From the U.S Department of Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) announced more than $30 million in awards and funding opportunities at the Energy Storage Grand Challenge (ESGC) Summit in Atlanta. The opportunities include two $15 million Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) for energy storage innovations: one related to long-duration energy storage technology reliability and one to tackle pre-competitive energy storage R&D barriers. The office also announced its selection of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) as lab coordinators for the ESGC initiative for the next two years.

“These funding opportunities will ‘supercharge’ the future of energy storage and enable cost-effective solutions for all Americans’ electricity needs,” said Gene Rodrigues, assistant secretary for Electricity. “This is the culmination of extensive stakeholder outreach over the past year, as well as the hard work of our Energy Storage Division which is on the forefront of spurring the development of the most advanced long-duration storage available.”

The ESGC initiative’s purpose is to accelerate the development, commercialization, and usage of next-generation energy storage technologies and sustain American global leadership in energy storage. This comprehensive set of solutions requires concerted action, guided by an aggressive goal: to develop and domestically manufacture energy storage technologies that can meet all U.S. market demands by 2030.

The two FOAs will have medium- and long-term effects. Details include:

• Medium-term – $15 million in funding to show that new long-duration storage technologies will work reliably in the field. This opportunity feeds into OE’s Rapid Operational Validation Initiative which will validate the reliability of new technologies faster than real time and help new energy storage companies get their innovations to market faster.
• Long-Term – $15 million in funding to jump-start a new domestic energy storage industry by tackling key R&D barriers. This opportunity builds on Storage Innovations 2030, which was first announced at the 2022 ESGC Summit and included extensive stakeholder interviews and open listening sessions on storage industry’s R&D needs, as well as a series of Technology Strategy Assessments which were released this month.

To help tie all of these – as well as future – efforts together, OE and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) will jointly fund PNNL and ANL to be ESGC Lab Coordinators, which will set up new, inclusive collaboration mechanisms for labs and stakeholders to share information and input on DOE energy storage activities. The offices have agreed to equally split the annual cost of $600,000 for both FY23 and FY24.

Learn more about OE’s work here.