Energy.gov

Thanks to an ARPA-E award, Fluidic recognized the potential to transform how our nation stores and utilizes energy throughout the electric grid.

Nearly 2,500 of the nation’s brightest minds from across the energy ecosystem came together outside Washington, D.C., this week to share ideas about how we can advance technologies to address America’s energy challenges.

Yesterday, the third annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit kicked off near Washington, D.C. The Summit’s unique combination of leaders makes this an ideal environment for developing energy solutions that will enable America to out-innovate our global competitors.

Leaders from the public and private sectors will meet in Washington, DC, next week to share ideas for solving our greatest energy challenges.

Words like “biofuels” and “power electronics” usually conjure up images of labs and power lines, not biology class. But what better place is there to start innovation than in the classroom? The Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) fosters this philosophy during the annual Energy Innovation Summit.

In the U.S., businesses tend to invest in research that will pay off in the short term. National laboratories are filling a gap by conducting the essential research that will change the game 10 to 20 years down the road. Learn more about how years of conducting advanced research in both the private and public sectors led to battery technology that made electric cars possible.

More work must be done to streamline the process from creation to commercialization in order to ensure that the best ideas are appropriately matured and introduced to the marketplace, and avoid what is referred to as the “Valley of Death” – where great innovations go to die. Just as in the broad marketplace, the Energy Department has a large number of unlicensed patents that could be commercialized.

Who will be America’s Next Top Energy Innovator? Iowa Powder Atomization Technologies (IPAT) won't be left in the dust -- they have licensed gas atomization technology developed by Ames Laboratory that will enable them to manufacture titanium powder 10 times more efficiently.

It's hard to believe the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is just two years old: already we have seen the potential of high-risk, high-reward research to both our energy and economic future. Read the Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report.

If you missed the 2nd Annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit featuring some of today's most cutting-edge energy technologies, video from some big names who spoke is available here.

We checked in with ten outstanding technologies on display at the 2011 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit to find out how the transformational projects will change our energy future.