Happy Election Day, everyone! If you haven’t already, I encourage you to go vote. If you’re voting in person, please take proper health and safety precautions and wash/sanitize your hands obsessively, considering the CDC’s advice that COVID-positive people can still vote in person. Be well and vote well!

Now, today’s Midwest climate tech headlines, starting with electric vehicle advancements in Illinois.

Today’s headlines:

🚗 EVs: Scientists from multiple disciplines at Argonne National Laboratory are involved with several collaborations to figure out how to deploy innovative electric vehicle charging technologies and boost EV adoption. The U.S. Department of Energy is financially backing the projects.

• A project that will take place in Maryland will test smart charging devices and approaches, devise charging infrastructure demand models, determine how demand affects the grid, and examine cybersecurity needs. The study seeks to quantify benefits to EV owners and power grid operators. Most EV charging stations do not directly communicate with utilities, so researchers will install 1,000 Argonne-developed Smart Charge Adaptors to facilitate that connection.
• Another project will develop an electrification ecosystem that aims to connect major cities and transportation hubs with EV charging in the Washington, DC region.
• A third project, led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, involves analyzing techno-economic aspects of EV community charging hubs. “We hope to develop a novel and open-source computational framework to synthesize and classify EV charging profiles for residents of multi-unit dwellings and estimate time-of-day energy use to help them manage charging hubs,” Yan (Joann) Zhou, principal analyst and group leader of Argonne’s Vehicle and Energy Technology & Mobility Analysis in the Energy Systems division, said in a news release.

🔋 FUEL CELLS: Columbus, Indiana-based Cummins received $4.6 million in federal grants to advance the commercialization of solid oxide fuel cell technology, which could reduce commercial and industrial companies’ carbon impact, provide energy resiliency, and cut costs. SOFCs could serve as a bridge technology to carbon neutrality.

🏙️ SMART CITIES: The team behind a smart neighborhood and urban farming project in Highland Park, Michigan, aims to revitalize the neighborhood by developing self-supporting systems and net-zero residences through the use of green technologies such as EV charging stations, solar-powered streetlights, and an aquaponic garden, reports Model D Media.

🌬️ RENEWABLES: A panel of public and private leaders indicated that Iowa could become even more of a renewable energy leader with greater investments in transmission and renewable hydrogen technologies, reports the Des Moines Register.

♼ RECYCLING: The Union of Concerned Scientists released a series of four blog posts examining challenges and opportunities for recycling clean energy technologies. The posts about wind turbines and energy storage batteries mention efforts in the Midwest.

💰 FUNDING: The DOE will provide up to $32 million for open-source software development for the chemical sciences field, especially for use at Argonne, Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.

🤝 ACQUISITION: Milwaukee-based Badger Meter acquired water quality monitoring system developer s::can and subsidiaries for 27 million euro.

🏆 HONORS: ServeNebraska recognized Omaha-based Green Plains Renewable Energy for its work to create ethanol-based hand sanitizer amid the growth in product demand during the pandemic, reports FOX NE.