Faraday Battery Challenge: Funding for Research into Automotive Battery Technologies

The Faraday Battery Challenge was launched by Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark in July 2017 as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). The Faraday Battery Challenge is an investment of £246 million over four years, set up to help UK businesses seize the opportunities presented by the transition to a low carbon economy and to ensure that the UK leads the world in the design, development and manufacture of batteries for the electrification of vehicles. Battery research from fundamental research through development and innovation to industrial scale up is being supported by the Faraday Battery Challenge via three elements:

• £78m for a new ‘application-inspired’ research programme coordinated at a national scale - a large part of this is being led by the Faraday Institution.
• £88m Innovation programme to stimulate collaborative research and development with co-investment from industry – derisking and enabling the steps to get from research through to manufacturing at scale.
• £80m Scale-up programme to allow companies of all sizes to rapidly move new battery technologies to market through the creation of an open-access National Battery Manufacturing Development Facility.

The winners of the first round of the Innovation Feasibility Studies and Research and Development competitions and the Scale-up competition were announced by Greg Clark on 29th November 2017.

Innovate UK will be opening the second round of Faraday Battery Challenge: Innovation competitions on 22nd January 2018, with a deadline for applications on 28th March 2018.

Working together with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Innovate UK, the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) will run a number of Competition Briefing events where the scope of these competitions will be launched.

These competitions will support a range of Innovation activities around materials, cell and battery manufacturing for Automotive applications.

About the event:

The event, hosted by the Knowledge Transfer Network, aims to:

• Provide an overview of the ISCF and Faraday Battery Challenge
• Provide details of the second round of Faraday Battery Challenge: Innovation competitions
• Provide a facilitated networking programme from the KTN that maximises your chances of securing suitable collaborators for your ideas
• Through a series of pitches from organisations link early research to targeted industrial applications to assist with exploitation and collaboration
• Innovate UK and KTN staff associated with the competitions will be on hand for advice and answer questions.

Agenda:

09:30 Registration

10:00 Welcome and Introduction to KTN

Chris Bagley, Head of Infrastructure, KTN

10:10 Welcome from Newcastle University

Volker Pickert, Newcastle University

10:25 Introduction to the Faraday Battery Challenge

Kathryn Magnay, EPSRC

10:45 The Faraday Institution

Martin Tillin, Faraday Institution

11:00 UK Battery Industrialisation Centre

Anna Ritchley, WMG

11:15 Pitches

11:30 Break & Networking

12:00 Competition Scope: R&D and Feasibility Studies

Anna Wise, Innovate UK

12:40 National Physical Laboratory

Gareth Edwards, NPL

12:50 Intellectual Property

Dave Hopkins, IPO

13:10 Wrap Up and Next Steps

13:15 Lunch, Networking & 1:1 Meetings

14:30 Close

Who should attend:

This event will benefit entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers who can expand their work in the areas of battery chemistry, raw materials, materials processing, cell components, cell, module and pack assembly and vehicle integration, cell production methods, and any aspect of the future electric vehicle battery supply chain.

Not able to attend? The main Competition Briefing event will take place in London and will also be webcast for those wishing to join online. In addition to the regional briefing event in Newcastle, there will be a further regional event in Cardiff on 8th February.