Battery Energy Storage 2022

Monica Marinescu: Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London

Dr Marinescu is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. She has worked in the field of electrochemical energy storage for the last ten years, focussing on identifying the mechanisms that limit the performance of batteries and supercapacitors. She has developed bespoke modelling tools and experimental techniques that inform the design of battery cells and packs with increased performance, and that enable their better use. She is passionate about enabling industry advancements by bringing academic research outputs into real life applications.

Alex Buckman: Interim Business Lead – Modelling, Energy Systems Catapult

Dr Alex Buckman leads Energy Systems Catapult’s modelling capability. He is responsible for understanding complex whole system problems from national through to building scale. Alex leads the specification and technical delivery of major projects within the Catapult across flexibility, whole system modelling, networks and energy storage. He engages regularly with government, industry and academic stakeholders to help define and develop collaborative projects that will benefit the energy sector and wider UK economy.

Gill Davies: Project Manager, Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy

Dr Gill Davies is an Innovation Project Manager for Energy Storage at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). She has worked in the low carbon energy sector for over 15 years, previously in a mix of private sector and academic roles in UK and international contexts. Gill enjoys her role at BEIS working with her team to support energy storage technology innovation. She is currently managing multiple electrical category projects under the government’s Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration competition.

Iola Hughes: Research Manager, Rho Motion

Iola Hughes is a Research Manager at Rho Motion working on electric vehicle, battery, charging and energy storage market analysis. Iola graduated with a First-Class Honours Master’s Degree in Geophysics from University College London, with a year spent at the University of California.

Ian Ellerington: Head of Technology Transfer, The Faraday Institution

Ian joined the Faraday Institution after six years in central government where he worked on designing and implementing innovation programmes in the energy sector. He was responsible for the government’s energy innovation programme in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and continued in the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as Head of Disruptive Energy Technologies and Green Finance Innovation.

Ian is an engineer who graduated from University of Cambridge with an M.Eng. in Manufacturing Engineering in 1993 and is now an experienced technical manager who has worked with small, medium and large corporates, academia and government. His early career was spent working on Gas Turbine engines with the Ministry of Defence before moving to project management at QinetiQ where he was responsible for research programme management and delivery of the large test programmes. He left QinetiQ to join Meggitt Defence Systems that developed and operated new technical products. As UK General Manager Ian set up and ran a new R&D and manufacturing facility.

Richard Dawson: Technical Director, LiNa Energy

Richard Dawson, is LiNa Energy’s Technical Director. He has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College, and an MEng in Engineering Science from Cambridge University. Richard leads the team that implements LiNa Energy’s technical strategy. He helped develop the original concept for the LiNa cell and was part of the team that led the spin-out from Lancaster University. Prior to LiNa Energy, Richard gained experience in developing novel electrochemical technologies at Ceres Power, AFC Energy and at Lancaster University where he was an academic.

John Fox: Director of Business Development, AMTE Power

John is Director of Business Development at AMTE Power Plc, a UK based manufacturer of Battery Cells, who focus on Energy Storage and Electric Vehicle applications.

John is a founder member of the AMTE team having successfully developed a number of technology and service focused businesses, he has held board positions in both public and private companies, and provides support and advice on business growth as a non-executive.

John has helped to define AMTE’s products and markets, by developing commercial and strategic relationships.

John lives on the most easterly inhabited island in the UK and enjoys sailing and supporting a local community sailing club as safety crew. 

Ross Hubble: Senior Applications Engineer, COMSOL

Ross works as a Senior Applications Engineer at COMSOL UK. He graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2010 with a MEng in Chemical Engineering and then went on to carry out his PhD investigating carbon oxide hydrogenation reactions.

Mikey Clark: CTO, Pivot Power

Mikey Clark is CTO at Pivot Power, part of EDF Renewables. He has worked in the electricity industry for over 15 years, leading some of the UK’s most high-profile R&D and infrastructure projects, including UK Power Networks’ Low Carbon London initiative and the Olympic park pylon undergrounding (tunnelling) project.

Prior to this Michael focused on mechanical and electrical consulting for new build and refit works across retail, commercial and data centre sectors. He has an intuitive knowledge of building electrical systems as well as the power grid and has a degree in Metallurgy and Materials Engineering from the University of Liverpool. He is also an avid sailor, recreational woodworker and technology enthusiast.

Alicja Kowalewska-Montfort: Principal - Energy Storage, Gore Street Capital

Alicja is a Principal with Gore Street Capital. She heads up the Technical Team overseeing the development, construction and operation of the Gore Street Fund portfolio including the route to market strategy.

She holds MSc from Cranfield University in Renewable Energy Technology and Processing Engineering. Previously she worked at Origami Energy and RES where she focused on energy storage technology and route to market respectively.

David Stone: Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Sheffield

David Stone is Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield and leads the Center for Research into Electrical Energy Storage and Applications (CREESA) at Sheffield, including the facilities 2MW, 1MWhr Grid connected Energy storage research facility. He is also a director of the University Energy Institute.

Professor Stone was appointed into the Electrical Machines and Drives (EMD) research group in 1989, and is heavily involved in EV / HEV research, together with energy conversion. He has led battery testing and management for over 20 years, being principal investigator on a number of industrially oriented projects together with more academic work on recycling and reuse of batteries on the grid, and Li-ion battery pack management. The battery work, coupled to power electronics, have resulted in over 290 papers in conferences and peer-reviewed journals. Prof Stone also works in the areas of power electronics and power conversion, and has a number of projects in the area of electric transport, including the use of EV’s as energy storage on tram and light rail systems.

Hugh Maguire: Senior Project Development Manager, SSE Energy Solutions

Hugh Maguire has spent 20 years developing low carbon energy infrastructure. His technology experience ranges from Battery storage, solar, waste, biomass, CHP, district heating, renewable liquid fuels and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. He has held engineering design, management and project management roles in consultancy and at SSE. A Chartered Chemical Engineer, Hugh has most recently led the development of the 50MW, 2 hour Salisbury Battery Storage scheme, the first battery project for SSE’s solar and storage business.

Jonathan Sansom: Project Engineer, WMG, University of Warwick

JONATHAN E.H. SANSOM received his PhD in Solid State Chemistry in 2003 from the University of Surrey developing novel electrolyte materials for solid oxide fuel cells. He graduated previously with a 2:1 Honours Degree in Life Sciences (with Chemistry) from the Open University in 1999. During this period of study he was also working with British Telecom, engaged with analogue to digital transmission upgrade activities. On completion of his PhD he spent a period of time at Surrey university developing novel cathode materials for solid oxide fuel cells before taking up a position with a commercial fuel cell company developing and scaling up alkaline fuel cells. He now works at Warwick Manufacturing Group developing rapid triage techniques for determining the State of Health of lithium ion modules. His main activity involves developing methodologies for instrumenting ‘Smart Lithium Ion Cells’ with internal sensors.