A “large-scale battery” research lab is being set up in Wales with the backing of key industry players.
The University of South Wales has been awarded GBP995,000 ($1.3 million) to invest in the project at its Power Systems Laboratory in Treforest.
The funding, from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, will enable the lab to test and simulate battery systems up to 1.6 megawatts— which the university said would be “the largest of any similar research facility in the UK”.
Research will focus on “the storage of electrical energy, the rapid charge of batteries for vehicles, frequency stabilisation and using batteries to support peak power usage on the local national grid”, the University said.
Treforest is already home to the University’s specialist Centre for Automotive and Power Systems Engineering— with clients and research partners including Ricardo, Johnson Matthey Battery Systems, Oxis, Yuasa Battery (UK) and EnerSys.
