A first-of-its-kind laboratory has opened in Eastern Washington, bringing together some of the world’s most respected researchers to work on large-scale BESS issues. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) was selected in a DOE competition to create a new nationwide center, dubbed the Grid Storage Launchpad, that will work towards advancing utility-scale energy storage technologies.
Federal, state, and Tri-Cities officials on Tuesday celebrated the opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $75 million launchpad on PNNL’s north Richland campus.
According to GovTech, the 93,000-square-foot building will bring about the analysis and development of new materials to advance BESS technology at the 100-kilowatt scale under realistic grid cycles.
PNNL’s new facility will develop battery systems using new materials to efficiently and cost effectively get electricity users through a week-long outage when renewables are not generating power. Advanced technologies will allow engineers to quickly design and build advanced prototype batteries for testing, effectively reducing the cost and risk of new approaches.
Vincent Sprenkle, director of the Grid Storage Launchpad, said, “It gets us through the development process faster and that’s really the goal of this building as designed — to accelerate every step of that development process so these technologies can be deployed in a more reasonable time.”
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