The new Aqueous Battery Consortium of Stanford, SLAC, and 13 other research institutions, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, seeks to overcome the limitations of a battery using water as its electrolyte.

How do you store electricity in a way that is large and powerful enough to support the electric grid, as well as reliable, safe, environmentally sustainable, and inexpensive? One way may be to make a major component of the rechargeable battery mostly from water and the rest of the device primarily from abundant materials.

That is the vision of dozens of the best energy storage experts from 15 research institutions across the United States and Canada, led by Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. After a competitive process, the U.S. Department of Energy announced on Sept. 3 its support for this energy hub research project, called the Aqueous Battery Consortium. The project can receive up to $62.5 million over five years as part of the DOE’s Energy Innovation Hubs program. The other battery-centered Energy Innovation Hub announced today by the DOE is the Energy Storage Research Alliance, led by Argonne National Laboratory.

Scientists seek to invent a safe, reliable, and cheap battery for electricity grids | Aqueous Battery Consortium