According to foreign media reports, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to provide developers with $30 million in incentives and funding for the deployment of energy storage systems, because it hopes to significantly reduce the cost of deploying energy storage systems.
The funding, administered by the DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE), will be split into two equal funds of $15 million each. One of the funds will support research into improving the reliability of long-duration energy storage systems (LDES), which can provide energy for at least 10 hours. Another fund will provide funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity (OE) Rapid Operational Demonstration Program, which is designed to rapidly fund new energy storage deployments.
In March of this year, the program promised to provide $2 million in funding to six US Department of Energy national laboratories to help these research institutions conduct research, and the new $15 million in funding can help accelerate research on battery energy storage systems.
The other half of the DOE funding will support some energy storage systems that are in the early stages of research and development, and that are not yet ready for commercial implementation.
Accelerate the deployment of energy storage systems
Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary for Electricity at the U.S. Department of Energy, said: “The availability of these financings will accelerate the deployment of energy storage systems in the future and provide cost-effective solutions for meeting customers’ electricity needs. This is the result of hard work by the energy storage industry.” , the industry is at the forefront of promoting the development of state-of-the-art long-duration energy storage.”
While the U.S. Department of Energy did not announce which developers or energy storage projects will receive the funding, the initiatives will work towards the 2030 goals set by the Energy Storage Grand Challenge (ESGC), which includes some Target.
ESGC launched in December 2020. The goal of the challenge is to reduce the levelized cost of energy storage for long-duration energy storage systems by 90% between 2020 and 2030, bringing their electricity costs down to $0.05/kWh. Its goal is to reduce the production cost of a 300-kilometer EV battery pack by 44% over the period, bringing its cost down to $80/kWh.
Funding from the ESGC has been used to support a number of energy storage projects, including the “Grid Energy Storage Launchpad” being built by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with $75 million in government funding. The latest round of funding will go towards similarly ambitious research and development projects.
ESGC has also committed $17.9 million to four companies, Largo Clean Energy, TreadStone Technologies, OTORO Energy and Quino Energy, to develop new research and manufacturing processes for energy storage.
The development trend of the energy storage industry in the United States
The DOE announced these new funding opportunities at the ESGC Summit in Atlanta. The DOE also noted that Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory will serve as ESGC project coordinators for the next two years. DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE) and DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will each provide $300,000 in funding to cover the cost of the ESGC program through the end of fiscal year 2024.
The new funding has been welcomed positively by parts of the global commodities industry, with Andrew Green, executive director of the International Zinc Association (IZA), claiming to be delighted with the news.
“The International Zinc Association is pleased to see the US Department of Energy announce major new investments in energy storage,” Green said, noting the growing interest in zinc as a component of battery storage systems. He said, “We are excited about the opportunities that zinc batteries bring to the industry. We look forward to working together to address these new initiatives through the zinc battery initiative.”
The news follows a dramatic increase in the installed capacity of battery storage systems deployed in the United States in recent years. According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the cumulative installed capacity of large-scale battery energy storage systems in the United States has increased from 149.6MW in 2012 to 8.8GW in 2022. The pace of growth is also picking up significantly, with 4.9GW of energy storage systems deployed in 2022 nearly doubling from the previous year.
U.S. government funding is likely to be critical to achieving its ambitious energy storage deployment goals, both in terms of increasing the installed capacity of energy storage systems in the United States and developing long-duration energy storage technologies. Last November, the U.S. Department of Energy specifically announced $350 million in funding for long-duration energy storage projects, aiming to encourage innovation in this field.
Post time: Aug-04-2023
