It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Imre Gyuk, one of the truly great figures in the field of energy storage. Imre served most recently as Chief Scientist, Energy Storage at the U.S. Department of Energy. But he made his mark on the world and on those of us who knew him in industry over the nearly 40 years before during which he served as the Director of Energy Storage Research at the Department of Energy.
Today storing electricity on the grid to use when needed is a mainstream technology with a market size in excess of $265 billion. It is therefore difficult to appreciate how novel, and indeed how absurd, the concept of large-scale electrochemical storage of electricity was 40 years ago. That was the world a small band of dreamers stepped into with Imre at their head. Any visitor to Imre’s tiny office buried deep within the bowels of the Forrestal Building could quickly sense the bet against being placed by policymakers at the time.
There is much debate today about the proper role of government in investing in new technologies. What Imre did with energy storage at the U.S. Department of Energy may well be a template for how to do it right. Imre investigated a wide range of energy storage technologies, some of which worked and some of which were less successful. But he focused heavily on demonstrating the feasibility of these new technologies in the real, commercial world. Energy storage became a mature technology not so much because electrochemistry improved, but because Imre identified and funded real-world demonstration projects that de-risked the technology in the eyes of those in industry who would eventually deploy it.
The de-risking of energy storage on the grid is what transformed a small band of dreamers into an important industry that today provides the backbone for delivery of clean and reliable electricity to the American people and increasingly to people all around the world. This transformation was Imre’s great accomplishment and will be his great legacy.
But Imre was more than just a government scientist. He was a thinker and a true intellectual. I always enjoyed dinners with Imre, where discussion would often turn to a wide array of new technologies, how they relate to one another, and their impact on the world. I will always remember Imre’s telling me that electricity storage was really just about creating a new dimension in energy. Electricity had no real value until Edison figured out a way to move electrons over space. With energy storage, we are simply figuring out a way to move electrons over time. It may be years until we fully understand the power and value of this new dimension.
I suspect that Imre today is busy discovering a new dimension. NAATBatt extends its condolences to Nora, to the rest of Imre’s family and to all of those in government and industry who had the privilege of knowing this interesting and extraordinary man. Rest in peace.