The lion’s share of new funding announced this week to help scale-up potentially disruptive technologies by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) of the US government Department of Energy (DOE) will go to battery and smart grid technologies.

‘Liquid metal’ battery technology developed as a potential low-cost competitor for lithium-ion looks set to be used at a data centre under development near Reno, Nevada.

An analyst has hailed the work of a University of Cambridge team developing the “ultimate” lithium-air battery for overcoming some of the technology’s limitations, but has expressed doubts as to its prospects for commercialisation.