The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity announced more than $30 million in awards and funding for energy storage.
Grants will be for energy storage innovations: $15 million for demonstration of three different energy storage technologies, and three $5 million awards to tackle pre-competitive research and development challenges.
Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary for Electricity, said the DOE awards will “supercharge” the future of energy storage and enable cost-effective solutions.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory will function as lab coordinators for two years.
A contingent of representatives from zinc battery companies attending the DOE announcement was quick to seize on the announcement. Josef Daniel-Ivad, manager of the Zinc Battery Initiative, said funding, whether from the DOE or investors, is key as many stakeholders are risk averse, even with promising technologies.
Balki Iyer, CCO at Canadian company e-zinc, said: “While the supply of zinc is not as constrained given the abundance and mature recycling, efforts such as this are essential to make zinc batteries mainstream amongst the utilities and financing communities.”
Gabe Cowles, VP of Commercial Strategy and Finance at Urban Electric Power, said this type of funding is critical in helping jumpstart the commercialisation of zinc battery energy storage in the US. “We are at an inflection point where the US can become the leader in advanced energy storage technologies,” he said.
The DOE released a series of technical reports summarising and analysing the results of long duration energy storage innovation. It aims to achieve 90% cost reductions for technologies providing 10 or more hours of energy storage in the next decade.
- Methodology
- Lithium-ion Batteries
- Lead-acid Batteries
- Flow Batteries
- Zinc Batteries
- Sodium Batteries
- Pumped Storage Hydropower
- Compressed-Air Energy Storage
- Thermal Energy Storage
- Supercapacitors
- Hydrogen Storage
27.7.23: This story was updated, adding comment and again adding links to technical reports.