The US Department of Energy (DOE) plans to allocate $30 million in new awards and funding opportunities to support the development of energy storage solutions. This initiative aims to significantly reduce the cost of energy storage systems in the United States.
The funding, which will be managed by the DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE), will be divided into two equal funds of $15 million each. One fund will focus on research to enhance the reliability of long-duration energy storage (LDES) systems, which can provide power for at least ten hours. This research will contribute to the OE’s Rapid Operational Validation Initiative, which aims to rapidly provide funding to new energy storage projects.
The other half of the funding will be used to support “pre-competitive” systems that are in the early stages of research and development and not yet ready for commercial implementation.
The DOE expects that these funding opportunities will accelerate research and development efforts in battery storage systems. While specific recipients of the funding have not been announced, these initiatives align with the goals of the Energy Storage Grand Challenge (ESGC), which sets ambitious targets for the US energy storage sector by 2030.
The ESGC, launched in December 2020, aims to reduce the cost of long-duration energy storage by 90% by 2030, bringing the price of storing energy to $0.05/kWh. Additionally, the ESGC targets a 44% reduction in the cost of producing battery packs for electric vehicles with a range of 300 miles, aiming for a cost of $80/kWh.
The ESGC has already provided funding for various storage projects, including the Grid Storage Launchpad being constructed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Washington with $75 million in government funding. The launchpad is expected to be operational next year. The DOE anticipates that the latest round of funding will support similarly ambitious research and development projects.
At the ESGC Summit in Atlanta, the DOE announced these new funding opportunities. The department also appointed the PNNL and Argonne National Laboratory as the lab coordinators for the ESGC project over the next two years. The DOE’s OE and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will jointly provide $300,000 in funding to cover the costs of the ESGC scheme until the end of the 2024 financial year.
The announcement of the new funding has been positively received by the global commodities sector. Andrew Green, the Executive Director of the International Zinc Association (IZA), expressed excitement about the DOE’s investments in energy storage. Green highlighted the growing interest in using zinc in battery storage systems and expressed the IZA’s willingness to collaborate through the Zinc Battery Initiative to support these new initiatives.
The capacity of battery storage systems in the US has witnessed significant growth in recent years. Based on data from the Energy Information Administration, the net cumulative capacity of large-scale battery storage systems in the US increased from 149.6 MW in 2012 to 8.8 GW in 2022. Moreover, the growth rate has been accelerating, with the capacity in 2022 nearly double that of the previous year, which stood at 4.9 GW.
Government funding is expected to play a crucial role in achieving the US’s ambitious energy storage targets, both in terms of expanding the capacity of existing storage systems and advancing technologies like LDES. In November of last year, the DOE announced $350 million in funding specifically for LDES projects, aiming to stimulate innovation in the sector.
