Oxford Engineering collaboration wins Faraday Institution Innovation Award for battery research

Oxford Engineering researchers and Bboxx have won the Battery Innovation Programme – Innovation Award at the 2026 Faraday Institution Community Awards, recognising their work to improve battery health, lifetime and reliability in off-grid energy systems.

Led by Professor David Howey from our department along with Christopher Baker-Brian, Chief Technology Officer at Bboxx, the collaboration combines battery science, machine learning and large-scale real-world data to understand how batteries perform outside laboratory conditions.

The team has worked with hundreds of gigabytes of battery telemetry data from more than 700,000 connected devices deployed across more than ten African countries. This has enabled researchers to develop new approaches to battery diagnostics, degradation modelling and lifetime prediction.

The research is particularly relevant to off-grid energy systems, where battery failure can affect the reliability and affordability of electricity. In a field trial in Rwanda, for example, battery management strategies developed through the collaboration extended the lifetime of older lead-acid batteries by up to 25 per cent.

The research is now being translated into Bboxx’s operational systems. Battery health diagnostic algorithms developed at Oxford are being incorporated into product management software for newer lithium-ion batteries, while ongoing research is exploring ways to extend battery lifetimes under the environmental conditions found in sub-Saharan Africa.

The long-running collaboration has also produced open datasets, peer-reviewed research, doctoral projects and a patent application, demonstrating how research can move from laboratory and field studies into technologies used at scale. Professor

David Howey said: “We’re delighted for this work to be recognised by the Faraday Institution. It’s been a huge team effort over more than a decade; it’s wonderful to see this come to fruition and start to impact real-world device performance.”

The Faraday Institution award recognises the collaboration’s contribution to translating battery research into practical applications with benefits for energy users across Africa.

Read the full Faraday Institution award story here: https://www.faraday.ac.uk/battery-innovation-programme-innovation-award-winner-university-of-oxford-and-bboxx/?utm_source=chatgpt.com