One year ago, the Office of Electricity’s Grid Storage Launchpad was a new building full of sparkling new laboratories with new, unused equipment. Today, the 93,000-square-foot facility is bustling with researchers who are working to develop robust, affordable energy storage solutions to help bolster the nation’s electricity grid.
August 13, 2025
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Eric Hsieh
Eric Hsieh is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Storage in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE), where he leads efforts to accelerate the next generation of energy storage technologies that deliver reliability, resilience, economic, and efficiency benefits. Mr. Hsieh also co-chairs the crosscutting Energy Storage Grand Challenge, which coordinates departmental priorities such as the Long-Duration Storage Energy Earthshot. He is an energy policy, financial, and engineering thought leader with nearly 20 years of experience in improving energy delivery through innovation. Prior to his current role, Mr. Hsieh was the Director of Grid Components and Systems within OE.
As Director of Grid Components and Systems, Mr. Hsieh led strategy development and execution for grid hardware innovations including power conversion, energy storage, and robotics. He has more than 10 years of federal service, having also been the Director of the Office of Finance and Incentive Analysis, where he applied geospatial and computational techniques to modernize utility industry analysis.
Over the course of his professional career, Mr. Hsieh has held executive positions with several industry-leading firms and government associations. Before joining DOE, Mr. Hsieh was the Director of Business and Market Development at Nexans/The Valley Group, a global power transmission solutions provider, where he led worldwide efforts to deploy dynamic line rating technologies. Prior to that, at A123 Systems, a developer and manufacturer of advanced batteries for the electric grid, he helped the company reach its first 100 MW of deployed grid-connected battery storage. He has also held roles at National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Mr. Hsieh authored and co-authored pieces published in journals such as IEEE Electrification Magazine, Electricity Journal, and ElectroIndustry; as well as delivering presentations at respected industry-leading conferences across the country. In 2019, Mr. Hsieh was named one of “Fortnightly’s Under 40” as part of Public Utilities Fortnightly’s “next generation of up-and-comers in the utilities industry.” Mr. Hsieh holds a master’s in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering (with a concentration in AI) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
One year ago, the Office of Electricity’s Grid Storage Launchpad was a new building full of sparkling new—but empty—laboratories with new, unused equipment. Today, the 93,000-square-foot facility is bustling with researchers who are working to develop robust, affordable energy storage solutions to help bolster the nation’s electricity grid.
Batteries are ubiquitous to everyday life—they power our electronics, medical devices, vehicles, and more. And soon, batteries may also be key to keeping the nation’s electric grid reliable and resilient.
Before batteries can support the grid on a nation-wide scale, however, they must be several things: powerful enough to provide energy for many homes under many different conditions, stable enough to last for many years, and safe enough to keep surrounding communities from harm.
GSL’s facility helps to accelerate this goal with its state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment researchers can use to characterize and develop new batteries, from atoms to systems.
For instance, the facility’s scanning electron microscope gives researchers an unprecedented view into the atomic mechanisms of battery materials, helping them understand what can disrupt a battery’s lifespan.
In the Material Innovation through Robotics & AI Laboratory (MIRAL) lab, AI and robotics come together to help researchers synthesize, characterize, and test potential battery chemistries. Driven by machine learning algorithms and advanced software controls, the MIRAL robotic arm and accompanying system can perform hundreds of experiments per day that might take human researchers weeks.
GSL researchers also help advance new battery technologies, working with private industry to help validate their prototypes in development.
This year for example, PNNL entered into a new licensing agreement with battery materials company Ampcera to help bring a new solid-state electrolyte to market. In the lab, researchers demonstrated that the electrolyte improved the performance of all-solid-state lithium batteries. PNNL and Ampcera will work together for the next year to further optimize the material and scale up the manufacturing process.
GSL researchers’ expertise is also helping rural communities improve the reliability and resilience of their own grids: Last year, PNNL researchers teamed up with multiple organizations to help the rural Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota install a 277-kilowatt-hour energy storage system. PNNL, along with Sandia National Laboratory, provided expertise in system design, safety protocols, and integration.
Soon, GSL will be opening its 100 kW/400 kW-hour test chambers to private companies who wish to work with PNNL to test and develop grid-ready systems. These systems can be costly and cumbersome for individual companies to test themselves, and GSL’s testing facility can provide valuable data about how the system might perform under a myriad of different conditions.
GSL is also helping bring energy storage to new industries, such as hydropower. Researchers have been working with hydropower dam operators to investigate the economic benefits of adding battery systems to hydropower dams. Initial modeling studies have shown that adding energy storage to hydropower facilities could help dams last longer by reducing wear and tear on turbines, and operators could more easily enter more variable energy markets and increase their revenue.
GSL’s mission hasn’t changed. Its four pillars remain:
- Validate: The GSL will enable independent testing of next generation grid energy storage materials and systems under realistic grid operating conditions.
- Accelerate: The GSL will speed the development of new technologies by propagating rigorous performance requirements.
- Collaborate: The GSL will bring OE, researchers, and industry together to tackle our nation’s energy storage needs. OE knows that the LDES challenge can only be met if every stakeholder works together.
- Educate: The GSL will train, educate, and develop the workforce of the future, from skilled labor to first responders, from safety officials to utility planners and regulators.
