A major deliverable for the Supergen Network+ is its flexible funding scheme. A total of £410,000 is available over the next four years to support development through travel and conference grants, feasibility studies and research projects that will enhance existing knowledge to facilitate academic, industrial, policy or international impact.

Expressions of Interests (EoIs) are sought for a piece of work that will deliver an organic on-line document as a key outcome from Supergen Energy Storage Network+. This document will be referred to as “Energy Storage: Gaps and Opportunities Analysis” (ESGOA). It may well be that this work can be developed further to become an independent publication in the area of Energy Storage and the successful applicants will be entitled to submit a manuscript on this basis provided that the support of EPSRC and the Supergen Energy Storage Network+ is acknowledged.

A total of £8,000 is available in the current round of funding. The maximum ‘cost’ per project is £10,000 (at 100% FEC); the maximum funding available by Supergen Network+ is £8,000 (at 80% FEC) per project. Only one submission per applicant is permitted.

The ESGOA document will provide a structured mechanism by which workers in the community can input and harmonise views about the domain of energy storage. It will also serve as a repository of links to evidence about the existence of these gaps and opportunities. The exact format of the organic document is not prescribed but an early part of this work should be to present a proposal for the format. Subsequent to the discussion and agreement on that format, the successful applicant will start to populate some sections of that document. Importantly, ESGOA is intended to be operated for several years after initiation and this has several ramifications. Firstly, the document must be accessible over the internet and must offer open access to all who have the link but must have edit rights restricted to approved users. Secondly, it must be archived regularly so that at worst the loss of data from a human or system error is limited to two weeks maximum. Thirdly, it must not be locked to any one academic institution – or if it is, there must be clear and explicit agreement from the outset that a copy will be released if/when required by EPSRC and the original site will be closed with redirection to the new site. A Google Sheets document is one possible format but not the only possibility.

More information is available here.