions (and for quite a few years), and Ankur rounded out the team with his mass transport expertise and the needed modeling.

In October of 2025 Agami Zero competed in the 2025 Lab Venture Challenge. Since 2018 CU ��ý�� has hosted the Lab Venture Challenge, which has now funded more than 115 innovative projects, resulting in 70 new deep-tech startup companies, leading to over $300M in follow-on financing raised by companies. Each year teams participate in an intensive application process that culminates in the LVC Community Showcase. This year eleven teams from CU ��ý��, that brought together faculty, researchers, and graduate students, competed for a combined $755,000 in startup funding grants. The community showcases adopt a “Shark Tank” style format, where the teams pitch, in front of a live audience, their ideas and innovations to a panel of judges. This year Agami Zero were competing in the Physical Sciences category and were able to convince the judges panel that their approach using MEE to offer scalable and cost-effective hydrogen fuel for transportation, industry, and off-grid power, should win.

The success of Agami Zero, from an innovative idea to a winning pitch at the LVC, is more than an entrepreneurial accomplishment, it is a testament to how researchers can use scientific understanding to solve real world problems. By taking a fundamental concept such as the Lorentz Force and applying it to a bottleneck in hydrogen generation, Oana, Hunter, and the entire team now have the opportunity to make a measurable difference in how we generate green hydrogen. This seed funding gives them a real chance to explore this idea, and we look forward to watching how Agami Zero innovates in scaling up Green Hydrogen applications.

December 2025

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Kyri Baker featured on Marketplace: Power demand of data centers keeps exceeding expectations

Daniel Morton — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:20:54 +0000

Kyri Baker featured on Marketplace: Power demand of data centers keeps exceeding expectations Daniel Morton Tue, 12/02/2025 - 12:20

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Six RASEI Fellows featured among the 2025 Clarivate highly cited researchers

Daniel Morton — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:09:48 +0000

Six RASEI Fellows featured among the 2025 Clarivate highly cited researchers Daniel Morton Thu, 11/20/2025 - 09:09

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RIO Highlight

Six RASEI Fellows highlighted as Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers in their 2025 list. Congratulations to Matt Beard, Joe Berry, Joey Luther, Mike McGehee, Mike Toney, and Merritt Turetsky!

Each year Clarivate, the parent company of Web of Science, performs an evaluation and selection process to identify and recognize researchers whose exceptional and community-wide contributions shape the future of science, technology, and academia globally. The evaluation is an evolving process, which employs criteria to address issues including hyper-prolific authorship, excessive self-citation, anomalous publication and citation patterns and profiles, in an attempt to ensure that recognized researchers meet the benchmarks they have developed.

This provides a mechanism to provide a snapshot of the global research landscape of current top-tier research talent, providing insights on global research and innovation trends.

In 2025 Clarivate designated 7131 Highly Cited Researcher awards to 6868 individuals. (Some researchers were recognized in more than one category).

This recognition highlights the cutting-edge research being done by the RASEI community. Congratulations again to our Fellows.

November 2025

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New ‘Molecular Dam’ Stops Energy Leaks in Nanocrystals

Daniel Morton — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:17:19 +0000

New ‘Molecular Dam’ Stops Energy Leaks in Nanocrystals Daniel Morton Tue, 10/21/2025 - 13:17

Daniel Morton

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A molecular engineering breakthrough could make key light-driven reactions over 40 times more efficient.

A collaborative team of scientists from the ��ý��, the University of California Irvine, and Fort Lewis College, led by RASEI Fellow Gordana Dukovic, has found a way to slow energy leaks that have impeded the use of tiny nanocrystals in light-driven chemical and energy applications. As described in a new article published in the journal Chem, the team has used a molecule that strongly binds to the nanocrystal’s surface, essentially acting like a ‘dam’ to hold back the energy stored in the charge-separated state formed after light absorption. This technique extends the lifetime of the charge separation to the longest recorded for these materials, providing a pathway to improved efficiencies and more opportunities to put this energy to work in chemical reactions. This collaboration is part of the U.S. Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center: Ensembles of Photosynthetic Nanoreactors (EPN).

