Teams led by Argonne National Laboratory and Stanford University are in line for $125 million to boost their research into next-generation energy storage.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced the funding Sept. 3. It said the two Energy Innovation Hubs will accelerate development of storage technology beyond lithium-ion batteries, with a priority on use of inexpensive and abundant materials.

The Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA) led by Argonne will focus on new compact batteries for heavy-duty transportation and grid-scale energy storage, while the Aqueous Battery Consortium (ABC) led by Stanford will work to establish the scientific foundation for large-scale development and deployment of aqueous batteries for long-duration grid storage technologies.

If finalized, the awards will be worth up to $62.5 million each and will extend up to five years.

In its own announcement, Argonne said:

“ESRA seeks to enable transformative discoveries in materials chemistry, gain a fundamental understanding of electrochemical phenomena at the atomic scale and lay the scientific foundations for breakthroughs in energy storage technologies.”

The goal is high-energy batteries that provide days of output, do not catch fire and have decades-long service lives. They will rely on abundant materials, which may mitigate the cost and supply chain volatility associated with present-day batteries.

ESRA Director Shirley Meng said: “To achieve this, energy storage technology must reach levels of unprecedented performance, surpassing the capabilities of current lithium-ion technology. The key to making these transformative leaps lies in a robust research and development initiative firmly grounded in basic science.”

DOE said both projects also will be a vehicle for workforce development and inclusion of diversity.

ESRA Deputy Director Wei Wang said: “Cultivating a diverse workforce dedicated to safeguarding America’s energy resilience is key to ESRA’s mission. Through our strategic equity and inclusion initiatives, we plan to create a robust training ground for energy storage science from the undergraduate to postdoctoral levels.”

Stanford in its announcement said the ABC seeks to overcome the limitations facing batteries that use water as their electrolyte.

ABC Director Yi Cui explained that enormous amounts of stationary energy storage will be needed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, and said water is the only realistic solvent available at the cost and quantity needed.

He said: “How do we control charge transfer between solids and water from the molecular to the device scale and achieve reversibility with an efficiency of nearly 100%? We don’t know the solutions to those hard problems, but with the Department of Energy’s support we intend to find out.”

The aqueous battery concept is in extensive use in the starter systems of internal combustion vehicles, but those batteries are small and rely on a toxic substance — lead acid.

Using water instead is a tall order.

“The barriers to such a new aqueous battery have stymied inventors for years,” said ABC chief scientist Linda Nazar. “In addition to stubbornly low voltage and energy density, water can corrode battery materials, become the source of undesirable side reactions, and the cells can fail after just hundreds of charge-discharge cycles under demanding practical conditions.”

Dozens of researchers working in six teams will investigate the challenge.

Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory lead the Aqueous Battery Consortium, and are joined by investigators from California State University, Long Beach; Florida A&M University/Florida State University’s College of Engineering; North Carolina State University; Oregon State University; San Jose State University; UCLA; UC-San Diego; UC-Santa Barbara; University of Maryland; University of Texas at Austin; and the University of Waterloo.

ESRA is led by Argonne and co-led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Partners are Columbia University; Duke University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Princeton University; UC San Diego; UChicago; University of Houston; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of Michigan; Utah State University; and Xavier University.

DOE’s Energy Innovation Hubs are managed by the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) Program of the Office of Science. They seek to overcome key scientific barriers for major energy technologies.

ABC and ESRA build off previous BES-funded efforts, including the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research innovation hub, which ended a decade of operation in 2023 and also was led by Argonne.