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INNOVATIONS IN BATTERY STORAGE 

FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 1, 2015 

Serial No. 114–18 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

HON. RANDY K. WEBER, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

May 1, 2015 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Randy K. Weber, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 6 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 7 

Statement by Representative Alan Grayson, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 8 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 9 

Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on 

Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ..................... 9 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 10 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Imre Gyuk ,Energy Storage Program Manager, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Department of Energy 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 12 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 15 

Dr. Jud Virden, Jr., Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 25 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 27 

Mr. Phil Giudice, Chief Executive Officer, Ambri 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 35 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 37 

Dr. Jay Whitacre, Chief Technology Officer, Aquion Energy 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 44 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 46 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 57 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Imre Gyuk ,Energy Storage Program Manager, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Department of Energy .......................................... 76 

Dr. Jud Virden, Jr., Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ............................... 80 

Mr. Phil Giudice, Chief Executive Officer, Ambri ................................................. 81 

Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record 

Statement submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking 

Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 

Representatives .................................................................................................... 84 

(1) 

INNOVATIONS IN BATTERY STORAGE 

FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY 

FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:10 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Randy Weber 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
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Chairman WEBER. The Subcommittee on Energy will come to 

order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses 

of the Subcommittee at any time which we might go ahead and do. 

Have you all eaten breakfast? So I want to thank you all for being 

here today. 

Today’s hearing is titled Innovations in Battery Storage for Renewable Energy. 

I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement. 

Today, we will hear from government and industry witnesses on 

the state of large-scale battery storage, and recent technology 

breakthroughs achieved through research and development at the 

national labs and universities around the country. Our witnesses 

today will also provide insight into how innovative companies are 

transitioning basic science research in battery storage technology to 

the energy marketplace. 

Energy storage could revolutionize electricity generation and delivery in America. Cost-effective, large-scale batteries could change 

the way we power our homes, reduce infrastructure improvement 

costs, and allow renewable energy to add power to the electric grid 

without compromising reliability or increasing consumer costs. As 

a Texan, trust me, I know the value of reliable, affordable energy. 

With a population in Texas that is increasing by 1,000 people a 

day, or more, and energy-intensive industries driving consumption, 

Texas is by far the nation’s largest consumer of electricity. The 

Texas economy needs reliable and affordable energy to power longterm growth, plain and simple. With battery storage technology, 

Texas could count on power from conventional and renewable energy sources regardless of the weather, saving money for Texas 

consumers and keeping the Texas power grid reliable and secure. 

Although large-scale battery storage has been available for decades, there is still more work to be done. Fundamental research 

and development into the atomic and molecular structure of batteries is needed to better understand the operation, performance 

limitations, and the failures of battery technology. At our national 

labs, we have the facilities and expertise necessary to conduct this 

basic research. The private sector plays an instrumental role in 

commercializing next generation battery technology. Through partnerships with the national labs, innovative battery companies can 

take advantage of cutting-edge research and user facilities, and develop cost-effective, efficient energy storage technology that can 

compete in today’s energy marketplace. Instead of duplicating deployment efforts that can be done by the private sector, the federal 

government should prioritize basic research and development on 

energy storage. This investment in energy storage technology R&D 

can benefit all forms of energy while maintaining that reliability 

and the security of the nation’s electric grid. 

Current U.S. policy for advancing the deployment of renewable 

energy is built around federal subsidies and tax credits. But these 

policies only tend to increase costs for the American people, and 

are counterproductive to the development of battery storage technology that could make renewable power a good investment in the 

real world. By creating an incentive to invest in renewable energy 

deployment instead of energy storage, the federal government is actually steering investment away from battery storage technology. 
7 

And the truth is, without affordable and efficient energy storage, 

renewable energy will never be able to match the efficiency, affordability, and reliability of fossil fuels. Instead, the federal government should end market-distorting subsidies and tax credits for the 

renewable energy industry, and allocate those resources to basic research and development necessary to solve the challenge of energy 

storage. 

I want to thank our witnesses for testifying to the Committee 

today, and I look forward to a discussion about federal energy storage research and development, and the impact efficient and affordable batteries can have on energy reliability and security. 

I now recognize the Ranking Member, the gentleman from Florida, for an opening statement. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Weber follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

CHAIRMAN RANDY K. WEBER

Good morning and welcome to today’s Energy Subcommittee hearing examining 

innovations in battery storage technology. Today, we will hear from government and 

industry witnesses on the state of large-scale battery storage, and recent technology 

breakthroughs achieved through research and development at the national labs and 

universities around the country. Our witnesses today will also provide insight into 

how innovative companies are transitioning basic science research in battery storage 

technology to the energy marketplace. 

Energy storage could revolutionize electricity generation and delivery in America. 

Cost effective, largescale batteries could change the way we power our homes, reduce infrastructure improvement costs, and allow renewable energy to add power 

to the electric grid without compromising reliability or increasing consumer costs. 

As a Texan, I know the value of reliable, affordable energy. With a population 

that is increasing by more than 1,000 people per day, and energy intensive industries driving consumption, Texas is by far the nation’s largest consumer of electricity. The Texas economy needs reliable and affordable energy to power long-term 

growth. With battery storage technology, Texas could count on power from conventional and renewable energy sources regardless of the weather, saving money for 

Texas consumers and keeping the Texas power grid reliable and secure. Although 

large-scale battery storage has been available for decades, there is still more work 

to be done. 

Fundamental research and development into the atomic and molecular structure 

of batteries is needed to better understand the operation, performance limitations, 

and failures of battery technology. At our national labs, we have the facilities and 

expertise necessary to conduct this basic research. 

The private sector plays an instrumental role in commercializing next generation 

battery technology. Through partnerships with the national labs, innovative battery 

companies can take advantage of cutting edge research and user facilities, and develop cost-effective, efficient energy storage technology that can compete in today’s 

energy marketplace. Instead of duplicating deployment efforts that can be done by 

the private sector, the federal government should prioritize basic research and development on energy storage. This investment in energy storage technology R&D 

can benefit all forms of energy while maintaining reliability and the security of the 

nation’s electric grid. 

Current U.S. policy for advancing the deployment of renewable energy is built 

around federal subsidies and tax credits. But these policies tend to increase costs 

for the American people, and are counterproductive to the development of battery 

storage technology that could make renewable power a good investment in the real 

world. By creating an incentive to invest in renewable energy deployment instead 

of energy storage, the federal government is steering investment away from battery 

storage technology. And the truth is, without affordable and efficient energy storage, 

renewable energy will never be able to match the efficiency, affordability, and reliability of fossil fuels. 

Instead, the federal government should end market-distorting subsidies and tax 

credits for the renewable energy industry, and allocate resources to basic research 

and development necessary to solve the challenge of energy storage. 
8 

I want to thank our witnesses for testifying to the Committee today, and I look 

forward to a discussion about federal energy storage research and development, and 

the impact efficient and affordable batteries can have on energy reliability and security. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Thank you, Chairman Weber, for holding this 

hearing. And thank you to our witnesses this morning for participating. 

Today we’ll be discussing energy storage and the potential benefits that can be gained by developing storage technologies. Energy 

storage has the potential to solve problems such as interruptions 

in power on the electric grid, we all know how frustrating and, at 

times, even dangerous a power outage can be, and to make intermittent renewable sources of energy more practical and affordable. 

Energy storage allows the buying of energy when prices are low, 

and the selling of energy when prices are high. This capability can 

lead to a reduction in energy congestion on America’s electrical infrastructure; lowering prices for consumers, and also potentially 

lowering utility revenues for providers. We have to plan that out 

accordingly. Well-placed storage units can eliminate the need for 

building additional transmission lines in some areas, saving consumers money. These challenges to existing energy infrastructure 

business models will grow as residential storage systems become 

more affordable. 

Japan, according to Bloomberg Business, is said to spend $670 

million in response to the grid issues that it’s facing, so that it’ll 

be able to accommodate the influx of renewable energy, which is 

often intermittently produced. In contrast, our Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Storage Program was funded at only $12 

million; that’s $670 million versus $12 million, for Fiscal Year 

2015. We need to do better than this if we want to maintain a reliable, resilient electric grid that can accommodate the many new 

forms of energy production and storage that are emerging today. 

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab estimated the annual costs associated with interruptions in power are as high as $135 billion, and 

often it’s the commercial and industrial sectors in our economy that 

bear those costs. In a future in which manufacturing processes increasingly rely on digital technology, even short, brief outages can 

dramatically impact production and sales. 

Energy storage solutions provide a line of defense against the 

cost of an outage, and it is imperative that America be prepared 

to incorporate storage solutions into energy and electrical infrastructure. If we invest wisely, research programs in electrical and 

energy storage can help America move from our current 20th century energy grid to a future grid that delivers more and pollutes 

less. 

And federally funded research has the potential to create new 

product lines, new business opportunities, and new international 

markets. Storage technology can make America’s energy future arrive faster, and that’s always our goal; to make the future arrive 

faster. 

Again, I thank each of our witnesses for being here today, and 

I look forward to hearing what each of you has to say. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Grayson follows:] 
9 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

MINORITY RANKING MEMBER ALAN GRAYSON

Thank you, Chairman Weber, for holding this hearing, and thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today. 

Most of us take the electric grid for granted. We flip a switch and the lights come 

on. But all of us have experienced outages. 

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab estimated that the annual costs associated with interruptions in power are between $22 billion and $135 billion, most of which is 

borne by the commercial and industrial sectors. 

As we move to manufacturing and industrial processes that rely more and more 

on digital technology to operate, even short outages can impact the cost of doing 

business. According to the Lab’s study, two thirds of industrial and commercial outage costs were due to outages lasting less than five minutes. These outages alone 

translate to a $52 billion dollar price tag. 

Storage can solve this problem. 

We will hear today about many of the other benefits storage can provide. 

Even with these benefits, however, storage technologies may face opposition because storage is a technology that can permanently disrupt the electricity sector’s 

business-as-usual model. 

Storage allows you to buy energy when prices are low, and sell it when prices are 

higher. Likewise storage can be used to reduce electricity congestion, lowering prices 

in high market areas, which benefits consumers but lowers utility revenues. 

Well placed storage units can eliminate the need for building additional transmission lines, saving consumers money. But this can also decrease utility revenues 

tied to rate increases for capital expenditures. 

These challenges to the existing industry business model are the beginning. 

There’s more to come. If residential storage systems become affordable, business 

models will need to adapt again. 

