A pair of Houston-based partners will design and build the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s $75 million Grid Storage Launchpad. 

Harvey|Harvey-Cleary and Kirksey Architecture were selected to design and construct the project by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, which announced the ambitious clean energy development center on March 10. 

The Launchpad project promises to help cement the Tri-Cities and Washington state as a center for clean energy development. Work begins this fall.

The partners are also the design-build team for the $90 million Energy Sciences Center being constructed on the PNNL campus in North Richland. In 2008-09, Harvey|Harvey-Cleary was the general contractor for a biological and computational sciences research center.

The Grid Storage Laboratory will provide validation and testing of grid storage technologies. The 85,000-square-foot building will include 30 research laboratories and other amenities to serve scientists and researchers.

The state of Washington is supporting with project with an $8.3 million grant to pay for equipment and instruments.