The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has invited expressions of interest in £289 million of funding to develop storage, demand side response and flexibility technologies, and to speed up their delivery.

A new competition has £9 million up for grabs (part of £50 million announced in the recent budget) to reduce the cost of storage, which includes electricity, thermal and power-to-gas options.

There are two opportunities to apply for the energy storage cost reduction competition:

• Tranche 1 – registration by 16 March 2017 and the deadline for applications is 13:00 on 23 March.
• Tranche 2 – registration by 1 June 2017 and the deadline for applications is 13:00 on 8 June.

Included in that funding is “an additional £600,000 to support feasibility studies for a potential first-of-a-kind, large-scale future storage demonstrator,” said BEIS. To apply for the energy storage feasibility study competition, registration is required by 16 March  and the deadline for applications is 13:00 on 23 March 2017.

A separate competition has up to £7.6 million available for “innovative demonstrations of energy demand side response technologies in UK businesses or public sector organisations to reduce their energy use in peak times and provide flexibility to the energy system”.

To join this competition, particpants must submit a registration email to [email protected] with the title “Non-Domestic DSR Competition” as the email subject  by 11 May.

The government also plans to invest up to £9.2 million in an ‘Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator’, to be delivered over the next four years. It will seek industry-specific solutions which are close to commercialisation by leveraging private sector investment and strengthening UK supply chains. BEIS is looking for partner organisations to design and run the competition and expressions of interest should be sent to [email protected].

More on the competitions here

Further reading:

Subscribers login to read: UKPN ‘will tender 10 storage projects in 2017’

Innovation Exchange aims to cut offshore wind costs with disruptive technologies from outside the sector

Carbon Trust launches competition to reduce cable damage during offshore construction

Feature: On track for offshore wind targets (members only)

Subscribe to New Power for full analysis, comment, interviews and data in our monthly report, and access to our database, and sign up to our FREE e-newsletter for website updates