The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) recently announced a group of six national laboratories to receive $2 million to carry out a Rapid Operational Validation Initiative (ROVI). This initiative will support the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2035, finding ways to make energy storage systems more cost-effective and long-lasting. To accomplish this, the six labs—Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory—will work with industry and academia to create a framework detailing data needs for energy storage systems and a roadmap to complete the program.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) of 2021 has appropriated $505 million to create grid-scale, long-duration energy storage demonstrations, and ROVI is set to support the performance reporting requirements and commercialization objectives of BIL. Additionally, the initiative will give project performers the opportunity to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to gain insights about the performance of long-duration energy storage technologies.
Gene Rodrigues, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Assistant Secretary for Electricity, said that “energy storage is a critical component of the modern grid and validating the performance of new storage systems will help accelerate wide deployment across the nation, supporting a resilient, reliable and clean electricity grid.”
Currently, the DOE’s energy storage program is focused on proving that energy storage systems are reliable and effective to make their wide deployment possible. With $2 million going towards this initiative and the framework put in place by the six national laboratories, the DOE’s ambitious goals for clean energy seem more achievable than ever.
