About

CENELEST is the German-Australian alliance for electrochemical technologies for the storage of renewable energy, founded by Fraunhofer ICT (Germany) and UNSW Sydney (Australia). Since 2017, the two institutions have worked together as an alliance, continuously developing the cooperation through the exchange of researchers and students. The joint research focus of the alliance is on redox flow batteries.

One alliance, two complementary partners

Fraunhofer ICT and UNSW Sydney contribute complementary strengths — together they cover the entire chain from fundamental materials research to applied systems.

Research laboratory at UNSW Sydney with a robotic test setup — **UNSW Sydney, Australia**Fundamental research, materials, modelling and rapid prototyping.

Electrochemical flow-cell setup at Fraunhofer ICT — **Fraunhofer ICT, Germany**Applied electrochemistry, cells, stacks, testing and systems.

Why CENELEST

The growing share of renewable energy makes stationary energy storage increasingly important — yet few storage technologies have so far reached the required technical maturity at competitive cost. Redox flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolytes, which decouples power from capacity and makes them the most direct route to large-scale stationary storage. CENELEST combines fundamental and applied research on exactly this technology, so that industry and research partners get a single contact point to the combined capabilities of both institutions.

Established in 2017

CENELEST was founded in 2017 by Fraunhofer ICT and UNSW Sydney. Since then, researchers and students have moved between Sydney and Pfinztal, steadily strengthening the cooperation between the two institutions.

Meet the team Advisory Board