DOE

After years of trailing the Chinese and Japanese, the United States now has three of the four fastest supercomputers in the world. Titan, the U.S. Department of Energy’s top open science supercomputer, was officially crowned the world’s fastest computer on Monday.

After my recent SafetyData.gov review, (“Long On Text, Short On Data Tables”), I was resolved to review the new Energy Data.gov Beta Web Site and check some of the claims presented at the White House’s Energy Datapalooza held earlier this month.

I decided the best place to start was the Energy Datapalooza fact sheet because it did not contain any links to actual energy data. Energy Data.gov says “data and insight are combined to facilitate public discussion and awareness of our Nation’s energy activities.”

So I tried to match the facts to the substance using a knowledge base found elsewhere. Here’s what the fact sheet contained – and what I found:

Administration Announcements

  • New Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): 4 – (My comment: I only found three in the Presidential Innovation Fellows Blog and they were not APIs – see below.)
  • New Data for Entrepreneurs and Innovators: 2 – (My comment: Energy.Data.Gov with more than 900 data sets – not really – see below, and 20 new datasets from DOE – actually only 19 that require closer inspection.)
  • New Events and Challenges: 2 – (My comment: At Apps for Energy there are 9 winners from 56 submissions with no new challenges.)
  • New Green Button Integration – (My question: Where do I find how to do this? See below for the work it requires.)
Private Sector Committments Keep reading →

NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy launched a new public challenge contest Wednesday to generate novel approaches to using “big data” information sets from various U.S. government agencies.

Dr. Suzanne Iacono, senior science advisor for the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science directorate, made the announcement during an industry forum at the Capitol surrounding the release of a new report on big data in government. Keep reading →


This is an installment in a series of columns that originally appeared at Recovery.gov about the ongoing efforts of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and its oversight of the $840 billion Recovery program.

The Department of Energy is a major player in the $840 billion economic stimulus program. Indeed, the Department has received more than $35 billion to support science, energy and environmental projects along with the authority to make or guarantee another $52 billion in energy-related loans. Put simply, that amount of funding makes the Energy Department one of the largest federal agency recipients of Recovery Act funds. Keep reading →


From developing a foot and mouth disease vaccine to simulating nuclear explosions, government leaders shared examples on Tuesday of how science advances government missions during a panel discussion at the annual Federal Senior Management Conference in Cambridge, Maryland.

The discussion, which included executives from the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and NASA and was led by FedInsider Executive Editor Tom Temin, offered a glimpse into the range and power of science in the federal government. A common thread among the panelists was accomplishing big things with fewer resources. Keep reading →

Four major solar companies, including Solyndra, filed bankruptcy in the last four months, yet the Department of Energy continues to aggressively promote and fund solar energy projects. The rationale behind how the DOE appropriates its budget to explore multiple alternative energies– with varying degrees of success–was the central topic of the latest episode of Federal Spending, an online analysis program broadcast Oct. 6 through a collaborative arrangement with Breaking Gov.

Despite our best efforts, China outpaces the U.S. in solar and wind equipment production, largely because its government provides low cost loans and quick approval of imports and construction, according to keynote speaker Jack W. Plunket, CEO and publisher of Plunkett Research, Ltd., a Houston-based provider of market research and industry information. Keep reading →

Batteries are the basis of almost all futuristic energy visions: they will be used to power cars and store energy from intermittent renewables.

In an effort to improve battery technology, DOE research center Argonne National Laboratory has partnered with the Dow Chemical Company to conduct collaborative research on advanced battery technologies using several new materials that could improve battery performance and lower costs. On Wednesday it announced it will also partner with Western Lithium, a company that produces lithium carbonate for batteries. Keep reading →