U California Los Angeles Wins $1.62 Million To Build Energy Storage System

Engineers from the University of California Los Angeles Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have won a $1.62 million grant to build a hybrid energy storage system.

The team with work with Southern California Edison, which will help operate the system on the Cal Poly Pomona campus upon completion, to build a system to store "energy harvested from intermittently productive renewable sources such as solar panels and wind farms, then releases that energy into the grid when demand is high," according to a news release.

Lead by Pirouz Kavehpour, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, the team will build a system that uses both compressed air and thermal energy storage technologies to enhance capacity and reduce costs.

"Our estimated cost of energy for this unit is about $100 per kilowatt hour, which is much lower than any battery system of which we are aware," said Kavehpour, in a prepared statement.

The grant was awarded by the California Energy Commission.

About the Author

Joshua Bolkan is contributing editor for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • VSLive! session

    VSLive! San Diego 2026 Puts AI at the Core of the Campus IT Stack

    For higher education IT teams working through AI pilots, ERP integrations, student-facing apps, analytics projects, and mounting security concerns, Visual Studio Live! San Diego 2026 offers a look at the development practices that are shaping the campus technology landscape.

  • Binary code flows through a digital pathway with red and blue lights in a dark background

    Survey: Enterprises Say They Are Ready for Agentic AI Failures, but Few Test Recovery Often

    Most enterprise organizations say they are ready to recover from disruptions involving agentic AI, but a new survey of more than 300 IT decision-makers from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States suggests relatively few test those plans often enough to prove it.

  • Interface buttons of Generative AI tool

    Report: No Foolproof Method Exists for Detecting AI-Generated Media

    Microsoft has released a new research report warning that no single technology can reliably distinguish AI-generated content from authentic media, and that deepening reliance on any one method risks misleading the public.

  • abstract smartphone translucent screen displaying AI interface

    Apple Introduces Redesigned Siri AI

    At its recent Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple introduced Siri AI, a redesigned version of its voice assistant that Apple describes in its own announcement as "a profoundly more capable and personal assistant." The update is intended to make Siri more conversational, more context-aware, and more useful across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.