At the inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that $100 million from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding will be made available to accelerate innovation in green technology.
This is the ARPA-E's third round of funding and is focused on three technology areas: Grid-Scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage, Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT) and Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices.
‘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,’ says Chu.
Through ADEPT, ARPA-E seeks to invest in materials for fundamental advances in soft magnetics; high-voltage switches; and reliable, high-density charge storage. These investments will be coupled to advanced circuit architectures and scalable manufacturing processes with the potential to leapfrog existing power converter performance while offering reductions in cost.
Lightweight, solid-state, medium-voltage energy conversion for high power applications, such as solid-state electrical substations and wind turbine generators, is a category that will be considered.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy
