The US Department of Energy has awarded a $4.2 million grant to four institutions to develop a superconducting magnet energy storage (SMES) device. An affordable, large-scale SMES device would be the ideal technology to allow wind and solar energy sources to attain widespread use in the nation’s power grid. The funding is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, administered through the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).
The four institutions that will spearhead development of the SMES technology are UH, ABB Inc. of Cary NC; SuperPower Inc. of Schenectady NY; Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton NY; and the University of Houston.
“A key enabler to the SMES project is the improved HTS wire technology that was recently developed by the TcSUH Applied Research Hub along with SuperPower to achieve two-fold superior performance in high magnetic fields,” said Venkat Selvmanickam, Chief Technology Officer at SuperPower.
