The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a $30 million shot in the arm for energy storage research.
The funding is part of a new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy programme aimed at developing “innovative technologies for long-duration energy storage on the power grid”— providing reliable electricity for between 10 and around 100 hours.
Researchers working on a range of storage technology choices, including thermal, mechanical, electrochemical and chemical, will be eligible for a slice of the funding. However, the DOE said it had set “an aggressive set of cost targets, siting, power output, and duty cycle requirements”.
Energy storage developments under the programme must be deployable “in almost any location and discharge electricity at a per-cycle cost target much lower than what is possible in systems available today”, the DOE said.
US energy secretary Rick Perry Energy said: “We are peering over the energy horizon and identifying the key technologies we need to support the power system of the future. These new storage options will offer us the opportunity to make the grid more resilient while enabling greater integration of our domestic energy resources.”
Details of the programme are online.
