DOE announces $120M "Manhattan Project" for advanced battery development

[wtmusic]

"Think of it as a Manhattan Project, except instead of secret nuclear bombs, the end result is much better batteries for devices, electric vehicles and the power grid. That’s at least one of the analogies used by the U.S. Department of Energy on Friday when it announced the launch of a new advanced research “Battery Hub,” to the tune of a $120 million, five-year government grant.

The Battery Hub, as most of those involved refer to it — officially named the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR, pronounced 'J Cesar') — will be led by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois (outside Chicago), will include actually include top researchers from a wide swath of some of the most prestigious institutions around the country, among them Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and other universities throughout the state and the Midwest.

'We wanted to have an aspirational and ambitious, but concrete, goal,' said Jeff Chamberlain, an Argonne chemist and the Battery Hub’s deputy director. 'That goes back to Bell Labs and the Apollo Mission and the Manhattan Project. We set the goal as high as we possibly could.'"

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/energy-department-launches-battery-hub-for-battery-manhattan-project.php

[Scuba]

1. A small fraction of the gifts we give to big oil every year.

[wtmusic]

3. Yeah, "Manhattan Project" is hyperbole.

That kind of funding, in today's dollars, would be $21.5 billion - what we should be spending.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Energy Storage:

For transportation technologies and for the smart grid, distributed generation, and expansion of renewables, energy storage technologies will change the world.

K/R

[Starboard Tack]

4. K&R! Hopefully not too little too late

Hard to think of a better place to spend R&d $$ than battery research. Could result in a game changer.