Dr. Imre Gyuk is Director of Energy Storage Research at
the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity.
Twenty years ago, when he took charge of the stationary
energy storage program, the technology was only beginning
to be explored. There were very few demonstrations and the
rare industry meetings were only attended by a handful of
researchers, scientists, and dreamers. Under Dr. Gyuk’s
leadership the DOE program grew into a $100M a year effort
while storage technology became one of the hottest topics
of the electricity business. His Program includes research
on materials, devices, and systems; it also funds work on
power electronics, analytics, policy, and finance. He
sponsored groundbreaking work on vanadium redox and other
flow batteries as well as on rechargeable zinc manganese
batteries.
Collaborations with Sandia National Laboratories and
Pacific Northwest National Laboratories have led to
numerous pioneering storage installations. His group was
the first to recognize the potential of energy storage for
frequency regulation and demonstrate this in a
full-fledged installation. FERC's resulting “pay for
performance” mandate provided the first viable business
case of Energy Storage for utility applications. His group
also funded pioneering projects using storage for upgrade
deferral of substations and combining storage and photo
voltaic generation for cost effective resiliency
applications. For the past 2 decades, he has directed work
on a wide portfolio of storage technologies for a broad
spectrum of applications, partnering with states, tribes,
and municipalities on numerous projects for grid scale
demonstrations. Most recently he is involved with long
duration storage and energy justice.
Having received a B.S. from Fordham University, Dr. Gyuk
did graduate work at Brown University on Superconductivity
and received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from
Purdue University. He taught Physics, Civil Engineering,
and Environmental Architecture at the University of
Wisconsin. Dr. Gyuk became an Associate Professor in the
Department of Physics at Kuwait University where he became
interested in issues of sustainability. He served on the
Emir’s taskforce on the Future of Kuwait and organized a
conference on the Environment of the Gulf. He has traveled
widely throughout the Near East, Europe, China, and Japan.
His work has led to 13 R&D 100 awards, two EPA Green
Chemistry Challenge Award, and Lifetime Achievement Awards
from ESA and NAATBatt. He has also received the Tibbetts
Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration for
technology transfer, He is internationally recognized as a
leader in the energy storage field.