U.S. Department of Energy awards $47 million to support transformative energy technologies, including energy storage

China Energy Storage Network: According to foreign media reports on January 12, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced an additional $47 million in funding for seven projects as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) program. These projects bring the total funding for the SCALEUP program to more than $70 million, which is based on the previously announced $24 million SCALEUP "Fast Track" project. These new SCALEUP projects will receive funding to support the further development of high-risk and potentially disruptive new electric vehicle power batteries, data center efficiency, grid modernization, emissions reduction, and energy storage.

“ARPA-E’s SCALEUP program builds on ARPA-E’s R&D mission to help move transformative energy technologies from the lab into the marketplace,” said ARPA-E Director Lane Genatowski. “These selections directly address the challenges many early-stage energy concepts face in scaling up, and will help the selected projects cross the dreaded ‘valley of death’ and continue on the path to commercialization.”

SCALEUP is a first-of-its-kind program that supports the scaling of high-risk and potentially disruptive new technologies across the energy application spectrum. The goal of the program is to commercialize the performance achieved at the laboratory and bench scale by previously funded ARPA-E technologies, supporting promising energy technologies or pilot projects that need to be scaled up, helping them enter the market, and ultimately achieve commercialization. The selected projects are unique in that they will focus on further developing existing technologies that have solved proof-of-concept R&D challenges and can be further scaled up to have real-world impact.

The newly selected projects are as follows:

24M Technologies, Inc. - Cambridge, Massachusetts

Next-generation lithium metal anode batteries for electric aviation - $9 million

Over the past decade, the cost of lithium-ion battery energy storage systems has decreased while energy density has steadily increased. However, just as new electrified transportation applications are emerging, current lithium-ion batteries are approaching a plateau in performance and cost. The 24M team will develop and scale up batteries, including lithium electrode components and semi-solid cathodes, to provide lower cost energy storage (1.5kW/kg) and higher energy density (450Wh/kg) for electric aviation. The 24M Technologies team will develop and scale up a commercial, modular large-scale pilot line (1 MWh/year) for customer validation, which will clearly demonstrate the GWh/y production capacity of new lithium metal batteries.

Cambridge Electronics, Inc. - Cambridge, Massachusetts

8-inch 3DGaN FinFET technology for energy-efficient data centers and 5G networks - $4,320,000

Cambridge Electronics Inc. (CEI) has developed a disruptive 3D Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology that significantly outperforms today’s planar GaN transistors. CEI’s goal is to create an ecosystem around 3DGaN technology, transfer it to an 8-inch silicon wafer manufacturing facility in the United States, and develop products in partnership with epitaxial wafer suppliers, foundries, and semiconductor chip and module manufacturers. The success of the proposed project will have broad implications for improving energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and creating high-tech jobs in the U.S. energy efficiency and green energy industries.

Sila Nanotechnologies - Alameda, California

Scaling up technology to accelerate adoption of high-capacity silicon anodes in mass-market electric vehicles - $10 million

With previous ARPA-E support, SILA has developed a unique drop-in replacement silicon (Si)-based composite anode powder that increases the energy density of automotive lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) by more than 20% and enables fast charging. SILA has built a pilot production line that has been operating 24/7 for the past two years and is commissioning its first plant (50 MWh) to use its silicon anodes in wearable and portable electronic devices and quality-qualified electric vehicles. As part of SCALEUP, SILA aims to develop a range of technologies around advanced reactor designs, including more efficient material handling, online diagnostics, improved precursor utilization, and improved material handling. This proposed project will significantly (1) reduce silicon anode costs; (2) improve efficiency and reduce waste in production; (3) reduce engineering and cost risks; and (4) reduce electric vehicle battery costs and accelerate the transition to clean transportation and renewable energy.

Switching Source LLC - Vestal, New York

Expanding Cost-Effective Grid Modernization – $8,560,000

Switching Source is introducing a new generation of distribution automation technology for large commercial and industrial customers and electric utilities that cost-effectively improves distribution grid reliability, resiliency and distributed generation capacity. Switched Source’s product portfolio consists of two patented smart grid devices that actively manage real and reactive power flows in medium voltage systems. A critical next step to gain recognition as a viable investment and validated practical technology is through structured demonstration projects on partners’ distribution systems with third-party performance evaluations. SCALEUP will enable Switching Source to bring transformative ARPA-E technologies to the utility market by establishing processes, infrastructure, and technology validation to address remaining technical and commercial risks.

LongPath Technologies Inc. - Boulder, Colorado

Basin Scan: A Basin-Scale Sustained Oil and Gas Emissions Reduction Network – $5 million

LongPath Technologies has proposed the largest continuous emissions monitoring network project in the oil and gas industry. The network will be able to locate and size natural gas emissions in real time across 700 square miles of the Permian Basin in the southwestern United States. Project goals include expanding the network to cover more than 850 oil and gas facilities, reducing system costs, expanding value-added services on the sensor platform, and quantitatively demonstrating the net benefits of continuous monitoring. The potential impact of the project includes a 60%-80% reduction in oil and gas production emissions across the basin.

AutoGrid Systems, Inc. - Redwood City, CA

A highly scalable virtual power plant platform for large-scale energy storage and electric vehicle deployments - $2,250,000

AutoGrid’s FlexTM is an energy flexibility management and virtual power plant software platform that enables utilities and energy-as-a-service providers to aggregate and optimize distributed energy resources. FlexTM enables its customers to maximize the monetization of value streams such as time-of-use arbitrage (buying and storing energy when electricity costs are low and selling or using the stored energy when costs are high), demand-based charging (fixing charges during peak demand periods), management, and grid services. The project plans to significantly enhance FlexTM’s capabilities by co-optimizing the number of energy storage assets in real time to 100,000 and expanding its features and functionality for electric vehicle management use cases.

Ionic Materials - Woburn, Massachusetts

High-throughput manufacturing of breakthrough polymer electrolytes for low-cost solid-state batteries - $8 million

Ionic Materials (IM) will eliminate key technical, manufacturing and market risks on the path to commercialization by validating three key elements of its polymer electrolyte (PE): manufacturability of high-volume, commercial, high-quality polymer electrolyte materials and components; safety for high-capacity lithium-ion batteries; and battery performance that meets commercial specifications. The team will work to reduce the production cost of IM's PE powder by 15% and strive to obtain third-party qualifications for ultra-high-capacity automotive lithium-ion batteries (250 amp-hour). The project will demonstrate that IM's PE can be a low-cost component for safe, solid-state lithium-ion batteries.