The Department of Energy (DOE) announced this Wednesday it has initiated the design and construction of a $75 million energy storage facility, to be located at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.
Firstly, the facility is called Grid Storage Launchpad (GSL); it will boost clean energy adaptation and it will accelerate the development and deployment of long-duration, low-cost grid energy storage.
Secondly, the facility intends to bring together researchers and industry leaders from around the world to modernize; also, add flexibility to the energy storage technology. Secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm, said it like this: “deploying new grid technologies means we can get more renewable power on the system.”
Also, “support a growing fleet of electric vehicles, make our grid more reliable and resilient, and secure our clean energy future.”
In addition, the GSL will gather 30 research laboratories; “some of which will be testing chambers capable of assessing prototypes and new grid energy storage technologies under real world grid operating conditions.”
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GSL aims to speed up the energy storage technology development
It will also include flexible workstations, collaborative spaces, fellowship labs; and will also provide with dedicated space to incubate energy storage technologies.
In fact, the GSL will have three main focuses. Bringing together multidisciplinary researcher for collaboration; the independent testing for technology validation; and also, the acceleration of the benchtop to system process, for quicker development.
Moreover, “the GSL will speed up the process considerably; by doing the work needed to develop and also deploy new grid storage technologies. It took 40 years to get to the current state of today’s lithium-ion battery technology; consequently, we also need to move much faster to develop the long-duration, low-cost batteries needed to meet the challenges of decarbonizing the energy system.” Said PNNL Director Steven Ashby.
Finally, apart from federal funding, the Washington State Department of Commerce will further fund the project with $8,3 million; for advanced research, equipment and specialized instrumentation.