Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

A growing proportion of our energy may well be derived from renewable sources such as wind, solar, wave, water vortices and tides as concerns about global warming and energy sustainability increase. These sources produce energy intermittently or unpredictably. The solution is to develop battery storage facilities from which energy can be tapped when required. In contrast, the availability of a large amount of energy and power, on a time scale of seconds or minutes rather than hours is a concern for back-up power on server farms and is of growing importance as the internet, search engines and real-time communications through the internet become more pervasive. Conventional battery rating methods do not address many of the modern applications because system parasitics such as the inductance of the wiring interconnects, and parasitics associated with the detailed operation of a battery have not been sufficiently modeled or are not fully documented or reflected on datasheets. Moreover, battery manufacturers either cannot provide the data or are reluctant to disclose information for fear of releasing trade secrets. Unfortunately for companies such as AEG that are building critical subassemblies for solar farms and server farms there is no guidance as to how to design or rate energy storage devices within a system context. This implies that a design methodology for selecting and rating energy storage components, as driven by the application, is lacking. This research project addresses this technology gap by developing a design methodology that will allow companies such as AEG to select and rate a single or hybrid energy storage device. There is also a recognition that other means of storing energy are possible. Therefore, a secondary objective of this project is to explore new approaches of storing energy at the molecular level, by non-electrochemical means, and perhaps achieve 100 times the energy density of existing state-of-the art battery technologies.