BIC

The advanced battery sector is booming, a $50 million global market with double-digit annual growth forecast for the next decade and beyond.

Breakthroughs in storage capacity and complementary technologies will be critical to drive wider adoption of electric vehicles, optimize the use of renewable resources like wind and solar, and make the smart power grid succeed.

Private firms, universities, and federal research labs are all striving to achieve and commercialize these breakthroughs – but they can’t do it alone. Battery development is incredibly capital-intensive: the computing power, lab facilities, testing/validation infrastructure and high-tech manufacturing facilities could easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Duplicative investments on this scale simply aren’t viable.

That’s why in 2012 ESN launched the Battery Innovation Center (BIC), an Indiana-based non-profit initiative that links manufacturers, government agencies and research labs, academia, and Fortune 500 companies to accelerate the advanced battery market. The BIC consists of a 32,000 square foot multi-million dollar facility, which held its grand opening in August 2013, at WestGate@Crane Technology Park in Greene County. The site is next to Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane (NSWC Crane), the Department of Defense center of excellence in battery development and power electronics.

Along with NSWC Crane, the BIC leverages Indiana’s other university and corporate research labs focused on energy storage technologies, creating a center of excellence that can position southwest Indiana as a ‘Silicon Valley’ for advanced battery technologies.

For more information on the Battery Innovation Center, visit www.bicindiana.com.

Objectives

The Battery Innovation Center (BIC) is a collaborative initiative designed to incorporate leadership from renowned universities, government agencies, and commercial enterprises to focus on the rapid development, testing and commercialization of safe, reliable and lightweight energy storage systems for defense and commercial customers.

Benefits

The BIC, located in Greene County, IN, has contributed immensely to the state’s economic development efforts. As one of the best energy storage facility in the United States, the team’s expertise has attracted national and global partners to bring their operations to southern Indiana.

Impact

1. Provide military and national security customers with a robust and secure source of battery development and low-volume production under one roof with linkages to an array of high-volume commercial manufacturing partners. 2. Give the commercial industry a one-stop shop for battery testing and certification along with a full spectrum of world-class support services from R&D to manufacturing solutions. 3. Establishing a network that virtually and physically links university-led battery R&D and accelerates the transition from basic research to battery cell and pack prototypes into commercialization.

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