UKRI-2128 - Evaluation of UK Battery Infrastructure to Support Rapid Scale up of Battery Material and Cell Technologies

The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Faraday Battery Challenge (FBC) is a Government initiative that is enabling the decarbonisation of the UK’s transport sector whilst ensuring that the UK prospers from this transition. Established in 2017, the FBC has been designed to create an effective research, innovation and scale-up ecosystem that can deploy advancements in battery technology and secure a battery manufacturing base in the UK. This is being delivered through its three pillars: the Faraday Institution (FI), Innovate UK and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC). This evaluation will assess the existing UK battery infrastructure available to UK PLC in the development of battery materials and cells, including academic institutions, private organisations offering contract services and open-access facilities. The existing available infrastructure will be assessed against current and likely future candidates for research/commercialisation in both battery materials and cell technologies to assess where there are gaps in support for companies progressing from lab  pre-pilot  pilot  gigascale. The technologies to be assed have already been defined by an earlier study. Different scenarios will be developed for a government funded open-access facility which addresses materials scale up, cell-level scale up, and/or both to meet the gaps identified, and maximise cost benefit to the UK. The different scenarios will be evaluated to understand likely workflows for different technologies over a 5-15 year time horizon to understand how such facilities could be used and to further evaluate the cost-benefit of building infrastructure to support certain technologies at certain scales. As a secondary point, use by organisations outside of the UK and the global importance of such a facility in attracting foreign direct investment into the UK should be considered. The outputs of this report may be used as guidance for the formation of the scope and evaluation of bids on infrastructure to be built as part of the next phase of the Faraday Battery Challenge. The main aims of the tender exercise are to produce a report to: •Identify if there is a gap in UK scale up support that could be serviced by a battery, materials and/or cell scale up facility •Clearly define any gap in terms of technology, scale, equipment and facility requirements, in addition to type and quantity of work predicted over a 5-15 year timescale •Determine whether single or multiple facilities would be best placed to fill this gap through a series of scenarios •Understand the cost-risk profile of supporting scale up of specific technologies •Understand the limitations and challenges of building such a facility •Understand if a facility that meets the needs of the UK could be of international importance, potentially attract foreign direct investment into the UK, and de-risk investments into supporting specific technologies Additional information: To respond to this opportunity please click here: https://ukri.delta-esourcing.com/respond/5TRBR2H646