DOE, DOD To Join On Battery R&D

Under an agreement announced last week, the Department of Defense will deploy and further develop basic energy-related R&D discoveries made by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). DOD’s Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering agreed to increasingly use ARPA-E’s early technology breakthroughs in grid-scale energy storage, batteries for electric vehicles, and power electronics. According to the announcement, ASD(R&E) plans to develop an energy storage device that will provide future defense systems with long-duration storage for a variety of military applications. In making the announcement, DOD officials noted the military’s growing and voracious appetite for energy and the need for better energy storage. DOE’s ARPA-E program is modeled on the much larger Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of DOD that supports basic research with direct military applications.