Innovate UK £3M ULDES call: infrastructure design notes for civil engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Innovate UK has opened a £3M competition for electrochemical ultra long duration energy storage (ULDES) technologies capable of delivering multi-hour to multi-day grid support beyond conventional lithium-ion systems. Funding will target UK-based businesses developing novel chemistries, cell architectures or balance-of-plant designs that can be deployed at scale for transmission and distribution infrastructure. Civil and geotechnical engineers should expect emerging requirements for foundations, enclosures and thermal management for large stationary electrochemical plants integrated with substations and renewable generation sites.
Technical Brief
- Competition funding pot is £3M, to be split between multiple electrochemical ULDES projects.
- For similar infrastructure programmes, early engagement with geotechnical and civil design teams will be critical to de-risk deployability.
Our Take
Innovate UK appears repeatedly in our database backing low‑carbon materials and critical minerals processing, such as the Ascension rare earths spinout and Scottish Water’s low‑carbon concrete procurement, signalling that electrochemical ULDES bids will likely be judged on both decarbonisation impact and supply‑chain resilience rather than lab performance alone.
With 915 Infrastructure stories and 2,445 tag‑matched ‘Projects’/‘Sustainability’ pieces, UK‑based funding calls like this one tend to act as reference points for later procurement moves (as seen with Scottish Water’s advance market commitment), so successful ULDES demonstrators could quickly find routes into regulated utility frameworks.
New Civil Engineer’s role in hosting technical debates on bridges and BIM/data handover in other recent pieces suggests that Innovate UK‑supported ULDES concepts showcased here may gain early visibility among UK asset owners and designers, which can shorten the gap between pilot plants and specification in major infrastructure projects.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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