It should be noted that, despite the title of this hearing, storage isn’t really needed to maintain grid reliability when using renewable energy until you get to very 

high penetration levels of around 30 percent or more, according to the American 

Wind Energy Association. For now, there are actually many other mechanisms to 

address the variability of these resources that are more cost-effective. So a lack of 

storage is not an immediate show-stopper for renewables. But at some point, we 

may well want to go higher than 30%, and affordable large-scale storage technologies could become an even bigger game-changer for our environment as well as 

our energy security. 

Energy storage is a powerful enabling technology that can benefit all of us. It can 

improve the resiliency and efficiency of our electrical infrastructure. 

If we invest wisely, research programs in storage technologies can help us transition from our current grid to a future grid with lower carbon emissions. And, at the 

same time, federal research can open up new business opportunities, new product 

lines, and new international markets. 

Earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) may be investing more than $400 million in gridscale energy storage technologies. In contrast, the DOE’s Office of Electricity Storage Program FY 2015 budget was $12 million. The budget request for FY 2016 is 

$21 million. We can do better than this. 

Storage can be the next revolution in our energy future if we invest sensibly. We 

should be doing everything we can to make this future come faster. 

Thank you and I yield back. 

Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Grayson. And I now recognize 

the Chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Smith. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought I’d mention to members at least part of the reason and part of the genesis 

for this hearing today. A couple of years ago, I was meeting in my 

office with the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on energy. 

His name is Daniel Yergin, and I suspect many of you have heard 

of him. He also happens to have been a college classmate. And I 

asked him what was the single most important thing we could do 

to help consumers with energy, and he replied, develop a better 

battery, or develop a battery that had better storage capability. 

And even though that conversation took place a couple of years 
10 

ago, that really led to today’s hearing. And so that’s how important 

I think it is, and how important at least one other expert thinks 

the development of better battery storage is as well. 

Mr. Chairman, today the Subcommittee on Energy will examine 

breakthrough technology in battery storage for renewable energy. 

Battery storage is the next frontier in energy research and development. Advanced batteries will help bring affordable renewable energy to the market without costly subsidies or renewable energy 

mandates. Forty-five percent of new U.S. power production last 

year came from wind turbines, while solar power made up 34 percent of new global power capacity. But without the capacity to efficiently store the energy produced when the sun isn’t shining and 

the wind isn’t blowing, renewable energy makes a minimal contribution to America’s electricity needs. Advanced battery technology will enable utilities to store and deliver power produced by 

renewable energy. This will allow us to take advantage of energy 

from the diverse natural resources available across the country. 

My home State of Texas offers a ready example of the impact 

battery storage could have on harnessing renewable power. Texas 

is the top wind producing state in the country. The Lone Star State 

currently operates more than 12,000 megawatts of utility-scale 

wind capacity; about 1/5 of the total wind capacity in the United 

States. In ideal circumstances, wind generates up to 18 percent of 

Texas’ power. But even with this significant capacity, Texas wind 

energy cannot produce power on demand. And when energy needs 

are the highest, wind makes up just three percent of Texas power 

generation. Advanced battery technology could help the United 

States meet its energy needs and effectively manage its power production when conventional and renewable energy resources, which 

will save money for energy consumers. Federal research and development can build the foundation for the next breakthrough in battery technology. 

Mr. Chairman, I know votes have been cast, so if—I’d like to ask 

unanimous consent that the rest of my opening statement be made 

a part of the record so that we can at least get our witnesses introduced before we need to leave for votes, and then I know Members 

will return after that. 

I will yield back. 

Chairman WEBER. Without objection. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FULL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH

Good morning. Today, the Subcommittee on Energy will examine breakthrough 

technology in battery storage for renewable energy. 

Battery storage is the next frontier in energy research and development. Advanced batteries will help bring affordable renewable energy to the market without 

costly subsidies or renewable energy mandates. Forty-five percent of new U.S. power 

production last year came from wind turbines, while solar power made up 34 percent of new global power capacity. 

But without the capacity to efficiently store the energy produced when the sun 

isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, renewable energy makes a minimal contribution to America’s electricity needs. Advanced battery technology will enable 

utilities to store and deliver power produced by renewable energy. This will allow 

us to take advantage of energy from the diverse natural resources available across 

the country. 
11 

My home state of Texas offers a ready example of the impact battery storage 

could have on harnessing renewable power. Texas is the top wind producing state 

in the country. The Lone Star State currently operates more than 12,000 megawatts 

of utility-scale wind capacity—about one-fifth of the total wind capacity in the 

United States. In ideal circumstances, wind generates up to 18 percent of Texas’ 

power. 

But even with this significant capacity, Texas wind energy cannot produce power 

on demand. And when energy needs are the highest, wind makes up just 3 percent 

of Texas power generation. Advanced battery technology could help the U.S. meet 

its energy needs and effectively manage its power production from conventional and 

renewable energy resources, which will save money for energy consumers. 

Federal research and development can build the foundation for the next breakthrough in battery technology. At the Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL), home 

to one of today’s witnesses, researchers are developing new approaches for largescale energy storage. PNNL conducts research on battery technologies, including innovative battery electrodes to improve energy storage capacity. 

Using the powerful transmission electron microscope at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, scientists can study damage caused by battery recharging. 

This basic research on the fundamental challenges to safe, efficient, and affordable battery technology has incredible value and application for the private sector. 

It will help the private sector lead the way to bring battery storage technology to 

the energy marketplace. 

Inspired by the fundamental research conducted at the Department of Energy national labs and universities around the country, the private sector is now investing 

in battery storage technology. American entrepreneurs have invested over $5 billion 

in battery research and development over the last decade, which has helped fuel a 

renaissance in new battery technology. 

Just this week, the tech company Tesla announced it will expand into the battery 

market, manufacturing home batteries to help consumers cut costs and to provide 

back-up power to their homes. And Tesla’s potential large-scale utility batteries can 

be used for renewable power generation. 

Two of our witnesses today represent innovative energy storage companies, with 

unique battery designs developed through basic research. I look forward to hearing 

more about the impact these new concepts for battery chemistry and construction 

can have on our economy and renewable energy production. 

While the private sector funding will deploy next generation battery technology 

into the energy marketplace, the federal government should invest in basic research 

and development that can revolutionize battery technology. 

Prioritizing the ongoing partnership between the national labs and American entrepreneurs can develop next generation battery technologies and keep America at 

the forefront of battery science. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman and I yield back. 

Chairman WEBER. Let me introduce our witnesses. Our first witness today is Dr. Imre Gyuk. Okay, good German name. The Energy Storage Program Manager for the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. His work involves research on a wide variety of technologies, including advanced batteries, flywheels, the super-capacitors, and compressed 

air energy storage. Dr. Gyuk received his Bachelor’s Degree from 

Fordham University, and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Purdue University. 

Our next witness is Dr. Virden, Associate Laboratory Director for 

the Energy and Environment Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Now, that’s a mouthful. At PNNL, Dr. Virden 

leads a team of 1,000 staff in delivering science and technology solutions for energy and environmental challenges. And he’s been 

with the lab for over two decades. Dr. Virden holds two United 

States patents, and has received R&D 100 and Federal Laboratory 

Consortium awards for non-thermal plasma technology, a Discover 

Award from MIT for fuel reformation technologies, and he contributed to a Financial Times Global Automotive Award for PNNL’s assistant to Delphi’s non-thermal plasma technology for automotive 
12 

applications. Dr. Virden earned his Bachelor’s Degree and Ph.D. in 

chemical engineering from the University of Washington. Welcome. 

Mr. Giudice—actually, I’m going to yield to the gentlewoman 

from Massachusetts, because I think she knows something about 

him, to introduce him. 

Ms. CLARK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

It is my pleasure to introduce Mr. Phil Giudice, the CEO of 

Ambri, and a constituent of mine from Wayland, Massachusetts. 

Ambri is a technology company in Massachusetts that is creating 

cost-effective and reliable battery technology that has the potential 

to revolutionize the grid. Phil, in addition to leading Ambri, has 

more than 30 years of experience throughout the energy industry. 

He has worked as a geologist, a consultant, a manager, and a public servant. I will highlight just a few of his many, many accomplishments on his resume. Phil is a Board Member for FirstFuel, 

an efficiency startup; Advanced Energy Economy, an energy business leadership trade group; and the New England Clean Energy 

Council. He was an appointee to the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee, as well as its 

State Energy Advisory Board. And he has served the Commonwealth as Undersecretary of Energy, and Commissioner of the 

State’s Department of Energy Resources. I want to thank you, Phil, 

and the entire panel for joining us today, and we look forward to 

your testimony. 

I yield back. 

Chairman WEBER. I thank the gentlewoman from Massachusetts. 

Our final witness today is Dr. Jay Whitacre, Founder and Chief 

Technology Officer for Aquion Energy. Dr. Whitacre became an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon in 2007, with a joint appointment in material science and engineering, and engineering in public policy departments, where he developed the chemistry that is 

the basis for Aquion Energy’s product line. Dr. Whitacre received 

his Bachelor’s Degree in physics from Oberlin College, and received 

his Master’s and Ph.D. in material science and engineering from 

the University of Michigan. 

That concludes the introduction of the witnesses, and unfortunately, as The Chairman said, they have called votes, so we are 

going to recess and then we will reconvene immediately after the 

last vote on the Floor. 

The Subcommittee stands in recess. 

[Recess.] 

Chairman WEBER. We’re going to reconvene this hearing, and 

we’re going to recognize our first witness, Dr. Gyuk. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. IMRE GYUK, 

ENERGY STORAGE PROGRAM MANAGER, 

OFFICE OF ELECTRICITY DELIVERY 

AND ENERGY RELIABILITY, 

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 

Dr. GYUK. Chairman Smith, Chairman Weber, Ranking Member 

Grayson, and Members of the Committee, thank you for your invitation to testify at today’s hearing. I appreciate the opportunity to 

tell you about the energy storage program of DOE’s Office of Elec-
13 

tricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, and the serious efforts the 

program is making to address the challenges facing the widespread 

deployment of grid energy storage. 

I am pleased to be part of this panel with some of my distinguished colleagues who have been great partners over the years. 

Last week, the Administration released the first ever quadrennial energy review. The QER takes a broad look at the infrastructure used for the transmission storage and distribution of energy. 

Several of the QER findings and recommendations addressed the 

opportunities that grid energy storage can provide to modernize the 

electric grid. 

Today, I would like to highlight our work over the last dozen 

years to develop energy storage technology, working on materials 

and devices, and to bring them into commercialization. 

