At the invitation of Prof. Lidong Chen, the Vice Director of SICCAS and Prof. Zhaoyin Wen, the director of Energy Materials Research Center of SICCAS, Dr. Z. Gary Yang visited SICCAS on June 13th, 2010.

Dr. Z. Gary Yang is the Chief Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) of US Department of Energy (DOE), and through his research for DOE, Dr. Yang conducts fundamental and applied research into materials for energy storage and conversion applications. In his presentation of “Advanced Electrochemical Energy Storage for Renewable Integration and Grid Applications: Status and Challenges”, Dr. Yang introduced the recent research and achievements on energy storage and transforming technologies at PNNL. By reviewing and discussing the different kinds of energy storage technologies, Dr. Yang highlighted the perspective of Sodium Sulfur Batteries and Redox flow Batteries, due to their advantages in application of Smart Grid.

An extensive discussion with the audience was triggered by Dr. Yang and his interesting talk, and the enthusiasm and exchange also accompanied the researchers all the way of lab tours in SICCAS. With the guidance from Prof. Lidong Chen, Prof. Zhaoyin Wen and Prof. Shaorong Wang respectively, Dr. Yang visited Labs of Thermoelectric Materials and Devices, Solid State Secondary Batteries and SOFC, and common interest was expressed by both sides to develop cooperation in some research areas.