The U.S. Energy Department announced funding to renew the agency’s innovation hub dedicated to battery science over five years, according to a Sept. 18 press release. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, established in 2012, 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 center will focus on multivalent designs with higher energy capacity than lithium-ion batteries and innovative flow-battery concepts for the power grid. The department also selected 10 projects as part of an initiative called “Duration Addition to electricitY Storage,” or DAYS, to facilitate long-duration energy storage that can last up to 100 hours.