• NYSERDA awarded nearly $13 million to 15 energy storage projects through its Power Generation and Storage Innovation program on November 6, 2026.
  • Joule Post arithmetic on the published award amounts shows about 66 percent of the money going to non-lithium battery storage designs, while the state’s September bulk storage contracts went entirely to lithium-ion.
  • The largest single award, more than $2.4 million, funds an iron-sodium battery designed to discharge for more than 10 hours at a substation.

New York’s research money and its procurement money are moving in opposite directions. The NYSERDA energy storage awards announced on November 6 total about $12.85 million when the published figures are added up. Roughly $8.43 million of that sum backs sodium, zinc, vanadium, metal-air, and compressed-air storage, while lithium-based work takes about $4.42 million. The arithmetic is Joule Post’s own; several amounts are stated as “more than” or “nearly,” so totals are approximate.

That split is the mirror image of the state’s commercial procurement. On September 23, 2026, NYSERDA contracted eight bulk storage projects totalling 950 MW in its first bulk energy storage solicitation, and every one of them uses lithium-ion batteries, with durations of four to eight hours. The two programs are buying different things. The solicitation buys capacity that can be built now, while the awards announced on November 6 fund development and demonstration of technologies that are not yet commercial.

Tesla Megapack units installed under solar canopies at a grid storage site
Wikideas1 / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

The 15 NYSERDA energy storage awards at a glance

The awards run through NYSERDA’s Power Generation and Storage Innovation program, which funds long duration storage and other alternatives to conventional lithium-ion that have not yet reached the market. NYSERDA describes the selected technologies as designs for scalable storage lasting more than 10 hours at rated power, aimed at grid congestion, hosting capacity limits, and siting constraints on lithium-ion systems. Funding comes from the state’s Clean Energy Fund.

The awards range from $250,000 to more than $2.4 million. The average award works out to about $857,000 across the 15 projects, but the money is concentrated at the top: the three largest awards, to Inlyte Energy, Standard Potential, and Urban Electric Power, total about $5.7 million, or roughly 44 percent of the published total.

Company Award Technology
Inlyte Energy More than $2.4 million Iron-sodium battery, more than 10 hours
Standard Potential Co. $1.8 million Sodium-ion portable power station
Urban Electric Power Nearly $1.5 million Zinc-manganese dioxide battery
Daqus Energy Nearly $1 million Metal-free organic cathode for lithium-ion
Sprocket Power More than $1 million Vanadium redox flow battery
Respire Energy More than $850,000 Metal-air battery
IBEX Materials $750,000 Silicon-rich anode, solid-state electrolyte
LiNova Energy Nearly $720,000 Lithium-ion, critical-mineral-free polymer cathode
Graphenix Development More than $700,000 Silicon anode and sulfur cathode
Aestus Energy Storage More than $590,000 Advanced compressed air energy storage
LiBAMA Power More than $400,000 Lithium metal anode, nonflammable electrolyte
AlphaEn More than $350,000 Lithium metal electrode manufacturing
Alsym Energy More than $290,000 Sodium-ion prototype, 10 kWh
InfinitEnergy $250,000 Solid-state battery (chemistry not stated)
Orion Polymer $250,000 Membrane for lithium-sulfur batteries

“Investing in next-generation energy storage technologies is critical to building a flexible and resilient grid that can make the most of our diverse energy resources,” said NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen M. Harris. “These projects will advance promising solutions that can deliver power when it is needed most, strengthen grid performance, and help drive down costs as we build a more affordable and reliable energy system for New York consumers.”

How the NYSERDA energy storage awards split by chemistry

Grouping the 15 projects by their main storage chemistry produces a near three-way split: eight lithium-based projects totalling about $4.42 million, three sodium-based projects (Inlyte, Standard Potential, and Alsym) totalling about $4.49 million, and four others (zinc, vanadium flow, metal-air, and compressed air) totalling about $3.94 million. The shares come to roughly 34 percent, 35 percent, and 31 percent. The classification follows the grouping published by XenoSpectrum.

