Ultra Long Duration Energy Storage Project Development Studies Relaunch

Key Features

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £3 million for project development studies to support the development of electrochemical ultra long duration energy storage demonstration projects in the UK.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £3 million

Opens: 11th Sep 2026

Closes: 30th Sep 2026

! This scheme is closing soon
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Grant Overview

Innovate UK are investing up to £3 million from the UKRI R&D Missions Accelerator Programme. This competition is to support the delivery of electrochemical ultra long duration energy storage project development studies in Phase 1.

Grant Scope

The aim of this competition is to support the development, scale up and UK manufacture of electrochemical ultra long duration energy storage technologies. These technologies must be capable of delivering cost effective power to the Uks electricity grid with at least 100 continuous hours at rate power and a working life of at least 25 years.

This is a 2-phase competition:

  • Phase 1: Project development studies, to be funded under this competition
  • Phase 2: Technology demonstration, to be funded under a future competition planned for mid-2027

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for this competition, your project must have a total grant funding request of between £350,000 and £700,000 with projects lasting between 3 and 9 months. Projects must start by 1st January 2027 and end by 30th September 2027.

Lead Organisation: To lead a collaborative project or work alone, organisations must be a UK registered business of any size. Academic institutions cannot work alone.

Project team: To collaborate with a lead, organisations must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation. To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must:

  • apply for funding when entering their costs into the application
  • include rationale for the collaboration and describe the structure in your application
  • ensure any no single organisation can claim more than 70% of the total project costs

Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations that do not claim funding for their work on the project. These costs must be covered from their own resources and can include UK, EU, and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry our project work from within their home countries and exploit results outside of the UK.

Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used, but you must state why UK subcontractors could not be used in your application.

Number of applications: An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications. An eligible organisation that is not leading an application can collaborate in any number of applications.

Previous applications: Previously submitted applications cannot be included in this application.

Grant Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding the following projects:

  • Projects that are focused on laboratory scale or early-stage discovery research
  • Projects that are limited to component, material, or subsystem development, or manufacturing process optimisation
  • Projects focussed on incremental improvements to existing short duration battery energy storage technology
  • Projects focussed on the development of deployment or lithium ion, hydrogen fuel cell or lead acid technologies
  • Projects focussed on the combustion of hydrogen, or other molecules, to produce electricity
  • Projects focussed on technologies that store energy in the form or thermal, mechanical or electrical energy, including molten salts, compressed air, pumped-hydro storage and capacitors

Grant Funding

Innovate UK have allocated up to £3 million to fund innovation projects in Phase 1 of this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant. A planned phase 2 competition aimed at supporting demonstrator projects will be subject to the outcomes of this competition.

Under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Route rules, no more than £3 million can be awarded in the form of a grant to any one enterprise in any one competition.

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.

Category 1 Feasibility studies

For feasibility studies you can 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

Research participation

The 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 can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

  • 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are an academic institution

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

  1. Research organisations must use the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) method as the Je-S form has now been decommissioned.
  2. We pay 100% of the 80% Full Economic Cost (FEC). On IFS only enter the 80% being claimed.

For further information on this competition, please see full details.

Full competition details