The US Department of Energy has announced the creation of a Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, at a cost of $US120 million over five years, with the aim of producing batteries that are five times more powerful at five times less cost than today’s batteries.
According to ComputerWorld, the project aims to reproduce the development environments used by Bell Laboratories during World War 2 in the Manhattan Project.
The project brings together scientists and researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois-Chicago, the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and the University of Michigan alongside engineers from private sector firms Dow Chemical, Applied Materials, Johnson Controls and Clean Energy Trust.
Aside from its obvious applications for mobile devices, improved energy storage technology is also set to benefit the renewable energy and transportation sectors.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
