Glendale-based Johnson Controls Inc. has landed a piece of a federal contract to develop the next generation of energy storage technology in the Midwest.
The $120 million competitive grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy to Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., a southwest Chicago suburb. It will fund a science and industry partnership to research and develop a new type of battery.
A batteries and energy storage hub will be built at the renowned lab, with $35 million that the state of Illinois has committed to funding. It will be called the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research. This is the fourth Energy Innovation Hub established by the DOE since 2010, and the only one focused on energy storage.
The hub partnership includes five Department of Energy national laboratories, Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; five universities, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Michigan; and four private firms, Johnson Controls, Dow Chemical Company, Applied Materials Inc. and Clean Energy Trust.
The coordinated effort is meant to quickly bring new energy storage technologies to market for use in the electricity grid as well as electric and hybrid cars. This research will be a critical part of the national effort to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil while reducing energy costs.
“This is a partnership between world leading scientists and world leading companies, committed to ensuring that the advanced battery technologies the world needs will be invented and built right here in America,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. “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 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.”
Johnson Controls and Argonne have worked together on other projects in the past, said MaryAnn Wright, vice president for technology and innovation in the power solutions business at Johnson Controls.
As Argonne evaluated potential industry partners, Johnson Controls stuck out because it has the capabilities to get the future product scaled and produce a high volume of batteries efficiently, she said.
The results of the hub’s research will have a wide reaching effect on energy storage techniques, Wright said.
“This isn’t just about electric vehicles. It doesn’t matter what type of fuel you have in your car—you need a battery,” Wright said.
Johnson Controls was a significant part of the planning and proposal process Argonne went through to obtain the grant, she said.
Johnson Controls is the world’s largest battery manufacturer, a fact that did not go unnoticed by Argonne, said Jeff Chamberlain, who has been named deputy director of the JCESR.
Argonne graded potential industry partners by how the companies would fit together, whether the company would translate the innovations effectively and whether their strategy was focused on expanding their technology footprint, he said.
“We not only were looking for the best battery company to work with but also the best value chain to attach ourselves to,” Chamberlain said.
The companies have worked together for several years to find ways for the U.S. to capture more of the market share in the $12 billion advanced battery industry, he said.
“How do we invent something that can take that market share back onto U.S. soil? Let’s grow some GDP associated with batteries,” Chamberlain said.
New technologies will be developed through teamwork among physicists and chemists, engineers and product developers. When the engineers stumble across a problem they can’t solve, physicists and chemists will be right there to help them, he said.
While Johnson Controls has focused heavily on lithium-ion battery technology, this project will be different.
“We believe one of the reasons that we won is that we were specifically not aiming this work at lithium-ion,” Chamberlain said. “What we’re aiming at is the next generation, to leapfrog our Asian competitors, and so we’re aiming at whole new ways to store energy.”
Some of Johnson Controls’ scientists will do applied research at the hub, while others will work at Johnson Controls’ facilities, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Johnson Controls’ Holland, Mich. lithium-ion plant would serve as a pilot manufacturing facility for the new battery technology.
“While we’re helping on the technology piece of it, our significant contribution is really going to be scaling up manufacturing excellence and packaging it so that it can get out into the market more quickly,” Wright said.
She called the five-year grant program the 5-5-5 plan, aimed at storing five times the energy at one-fifth of the cost in five years. If it proves successful, the program will be renewed for another five years, Wright said.
The partnership will benefit Johnson Controls through the learning opportunities its employees will get from industry experts and can then apply to the company’s products.
“We’re really going to benefit from a lot of different viewpoints,” Wright said. “This is frankly something that no one company could do on their own.”
Since planning for the hub is in the early stages, Johnson Controls does not yet know how many of its employees will be involved in the project. More employees may be hired if needed.
“Johnson Controls continues to build our technical capabilities focused on maintaining our market leadership position in energy storage – irrespective of the hub,” Wright said. “We will ensure we have the appropriate resources supporting our activities in the hub.”
Advancing the pace of energy storage technology will help the U.S. compete with battery competitors like China in the global marketplace.
“We need to create a science and manufacturing talent pipeline to ensure the U.S. is positioned as a global competitor,” Wright said. “This energy hub is a long-term play and a significant investment to ensure the (intellectual property) and manufacturing doesn’t go offshore. The hub is designed to bring the best scientific and industrial talent together and create a domestic competitive advantage in this important technology and market space.”
