Executive Summary

• The Ultra-Long Duration Energy Storage (Ultra-LDES) Challenge, with £28 million in funding from UK Research and Innovation (URKI) aims to support the development of new technologies focused on energy storage, including advanced batteries and underground hydrogen
• The government notes that underground hydrogen storage has the potential to reduce total energy system costs by between £14bn and £50bn between 2035 and 2050
• The previously announced £3m URKI funding competition for electrochemical Ultra-LDES technologies forms part of the wider challenge

A new initiative from the UK government is looking to support the development of new technologies focused on energy storage, including advanced batteries and underground hydrogen storage, to the tune of £28 million.

The Ultra-Long Duration Energy Storage (Ultra-LDES) Challenge is offering funding for projects across two main areas of the focus. The first are projects which are capable of supplying clean electricity for 100 hours or more. Such technologies are yet to be commercialised at scale, giving the UK ‘an opportunity to secure an early foothold in the market’, the government noted. The second is to support the development and testing of systems which store hydrogen underground and release it when needed.

The latter holds the potential to reduce total energy system costs by between £14 billion and £50 billion between 2035 and 2050, the government added.

Regular readers of Electrical Insight will recall UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) allocating £3 million earlier this month to the first phase of a funding competition aiming to support the development, scale-up and UK manufacture of electrochemical ultra-long duration storage technologies. That competition is part of the wider Ultra-LDES Challenge, with UKRI also putting up the wider £28m funding.

In total, this launch completes the rollout of the £102m Clean Energy challenges, as well as the £74m Consumer-Led Flexibility Challenge, which both aim to help fund new technologies shifting electricity use when it is at its cheapest.

“Ensuring the UK has the technologies capable of storing energy efficiently and effectively is a vital part of the equation in the move to a clean and more secure energy system,” said Jenny Hill, UKRI’s Clean Energy Challenge director. “This challenge will help propel the UK to the forefront of the global energy storage market, creating skilled jobs and attracting private investment.”

The launch comes as Ofgem consults on plans to support 16 long-duration electricity storage projects. The selected projects, as Ofgem announced in June, comprise four technologies; pumped storage hydro, compressed air energy storage, lithium-ion batteries, and vanadium redox flow batteries.

Picture credit: Created by Magnific