Sir Henry Royce Institute - Oxford Equipment

78cd3493-8f12-4d65-8497-f53c80c5d17e

Closed

EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC

£50,000,000

March 31, 2017

March 31, 2020

Energy storage (ES) is at the heart of the energy trilemma for clean, secure, and cost effective
supply. The UK is strong in advanced materials engineering combined with unique geographical
opportunities for sustainable energy storage. Technology integration and strategic deployment are
essential for the UK to be world leading and to exploit material technology globally. According to
GE: "the development of energy storage technology is going to be one of the defining features of the
21st centuries energy landscape....it is going to be a huge market and is going to render the utilities
business unrecognisable within a few decades". Fundamentally, the most critical and enabling
aspect of energy storage devices are the materials from which they are made. For example, in
lithium ion batteries, the anode, cathode, separator, electrolyte and current collectors are all highly
optimised and compatible materials that are integrated at large scale ~5 B Li ion cells in 2016) using
bespoke manufacturing expertise.

Energy storage is a key enabler for clean transport and completes the renewable energy cycle. From
a historical perspective, there has been a disparate and 'polarised' approach to renewable energy
generation and use - the focus has been on the two 'extremes': on one side, generation (e.g. wind
turbines, solar PV) and on the other side, end uses and applications (e.g. electric vehicles). However,
the bridge to connect these into a working system is energy storage. Both mobile and stationary
energy storage offer significant potential for the UK; on the other hand, without energy storage it
will be difficult to decarbonise the electricity grid and achieve the UK targets for CO2 mitigation. The
importance of ES was highlighted in the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy green
paper Building our Industrial Strategy in January 2017 that stated "Given the UK's underlying
strengths in science and energy technology, we want to be a global leader in battery technology."
ES comprises a wide variety of technologies, all particularly dependent on advances in materials
science. Resources need to be carefully allocated on selected technologies in order to achieve the
world leading status. Following Oxford-led stakeholder meetings, workshops and discussion, the
Royce ES theme will focus on (i) electrochemical energy storage technologies such as batteries,
supercapacitors and flow cells and (ii) thermoelectric and piezoelectric devices.

Potential Impact:
Please see attached proposal