The program is firmly based on the knowledge and expertise of 

the National Laboratories. We work with Sandia, Pacific Northwest 

Laboratory and Oak Ridge in a fully integrated program which produces cutting-edge research focused on commercialization. And this 

focus on commercialization is essential. We also involve universities and industry as appropriate. We pursue a wide portfolio of 

technologies for a broad spectrum of applications. Some of the technologies we have studied include advanced lead carbon batteries, 

sodium ion systems, magnesium ion systems, and flow batteries involving vanadium, zinc iodide and organo-metallics. We bring 

promising chemistries all the way from basic investigations 

through device development, and into licensing and deployment. 

I would like to share some success stories in deploying energy 

storage technologies, and then discuss how OE’s program is addressing the major challenges. 

At Notrees, a small town near Odessa in west Texas, we 

partnered with Duke Energy to build a 36 megawatt facility for 

wind smoothing and frequency regulation. The installation helped 

to inform the Texas Public Utility Commission on developing rules 

for ancillary services. Tehachapi, California, is the site of the 

world’s largest wind field. But sometimes the wind blows and 

sometimes it doesn’t, and so we partnered with Southern California 

Edison to build an eight megawatt, four hour lithium ion facility 

to mitigate the variable nature of the wind. 

I believe strongly that federal programs need to work directly 

with the States, making the expertise developed by the national 

laboratories available to the public. For example, in Vermont, we 

are partnering with the Public Service Department to build a disaster-resilient micro-grid, combining four megawatts of storage 

with two megawatts of photovoltaics. During emergencies, the facility can function as a community shelter and maintain critical services indefinitely, even without input from the surrounding grid, 

which may well be down. In Detroit, we are exploring a community 

energy storage concept, incorporating reused electrical vehicle batteries. In Washington State, we are leveraging state funds to commercialize a battery technology that started with research at 

PNNL. Avista just inaugurated a one megawatt, three hour flow 

battery based on vanadium a few weeks ago, and two megawatts 

with Snohomish will soon follow. We will evaluate the operation of 

the facility, and make careful cost benefit evaluations. 
14 

DOE has developed a strategic energy storage plan which identifies four priorities, which form the framework for the OE Storage 

Program. One is lowering costs. That comes first. Two is validating 

reliability and safety. Three is helping to develop an equitable regulatory environment for storage. And four is furthering industry 

acceptance. The program has provided key leadership in establishing energy storage as an effective tool for promoting grid reliability, resilience, and better asset utilization of renewable Energy. 

Although grid energy storage has made a credible beginning, 

much remains to be done. DOE looks forward to continuing this important work. As our electric grid evolves, we expect that energy 

storage will be an integral component in assuring that electricity 

delivery for communities, business, and industry will be more flexible, secure, reliable, and environmentally responsive. 

Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, this completes 

my prepared statement. I will be happy to answer any questions 

you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gyuk follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank the doctor. And we’re going to move to 

our second witness, Dr. Virden. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JUD VIRDEN, JR., 

ASSOCIATE LABORATORY DIRECTOR 

FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT DIRECTORATE, 

PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Dr. VIRDEN. Chairman Smith, Chairman Weber, Ranking Member Grayson, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the 

opportunity to testify in today’s hearing. 

My primary message today is that, even with the tremendous 

amount of excitement about the emerging U.S. energy storage market, there is still plenty of need for R&D innovations that increase 

performance, reduce lifecycle costs, and improve safety of the next 

generation of battery storage technologies. The presence of Aquion 

and Ambri here are evidence to the role of innovative researchers. 

For our part, I am very proud of PNNL’s battery scientists and engineers who have produced close to 300 publications, have filed 91 

United States patents, with 19 granted so far, and seven licenses 

to U.S.-based companies in Washington State, California, and Massachusetts. One of these companies, Unit Energy Technologies, or 

UET, was started by two former PNNL employees, scientists, in 

2012. UET has grown to 50 employees, and they are now deploying 

their novel redox flow battery technology in Washington, California, and Germany. 

PNNL recently published the first Institute Scientific Investigation, looking at the atomic level changes in lithium ion batteries 

that enabled us to visualize why they short-out and fail. The expected lifetime of lithium ion battery systems today is generally believed to be 5 to 7 years, and grid storage batteries will need to last 

ideally 15 to 20 years. This groundbreaking work also confirmed a 

new approach that might dramatically extend the lifetime of lithium ion batteries. But despite all these advances, we still have fundamental gaps in our understanding of the basic processes that influence battery operation, performance, limitations, and failures. 

As you know, renewable energy creates many challenges for grid 

operations. Their generation profile does not match up exactly with 

demand, and their generation is intermittent. In the Pacific Northwest, we have five gigawatts of wind, and sometimes hundreds of 

megawatts or even gigawatts of RAMs. Texas has the same problem with wind, and California with solar. Battery storage could 

solve these problems by smoothing out the intermittent generation, 

and storing energy off-peak to be used later when it was most 

needed. Several of our PNNL studies have concluded that for battery storage to be viable, it must serve multiple grid applications, 

such as meeting energy demands minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, 

storing renewable energy at night for use the next day, as well as 

deferring transmission and distribution upgrades. Utilities would 

like battery storage to deliver both high power and lots of energy. 

This is like wanting a car that has the power of a Corvette, the fuel 

efficiency of a Chevy Malibu, and the price tag of a Chevy Spark. 

This is hard to do. No one battery delivers both high power and 

high energy, at least not very well or for very long. There are many 

different types of battery chemistries and sizes of batteries. In dem-
26 

onstrations around the country, I have counted over 13 different 

types and sizes of batteries being explored. All are in different 

stages of development, validation, and demonstration for grid applications. 

While today’s batteries can address the higher value-added grid 

applications, the cost of batteries need to be reduced, the lifetime 

expanded, and the safety validated. We believe there are three key 

research and development challenges that need to be addressed to 

significantly improve existing advanced battery systems in the near 

term, along with the longer term development of the next generation, lower cost battery systems. 

First, to provide confidence to utilities that new battery technologies will meet multiple grid applications, we need independent 

testing and evaluation of energy storage facilities to validate performance and safety, along with the continued development of 

codes and standards that allow interoperability between different 

technologies and software. 

Secondly, continued support for basic and applied R&D is needed 

to discover new battery systems, and to better understand and predict why batteries don’t perform as expected, why performance degrades over time, or why they fail. Universities and national labs 

across the country are well positioned to address the gap in our 

lack of fundamental understanding. 

Finally, as new technologies make it out of the lab, we will need 

regional field demonstrations that validate the lifecycle costs, performance, safety, and overall impact on—batteries will have on reliability, resiliency, and renewable integration. This information is 

critical to feed back to those developing the next generation of batteries. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I’d be happy to answer any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Virden follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Dr. Virden. Mr. Giudice, you are 

recognized for five minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. PHIL GIUDICE, 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AMBRI 

Mr. GIUDICE. Thank you, Chairman Weber, Chairman Smith, 

and Ranking Member Grayson, I appreciate the opportunity to testify today. 

I’m the CEO, President, Board Member of Ambri, and as you 

know by having this hearing, energy storage has the potential to 

transform our electricity grid in very positive and productive ways. 

Right now, the grid needs to meet, for every instant of the day, everywhere, the supply of electricity with the demand for electricity, 

and storage will change everything. 

Today in the United States, one of the ways we meet our peak 

demand is through simple cycle combustion turbines, and the capacity factor for those engines is two percent. Literally only 160 

hours a year are those engines being driven to meet the peak demands, and storage could change everything. If we are able to meet 

average demand instead of peak demand, we could actually reduce 

the amount of grid infrastructure investment by approximately 1/ 

2 of what our traditional market is. 

So there are many different ways that storage could help. I’m 

going to suggest six different areas for federal government leadership that would be particularly of interest, and I’ll give you a little 

story about Ambri in the context of that. 

First is ARPA–E Programs. So ARPA–E funded campus research 

at MIT, Dr. Sadoway, to look at a very interesting application for 

the—his life’s work, which was electrometallurgical refining. And 

basically, he took the same kinds of processes that are known in 

the aluminum smelter world of taking a ton of dirt and running 

electricity through it to produce pure aluminum metal at 50 cents 

a pound, and said what if we could make those processes reversible 

so that we’re not only taking enormous amounts of electricity off 

the grid, but we could turn around and put it back on the grid. And 

it was kind of an interesting concept, a White Paper sort of exercise, a—that attracted funding from ARPA–E in 2007/2008 time 

frame. The $7 million grant from ARPA–E made all the difference 

in the world. This was a concept that there was no private money, 

no other public money, that was willing to step up and see if this 

idea could work. With that investment, plus other private sources, 

Dr. Sadoway, and then Dr. Bradwell, were able to drive research 

on campus to actually prove that this concept works, and works 

rather remarkably. They had a team that was up to 20 folks on 

campus advancing this technology, which then enabled the company to come together as a private enterprise and seek private financing. We are now 50 people, and completely privately financed 

with investments from Bill Gates, Total, Khosla Ventures, the— 

KLP Enterprises and GVB, and we employ 50 folks and we’re out 

there now delivering our technology to the marketplace. So we’re— 

we were formed in 2010, we’re just now manufacturing our prototypes, and we’ll begin delivering them this fall. And those go to 

very interesting customers, including the U.S. Department of Defense in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Joint Base Cape Cod 
36 

and sub-base in Groton, Connecticut, Con Ed in New York, Alaska 

Energy Authority in Alaska, and then in Hawaii, two prototypes 

are going—are scheduled to go there end of this year/beginning of 

next year, as well as our first 1 megawatt hour battery storage solution to the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor towards the end of 2016. 

So this federal money that was able to sort of get behind a concept, and become sort of an interesting possible technology, is now 

developing itself and being delivered into the commercial marketplace, and looking very, very attractive. 

So one role I encourage is continued support for ARPA–E and the 

work that they’re doing. Another—five other possibilities include 

continued support on demonstration projects through the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. Third is to continue work with States and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to help them understand and appreciate the full value of storage. There’s a very clear and compelling need between States’ roles 

and rights, and the federal government in terms of helping to educate and appreciate the value that storage can provide. And then 

two other areas I’d touch on. One is the Loan Guarantee Program 

which, of course, has gotten a lot of coverage, I think plays a very 

interesting role and could be very helpful for storage, both from 

manufacturing and demonstration projects. Federal tax credits 

and—including in master limited partnership clean energy investments as possibilities to help this nascent technology that the 

United States, in fact, has the best research going on and the best 

new companies starting to really bear full fruit and become a 

world-dominant provider. 

