The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy is allocating $3.3 million to UCSD to help develop energy storage technologies for the commercial market, UCSD’s Program Director of Energy Storage Systems William Torre told the UCSD Guardian on Jan. 5. The university will also be providing $200,000 for facility management support for both laboratory and grid-connected testing of the advanced energy storage batteries. 

One of UCSD’s tasks in this project is to identify the path to commerciality of ARPA-E’s new high-energy density, low-cost battery technologies. Once full-battery module testing is completed, Torre gauges that it is likely that full-scale production could be in operation in one to two years. 

Vice Chancellor for Resource Management and Planning Gary C. Matthews argued that UCSD has the track record to indicate that they are capable of such a potentially impactful project.

“Energy storage has the potential to transform the global energy landscape,” Matthews told UCSD News Center. “Our campus has the largest, most diversified portfolio of energy storage devices of any university in the world, so we are uniquely qualified to help advance this technology.”

Matthews also told the Guardian that this project will place UCSD at the center of energy-storage research and development, which will in turn help bring other agency and private sector funding to its campus. 

Torre, as well, sees this as an opportunity for UCSD to establish itself as a leader in the growing technological field of energy storage.

“This project with ARPA-E will establish UC San Diego as the only major energy-storage testing facility on the West Coast for testing advanced-energy storage batteries,” Torre told the Guardian. “The testing that UC San Diego will perform through this ARPA-E contract will likely result in identifying the next generation of batteries that can be used to allow higher levels of renewable generation.”

When asked about how UCSD’s relationship with ARPA-E came about, Torre explained that UCSD has been actively involved with energy-storage research and demonstration projects for the last three years, including one of ARPA-E’s energy-storage programs. ARPA-E then sent out a notice of intent on June 18, 2014 to selected entities to submit abstracts for proposed testing of advanced energy storage. After reviewing the abstracts, ARPA-E selected UCSD as one of the entities to submit a full proposal and, subsequently, as one of the two winners.