August 2, 2018: The Faraday Institution, the biggest independent energy storage institute in the UK, announced Neil Morris as CEO on July 30.

Morris has more than 30 years’ experience in the energy sector, having worked as CEO for Klesch Petroleum and in various roles at British Petroleum.

The Faraday Institution was set up in October 2017 as part of a government-funded project to research and advance battery technology. The facility was built with collaboration between WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group), the university of Warwick, Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and Coventry City Council.

The UK government awarded £80 million to the project — but it was confirmed at the time that the facility would not look at lead acid battery technology, instead would focus on lithium.

Dave Greenwood, a professor with WMG, told BESB the facility was ‘primarily aimed at lithium-ion technologies and those that will succeed it (such as sodium-ion, solid state and multivalent chemistries’.

Read our article here.

In an interview with the Faraday Institution, Morris outlined his intention:

“I expect the greatest challenge will be to break down barriers between groups that have a different perspective and are not used to working together; however, this is also where the greatest opportunity lies.

“The prize is to bring together leading researchers and industry to work on tightly focused projects that can advance the technology more quickly and effectively than either group could have done alone.”