The United States Department of Energy Office of Electricity intends to issue Funding Opportunity Announcement number DEFOA0003036 titled Energy Storage Demonstration and Validation. This Notice of Intent to Issue is for informational purposes only; the Department of Energy is not seeking comments on the information in this notice and applications are not being accepted at this time. Any information contained in this notice is subject to change. The anticipated Funding Opportunity Announcement will address FY2023 Congressional Direction, which directs OE to pursue a competitive pilot demonstration grant program, as authorized in section 3201 of the Energy Act of 2020, for energy storage projects that are U.S-controlled, U.S. made, and North American sourced and supplied. The Department is directed to include in this program large scale commercial development and deployment of long cycle life, lithium-grid scale batteries and their components.

The DOE plans to make the FOA available by the end of July 2023. If released, the FOA is expected to make up to $12 million available for cost-shared research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) project(s) to support the goals of the DOE, ESGC, and OE to facilitate the large-scale commercial development and deployment of grid scale lithium and redox flow batteries. The anticipated number of awards are one under AOI 1 and one under AOI 2. The awards would be cooperative agreements and would include substantial involvement by the DOE. The DOE plans to contribute up to $6,000,000 for each award negotiated under AOI 1 and 2, with each award having a period of performance lasting up to 36 months starting from the funding being awarded and ending once the demonstration is operational and has initiated data collection for ROVI. Demonstrations must provide data to the ROVI lab consortium for a minimum of 12 months during system operation.

Expected factors of specific interest for the anticipated FOA include, but are not limited to:

• Demonstration of systems that address supply chain challenges and/or expand domestic manufacturing capacity

• Demonstrations for novel applications and use cases

• Demonstrations to enable further market applicability and validation of profitable business cases

• Demonstrations that that provide community benefits and address workforce considerations

• Demonstrations with ability to meet cost and performance measures informed by application or use case

• Likelihood that demonstration system can be delivered at scale and within budget

• Willingness to participate in ROVI data sharing program with national labs

Areas specifically not of interest:

• Demonstrations in a lab or testbed environment

• Demonstration of technologies that are not “U.S.-controlled, U.S.-made, and North American sourced and supplied.”