The University of Liverpool in the UK has been awarded £3.3 million by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to establish state-of-the-art facilities to support the development of advanced electrochemical energy storage devices for grid scale applications.
The funding—awarded jointly to the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester—will help as part of the UK Government’s strategy to invest in key technologies.
Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts, announced the funding award, which has been provided to universities following the Chancellor’s announcement of additional capital funding for the ‘eight great technologies’ in his pre-budget statement.
The Liverpool-Manchester consortium has been funded to create an interdisciplinary centre of energy storage research that will allow the transformation of batteries and supercapacitors into a viable option for wide-scale adoption in utility and grid applications.
Dr Laurence Hardwick, from the University’s Department of Chemistry, said: “We are delighted to be awarded these funds from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. In partnership with the University of Manchester, it will support world-leading research facilities to work on energy storage and advanced materials.
“The development of national scale electricity storage promises massive benefits – both in terms of savings on UK energy spend and in environmental benefits as it enables greater penetration of renewable generation technologies.”