So I am excited to be here today, and look forward to taking any 

questions that you might have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Giudice follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Giudice. Dr. Whitacre, you’re 

up. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JAY WHITACRE, 

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, 

AQUION ENERGY 

Dr. WHITACRE. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank 

you for inviting me to speak today on the innovation and grid scale 

energy storage. I also want to acknowledge the Bipartisan Center’s 

American Energy Innovation Council for working with your staff on 

setting up this important hearing. 

I am the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Aquion Energy. I am also still a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Engineering Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Seven years ago, I set out to solve the problem of making largescale energy storage systems that are high-performance, safe, sustainable, and cost-effective. The solution we developed is an Aqueous Hybrid Ion intercalation battery, which is a mouthful, I know, 

but it’s simple. It uses a saltwater electrolyte, manganese oxide 

cathode, carbon composite anode, and synthetic cotton separator. 

We chose these materials because they are made from safe, cheap, 

and abundant elements which will make a technology cost of 

around $100 per kilowatt hour achievable when produced at scale. 

The battery performs remarkably well; providing long-duration discharges of up to 20 continuous hours, while maintaining performance over thousands of cycles and, thus, many years of operation. 

We now have over 130 employees and a full-scale manufacturing 

facility in western Pennsylvania, as well as a satellite office in Boston. We have been shipping product to customers since mid-2014, 

and our batteries are now deployed or under testing with service 

provides in 18 States, who serve, in theory, millions of customers. 

Our products have also been exported overseas to Germany, Australia, Malaysia, the UK, and the Philippines, among other locations. 

The story of Aquion is indicative of the kind of public-private 

partnership behind many game-changing energy technologies. The 

idea for Aquion’s battery came out of my research at Carnegie Mellon, which was actually informed by my seven years working as a 

Senior Staff Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Shortly 

after arriving at Carnegie Mellon, I started a small exploratory 

project on this sodium ion battery chemistry that resulted in some 

key early results. This allowed me to garner some seed funding 

from a venture capital firm that allowed me to incubate the concept 

at university for a year or so, until some critical performance goals 

were achieved in the lab. At that point, we decided to try and start 

a real company. At the same time, we applied for and received Department of Energy funding, which was matched by private investors. Set up the facility, focused on prototyping battery units, build 

a pilot-scale production line, and demonstrate performance in a 

grid-connected environment. Additionally, that funding supported 

continuing basic research at Carnegie Mellon; the results of which 

helped us refine the technology and our manufacturing processes at 

the company. After pilot production and demonstrating the performance of the technology, Aquion was able to raise multiple 
45 

rounds of private investment that has allowed us to scale and commercialize our batteries. 

Without this DOE partnership, our early days would have been 

far more challenging, and perhaps Aquion would not have made it 

this far. My decision to—back in 2008 to spin out the company was 

wrought with risk. Aquion had to cross that pre-revenue valley of 

death where we’re spending a tremendous amount of money and 

time to turn lab results into something that was a bankable technology, while—at the same time, while the technology and the 

manufacturing piece is not well defined. 

It is very challenging to find private investors who can stomach 

this much risk. A handful exist, but by themselves, it’s rare for 

them to—to them to actually double-down and make it happen. 

And it’s even more difficult to get—net new technologies like ours 

and Ambri’s scale—to the scale that it’s been done without this 

kind of support. 

The partnership I had with DOE was critical for getting across 

this chasm, from a research concept to a marketable product with 

proven performance. Furthermore, we continue to collaborate with 

the DOE. We’re actively testing various generations of our products, and have partnered with us to develop large, in-house energy 

storage test beds. 

What can be done by the DOE and national labs to advance 

other breakthroughs? The DOE has a solid track record of encouraging good ideas and funding projects that can result in a significant impact. However, one key aspect that is often overlooked early 

in the technology development process is the difficulty of scaling 

and manufacturing. Since all new energy technologies will be both 

materials and manufacturing-intensive, focusing more on these aspects of the process early on would increase the success rate of 

translating lab results into market products. There is still a tremendous amount of important and interesting fundamental science 

and engineering to be done during the process scale-up and manufacturing side of any new energy storage technology. I would, therefore, encourage the DOE and the national labs to incorporate the 

considerations of scalability early in the technology development 

process, such that they are focused not only on what benchtop solutions make sense, but also how to turn a benchtop solution into a 

scaled, mass-produced and relevant technology. 

Thank you for the opportunity to share Aquion’s story, and the 

attention you are devoting to energy technology and development. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Whitacre follows:] 
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Chairman WEBER. Thank you, Dr. Whitacre. 

Did we lose Chairman Smith? Okay. So I will recognize myself 

for five minutes, and start with some interesting questions. 

Dr. Gyuk, the Fiscal Year 2016 budget request includes a proliferation of battery and energy storage R&D scattered throughout 

DOE, including in the Office of Science, through the Joint Center 

for Energy Storage Research, JCESR. Do you all have a name for 

that, an acronym? JCESR, okay. Which, to me, sounds like some 

kind of salad dressing, but—in ARPA–E, in the Vehicle Technologies Program, the Solar Energy Program, the Hydropower Program, the Geothermal Program, and Advanced Manufacturing Programs at EERE, and then the program you manage, the Energy 

Storage Program in the Office of Electricity. So how does the department make sure the highest priority research is funded, and 

how do you avoid duplicative research? 

Dr. GYUK. Thank you for this question, Mr. Chairman. It’s a very 

complex question, and I will try to attempt answering at least part 

of it. 

I would like to point out first of all that our particular program 

in the Office of Electricity is the first and original program at the 

Department of Energy. Most of the other programs entered the fray 

when grid storage reached a certain stage of development. ARPA– 

E does very interesting research aimed at cutting-edge technology. 

They are in the form of grants, and they have produced some very 

interesting projects like the Ambri project that we have heard 

about. We also interact with them. In fact, I was the person who 

suggested to the head of ARPA–E that he ought to be interested 

in grid energy storage. 

The Office of Science does basic work on—mostly on the electrochemistry involved in storage; catalysis and things of that type. We 

don’t do hydropower because there is an office, and hydropower is 

a well-developed technology which has some interesting things if 

you—to advance, but it’s not in the purview of our particular office. 

Chairman WEBER. Let me break in here for a second. Do you 

have a particular person who’s tasked with watching these different programs, assessing their priority, and determining what’s 

the highest level, and if so, who is that? 

Dr. GYUK. I believe not, however, we are putting together the 

QER Program which will provide more of a framework for not only 

grid energy storage, but also the whole field of grid-related energy 

projects. 

Chairman WEBER. Okay. Well, forgive me, we’re running short 

on time. Do you believe that grid-scale energy storage research receives the same priority within the department as vehicle battery 

R&D? Grid-storage research same priority as vehicle battery R&D. 

Dr. GYUK. Battery storage for vehicles has been sponsored for a 

long time, and has produced some very good results on lithium ion, 

and it’s also at a much higher budget level than—— 

Chairman WEBER. Well, when I—when we look at the numbers 

in the budget request, I have to tell you that grid-scale research 

looks to be a lower priority, just from the numbers in the budget 

request. 

Dr. GYUK. I would prefer to call—to say that we have a lower 

budget, but it’s not necessarily lower priority. 
58 

Chairman WEBER. So—and that was my first question; who’s assessing those priorities. But let me move on to my third question 

for you. Wouldn’t it make sense to cut the overhead cost and risk 

of duplication by combining all of these various programs into one 

battery and one energy storage program at DOE? If yes, why—if 

no, why not? 

Dr. GYUK. I would have to do this on a personal basis because 

policy decisions of that type are generally made by people in the 

administrative offices. 

Chairman WEBER. Okay. All right, well, I’m going to move on. 

All witnesses, very quickly. What impact could large-scale energy 

storage have on electricity reliability and reducing cost for customers? I mean that’s our goal, right? So just as quickly as you 

can, what impact could large-scale energy storage have on electricity reliability and reducing the cost for our consumers? Doctor, 

we’ll start back with—actually, let’s do it backwards. Doctor, let’s 

start over on this end. 

Dr. WHITACRE. The impact ranges dramatically depending on location, and depending on what kind of infrastructure and what 

kind of degree of renewables are local. In some places it can have 

a profound effect, and others it can be less profound. The message 

really is we need to figure out what locations can benefit most from 

grid-scale storage and implement those first, and then let it trickle 

through. 

As Phil indicated, one of the key things to do is to first try and 

off-set these peaker plants that are very rarely turned on. That’s 

a low-hanging fruit. Also finding places where we can level out 

wind or solar. Low-hanging fruit. And from there, there are weak 

points in the grid that are also low-hanging fruits. So you phase 

this in at the biggest pain points first and move through. It’s hard 

to put a dollar value on it, but there are already significant pain 

points. 

Chairman WEBER. Could you put a percentage on it? 

Dr. WHITACRE. Not for the entire country. For different locations 

you can. It’s a hard question to sort of average out because it’s a 

time question and a location question. I will defer. 

Chairman WEBER. Okay. 

Mr. GIUDICE. Yeah, just quickly, I agree completely with Dr. 

Whitacre. The—it is very situationally-specific, especially over 

these next few years. When proven out over this next decade and 

more, I think we could be at an electric system that could cost us 

30 to 40 percent less than our existing electric system—— 

Chairman WEBER. Less. 

Mr. GIUDICE. —and largely because less assets will be involved. 

Right now, this is the most capital-intensive industry in the world. 

It’s $3 of assets for every $1 of revenue that the industry generates 

across the entire value chain, and that’s all because we’re not using 

these assets very much. A lot of assets are laying idle in preparation for when we have our peak demand. So with storage fully developed and fully deployed, I think it could be a very, very different—— 

Chairman WEBER. Well, I love hearing the 20 to 30 percent 

lower, but it just depends on what the investment is. Dr. Virden? 
59 

Dr. VIRDEN. Well, thank you for the question. I like one part of 

your question a lot, which is the goal of energy storage is to keep 

prices down. 

Chairman WEBER. Yeah. 

Dr. VIRDEN. It’ll serve certain very high-end markets initially, 

but the goal is to keep prices down. And it will have a huge impact 

on resiliency and reliability and robustness of the grid. 

Let me give you one example. We did an analysis for Puget 

Sound Energy, and they had three substations that were basically 

maxed out at capacity about 9 days out of the year. Texas has the 

same challenges in the middle of the summer. And they asked 

where would energy storage have the biggest impact into maintaining the reliability of that substation and the distribution feeder. We 

did the analysis. It turns out you could put about a 3 megawatt 

battery that would run for 3 to 4 hours at a certain substation. 

