The ultra long energy storage challenge has arrived with £28 million, a four day ambition and the confidence of a ministerial launch. Nobody has yet asked where the electricity goes when the wind takes the afternoon off. The blank metal lunchbox is now the unofficial timekeeper. It is laughing at the phrase long term savings.
The government says the Ultra Long Duration Energy Storage Challenge will support projects that store clean electricity for more than 100 hours. The funding covers technologies such as advanced batteries and underground hydrogen storage. The aims include stronger energy security, less reliance on expensive gas generation and new industries.
That is a serious and potentially useful plan. It also makes an unusually large request of technology. The country has spent years treating electricity as something that appears when a switch gets bullied. Now it wants power to wait four days. This is rather like asking a Labrador to preserve a sandwich for winter.
The ultra long energy storage challenge meets the lunchbox
The blank metal lunchbox welcomes the announcement because it understands storage. Sadly, its record includes one banana, two warm biscuits and a mysterious receipt from 2019. It has applied to the advanced battery programme as a proven container based platform. The panel has declined its application.
The challenge will fund research into batteries that are not yet commercialised at scale. It will also support systems that store hydrogen underground and release it when needed. The official ambition is to keep clean power available when the sun is unhelpful and the wind has gone to lie down.
This gives government funding a refreshing job. Instead of asking households to perform increasingly elaborate chores during cheaper electricity periods, the system might eventually store power without making the public run the washing machine at 3.17am while guarding the meter.
A four day plan for a one day attention span
The ultra long energy storage challenge also promises jobs, investment and lower costs over time. The lunchbox has asked for “over time” to be defined in writing. It wants the answer before anyone asks it to hold a ministerial forecast.
The real test is the move from impressive announcement to dependable infrastructure. For now, the country has £28 million, several competing ways to store a very large amount of electricity and one lunchbox with a new career in energy transition. It guards the biscuits until 2030.
It calls this grid resilience. The biscuits call it a hostage situation.
Source: GOV.UK.
