The energy storage community is rapidly growing and evolving. There are many solutions under
investigation within the research and development (R&D) community across electrochemical, mechanical, and thermal approaches. However, many of these energy storage solutions have not yet been demonstrated in operational environments and at pilot scale. This limits their ability to access utility-scale demonstration funding and establish a commercial order book due to remaining scaling risk and uncertainty around real performance characteristics. Beyond the technical demonstration needs, there is a clear gap in market mechanisms to value and monetize storage services beyond 4-hour discharge. While significant efforts are needed to advance market mechanisms, this program is focused primarily on technology performance demonstrations.
This program seeks to:
1. Advance a diverse set of non-lithium energy storage technologies towards commercial viability and
utility-scale deployment.
2. Generate high-quality operational datasets and techno-economic models.
3. Build investor, utility, and other end user confidence in the real performance and adoptability of the
proposed solutions.
This program will fund technology demonstrations for energy storage solutions at the pilot-scale. The
program will focus on non-lithium technologies, long-duration (10+ hour discharge) systems, and stationary storage applications.
Applicant teams must include at least one technology provider as a recipient or a subrecipient. Priority will be given to proposals that include utility, developer, and/or end user members, a plan to demonstrate the solution in an operational environment, and a plan to build investor confidence to secure support for followon projects.
The following entities are eligible to apply as recipients: (1) State energy office, (2) Indian Tribe, (3) Tribal organization, (4) Institute of higher education, (5) Electric utility (including electric cooperatives, Tribal utilities, municipally owned electric utilities, and investor-owned utilities), and (6) Private energy storage companies.
This NOFO is being released in coordination with The Office of Electricity (OE) Critical Facility Energy
Resilience (CiFER) Solicitation DE-FOA-0003384 which is providing up to $30 million to support large scale deployment of innovative storage technologies to support energy resiliency needs at a host site containing critical infrastructure. Eligible entities are allowed to apply separately to both opportunities.
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