Now, the key was they gave us real world data so we could make 

that analysis. It saved them, given the ROI they wanted, $6 million 

over the other options which were upgrading the transmission infrastructure, the distribution infrastructure, the substation. So 

with that battery, they can now meet, they believe, 90 percent of 

the challenges they have on that distribution feeder. And the main 

return on investments for them was inter-hour balancing, so balancing on that distribution feeder the, you know, inter-hour requirements. T&D deferral was the next one. And we often talk 

about renewables, but the arbitrage part of that had very little 

ROI, even though the battery would spend 15 percent of the time. 

So as the previous witnesses said, there’s no one answer fits all. 

You almost have to go utility-by-utility and what their specific 

needs are, almost down to the distribution level. 

Chairman WEBER. Dr. Gyuk, I’ll let you weigh-in on that quickly 

please. 

Dr. GYUK. It’s easy because most of the points I would like to 

make have just been covered. 

Chairman WEBER. Okay. 

Dr. GYUK. I think we are all agreed that we have to start things 

slowly, and where we can find the most sensible results. Frequency 

regulation is already cost-effective in at least Texas and the FERC 

areas. Resiliency and emergency preparedness is an important one 

because when you need it, any price is good, and that includes the 

military bases. So military bases, islands, coastal areas are beautiful for resiliency. Peaking is another one. But the whole thing is 

about getting the right benefit streams, and increasing the asset 

utilization of the system as a whole. 

Chairman WEBER. Okay, thank you very much. 

And at this time, I’m going to yield to the Ranking Member. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Intel spends $5 billion a year on research and development. 

There are several drug companies that actually match that or exceed it. Why don’t we see the same thing with regard to batteries? 

Batteries are over $100 billion a year in revenue, why don’t we see 

Eveready or Duracell or Rayovac doing the same kind of research 

that would, to a large degree, underwrite what you do every day? 

I think Dr. Whitacre alluded to that in his testimony, so I’ll start 

over there. 
60 

Dr. WHITACRE. Yeah, there was actually a very interesting— 

thank you very much. There was a very interesting report done by 

the DOE, perhaps almost ten years ago now, that assessed this, 

and one of the findings was that, early on, I think folks recognized—this is for lithium ion batteries specifically, that in North 

America the return on investment on this kind of technology is a 

very long—it’s a very long investment window. Japan and other 

folks in Asia were more willing to invest over that long period of 

time, compared to what you might find in North America. So there 

was a general perception that this is a long-haul kind of technology 

development process, and that, in some cases, I think it’s very difficult for North American and North American industry to doubledown on a very capital-intensive, very costly situation. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Giudice, go ahead. 

Mr. GIUDICE. Yeah, so to address the question, this is not unique 

to batteries. This is the—one of the energy challenges that the energy industry faces, especially the electricity industry, and it’s part 

of the nature of the industry structure. There was an organization, 

the Electric Power Research Institute, that was—that came together to try and spur R&D and demonstration projects. It’s a very 

small budget. The vendors are—have a very small budget. The industry is not set to innovate in general, and so it’s a—there isn’t 

a model in this industry, writ large, not just around batteries, to 

innovate and to invest in the kinds of ideas that could be breakthrough. And it’s in part related to the nature of this industry. It’s 

a highly regulated industry, both federal and state. It’s not an industry that goes easily into change. When you have this kind of 

asset intensity, we have 30-year lifelong assets that they’re dealing 

with, so they’re not sort of with the mindset of let’s keep reinventing ourselves every couple of years. And so I think that it really suggests why there’s such an important federal and other public 

policy roles to bring us to a better energy future. 

Mr. GRAYSON. So are you suggesting that it’s economic or that 

it is regulatory, or that it’s cultural, what do you think is the most 

important—— 

Mr. GIUDICE. I think the fundamental economics are not—do not 

reward innovation at this stage, and consequently, the regulations 

are not such that they’re spurring change across the board. And it 

relates to smart metering, it relates to all kinds of aspects of the 

electric industry. It’s not just as it relates to storage. Yeah. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Doctor? Doctor Virden. 

Dr. GYUK. Yeah. Well, first of all I’d like to point out that there 

are battery companies that are working on innovation. For example, a company in Pennsylvania called East Penn worked with us 

to develop the ultra-battery which has a cycle life which is almost 

10 times that of a regular lead acid battery. General Electric is another company that actively works on research. But I agree with 

you that by and large, the battery industry is conservative. And the 

utility industry is conservative also, although we do have forwardlooking utilities like Southern California Edison, Florida Power and 

Light, First Energy American Public—you know, and various other 

companies of that type. But the federal impetus, I think, is helpful 

in bringing out the best in these companies, and coaxing them towards innovation and new battery development. 
61 

Mr. GRAYSON. Dr. Virden? 

Dr. VIRDEN. Yeah, with the Intel example specifically, they’ve got 

about an 18-month R&D cycle for next products, and huge profit 

margins. And when you start wandering into the grid and the energy storage space, the fundamentals, and I think you said it here 

are it’s high capital, high risk, long-term payback, and fragmented 

market, and it makes for uncertainty. 

Mr. GRAYSON. All right, I see I’m almost out of time, so I yield 

back. 

Chairman WEBER. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. GRAYSON. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman. I have one 

more question. 

Chairman WEBER. The gentleman is recognized. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Thank you. 

Doctor, I’d like you to try to clarify your response to Chairman 

Weber’s question earlier about who coordinates the various energy 

storage activities at DOE. Is it true that the Secretary established 

the Undersecretary for Science and Energy for that purpose? 

Dr. GYUK. Yes, that is true. 

Mr. GRAYSON. All right, thank you. 

Dr. GYUK. Yeah. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Now I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman WEBER. And now the gentleman that drives a battery 

just about everywhere he goes is recognized. Gentleman from Kentucky. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I drove an 85 kilowatt 

hour battery here this morning. It has four wheels. And that’s 

probably the way to look at it; it’s a rolling battery. 

Before I ask some questions about batteries, I want to ask Dr. 

Whitacre and Mr. Giudice about the role that patents play in commercializing technology. I think this is something that a lot of my 

colleagues here in Congress don’t fully appreciate why these are in 

our Constitution, but can you tell me do patents help or hinder you 

in your quest to commercialize this technology? 

Dr. WHITACRE. Thank you. I believe that maintaining a strong 

intellectual property stable, both patents as well as trade secrets, 

is critical. Folks will not invest or really take heart that you have 

something that’s legitimate unless you have some documentation 

that establishes your right to, you know, exercise your idea without 

being copied immediately. So it’s critical. And that story really matters. 

On the other hand, I will say especially in the energy technology 

space in general, and batteries specifically, there is a tremendous 

amount of overlapping intellectual property right now that is difficult to assess out, and there has been a lot of really interesting 

court cases and a lot of other things that go with this. Chemistry 

materials are hard to patent and maintain patent. And there’s a 

difference between right to practice, versus right to block. 

So it’s critical—I am positive that we wouldn’t have got the degree of investment that we have gotten without the nine or ten patents that we have, and the worldwide patents that we have as well. 

It’s super important. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you. 
62 

Dr. WHITACRE. On the other hand, you know, it doesn’t hurt us, 

for sure. 

Mr. MASSIE. Right. Let me give Mr. Giudice a chance to—— 

Mr. GIUDICE. Sure. I share the—Dr. Whitacre’s perspectives on 

this as well as far as the patents are critical. Intellectual property, 

without having our control of our intellectual property, we would 

not have attracted the investors we have. They are all motivated 

for long-term significant positive change for the planet and the 

country, but the financial rewards are what enables them to be 

able to write the checks for us. So I don’t think that there’s any 

doubt in my mind that without that, it would—it would not have 

been the same kind of conversation. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you. That confirms what my experience, 

when I started a company at MIT with technology from there is 

that, without patents—and you might think you would want all 

this to be shareware, but the reality is the investors will not come 

and invest the money and commercialize in the manufacturing unless you have patents. And you have to be able to defend them as 

well. And I know it can get messy with overlapping technology, but 

that’s what the courts are for, and we can get to the facts. 

So now, I’m sort of on a mission here in Congress to protect our 

intellectual property system, and it’s—trust me, it’s being attacked 

here right now. Quick—have a few questions. What—Dr. Gyuk, 

what portion of our storage capacity right now consists of pumped 

hydroelectric capacity on the grid, just roughly? It seems to be the 

most conventional at this point. 

Dr. GYUK. It’s the vast majority. Pumped hydro is a classical 

technologies—technology. All the utilities that have it bless the day 

when it was put in because it helps them with peaking power. I 

mean it’s very difficult to live without it. 

Nonetheless, not very much is being built these days. 

Mr. MASSIE. Why is that? 

Dr. GYUK. It’s a combination of most—many of these plants were 

built to cope with the hoped-for development of nuclear power, because nuclear power likes to put out flat electricity, and the 

pumped hydro was intended to follow the load and do the up-anddown. Since nuclear power is not as big a component of our national energy budget as was intended, the impetus for doing 

pumped hydro is less. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you. 

Dr. GYUK. It’s also very expensive to build a new pumped hydro 

plant. 

Mr. MASSIE. Is—and how does it compare like with batteries 

right now, the cost of pumped hydro versus, say, a chemical solution? 

Dr. GYUK. When you take into account a long lifecycle, a pumped 

hydro could run for 20, 30 years easily. You amortize over that period and the cost—the lifecycle cost them becomes lower than most 

batteries. And that’s sort of what we have to crack with battery research. The same is also true for compressed air energy storage, of 

which we have two very good examples in the world; one of them 

in Alabama in Huntsville, and the other one in Germany. But we 

are now developing new compressed air energy storage. That’s an-
63 

other bulk technology that amortizes over long periods of time, and 

will give us good output. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you very much. 

I see my time has expired. Are we going to do another round of 

questions, hopefully? I’ll beg for some more time if—— 

Mr. GRAYSON. I don’t have any objection to that. 

Mr. MASSIE. Okay. I yield back then. 

Chairman WEBER. The gentleman yields back. 

The gentleman from California is recognized. Or—I’m—yeah, 

that’s right. Go ahead, Mark. 

Mr. TAKANO. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also appreciate 

the Subcommittee’s indulgence to allow me to join today. Mr. 

Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity. 

