Testing and validating underground hydrogen storage components

Key facts

About this grant

Summary from the official listing on Find a Grant (GOV.UK):

Description

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will invest up to £5 million from the R&D Missions Accelerator Programme (RDMAP) in a collaborative research and development programme. The programme will accelerate the development and validation of critical technologies needed for the safe, reliable and cost effective use of underground hydrogen storage.

This competition responds directly to the recently launched Ultra Long Duration Energy Storage ULDES Challenge. The ULDES challenge will accelerate the UK’s commercialisation, manufacture and deployment of innovative and affordable long duration energy storage technologies with a duration over 100 hours. The ULDES challenge as a whole has up to £28 million to invest up to 2030, split between electrochemical and hydrogen for storage activities.

This competition sits alongside a separate £1.5 million competition that will provide funding for development expenditure projects to accelerate UHS projects towards final investment decision.

The aim of this competition is to fund a consortium programme which will enable the UK to accelerate the development and validation of critical technologies needed for the safe, reliable and cost effective use of hydrogen in ULDES within the UK electricity sector. This should enable components to be used in commercial settings within a 2030 timeline. The awarded consortium should work as one cohesive programme, containing the skills and expertise to deliver the competition aim.

Your proposal must be relevant to underground hydrogen storage (UHS) conditions. It should be technology agnostic across UHS technologies whilst remaining capable of meeting the requirements of the ULDES Challenge statement, to ensure developments remain relevant across a range of UK UHS futures.

The UKRI R&D Missions Accelerator Programme are running two competitions across UHS:

• Testing and validating underground hydrogen storage components (this competition)
• Underground hydrogen storage demonstrator: DEVEX support

It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct competition for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application, and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

We expect funded projects from both competitions to work together where appropriate. We will provide further information to successful applicants after funding decisions have been made.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly, but we are still unable to fund it.

Our experience from similar competitions suggests that you could have 20% chance of success.

We consider a range of factors when determining whether to provide funding to applicants. This includes an assessment of prior conduct, such as any outstanding payments owed to Innovate UK or UKRI. Such factors may influence the funding decision, potentially resulting in a refusal of funding or an award subject to additional scrutiny.

We also reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions. This may be in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations or broader government funding decisions.

This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct…

Eligibility

Who can apply

Your project

Your project must:

• have total eligible grant funding request of between £200,000 and £750,000
• last between 6 and 12 months
• start by 1 April 2027
• end by 31 March 2028

Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs.

If your project’s total eligible grant funding request or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will then decide whether to approve your request.

If your project does not meet our criteria and you have not requested justification approval, your application will be made ineligible and it will not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To lead a collaborative project or to work alone, your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

To be an eligible collaboration:

• the lead and at least one other organisation must request funding
• you must explain why you’re collaborating and how the collaboration will work

Non-funded partners

Your project can include organisations who do not claim any funding for their work on the project. Their costs will be covered from their own resources. These can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK

Details are copied from the official source and can change. Check the official listing before you apply. Grant Writing Company is not affiliated with this funder.