May 9, 2025: This year’s winner of BCI’s annual innovation award, the PNNL, was announced on the first day of the conference meetings on May 5th. The US Pacific Northwest National Laboratory won by an overwhelming majority of the judging panel for its Grid Storage Launchpad.

The GSL is a new US national capability for speeding up energy storage research: it brings all phases of battery development and deployment cycle under one roof, ranging from fundamental materials and device prototyping through to 100kW-400kW scale testing and validation.

“This acceleration of the development process is already proving to be dramatic,” said Vincent Sprenkle, director of GSL at the national laboratory.

“For instance, without the GSL it took about four years for us to take  a flow battery concept through to something that could be approached commercially. Using the GSL we’ve seen a recent project make the same advances in just four months.

“This fast prototyping and comprehensive testing of the entire energy storage development cycle are features not found anywhere else within the US national laboratory system.”

The GSL, $75 million  facility was funded by the DOE’s Office of Electricity which was an active force in its design and development.

“The GSL will prove an indispensable tool to encourage collaboration among researchers, across multi-disciplines and industry partners,” said Sprenkle.