This state agency manages the Clean Energy Fund which provides grants to research projects as well as funding for energy improvements in public facilities. The Clean Energy Fund has sponsored research into grid-scale battery storage, grid modernization, and will soon fund research on manufacturing.

State utilities that have received research grants include Avista, PSE, Snohomish PUD. Their projects are briefly outlined below:

• Avista is field testing a 1-MW, 3.2-MWhr UniEnergy vanadium-flow battery assembly in a three-year demonstration project at a substation in Pullman. Partners include Uniready Technologies.
• Puget Sound Energy is deploying a 2-MW, 4.4-MWhr lithium-ion/phosphate battery assembly at a substation in Glacier, WA.
• Snohomish PUD is doing multiple demonstration projects working with 1Energy Systems on Modular Energy Storage Architecture, a set of nonproprietary design and connectivity standards offering a scalable approach for energy storage control system integration and optimization. Research involves two 1-MW, 500-MWhr lithium-ion battery systems within one substation, and at a different substation, multiple advanced vanadium-flow battery assemblies.
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is performing analysis on all the projects named above.

Future grant funding opportunities are described on the Commerce website along with a list of other energy research Commerce helped fund with federal grant matching funds.