DOE Announces $100M for Green Tech Research

Panasonic’s residential fuel cell technology uses natural gas to generate electricity and heat. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com

Last week, the Department of Energy announced that $100 million in stimulus funding will be allocated to further promote green innovation in the technology sphere.

“This is about unleashing the American innovation machine to solve the energy and climate challenge, while creating new jobs, new industries and new exports for America’s workers,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The department has designated three areas of focus for the projects: energy storage, electrical power technology and thermodevices.

Part of this funding will go towards developing new technologies to enable the widespread deployment of cost-effective grid-scale energy storage. While there are already similar initiatives in place, according to the DOE, this program “focuses on developing energy storage technologies to balance the short-duration variability in renewable generation.”

“By investing in the development of grid-scale energy storage technology, this funding opportunity will allow the U.S. to assume global technology and manufacturing leadership in the emerging and potentially massive global market for stationary electricity storage infrastructure.”

This investment coincides with many ideas that we saw at Greener Gadgets in New York City a couple of weeks ago. According to Peter Fannon, vice president of corporate and government affairs for Panasonic, the company’s next major venture is investing in this very same type of technology.

“Our current strengths are things that could be associated with renewable energy, such as storage batteries. Once you’ve stored the wind or solar power and it can’t be used on site or on the grid, you have to store it, and those batteries will be a much larger part of the system,” Fannon explained.

“This includes home storage batteries, which would store energy you create and maintain the ability to keep the important parts of your home powered in and when the grid you’re attached goes out. So, along with things like wind power and solar power, renewables, the smart grid activity in the US is becoming and public topic, but that’s actually been a sizable part of national development plans and international plans for many years, and Panasonic has been active in all of those.”

Panasonic’s residential fuel cell technology is an example of this type of this research. However, the fuel cell is not yet available in the U.S., partly due to its a hefty upfront cost (about $30,000). Fannon said government subsidies will be key to getting this type of technology off the ground in the U.S. in order for this investment to make sense for homeowners. Fannon said in February that he was “positive” the government was moving in this direction. Looks like he called it.

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