Two research groups at The University of Texas at Austin have been awarded grants to develop technologies that could dramatically improve energy storage capacity on the electric grid.
The grants, which were awarded to scientists at the Center for Electromechanics (CEM) and the Center for Electrochemistry further solidify the university's standing as a leader in utility scale energy storage technology. The field has been transformed thanks to research breakthroughs led by university faculty who are internationally renowned in battery storage and fuel cell research, among other areas of expertise.
"With electric vehicles, solar power and wind power all needing better storage, The University of Texas at Austin researchers have necessarily focused on solving nearer term problems," said Robert Hebner, director of CEM and a research professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering. "This grant provides the longer term focus needed to produce new technology that, if successful, can fundamentally change the economics of storage."
The grants are part of Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project, which has given approximately $104 million since its launch in 2002.
This round of grants is focused on new approaches for developing high-efficiency electrochemical storage systems and flywheels (rotating devices that convert stored kinetic energy into electricity).
The University of Texas at Austin holds the record for the largest composite flywheel ever made and the highest tip speed for a composite flywheel. The device has been a significant contributor to most major flywheel programs in the U.S. over the last two decades, Hebner said.
Through the grants, Allen Bard and Jeremy Meyers of the Center for Electrochemistry are being funded to work on enhanced electrolyte energy storage systems.
Their research will seek to introduce transformative changes in the construction and composition of the redox flow battery, a promising but so-far expensive technology that stores electrical energy as chemical energy like a battery does, but can be made large enough to store energy for the electric utility grid. Large-scale energy storage is needed in order to maximize the amount of energy generation from solar and wind sources.
Hebner, Richard Thompson and Siddharth Pratap of the Center for Electromechanics will use their grant to work on low-cost flywheel energy storage.
Their program will investigate two novel designs: pendulum and hubless flywheels that use high-strength carbon nanomaterials with superconducting qualities to increase energy storage capacity at a significantly reduced cost.
"The GCEP award will allow us to advance the understanding of revolutionary flywheel designs, which have the potential for a 10-fold decrease in the cost of stored energy compared to other technologies," said Thompson, senior engineering scientist at the UT Austin Center for Electromechanics.
The university boasts a long list of energy storage experts, including Heber, Bard and Meyers. Others include mechanical engineering Professor John Goodenough, who identified and developed the oxide cathode materials now used worldwide for high energy-density rechargeable lithium, and mechanical engineering Professor Arumugam "Ram" Manthiram. Manthiram is widely regarded in the materials science field for developing low-cost electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries.
GCEP is a collaboration of the scientific and engineering communities in academia and industry. With the support and participation of ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger and Toyota, GCEP explores science that could lead to energy technologies that are efficient, environmentally benign and cost-effective.
