Last week, CleanTechnica took note of some concerns that energy storage and renewables have enabled utilities to keep leveraging fossil fuels into the grid. Sure enough, here comes the US Department of Energy with a solution: a newly announced round of $30 million in funding for next-generation technology leading to batteries that can store electricity in bulk for at least 10 hours.
At that scale, energy storage can solve three problems at once: it can funnel more wind and solar into the grid, it can shrink reliance on coal baseload power plants, and it can push gas “peaker” plants out of the picture. Problem solved!
Why Exactly Is The Trump Administration Interested In Bulk Energy Storage?
By the way, 10 hours is just for starters. The new round of funding aims at systems that can shoot electricity into the grid for up to 100 hours, which puts nuclear power on even shakier ground than it is now (that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms).
The funding comes through the Energy Department’s ARPA-E (Advanced Projects Research Agency – Energy) office, which kickstarts high risk, high reward R&D. That means we taxpayers get the credit for pushing new clean tech into the market when private sector dollars lack the muscle. Group hug!
For those of you new to the ARPA-E topic, Congress breathed the office into life in 2007 during the last years of the Bush Administration, but it wasn’t funded until 2009 under the Obama Administration.
If you’re thinking that breaks down along political lines well, it does — up to a point. President* Trump threatened to kill ARPA-E and he appeared to be on track for successlast year, but Secretary of Energy Rick Perry seems to have gotten the last laugh.
Renewables are not ARPA-E’s only area of focus but they’re a big one, and that’s where the 10-to-100 goal for energy storage comes in.
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