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The US Department of Energy has completed its $349m three-round investment initiative to fund innovation in energy generation, storage and use. The final round, announced this week, consisted of about $92m in grants to public and private organizations doing work in a variety of areas, including energy storage, energy transmission and cooling systems that aim to increase building energy efficiency.

"These innovative ideas will play a critical role in our energy security and economic growth," US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said in a statement. "It is now more important than ever to invest in a new, clean energy economy."

One of the largest grants received in the energy-transmission category was about $3.7m that went to a Durhan, N.C.-based company called Cree. Cree is developing high-voltage transistors for electrical substations that will enable replacement of the heavy 8,000lb transformers used for electricity distribution today with "suit-case size" 100lb transistor-based units.

According to DoE, the silicon carbide transistors handle record-high voltage of 15-20kV.

Projects that received grants in the energy-storage category include everything from magnetic storage solutions and flywheels to fuel cells and batteries. The focus is on large-scale, affordable energy storage that will enable widespread use of intermittent sources of sustainable energy like wind and solar.

The largest grant in this category ($4.2m) went to ABB, which is developing a superconducting magnetic energy storage solution. The device holds electricity it receives from the grid in a magnetic field of a coiled wire, reducing energy loss to almost ‘zero.’

Another large grant ($2.25m) went to Beacon Power Corp., which is working on a next-generation flywheel technology that allows for storing four times more energy than the current flywheel solutions.

On the cooling-system side, the largest grant went to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at the Texas Engineering Experiment Station of the Texas A&M University. The lab will use the $3.3m investment to fund development of high-efficiency membrane air dehumidifier. Efficiency comparative to typical approaches will be achieved by using a metal foil-like paper-thin membrane that will selectively sieve out water molecules at high flux, while blocking air molecules.

This was the third and final round of funding financed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the DoE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The projects funded are based in 18 states. Click here to see the complete list of projects.
 

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