Mr. Giudice, last week the majority passed a bill out of our Committee that would have cut—that did cut funding for ARPA–E by 

50 percent. In contrast, your testimony strongly recommends increasing our support for the agency, and provides an excellent example of the critical role that ARPA–E now plays in advancing new 

grid-scale energy storage technologies. Can you explain why you 

believe that ARPA–E is such an important part of our nation’s energy innovation ecosystem? 

Mr. GIUDICE. Thank you for the question. Yes, ARPA–E is a relatively new agency, and it has done a remarkable job in the few 

short years that it has been up and running and operating. I do 

think that, as we were talking earlier, I think Ranking Member 

Grayson mentioned the comparison of Japanese spending on storage, $670 million a year, versus the budget that Imre Gyuk controls of $12 million a year. ARPA–E fills a little bit of that gap, and 

it’s—their mission, obviously, is much broader than just energy 

storage, but they are there to try and help create the breakthroughs that will serve our country and our planet for years and 

years to come. There is no alternative to that. There isn’t a private 

sector group that’s going to stand in to do that, there’s not private 

investors through the venture capital-type community that can 

stand up and take the lead on these kinds of innovations. The large 

corporations are spending very small amounts of money because 

it’s not economically attractive to them to do that. So there is no 

one else to be able to take on that leadership. I strong encourage 

the continued support for the ARPA–E Program. 

Mr. TAKANO. Would your company and your technology be anywhere near where it is today without the early stage investments 

from ARPA–E? Would it even exist? 

Mr. GIUDICE. I do not believe it would exist. I don’t believe that— 

and to be clear, it was the campus research that got funded at 

MIT, so it was all done under a public-private—or public partnership with the ARPA–E on that. And that was necessary to advance 

the technology to the point that we could attract and have conversation with private investors. So we weren’t even ready for any 

kind of conversation with private investors when it was just a concept. That was necessary to prove out in the laboratories at MIT 

before it could be at all of interest to private investors. 

Mr. TAKANO. So we see that—we know that you have a number 

of private investors, notable ones, and you’re saying to me that the 

private sector could not have done this just on its own. 
64 

Mr. GIUDICE. I’m saying they could, but they would not because 

there is no economic package that makes sense on the—on its own. 

Mr. TAKANO. So—I mean in theory, it’s possible that they could 

have—they have the capacity—— 

Mr. GIUDICE. That’s right. 

Mr. TAKANO. They have the capacity to do this. 

Mr. GIUDICE. That’s right. 

Mr. TAKANO. But the market alone doesn’t seem to be able to 

move us in this sort of direction. It sometimes takes leadership—— 

Mr. GIUDICE. Absolutely. 

Mr. TAKANO. —through government-funded efforts. 

Mr. GIUDICE. Yes, that’s completely appropriate. I—and you look 

at the profitability in the energy industry of equipment and services that are provided to this industry, versus the profitability in 

the Intel example or the pharmaceuticals example, and they’re 

just—the private sector isn’t making the kind of money in this industry to justify spending money on concepts that could, in fact, 

bear great benefit for society. And this is a very appropriate role 

for federal leadership to stand in and say, let’s figure out what 

might make sense here, and then when it’s ready, the federal government can step back and the private sector can take it forward 

for commercial deployment and bear full fruit. 

Mr. TAKANO. I think about how geography and circumstances 

forced a nation like Japan to move in certain directions, and our 

relative geographic situation where we had abundant resources, we 

didn’t have to think like they did, but—like they did, but I think 

about the way that they began to dominate the car market, the design of their cars and, you know, and the—they gained a competitive edge, and I’m worried about our Nation keeping a competitive 

edge in R&D and also in the ways we can bring this technology to 

market, or transfer that technology, transfer that knowledge. 

My time is up, Mr. Chairman, and I will yield back. 

Chairman WEBER. Gentleman yields back. Thank you. 

I recognize the Chairman of the Full Committee, Chairman 

Smith. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Dr. Whitacre, 

let me apologize for not hearing your testimony; I had to go give 

a quick speech, but I’m glad to be back. And I am also sorry I 

didn’t get to hear all the questions that were posed by my colleagues, so I may be plowing some of the same ground. 

But let me direct my first question to Dr. Gyuk, if I could, and 

it is this. First quick question is, you may have seen Tesla announce yesterday that they were announcing a new sort of home 

storage battery and a new industrial strength battery that presumably had better storage capability than others. I don’t know how 

much information you might have read about Tesla’s new batteries, 

but do you have any comment on them? 

Dr. GYUK. My information is roughly the same information you 

have. I hear the public announcements. Tesla has a very fancy luxury car. They have talked about residential batteries, but they really do not have any major part of the market. And I wish them well. 

If they succeed then energy storage will profit from it as a whole. 

Chairman SMITH. And I’m guessing it’s incremental progress, not 

something that’s explosive perhaps, or not something that’s a major 
65 

breakthrough, but they are on the forefront of car batteries in general, so that’s why we tend to look to them maybe for some of the 

most—greatest advances in battery storage. 

Dr. Virden, you mentioned in your testimony that I heard that 

there are number of gaps in our knowledge about developing the 

next generation battery, and looking for the next breakthrough. 

Given those gaps, do you want to give us any kind of a timeline, 

any kind of a prediction as to when we might make those kind of 

breakthroughs that will dramatically change the way we use alternative forms of energy? 

Dr. VIRDEN. Yeah, thank you for the question. I think what 

you’re going to see, from my perspective, is two phases. You have 

companies who have taken technologies that maybe have been developed over the last five or so years and they’re going to try to 

move those to the market, and they’re going to try to improve 

them. 

Chairman SMITH. Um-hum. 

Dr. VIRDEN. We, for example, on that vanadium redox flow battery, which was a well-understood battery, it’s been around for 

years, through some fundamental scientific investigations in solubility, we are able to increase the capacity by 70 percent. Not incremental, but kind of revolutionary. 

So you’re going to see, I think, those continued advances in the 

pipeline. Maybe five or ten years out are all kinds of ideas of—you 

know, every battery has an anode and a cathode, just like your car 

battery, and an electrolyte in between. And you see all kinds of 

press releases about a new anode material that’s five times better 

than anything out there—— 

Chairman SMITH. Um-hum. 

Dr. VIRDEN. —and it probably is, but as Mr. Whitacre—Dr. 

Whitacre was saying, when you put that in with an electrolyte and 

a cathode, and put it together and then try to scale it, all kinds 

of things don’t work. Materials start to fall apart, the chemistry 

isn’t well known, there’s side reaction, and usually what that leads 

to is loss of performance, loss of safety. And we as fundamental scientists don’t understand those basic mechanisms. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. 

Dr. VIRDEN. So in this ecosystem, you need that fundamental research that continues to move the state of knowledge along so companies can take that and utilize it, and the unique tools that DOE 

provides they can utilize. 

Chairman SMITH. Right. 

Dr. VIRDEN. Then you need companies to spin out and move it 

along. And we do really undervalue the challenge of scale-up. I 

think you’re exactly right. In every materials process I see, in an 

experiment in a lab like this big, it works perfectly. Then when you 

want to make thousands of them—— 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah. 

Dr. VIRDEN. —it doesn’t. And so I think that is the challenge is 

filling that U.S. pipeline of fundamental science that can spin off, 

and people can keep moving things forward. 

And with respect to that ecosystem and why it’s so hard to move 

things out, there’s 3,000 utilities—— 

Chairman SMITH. Right. 
66 

Dr. VIRDEN. —in this country, and they don’t have R&D budgets, 

and they don’t have venture capital budgets. 

Chairman SMITH. Right, yeah. 

Dr. VIRDEN. And they’ve got—we’ve got private, we’ve got public, 

we’ve got co-ops. The fragmented market makes it very difficult for 

the ultimate end-user to do the R&D. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Virden. You said five to ten 

years, so I gather that’s what you’re thinking. 

Let me ask the other witnesses real quickly my last question. 

What’s—sorry. And that is, and you’re welcome to mention your 

own companies as well, in the case of our last two witnesses today, 

but what do you think is going to be the next great breakthrough? 

And, Dr. Whitacre, we’ll go to you, and then Mr. Giudice and then 

Mr. Gyuk. 

Dr. WHITACRE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The—there 

is a tremendous amount—there’s a lot of leeway in that question, 

I will say. It’s difficult for us to—for me to speculate on which vector the breakthrough should be in. There’s energy density, there’s 

power density, there’s cost, there is lifetime, there is sustainability. 

These are all different, you know—— 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah. 

Dr. WHITACRE. —axes of innovation. And my sense is which axes 

is more—most important I believe is cost and lifetime. And the 

things that are going to move the bar in that are going to be the 

broad scale and adoption of maybe not necessarily completely different kinds of technologies, but understanding how to leverage our 

existing base to get it to the right price for the right durability. 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah. 

Dr. WHITACRE. It’s lifetime cost of electricity that matters. Electrons are dollars. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. Mr. Giudice, my time is up, so if 

you’ll give me a brief answer. 

Mr. GIUDICE. Sure. It’s going to be less than three years, and it’s 

actually demonstrating the technologies that are now just getting 

to the market that are going to show the kinds of improvements 

that we need. And it is all about cost. 

Chairman SMITH. And what’s the quick technology you’re talking 

about? 

Mr. GIUDICE. Well, I’m excited about Ambri, I’m excited about 

Aquion. There’s a few others out there. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay, great. Dr. Gyuk? 

Dr. GYUK. We have driven down the cost of vanadium systems 

to a considerable degree. We are now thinking of taking that experience and going into new directions, but with the same general approach. Zinc iodide is a possibility. Metalorganics and completely 

organic electrolytes. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you all. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MASSIE. [Presiding] Thank you, Chairman Smith. And because this is such an interesting topic, and we have such great witnesses, we’re going to do a second round of questions, at the risk 

of not catching our airplanes. And I appreciate your indulgence if 

you’re available to stay for more questions. 
67 

Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Chairman, you could always give me a ride in 

your car. 

Mr. MASSIE. Yeah. It will get you there very quickly. 

And at this point I yield five minutes to Mr. Takano from California. 

Mr. TAKANO. Yeah, do you have a battery as part of your freestanding house in—— 

Mr. MASSIE. Yes, I have a 45 kilowatt hour lead acid battery 

that’s 12 years old, and I’m looking for a replacement, by the way, 

so I want to talk to you after the hearing. 

Mr. TAKANO. And you’re completely off the grid, is that right? 

Mr. MASSIE. Yes, sir. 

Mr. TAKANO. Literally. 

