The hub, located on the Argonne National Laboratory campus in suburban Chicago, will collaborate with R&D expertise of five Department of Energy national laboratories, five universities, and four private firms to achieve improvements in battery performance.
Illinois governor Pat Quinn is providing $5m funding through his Illinois Jobs Now capital construction plan to build the JCESR facility.
Argonne National Laboratory director Eric Isaacs remarked that the new facility will develop energy storage technologies to transform the electricity grid and transportation, reducing their dependence on foreign oil.
US senator Dick Durbin added, "The large-scale, innovative research and transformational new battery systems that will result from this venture will mean more effective, lower cost and longer life energy storage technologies with real world applications for anything that can use a rechargeable battery."
The hub will also bring together some of the advanced energy storage research programs in the US.
