The U.S. Energy Department will partner with the University of Kentucky to explore breakthrough energy storage technologies in the second phase of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, the agency’s innovation hub dedicated to battery science.

• Established in 2012, the mission of the hub is to create next-generation technologies that can transform the transportation and the electric grid similar to the change that lithium-ion batteries brought to personal electronics.
• Since its inception, the hub has addressed major scientific challenges in electric storage including efforts to lay the foundation for doubly-charged magnesium batteries instead of singly-charged lithium, as well as designing computational methods that screened more than 24,000 compounds for new battery concepts and chemistries.
• The department announced $120 million funding in September to renew the hub over the next five years.