What if an electric bicycle’s frame was also its battery? Or an aircraft wing could store some of the electricity needed to power the aircraft? A new UK research programme is exploring a future in which batteries are no longer separate objects hidden inside products, but become part of the structures themselves.
Researchers at Imperial College London, Durham University and the University of Bristol are investigating structural power composites (SPCs) — materials designed to carry mechanical loads while simultaneously storing electrical energy.
The five-year EleComp (Electric Composites) programme, backed by a £7 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Programme Grant, could have significant implications for engineers and industrial designers.
Today, batteries generally exist as dedicated components. An electric vehicle, drone or portable electronic product needs space for battery cells, along with casings, connections and protection systems. All of this contributes additional mass and occupies valuable volume.
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Structural power composites propose a radically different approach: make the material already needed to form the product store energy as well.
That could allow designers to rethink familiar objects. Vehicle body panels might contribute to energy storage, for example, while lightweight consumer products could require fewer separate internal components. Potential applications extend from transport and aerospace to medical devices, electronics and infrastructure.
There is a considerable engineering challenge behind the concept. A good structural material needs strength and stiffness, while an effective energy-storage material needs to allow ions to move through it. Achieving both properties simultaneously requires compromises that conventional materials are not designed to make.
EleComp researchers will investigate new material architectures, manufacturing techniques, modelling and testing methods to address this problem, including approaches inspired by structures found in nature. The programme is also unusual because its researchers are looking beyond materials science alone. Its multidisciplinary team includes expertise in electrochemistry, composites and sustainability alongside anthropology.
That human perspective could become increasingly important if energy storage begins appearing in unexpected places. When the chair you sit on, the device you carry or the vehicle surrounding you can potentially become part of an energy system, questions emerge about repair, ownership, longevity, recycling and how people understand the objects they use.
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Structural energy-storage materials are already attracting wider attention. The World Economic Forum included structural battery composites among its top emerging technologies of 2025, highlighting their potential to reduce weight and improve efficiency, particularly in electric transport.
The EleComp programme now aims to provide some of the scientific foundations needed to move the technology towards practical applications. For designers, perhaps the most intriguing possibility is not simply a better battery. It is the removal of the battery as a distinct design problem. For more than a century, products have largely been designed around components with clearly separated jobs: a frame provides strength, electronics provide intelligence and a battery provides power. Structural power composites challenge that convention.
If successful, the technology could usher in a generation of products where the material forming an object is no longer passive. The structure itself could become part of the machine.