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As with Edinburgh universities and their £6m funding for robotics research, which we blogged yesterday, it is part of the Government’s strategy to invest in key technologies, Chancellor Osborne’s ‘eight great technologies’.
The Liverpool-Manchester consortium has been funded to “create an interdisciplinary centre of energy storage research that will allow the transformation of batteries and supercapacitors into a viable option for wide-scale adoption in utility and grid applications” states Liverpool University.
“We are delighted to be awarded these funds from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. In partnership with the University of Manchester, it will support world-leading research facilities to work on energy storage and advanced materials,” said Dr Laurence Hardwick, from the University’s Department of Chemistry.
“The development of national scale electricity storage promises massive benefits – in terms of savings on UK energy spend and in environmental benefits as it enables greater penetration of renewable generation technologies.”
Professor Ian Cotton, from the University of Manchester, added: “The University of Manchester is already home to the largest high voltage laboratory in the UK and a new grid-scale energy storage test facility will be made available to industrial partners to allow energy storage systems to be fully tested before widespread deployment.”
The goal is for a grid-scale electrochemical energy storage facility that can charge up on unused electricity from windfarms (pictured) and release its energy to the grid during peak demand.
The Liverpool facilities will be located in the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, in new research laboratories.
