DOE Issues RFI Seeking Input On Its Draft Energy Storage Roadmap

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
Posted July 22, 2020

The Department of Energy on July 14 released a Request for Information (RFI) seeking stakeholder input for its energy storage roadmap.

In January, the DOE released its Energy Storage Grand Challenge Draft Roadmap, which aims to accelerate the development, commercialization, and utilization of next-generation energy storage devices.

The goal of the program is by 2030 to create and sustain U.S. leadership in energy storage utilization and exports, with a secure domestic manufacturing base and supply chain that is independent of foreign sources of critical materials.

The draft roadmap provides planned activities for each of the five tracks:

* The technology development track will focus DOE’s ongoing and future energy storage research and development around user goals and leadership;
* The manufacturing and supply chain track will develop technologies and strategies for U.S. manufacturing;
* The technology transition track will work to ensure that DOE’s R&D transitions to domestic markets through field validation, public private partnerships, bankable business model development, and the dissemination of high quality market data;
* The policy and valuation track will provide data, tools, and analysis to support policy decisions and maximize the value of energy storage; and
* The workforce development track will educate the workforce, who can then research develop, design, manufacture, and operate energy storage systems.

The DOE says that between fiscal years 2017 and 2019, it has invested over $1.2 billion into energy storage research and development, or $400 million per year, on average establishing a long-term strategy to address energy storage.

The draft roadmap also identifies six use cases that will be translated into a set of technology neutral functional requirements. The use case topics include facilitating an evolving grid, serving remote communities, electrified mobility, interdependent network infrastructure, critical services, and facility flexibility, efficiency and value enhancement.

The DOE intends to use those categories to help identify new and augmented research and development paths for a portfolio of energy storage and flexibility technologies that meet emerging needs.

The draft roadmap focuses on three key challenges that it is applying to each of the five tracks:

* Innovate Here – How can the DOE enable the United States to lead in energy storage R&D and retain intellectual property developed through DOE investment in the United States?
* Make Here – How can the DOE work to lower the cost and energy impact of manufacturing existing technologies, and strengthen domestic supply chains by reducing dependence on foreign sources of materials and components?
* Deploy Everywhere – How can the DOE work with relevant stakeholders to develop technologies that meet domestic usage needs and enable the United States to successfully deploy technologies in domestic markets, as well as export technologies?

Responses to this RFI are due Aug. 21. Interested stakeholders can view the draft roadmap and the RFI on the ESGC website.