Amid a plethora of grants and developments boosting the UK’s battery industry this year, England has now been chosen as the home of Europe’s largest battery innovation centre.
The £50m Energy Innovation Centre at the University of Warwick (Warwick Manufacturing Group) opened this month to provide development space for new battery chemistries from concept to market ready technology.
It is one of seven R&D centres on the Warwick campus, which provides guidance and technical know-how on Energy Storage, Energy Management, and Complex Electrical Systems.
The Centre includes a battery materials scale-up pilot line for the development of new battery chemistries from concept to fully proven traction batteries, available in sufficient quantities for industrial scale testing.
The Centre also includes a battery characterisation laboratory, aggressive testing chambers and an electric/hybrid drives test facility.
WMG’s £80m research programme is currently focused on developing cheaper, higher energy density, safer batteries.
WMG has been at the centre of a number of multi-million pound projects announced in the UK this year, to push EV lithium-ion technology, and ESS sodium-ion.
Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, WMG chairman said: “Electric and hybrid vehicles are the future of automotive and WMG is at the forefront of this research. We have a long history of research impact in hybrid, electric and low carbon vehicles which he has been able to see first-hand.”
Back in 2014 the British Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) selected the University of Warwick as hub location for research and development of low carbon propulsion systems. More here
