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 Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, which funds
projects meant to transform energy markets, has made huge strides
over the last few years on next-generation batteries that could make
electric cars and renewable energy cheaper and more accessible,
Ellen Williams said in an interview this week.
The battery division of Musk's Tesla Motors turned a profit in the
fourth quarter, after the first shipments of its rechargeable
products helped to reduce losses from the company's auto business.
Its Powerwall batteries store energy that homes and small businesses
generate with solar panels. The Powerpack model is designed for
large commercial facilities.
Williams said her agency has helped kickstart a dozen high-risk
projects based on newer technologies that could soon outperform
Tesla batteries.
"What Musk has done that is creative and important is drive the
learning curve. He's decided to take an existing, pretty powerful
battery technology and start producing it on a very large scale,"
she said.
"But it's not technology innovation in the sense of creating new
ways of doing it. We are pretty well convinced that some of our
technologies have the potential to be significantly better,"
Williams said.
Batteries are in a "Wild West" phase, said Colin Wessells, chief
executive of Alveo Energy, a San Francisco area startup developing a
high power, long lifecycle battery technology for renewable energy
and microgrids, or localized groupings of energy providers.
Only five energy grid storage batteries have been commercialized as
researchers and budding entrepreneurs race to bring new technologies
to market, he noted.
Wessells, whose company has ARPA-E support, said huge manufacturing
advances will speed up the commercialization of battery products.
"We are in a burst of innovation right now," he said at his
exhibition stand at the ARPA-E conference outside of Washington this
week. "Five years from now there will be a few technologies out
there that nobody saw coming."
ARPA-E is set to get a huge boost after the United States and 19
other countries launched Mission Innovation at the United Nations
climate summit in Paris late last year. The governments pledged to
double spending on clean energy research and development over the
next five years. The United States will boost its overall energy
research and development budget to $12.8 billion by 2021.
ARPA-E was launched in 2009 with a budget of $400 million and a
mandate to fund the most cutting edge technologies. President Barack
Obama's budget request for 2017 would increase its allocation to $1
billion in five years.
"With that increased budget we can definitely make a difference,"
said Williams.
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STAYING FOCUSED
ARPA-E funds projects for three years at a time, focusing on
commercializing new and exciting ideas and training researchers to
pitch them in ways investors can understand.
This differs from traditional academic research, which tends to take
too long, Williams said, noting that scientists "always focus on the
next problem."
"What we do that is very different is we really set a target to get
something specific done in a specific period of time," she said.
Williams said ARPA-E aims to steer projects away from what Microsoft
Corp founder Bill Gates called a "valley of death" of failures
between the early promise of a new energy concept and
commercializing it into a viable technology that exists in the clean
energy sector.
Gates, who launched a multibillion-dollar clean energy research
initiative alongside Mission Innovation in Paris, said last week the
money that he and other entrepreneurs will invest in clean energy
R&D will "complement government research" to deliver "energy
miracles."
Some of these miracles may come out of ARPA-E supported labs and
workshops, Williams said.
Besides energy storage, ARPA-E's research projects include using
robots and drones to help develop more sustainable sorghum-based
biofuels, and using sensors to make heating and air conditioning
systems more energy efficient.
The agency has funded projects in all 50 states.
"These concepts are way out-there now, but in a few years from now
they may be the way things work," she said.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; editing by Bruce Wallace and
Richard Chang)
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