Mr. MASSIE. Literally. In this—and because of that, I understand 

the importance of batteries. I have 13 kilowatts of solar on my roof, 

but it does me no good when the sun goes down if the batteries 

can’t hold the electricity. And some days, because I’m off the grid, 

the power is literally just kind of spilling out. It goes nowhere and 

doesn’t get saved. 

Mr. TAKANO. I know our Chairman is an expert himself, so I 

thought I’d ask him a question too. 

The question for all of you if you can answer it is, really where 

do you see the greatest potential for targeting future federal R&D 

funding to support emerging markets for grid-scale batteries, how 

we can scale, you know, do the grid-level—I mean just how best 

can we target our federal dollars? And if it were me, I would try 

to raise the R&D levels of spending, but what more—what’s—what 

do we need to do next? What are the next things we could do, given 

if you believe that there’s a role for the federal government in the 

basic research? Go ahead, take—— 

Dr. WHITACRE. Okay, I’ll take a crack. I sort of talked a bit about 

this already. My focus would really be to—I propose, and others 

have mentioned as well, that there are tens of amazing bench—like 

bench-scale results already out there that could be breathtaking 

and super innovative, but getting them to the next level, getting 

into something that is repeatable, demonstrable, that is scalable, 

there’s a tremendous amount of fundamental and basic science in 

that process. And I often think that there’s a boundary drawn between basic science and applied science that is maybe technically 

a little false. Right? There’s a tremendous amount of basic fundamental research in the process of making more than one tiny example of something, and why—how do we make that work. And energy technologies in general are about replicating and scaling, and 

and this is one of the disconnects. It’s so easy to do one thing, comparatively speaking, than having lived this, I can make you—and 

I did indeed make a very nice, very individual thing years ago, and 

my life’s work the past six years has been making it repeatable. 

Mr. TAKANO. Wonderful. Mr. Giudice? 

Mr. GIUDICE. Yes, from my perspective, I think from a federal 

leadership standpoint, I would really move towards the demonstration and pull through from the market standpoint than just on the 

basic science. And I appreciate the purview of this Committee is 

really more of the R&D side of it, but I really believe that there’s 

an enormous amount of work to be done, as the largest energy con-
68 

sumer in the world, to start incorporating more of these different 

types of technologies in the mix of the energy choices that the federal government is making, and then working through all of the 

policies and issues around federal and state regulations to be able 

to fully value what the economics—the potential economic value of 

storage would be, and figure out ways to help make sure that gets 

as fully appreciated as possible as soon as we can. 

Dr. VIRDEN. I’m going to use the all-of-the-above response on this 

one. And I truly believe you have to have the basic research to provide the long-term foundation. You’re exactly right. There’s some 

really cool technology ideas out there, but if you don’t have the applied sciences, where most of the battery work starts to fall apart 

is when you take it out of the lab, put it in a real world battery 

system, and it’s that applied science that starts to troubleshoot and 

figure out why they’re not performing the way they should. The 

theoretical densities are always really high. When you make one, 

it drops way down. And then you can’t get the full feedback until 

you do demonstrations. And if you don’t have all those parts of the 

ecosystem, it’s hard to innovate rapidly. 

Dr. GYUK. Couldn’t agree more. And that’s what our program has 

tried to do; take the applied ideas, drive them through developing 

the devices, and then get them out in the field and see how well 

it performs in the field in the real-life situation. And we need to 

have that entire chain from support of basic scientific research, 

through the scaling into prototypes and beyond, and the applications for the first early adaptors and demonstrations out in the 

field. 

Mr. TAKANO. And just real quickly, do any of you believe that 

this—getting to where we want to go can happen without federal 

leadership? I’ll take that as a—no one believes that. 

Okay, well, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you. At this point I yield myself five minutes. 

I can’t wait. 

TAKANO. Take as long as you want. 

Mr. MASSIE. And I’ve been given permission to take even more 

time. 

But the first thing I want to ask you about, I listened to your 

list of materials, Dr. Whitacre, in your battery, and I heard, you 

know, saline or seawater—saltwater and some other things, cotton, 

some magnesium maybe in there. I was glad I didn’t hear 

unobtainium, you know. This is a problem that we have when we 

try to scale things from the lab, you know, theoretical to mass production is sometimes you pick a material that’s hard to obtain or 

hard to find at those scales. And I think one thing we need to be 

careful of, and I know you mentioned vanadium and iodide, which 

aren’t unobtainium, those are familiar, is that we don’t trade one 

set of moral encumbrances for another if we design materials into 

our batteries that aren’t available domestically, and I’m okay with 

free trade, but are only available in politically unstable regions. 

And so could you talk to that issue? Mr. Giudice, you mentioned 

your battery technology, does it have any unobtainium in it or any 

special sauce that we can’t get in this country? 

Mr. GIUDICE. Yeah, so thank you for the question. The formation 

of the company was all about cost, and it was all about getting to 
69 

the lowest possible cost for the delivered energy solution, because 

we know that that’s going to make the most significant impact. So 

the chemistries that we utilized, we’re not public about, there’s 

been a lot of research published on our chemistries and other 

chemistries from the group Sadoway work on campus. We haven’t 

disclosed as a company what ours is, but it all starts with crustal 

abundance and local supplies as being very, very important. And 

you’re right, the initial work on campus was ultrapure materials, 

working inside glove boxes, and looking at could this sort of chemical matching work as a battery. And the answer was yes. As an 

industrial company now, we’re doing things in open air, and we’re 

doing things from industrial grade materials, and it’s working very, 

very well. So I think it’s an appropriate concern to have because 

it’s all about delivering as low a cost, and getting as much of an 

impact as we possibly can. And we’re quite comfortable that we’re 

on track to do that. 

Mr. MASSIE. Would anybody else like to comment on that? Dr. 

Gyuk? 

Dr. GYUK. Yes. There are two charts that I keep in my mind 

when I think about new technologies. One is the chart of crustal 

abundances, which tells you how abundant the things are in general, and it also has a subsection on what materials are industrial 

materials. Vanadium is an industrial byproduct of the steel industry. 

Mr. MASSIE. Um-hum. 

Dr. GYUK. So that’s okay. The other one is the chart of electro— 

electric potentials. You need materials that give you a large voltage 

window. Can’t be too large if you’re dealing with water, otherwise 

you’re producing hydrogen and you may explode. But these two together define the limits of what we look into, and that’s why we 

are interested in organics which are basically carbon with stuff 

added, okay. And once you have the way to make it down pat, it 

should be fairly easy to produce industrially in quantity. 

Mr. MASSIE. Because we’re using carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, right? 

Dr. GYUK. Yeah. 

Mr. MASSIE. Okay. 

Dr. GYUK. And simple materials. 

Mr. MASSIE. All right. Well, thank you very much. 

Now, I know that the constraints on a car battery are different 

than the constraints on a stationary application where you just go 

for cost and cycle time, and you don’t have to worry about weight, 

but what occurs to me is that—you were talking about those fancy 

cars they make, and I heard my car being called fancy, but it’s an 

85 kilowatt hour battery and we’re fast approaching 100,000 of 

those vehicles in, you know, domestically. It’s—that’s like 8.5, if 

I’ve got my decimal place in the right spot, 8.5 gigawatt hours of 

capacity running around in this country pretty soon. Is there a potential for using that wisely, Dr. Virden? 

Dr. VIRDEN. I think there is. There’s, you know, practical issues 

like if you do plug your car into the garage, who has liability for 

the battery—— 

Mr. MASSIE. Um-hum. 
70 

Dr. VIRDEN. —if you’re using it for, you know, stabilizing the 

grid. Interestingly, we did a study of all NERC/FERC sub-regions 

and looked and said how many of the cars could you put on—electric vehicles on the grid right now region-by-region, and the places 

where you could put a lot of cars on the grid, and the grid could 

deliver the electricity needed to charge and interact, was the Midwest primarily, and it was the places that had a lot of coal and natural gas intermediate capacity. And interestingly enough, in the 

west, Washington State, Oregon, California, where we’re hydrodominated, you could put the least amount of vehicles on the grid 

and charge them, because of our—having to back water up behind 

the dam at night, and we don’t have a lot of intermittent capacity. 

So people are looking at the idea. It makes sense. We could handle 

some of the distribution challenges, but there’s still a ways to go 

to be able to get that transactive signal that would allow the battery to play in that grid market. 

Mr. MASSIE. If you’ll indulge one more question. 

Mr. GRAYSON. That’s fine. 

Mr. MASSIE. All right. Dr. Whitacre, I know your company is 

making a battery and it’s selling it into applications that seem to 

involve different levels of scale. It’s sort of the unique feature of 

your battery; you can scale it up and down. And this is really a 

question to all of you, but I’ll start with Dr. Whitacre. To what degree are we going to be dealing with distributed storage, like at the 

home scale, versus centralized storage, and is there even a cost-effective place where it makes sense to do home storage? And I start 

with you, Dr. Whitacre. 

Dr. WHITACRE. Thank you. For sure it makes sense in some locations right now. Hawaii comes to mind as an obvious location 

where the cost of electricity is already so high, and the penalties 

with selling back to the grid during peak solar production hours is 

great, that people would just rather buy the battery and do it. And 

this is a fully distributed customer size meter model. There are 

other places around the world where it’s even worse. People are— 

and I should point out that our most intriguing early markets are 

not domestic. We are selling—we are exporting to a variety of 

places; the Philippines, Malaysia, you know, everywhere else, 

where there are—the dominant mode right now is distributed diesel generation, and they want to get rid of that, it’s expensive and 

dirty. They would rather go to solar and batteries. They want the 

right batteries. And—— 

Mr. MASSIE. That’s what I tell people that want to go off the grid, 

there’s only one thing worse than the battery problem and that’s 

the generator. 

Dr. WHITACRE. The generator, right. And—— 

Mr. MASSIE. I’m on my first set of batteries, but on my fourth 

generator so—— 

Dr. WHITACRE. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of our installations, yeah, 

we have some in northern California right now, they’ve been going 

for almost a year now and we really watch how often the generator 

comes on. That’s a big satisfaction piece for the customer; how 

often—and usually we’re lucky, most of the time in our installations it’s just the, you know, the weekly turn on to maintain integ-
71 

rity of the generator. That’s what you want to see. That’s a key— 

it’s a key like win for us if we have that. 

So—but there are other places, to be honest, in North America 

especially where electricity is very cheap, the grid is very reliable, 

and it’s hard to imagine that those residences will be wanting to 

go distributed off-grid.It’s—from a financial perspective, it’s a tough 

sell. But in those same areas, you may have some local grid issues 

or renewable issues where a more centralized storage infrastructure makes sense. So again, it’s very locationally dependent. 

Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Giudice. 

Mr. GIUDICE. Sorry. I agree, and the markets are developing, and 

we’ll see how they continue to develop. As you think through the 

3, 4, 5, six years out, I do think it’s going to make better sense to 

keep it at the grid level for the most part, and be able to share 

amongst your neighbors both the storage and the distributed generation that might be on everybody’s rooftop or on everybody’s hilltop, but not have to duplicate the storage investment on a buildingby-building basis. I think that there will be better economic value 

from a societal standpoint by doing that. It’s a very natural role for 

the grid to be able to provide that at the distribution level, and 

then be able to offset a lot of the other investments that would otherwise have to be made by doing it that way. But it’s going to take 

some time to work out those business models and really be able to 

put that in place. 

Mr. MASSIE. All right, my time has very much expired, and so 

I will yield time generously to Mr. Grayson from Florida. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Thank you. 

The basic idea of a battery, the anode, the cathode, the electrolyte, that idea is roughly 200 years old, about as old as our country, 

and it is interesting when you consider all of the other technologies 

that have been developed in the meantime; the telephone, the computer, television and so on, that we’re still basically using the same 

model that was used 200 years ago. 

Is there any realistic prospect of moving beyond that model for 

energy storage? Dr. Whitacre. 

Dr. WHITACRE. There are certain thermodynamic realties about 

storing electricity and materials, and those realities drive us to a 

sort of bipolar design where you have two separate material systems that retain different positive and negative charges when you 

apply a current to them. It’s hard to imagine a different paradigm 

using the materials as we understand them today to allow this. It 

is sort of—the anode and cathode are a natural reflection of thermodynamics, is the way I would put that. So my answer is, if 

you’re talking about electrochemical storage, I don’t think so. This 

is the paradigm. The key is to enhance our understanding and to 

maximize performance, and explore new material systems and new 

electrode designs and so forth. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Giudice? 

Mr. GIUDICE. So obviously, I think a point was made earlier that, 

as the grid exists now, 97 percent of the storage that’s done on the 

grid is pumped storage, mechanically, compressed air energy storage, two projects are going. So from an electricity storage standpoint, there’s alternatives, but from an electrochemical battery 

standpoint, I don’t think there are alternatives. And then the third 
72 

form of storage, thermal storage, is obviously being utilized in lots 

of different applications as another interesting way to store energy, 

not so much electricity. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Dr. Virden? 

Dr. VIRDEN. I would agree with the previous witnesses’ comments, if you’re trying to store electrons directly, the battery storage is really the only way to go about it. And it has practical challenges with, over those 200 years, I don’t think we’ve been faced— 

we’ve had to face the real issues of batteries, but with transmission 

distribution constraints, renewables, we’re now having to face directly, you know, how do we store energy in a battery. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Dr. Gyuk? 

Dr. GYUK. Yeah, I cannot—I need to agree with what you have 

heard so far. If you’re doing electrochemistry, you have certain limitations on the system. Nonetheless, there are directions one can go 

in. I do not necessarily believe that lithium ion is the end all and 

be all, even for cars. We have things to go beyond, but they will 

not necessarily be, you know, totally different. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Following up on my colleague’s question regarding 

distributed versus centralized storage, it seems to me that one of 

the key factors in that regard, whether you store electricity or energy centrally, or whether you store it household-by-household or 

business-by-business, is whether there are any significant economies with scale in the storage that would make up for the transmission losses that you would encounter when you distribute that 

energy from a centralized source. So please tell me, again, starting 

with Dr. Whitacre, whether you see any likely economies of scale 

in storage of energy that would offset the transmission losses. 

Dr. WHITACRE. Absolutely. I think, depending on where it is, you 

again—I keep on going back to this, but location specificity matters 

depends on how good your transmission and how close you are to 

a centralized power source. By typically, I mean there’s an argument for some degree of distribution to either eliminate the cost 

and the issues of either augmenting or establishing a more centralized traditional grid backbone system, or indeed, just by the 

straight efficiency losses associated with transmitting power. If you 

generate electricity on—in a location, you’re best apt to store it 

near or at that location. This is happening in Germany right now. 

There’s a self-consumption incentive wherein folks are actually 

driven to put batteries in their residence because they’re generating electrons in their residence, and they—it’s a more efficient 

system. So yes, there is. 

Mr. GRAYSON. So just to be clear, do you see a future of big storage, big batteries, or a future of small storage, small batteries? 

Dr. WHITACRE. You know, I see an intermediate situation. 

There’s probably an intermediate thing where there are—there’s 

certainly not a single battery in the center of the country, right, 

and there’s certainly not a battery in each of our pockets. There 

are—there’s an intermediate distribution of storage where there’s 

an optimal distribution. Maybe it’s at a neighborhood level or at a 

block level, or something—if we were to really reduce this down to 

that kind of question. There is some optimal economy of size and 

distribution. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s probably more 
73 

than—it’s probably outside the residence, but smaller than an entire city. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Giudice? 

Mr. GIUDICE. Yeah, so the market will tell us, and we’ll see as 

it goes forward. I do think it’s going to make sense, as I think 

where Dr. Whitacre was going, towards the distribution side of the 

business as the dominant place to have it make sense. And it’s not 

so much economies of scale of delivering storage, but it’s economies 

of the application. So on the neighborhood basis where clouds are 

coming by and we’re all solar generating on our rooftops, those 

clouds are sporadically shutting off different rooftops as they cover 

up the sun. The storage at each house would have a much different 

effect than if it was storage across that whole small grid area. And 

I think that in terms of reliability and reducing costs, we’re probably going to find optimal levels at those kinds of applications, 

rather than any central generating storage or storage for every single household. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Dr. Virden? 

Dr. VIRDEN. I think it’s going to be distributed at the substation 

level. So for me that’s, you know, several megawatts in a few megawatt hours. This is beyond frequency regulation where you have 

tens of megawatts. That’s the higher value-added market right 

now. I see the home market behind the meter as longer term, except in a few places like California and Hawaii. 

That Tesla announcement, by the way, you’ll get a battery pack that’s $3,000, you still have to buy the inverter, so it’s $4,500, and 

that would give you about 7 kilowatt hours. That’s not going to 

take you off-grid. Our estimates to go off-grid in a home, you’re 

spending $15,000 to $20,000 or more, so it’s still expensive. The 

community application, to me, makes the most sense because you 

spread the cost and get multiple benefits. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Dr. Gyuk? 

Dr. GYUK. Yeah, we consider distributed storage to be on the distribution side, which means substation and maybe slightly above or 

slightly below. Size from 500 kilowatt to about 10 megawatt. 

Those, I think, are the easiest applications. If we are going to go 

into residences, it’s not so much residences as small businesses, 

campuses, business parks, and so on, there it makes sense to be 

behind the meter. Individual residences are probably a market considerably in the future. 

Mr. GRAYSON. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. MASSIE. And as we close, I’m going to yield one more minute 

to my friend from California—— 

Mr. TAKANO. Just—— 

Mr. MASSIE. —Mr. Takano. 

Mr. TAKANO. Just one quick question. What about any kind of 

systems that might generate hydrogen or—and store hydrogen, you 

know, just through electrolysis? I don’t know the science of it, but— 

and in combination with a fuel cell. 

Dr. WHITACRE. I can quickly comment on that. While this is completely technically possible, and folks are still looking at doing it, 

one reality is the roundtrip energy efficiency of that kind of system 

is, at best, 60 percent maybe on the very best day. Most of the time 

it’s 50 percent or less. And it’s simply because the thermodynamics 
74 

of converting water to hydrogen, and then converting it back to 

water and getting electrons, and storing electricity through that 

process, is inherently inefficient. And so this is difficult to compete 

with the 80 or 90 percent roundtrip efficiency we have in batteries. 

And that’s a big, big deal when we talk about each electron is 

worth money. 

Mr. TAKANO. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MASSIE. Well, in closing, I want to say this has been a very 

enlightening hearing, thanks very much in part to the quality of 

the witnesses and the quality of the questions. And it confirms 

what I—my personal experience which is, batteries are not sexy, 

okay. You know, buckets of acid in your basement do not evoke 

envy from your neighbors, even though blue solar panels on your 

roof might. And—but the reality is this is what’s holding our country back, this is what’s holding renewable energy back. In fact, this 

is holding nuclear energy back, this is holding coal-fired energy 

back. I mean all these peak issues, they apply to any energy source 

that we have. And so I think even though it’s not as sexy as some 

of the other topics, it is fundamentally very important to moving 

forward in our country is to have a better battery. The world needs 

a better battery. So I thank you for making that point, and informing us today on some of the issues. I will say that we very much 

value your testimony today. 

And the members—the record will remain open for two weeks for 

additional comments and written questions from Members. 

And this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(75) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
76 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Imre Gyuk 
77 
78 
79 
80 

Responses by Dr. Jud Virden 
81 

Responses by Mr. Phil Giudice 

(83) 

Appendix II 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD
84 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER

EDDIE BERNICE JOHSNON

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. 

Today we will hear about the Department of Energy’s important role in advancing 

new large-scale energy storage technologies, which are critical to making our electric 

grid more efficient, reliable, and resilient, enabling a cleaner environment and lower 

costs for consumers. 

The title of this hearing aside, improvements in energy storage are actually important for all forms of electricity generation, not just renewable energy production, 

as demand for electric power is often highly variable. Currently, high capacity power 

plants are required to meet expensive peaks in demand while operating below capacity for when demand is low. Grid-scale energy storage allows lower capacity 

plants to meet the same demand at a lower cost. 

Dr. Gyuk, I am encouraged by DOE’s work on large-scale energy storage solutions 

to date, and I frankly believe that given your track record and the size of this problem, your budget should be much, much higher than the $12 million that your entire program received last year. 

It should be noted that another major contributor to early-stage research in this 

area is ARPA-E. This is yet one more reason that I was so dismayed that the majority proposed to cut this agency by 50 percent in their COMPETES bill just last 

week. I look forward to discussing the essential role that both ARPA-E and DOE’s 

Office of Electricity play in accelerating the development and commercialization of 

these technologies here in the U.S. 

As highlighted in the Department’s first, widely praised Quadrennial Energy Review—which was released just last week—this area is vital to the future of America’s energy infrastructure, and there is still much more work that needs to be done. 

Thank you and with that I yield back the balance of my time 

Æ