CYCLING HARDWARE TO ANALYZE AND READY GRID SCALE ELECTRICITY STORAGE (CHARGES) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The CYCLING HARDWARE TO ANALYZE AND READY GRID SCALE ELECTRICITY STORAGE (CHARGES) opportunity is a 2014 ARPA-E funding program under the U.S. Department of Energy that is designed to speed up commercialization of next generation stationary (grid) energy storage by building confidence in how these systems actually perform. ARPA-E was created by Congress through the America COMPETES Act (and later reauthorized) specifically to push high impact energy technologies that are often too risky or too early-stage for private investment, with the broader national goals of improving U.S. economic and energy security, cutting energy-related emissions (including greenhouse gases), improving energy efficiency across the economy, and maintaining U.S. technological leadership in advanced energy technologies. CHARGES fits into that mission by focusing less on inventing new batteries and more on creating credible, unbiased proof of performance for storage technologies that have already been developed under prior or existing ARPA-E awards.

A central feature of CHARGES is that awardees are not expected to develop new storage technologies themselves. Instead, they are expected to operate as independent test and evaluation hubs that provide the facilities, equipment, engineering know-how, and operational experience needed to analyze, scale, and validate emerging battery and flow battery systems intended for grid-scale use. The program is structured around the idea that the storage market, especially for utility and microgrid deployments, is strongly influenced by bankability and risk: utilities, independent power producers, microgrid operators, and commercial energy users need trustworthy data on performance, operating limits, safety considerations, maintenance requirements, and realistic lifetime expectations before they will buy and deploy unfamiliar technologies. CHARGES aims to generate that kind of reliable information by combining controlled laboratory testing with field-relevant operation, including real-world cycling and dispatch under microgrid conditions, and by ensuring substantial participation from potential future adopters of storage systems. In other words, the program is built to connect promising ARPA-E-backed storage inventions to the practical validation and customer confidence needed for broader market acceptance.

The solicitation makes several requirements unusually explicit because the credibility of the testing effort is the whole point. ARPA-E, not the applicant, decides which storage technologies will be tested at the applicant’s facility. Applicants are instructed not to propose specific technology vendors as partners, since doing so could compromise independence or create the appearance of biased evaluation. Awardees must provide unbiased analysis and testing services, and they must agree to strict confidentiality around both technical details of the systems being evaluated and the results produced. This confidentiality requirement reflects the reality that many of these storage concepts are still commercially sensitive, even if they are far enough along to be tested at meaningful scale.

From an administrative and funding standpoint, CHARGES was issued as a discretionary funding opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number DE-FOA-0001149) using a Cooperative Agreement instrument, which typically means substantial federal involvement during execution rather than a hands-off grant. The total estimated program funding was $8,000,000 with an expectation of about 12 awards. Individual awards were anticipated to fall between $1,000,000 (floor) and $4,000,000 (ceiling). Cost sharing was required, signaling that applicants needed to bring some of their own resources to the table and reinforcing the program’s applied, commercialization-oriented intent. Eligible applicants included small businesses, for-profit organizations other than small businesses, private institutions of higher education, and public/state-controlled institutions of higher education, which is consistent with the goal of building capable test centers across industry and academia.

Timing details in the announcement indicate the opportunity was posted June 19, 2014, created July 30, 2014, with an original closing date of August 4, 2014 and an updated closing date of August 8, 2014, and it was later archived June 17, 2015. The CFDA number listed is 81.135 (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy). The agency contact provided for access issues was Nicole D. Clopton (nicole.clopton@hq.doe.gov), and an additional information link was hosted through the ARPA-E FOA portal.

In practical terms, CHARGES is best understood as ARPA-E funding for the testing infrastructure and independent evaluation capability that bridges a common gap in energy storage innovation: moving from promising prototypes or pilot systems to widely accepted, financeable, deployable grid assets. By paying qualified organizations to run rigorous, confidential, and unbiased lab and microgrid-based validation campaigns on ARPA-E-funded storage technologies, the program seeks to reduce uncertainty for buyers and accelerate real adoption of new stationary storage options.

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