Department Of Energy Begins Five-Year, $120m Battery Research Program

It seems that five is the magic number for the US Department of Energy. It turns out, they're wanting to develop batteries that are five-times more powerful than today's batteries, and they want to make them five-times cheaper than they are today — all of which is aimed to be completed in just five short years from now.

In order to achieve that goal, researchers essentially plan to reproduce development environments that were used during the Manhattan Project, the one where we saw the first atomic bomb being used for warfare for the first time ever during World War II. Of course, it won't actually be anything like the Manhattan Project, but researchers are working at a similarly quick pace in order to see results in record time.

To do this, the Department of Energy will create the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, and will fund $120 million over the five years. Then, the department will round up some of the best researchers at six national labs, five universities, and four private firms. The DOE says that this kind of collaboration will "deliver the goods very, very quickly."

The goal is to have more powerful batteries that are also cheaper than what they cost today so that they can quickly can widespread adoption without much fuss. The DOE plans to work on all sorts of batteries as well, including batteries in phones, electric cars, and even batteries for solar and wind power.

[via Computerworld]