A group of government labs, universities and private companies led by Argonne National Laboratory has been picked by DOE for a $120 million award to speed up R&D in advanced battery technologies for electric and hybrid cars and energy storage for the grid.

As Energy Secretary Steven Chu put it, "Based on the tremendous advances that have been made in the past few years, there are very good reasons to believe that advanced battery technologies can and will play in an increasingly valuable role in strengthening America's energy and economic security by reducing our oil dependence, upgrading our aging power grid and allowing us to take greater advantage of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar."

The Batteries and Energy Storage Hub, formally titled the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), is intended to bring together top scientists, engineers and manufacturers and back them up with the resources, tools and market research they need to develop major breakthroughs in advanced technologies.

In addition to DOE's financial support, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has pledged $5 million through the Illinois Jobs Now! capital construction plan to help build the JCESR facilities to be located at Argonne's suburban Chicago campus. Quinn also is expected to work with the state's General Assembly to come up with an additional $30 million in future funding for the facility.

Additional labs participating with Argonne on the project include the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific North West National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Academic partners include Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Chicago-Illinois, University of Chicago-Urbana Champaign and University of Michigan.

The industrial participants that will focus on the market side of the advances developed by the hub include Dow Chemical Company, Applied Materials, Inc., Johnson Controls, Inc. and Clean Energy Trust.

Participants were chosen from an open national competition and reviewed by outside experts. JCESR is the fourth energy innovation hub developed by DOE since 2010.

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