TU Delft Receives Millions in Funding for Large-Scale Energy Storage Research

Paulien Herder, professor in Energy Systems at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), and her team in the interdisciplinary consortium RELEASE (Reversible Large-scale Energy Storage) have received funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) totalling over € 10 million for research into large-scale energy storage.

NWO is investing € 39 million in five large, interdisciplinary research consortia within the Crossover programme, with the aim of helping to meet various social and economic challenges.

RELEASE will work on new technological opportunities in energy storage, whereby electrical energy is stored for later use. The project will focus on three technologies for the short (2030) and long (2050) term: hydrogen production, hydrocarbon production from CO2 and flow batteries. The consortium includes universities, institutes of technology, businesses, field laboratories and government agencies in an unprecedented alliance that covers everything from the lab environment to full-scale implementation. Over 40 researchers from 7 universities and 25 partners will, together with their teams, conduct interdisciplinary research that aims to bring social and scientific breakthroughs a step closer. This research also complements the work being carried out within the TU Delft e-Refinery research initiative.

Paulien Herder: “The aim of our consortium is to work together on energy storage with scientists from a wide range of disciplines and public and private partnerships, and to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Active partnerships are essential in order to achieve scientific breakthroughs in these areas. Together, we hope to achieve technological solutions and policy measures for 2030 and 2050 that are essential if we are to improve the performance and reduce the cost of large-scale energy storage based on electrochemical conversion.”

The Crossover programme is new within NWO and is part of the NWO contribution to the Knowledge and Innovation Contract 2018–2019. Under this contract, government, industry and knowledge institutions subscribe to the research ambitions for the top sectors with the aim to strengthen the Dutch knowledge and innovation system. Compared to ‘regular’ public-private partnerships, the projects in the Crossover programme cover a broader range of top sectors and other research agendas.

Next to the RELEASE project, researchers from TU Delft are also involved in the NEON-project.