Harnessing Light to Power Chemistry

Many of the products we rely on today, from plastics, to fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals, are created, or synthesized, through industrial chemical reactions that can often require immense heat and pressure, typically generated by burning fossil fuels. For decades there has been research exploring a less harsh and theoretically more efficient alternative: Photocatalysis. The goal is to use a compound, a “photocatalyst”, that can harness the energy in light and use it to power chemical reactions at room temperature. Semiconductor nanocrystals, particles that are over a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, are a leading candidate for this job. When exposed to light these nanocrystals generate a short-lived spark of energy, in the form of a separated negative charge (an electron) and a positive charge (called a “hole”, due to the absence of an electron). A key challenge in this area is that this spark disappears quickly, because the electron and the hole recombine, and the energy is lost before it can be put to good use.

Building a Molecular Dam

To solve this problem the team focused on building what we might call a ‘molecular dam’, something that helps prevent, or at least slow down, the electron and the hole from recombining. This research started with cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanocrystals and designed a molecule (in this case a phenothiazine derivative) with two key features; first the incorporation of a chemical group that acts as a ‘sticky anchor’ (in this case a carboxylate group), which binds strongly to the nanocrystal surface, and second, a molecular structure that quickly accepts the positive charge (the hole), from the nanocrystal to realize the light-driven charge separation event.

By anchoring this molecule to the surface of the nanocrystal the team created a highly efficient and stable pathway. As soon as exposure to light creates the electron-hole pair in the nanocrystal, the anchored molecule shuttles the hole away, physically separating it from the electron. This physical separation of the electron and the hole prevents the two from quickly snapping back together and wasting the energy. This results in a charge-separated state that lasts for microseconds, which is an eternity in the world of photochemistry, creating a much larger window of time for future researchers to work with in terms of harnessing this captured light-driven energy for useful chemical reactions. The team was able to prove the significance of the ‘sticky anchor’ carboxylate, by comparing their derivative to a phenothiazine that lacked the anchor, which was shown to be far less effective at holding the energy, demonstrating that this anchoring to the surface was key to this system’s performance.

This collaborative work was done as part of the U.S. Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) Ensembles of Photosynthetic Nanoreactors (EPN). EPN consists of 17 senior investigates located across 9 universities and 3 U.S. national laboratories. The goal of EPN is to provide a forum for collaboration, bringing together expertise to advance the frontiers of discovery and fundamental knowledge in photochemical energy conversion. The aim is to not only foster new discoveries and applications, but in doing so, train the researchers who will build knowledge and advances that will benefit the United States innovation and economy.

This project took advantage of the different areas of expertise of each team to generate ideas and quickly execute them. Kenny Miller’s group of dedicated undergraduate researchers at Fort Lewis College synthesized the carboxylated phenothiazine derivative (and a slew of others). Miller then sent the derivative to Jenny Yang’s group of inorganic electrochemists at UC Irvine for advanced electrochemical characterization. Gordana Dukovic’s group here at CU ��ý�� synthesized the nanocrystals, tested their compatibility with the derivative, characterized the binding, and undertook the advanced laser spectroscopy study to see how the electrons and holes behaved.

“The first time I saw the results-saw how effective our ‘molecular dam’ was at slowing charge recombination-I knew we had struck gold” explained Dr. Sophia Click, a lead author on the study. “To slow charge recombination from nanoseconds to microseconds, and with a molecule that can be paired with so many existing photocatalyst systems, makes this work vital to share with as many researchers as possible.”

Development of this ‘molecular dam’ could have implications for the future design of catalysts for light-driven chemistry. By increasing the efficiency of the initial energy-capture step, this system improves the efficiency of the entire process. This could improve not just one specific reaction, but rather, benefit a broad range of light-driven chemical reactions. A key technology this could enhance is the development of light-driven creation of chemical commodities or high-value chemicals. This research provides a more robust and versatile chemical toolkit for exploring these possibilities.

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