WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued three funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) that offer $100 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the third round of its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program. The FOAs, announced at the first ARPA-E summit in Washington, D.C., are focused on innovations in three areas of technology: cooling systems for buildings, grid storage, and power converters. The goal is to promote U.S. leadership in the global market in these technology areas, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing U.S. electrical consumption by as much as 30 percent.

For building cooling technologies, the ARPA-E program seeks cooling systems that use refrigerants with low global warming potential, efficient air conditioning systems for warm and humid climates, and vapor-compression air conditioning systems for hot climates. Technologies should ideally be suited for both retrofits and new cooling systems. For grid storage, the program aims to support the development of modular, cost-effective, grid-scale energy storage technologies, including advanced system prototypes and proof-of-concept projects that address critical shortcomings of existing grid-scale energy storage technologies. For power converters, the program seeks fundamental advances in soft (non-permanent) magnets, high-voltage switches, and high-density charge storage. By coupling these to advanced circuit architectures and scalable manufacturing, the program aims to leapfrog existing power converter performance while offering reductions in cost. Power converters are broken down into three categories: chip-scale power converters; kilowatt-scale power converters for grid-tied photovoltaic systems and variable-speed motors; and medium-voltage energy converters for high-power applications, such as electrical substations and wind turbine generators.

Concept papers must be submitted by April 2, but the deadline for complete applications has not yet been determined. For more information, visit http://arpa-e.energy.gov/.

Publication date: 03/08/2010