Faraday Institution – ACES Seed Projects

Funding to support up to six seed funding projects that will lead on the development of improved and lower cost battery energy storage systems in developing countries.

The Faraday Institution was established in 2017 as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund – Faraday Battery Challenge. The Institution is the UK’s independent institute for electrochemical energy storage science and technology, supporting research, training, and analysis.

The Faraday Institution is leading on the UK’s Ayrton Challenge on Energy Storage (ACES), which provides international development funding for new energy storage research and development that will support clean energy delivery in emerging economies. As part of this, Faraday is leading a £5 million research and development programme focused on expanding energy access, facilitating emissions reductions, and supporting energy transitions in developing countries. The programme will lead on the development of improved and lower cost battery energy storage systems.

This opportunity will support seed funding projects that will identify enabling research or understanding that could overcome a key challenge in the adoption of new technologies or could be used, or lead to, an improvement in the following areas of interest:

• Low-cost alternative chemistries.
• Optimising systems to maximise performance and improve efficiency and lifetime, specifically tailored to the typical operating conditions found in deployment locations such as Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Improving battery/system performance, design, and interoperability, with a particular focus on e-mobility applications.
• Recycling.
• Reduce environmental impact throughout life.

Applicants must clearly link their project to the aims of ACES and the intended region of use.

Applicants must clearly demonstrate how their proposed research is focused and targeted at delivering tangible benefits, in the form of ‘real world’ improvements, not solely the production of academic papers. Funded projects are not intended to be ‘business as usual’. They should be fast-paced and focused and deliver transformative results that may lead to a second stage of collaborative research beyond the initial exploratory work.

Proposed projects should last for six to nine months. They should start no later than 28 February 2024 and must be completed by 31 March 2025.

There is an intention that promising seed projects will be supported to transition into larger projects at the next round of funding in 2025.