In this Backstory, Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues explain how their cost-focused approach led to the discovery of an affordable battery technology based on readily available materials. The ProblemCan batteries ever reach the cost of pumped hydroelectric storage, which today constitutes more than 99% of the deployed energy storage in the world, but has limited growth potential due to its geographical and environmental constraints? This was the overarching question that motivated our project team, which had a 5-year mandate from the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) to answer such challenges. If achieved, such storage could scale in a way that allows intermittent renewable generation (wind and solar) to truly compete with fossil fuel-based electricity generation. Of JCESR's audacious goals captured by their motto ''5-5-5'' (meaning 5 times reduction in cost, 5 times increase in energy density, accomplished in 5 years), for grid storage the authors considered the cost challenge to be the most important by far, since almost any electrochemical approach would have a hundred times or higher energy density compared to pumped hydro. Energy density was mainly important insofar as it enabled more compact systems of lower cost. Thus, we obsessed about the cost-per-stored-energy metric, US$/kWh, although other attributes such as lifetime, safety, and toxicity of components would naturally also be important.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.