Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, Innovate UK will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size or a research and technology organisation (RTO)
• be or involve at least one grant claiming UK micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with at least 2 UK registered businesses (one SME, and one business of any size).

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

UK Project team

Only UK registered partners must be listed in the Project Partner section of your application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). Your US partner will not receive any of this UK competition funding. US partners will be funded by NOWRDC following a parallel application.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each organisation in your consortium will receive funding from its respective national funding body.

Each UK partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the Innovation Funding Service. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

You cannot include US partners that do not receive Innovate UK funding, and their costs will not count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition, but they are limited to no more than 20% of each UK organisation’s eligible project costs.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from the European Economic Area (EEA) but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an EEA subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A business or research and technology organisation (RTO) can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If a business is not leading any application, it can be included as a collaborator in up to 3 applications.

If an RTO is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

An academic institution or a public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

• energy storage integration solutions that have a duration of less than 10 hours
• energy storage R&D that is not specifically related to the optimisation or integration of energy storage with offshore wind
• energy storage system balance of plant unless this R&D is specifically related to optimising or integrating existing long duration energy storage systems with offshore wind
• focused on baseline environmental data collection, surveys or studies

Innovate UK are not funding projects that include R&D of core energy storage technology components and systems, whether existing or novel, such as:

• electrochemical energy storage components and systems
• mechanical energy storage components and systems
• thermal energy storage components and systems

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

Up to £2 million has been allocated to fund UK partners’ costs for innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For feasibility studies and industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research participation

The UK research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

• 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
• 100% of your project costs if you are an RTO or public sector organisation