The Energy Storage Research Center draws on MIT’s faculty members’ extensive existing research capability to focus on developing transformative energy storage technologies and analyzing current and future business trends in the energy storage sector.
As a part of this Center, Members can sponsor research on:
- The development of new energy storage technologies or applications, stemming from novel materials, chemistries, computational techniques, designs, manufacturing techniques, applications, and other related technologies, and/or
- Current and future usage of energy storage in commercial applications, including:
- Business context: Markets and their regulations as well as regional/national policies, which are often in a state of flux
- Business opportunities: Assessment of investment opportunities, business models, service models, expected revenue streams, case studies
- Costs analyses of batteries in different applications and implementation scenarios: Capital expenditures, maintenance, operating costs, and degradation of batteries
- Technology trends: Innovations and new technologies on the horizon, battery manufacturing costs, and forecasts
- Modeling: Development of decision-making tools, models of the impacts of various technological outcomes on the grid, residential/commercial and industrial trends, and transportation needs of the future
Example projects
The Energy Storage Research Center and MITEI support early-stage research projects that explore new energy-storage ideas and open up new avenues for research. Current projects include:
- Designing for Manufacturing Scalability in Clean Energy Research (Elsa Olivetti, Materials Science and Engineering);
- Economics of energy storage (Jing Li, MIT Sloan School);
- Electrochemical ammonia synthesis for modular electrical energy storage (Karthish Manthiram, Chemical Engineering);
- Unlocking the rechargeability of calcium for high-energy-density batteries (Betar Gallant, Mechanical Engineering).