Stanford’s energy institute funds its first round of research

The Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE) at Stanford University has handed out its first research grants, totaling $1.8 million in seed funding. The money will help support six research projects with the potential for high impact in the areas of energy supply and use. "We asked our faculty for proof-of-concept experiments or analyses," said PIE Director Lynn Orr. "The objective is to allow our talented students and faculty to demonstrate the feasibility of energy innovations in a way that can help them compete for additional research funds." The six projects address a spectrum of issues, including how to convert carbon dioxide to fuel, how to handle the fluctuations in electricity generated from intermittent renewable resources such as wind and how to improve the efficiency of solar cells while reducing costs. Launched in January 2009, PIE is an independent institute at Stanford engaged in a broad, interdisciplinary program of energy research and education. It addresses the challenges of supplying energy in environmentally and economically acceptable ways, using it efficiently and tackling the social and policy issues involved in creating new energy systems for the United States and the world. Turning Papers into Supercapacitors for Grid-Scale Energy Storage , led by Yi Cui, materials science and engineering, and Zhenan Bao, chemical engineering, with research collaborator Seung Min Han, materials science and engineering.