The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory on March 8 started administering a prize challenge seeking individuals and teams that could help accelerate microbattery advancement and adoption in the United States.
NREL said Wednesday the two-phased Microbattery Design Prize will be an avenue to award a total of $1.1 million in federal funding and performance and safety testing services with DOE laboratories in support of the American-Made Challenges program.
Competitors will initially conceptualize technical designs for the first phase of the challenge. Idea phase winners will then compete in the second or test phase to create prototypes and undergo performance, safety and cost evaluation.
The grand prize winner will be awarded $300,000 while two other winners will receive $175,00 apiece.
“Supporting the prototyping and testing of more microbattery designs can provide the key link between potential system developers, users, and battery manufacturers to spur their adoption and increase manufacturing capacity for batteries of this size,” remarked Paul Syers, technology manager at DOE.
