The rapid deployment of variable renewable electricity in the UK will make it more challenging to balance the supply and demand of energy. Over the last five years, the potential for energy storage to meet this challenge has been recognised by industry and policy makers. Other global drivers of energy system change show the wider opportunity: providing remote communities with access to power, increasing urbanisation, and ageing infrastructure. The characteristics of energy storage can range from meeting the needs of individuals and households, to local/city distribution networks, to those of the high-voltage transmission grid. But advances, in energy storage devices themselves and their integration into systems, are needed to meet the required performance and cost levels.

With a strong research and industry base, the UK can be at the forefront of innovation in energy storage, capturing value in the global market. To these ends, the Government invested £30m in energy storage facilities under the 'Eight Great Technologies' call, providing state-of-the-art equipment in five university consortia for the development and testing of technologies that span application areas. However, whilst funding was made available for capital expenditure, no dedicated funding for undertaking research was attached.

We propose a truly interdisciplinary programme building on this investment to tackle some key challenges facing the energy storage community. We have designed a programme which will draw on the collective expertise and facilities that exist in the consortia to tackle research questions that span the storage technologies being developed, and to maximise the impact of the test-bed demonstrators.

Our approach is to address a set of research questions that apply across the technologies supported by the capital investment. We will consider the key challenges, across length scales, from materials to devices, to systems, specifically addressing:
- How the materials used in energy storage technologies, including batteries and thermal energy
- How processes are modelled in the technologies, and validating the models with experiments
- How energy storage devices can be integrated into the energy system most effectively
- How data from operational runs of pilot plants can improve our understanding of the role of energy storage

This project can be the catalyst which leads to improved understanding of physical processes, accelerated technology development, and shared learning from the operation of energy storage technologies. The research will also drive further collaboration between institutions, build the national research and innovation community, increase recognition of the UK's role, and maximise the impact from these facilities in the international energy landscape.

The consortia demonstrated excellence in research capability as part of their original capital grant bids. This project draws on this expertise directly with the involvement of senior investigators who have internationally leading reputations. We will also benefit from the additional support of technology users from across the energy sector, as well as the links through the individual consortia Advisory Boards.

Potential Impact:
The direct impacts of this project will be strongly felt across both the public and private sectors:

As the potential role of energy storage in the energy system is still uncertain, a better understanding of how different energy storage technologies perform individually and together will benefit those considering the technology mix under future scenarios. Recent analysis by Imperial College for the Committee on Climate Change ('Value of Flexibility in a Decarbonised Grid and System Externalities of Low-Carbon Generation Technologies', October 2015) has shown that the benefits of flexibility in the electricity system (primarily associated with the deployment of energy storage and demand side response) would be between £7.1-8.1bn per annum to meet a carbon intensity target of 50g/kWh, while the corresponding benefits for the 100 g/kWh target amount to £3-3.8bn annually. Policy makers will be keen to learn of these technological developments to inform thinking around energy markets and policy, and to guide further support for innovation. Funding agencies will value the results that show scientific advances across a wide range of disciplines.

With increasing penetration of variable renewable generation, system and network operators will value the analysis of the characteristics of energy storage technologies in different configurations, and how that could change over time through degradation in performance.

Technology developers will benefit from research into materials and process modelling, so that technology performance can be improved and costs reduced.

These impacts will be enabled for project partners by membership of the Advisory Boards of each consortium, at project research meetings and through the project's Steering Committee. The wider communities will benefit from publications in journals, the publishing of results through the energy storage observatory and presentations at conferences and other relevant meetings.

Students will benefit from having access to operational energy storage facilities, and the industrially relevant nature of the research being performed across the large number of partner universities.

In a broader sense, improved means of delivering a clean and efficient energy system will benefit the wider economy including the manufacturing sector and society.