Two caveats apply. First, Inlyte’s iron-sodium battery is a sodium metal chloride design, a different chemistry from the sodium-ion batteries Alsym and Standard Potential are developing. Moving Inlyte into the “other” group would cut the sodium share to about $2.09 million and end the even split. Second, NYSERDA’s announcement does not state the chemistry of InfinitEnergy’s solid-state battery, so counting it among the lithium projects is an inference.

Even with those caveats, the direction is clear. Lithium-based work in this round is mostly about improving cell components: silicon anodes at Graphenix and IBEX, lithium metal electrodes at AlphaEn and LiBAMA, and new cathode materials at Daqus and LiNova. The non-lithium battery storage money funds whole systems built to store energy for many hours. For background on how these chemistries differ, see our guide to battery chemistries, from LFP and NMC to sodium-ion.

Long duration energy storage in New York and the 10-hour test

Duration is the figure that separates this round from the commercial market. A storage system’s duration is the time it can supply power at its rated output, calculated by dividing stored energy by rated power. A 100 MW system needs 400 MWh to run for four hours and 1,000 MWh to run for 10 hours. New York’s contracted bulk projects run four to eight hours. The research program is explicitly aimed beyond that, at designs lasting more than 10 hours at rated power, the durations long duration energy storage New York will need to cover overnight lulls and multi-day cloudy stretches.

Only one of the 15 awards states a duration. Inlyte Energy’s iron-sodium battery is rated for more than 10 hours and will be installed at a substation to handle peak load growth and distribution-level resilience. The design replaces the nickel in the cathode of conventional sodium metal chloride batteries with iron, using abundant materials such as iron, sodium, and common salt. Inlyte has reported no capacity loss over more than 700 charge-discharge cycles in testing lasting over a year, with 90 percent round-trip efficiency, according to XenoSpectrum’s account of the company’s December 2024 test results.

Aestus Energy Storage takes a different route. Its award of more than $590,000 funds a subscale test of about 35 kWh of alumina-silica ceramic heat sink materials, to be used in the design of a 20 MWh advanced compressed air energy storage system. The planned system would hold roughly 570 times the energy of the test unit. Alsym Energy received more than $290,000 to design and test a 10-kWh non-flammable sodium-ion prototype with the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Battery Development Center. At 10 kWh, that prototype holds about as much energy as a single home battery, and readers weighing a home system can see how capacity translates to real loads in our guide to running air conditioning from a home battery during an outage.

Battery storage containers at the Nirazuka Battery Storage Power Station in Isesaki, Japan
Qurren / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What the $13 million split says about New York’s storage strategy

The contrast between the two programs is a deliberate division of labor. The September solicitation drew 46 bids totalling about 6 GW and contracted 950 MW, or roughly 16 percent of the capacity offered, all lithium-ion; seven bids using other technologies were not selected. The research awards go the other way: about two-thirds of the money funds non-lithium work. New York is buying proven lithium-ion capacity for the grid it needs by 2030 while spending research money on the chemistries that might replace it afterward.

The state’s 2030 target frames both programs. A June 2024 order from the New York Public Service Commission raised the storage deployment target for 2030 from 3 GW to 6 GW, with 3,000 MW of grid-scale bulk storage to be procured through annual solicitations. The 950 MW contracted in September is the first instalment, and NYSERDA plans a second solicitation by the end of 2026. The research awards sit upstream of that pipeline: if a sodium, zinc, or flow design proves out, it could compete in a later round, including the 20 percent share of each round the Commission targets for systems of about eight hours.

The research spending is modest next to the deployment money: NYSERDA’s Innovation and Research program invests more than $96 million a year. The state has made this bet before. In August 2023 it awarded about $15 million to four long-duration demonstration projects, including $12 million to Form Energy for an iron-air battery, and Urban Electric Power, a recipient in this round, was also selected in 2023.

The near-term signal is the second bulk storage solicitation, due by the end of 2026: it will show whether non-lithium bids get a second look after being shut out in September. The research awards will take longer to judge, since most of the 15 projects are developing components or prototypes and only Inlyte’s substation installation is framed as a deployment. The test for this $13 million is whether any of the 15 reaches a commercial solicitation in the next few years.