According to a 2020 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL): Contact online >>
According to a 2020 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL):
The 5 Most Promising Long-Duration Storage Technologies Left Standing
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Cheap, long-lasting iron-based batteries could help even out renewable energy supplies and expand the use of clean power.
For a few seconds on a sunny afternoon last April, renewables broke a record for California''s main electric grid, providing enough power to supply 94.5% of demand. The moment was hailed as a milestone on the path to decarbonization. But what happens when the sun sets and the breeze stops?
Handling the fluctuating power production of renewables will require cheap storage for hours or even days at a time. New types of iron-based batteries might be up to the task.
Oregon-based ESS, whose batteries can store energy for between four and 12 hours, launched its first grid-scale projects in 2021. Massachusetts-based Form Energy, which raised $240 million in 2021, has batteries that store power for up to 100 hours. Its first installation will be a one-megawatt pilot plant in Minnesota, slated to be completed in 2023.
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Both companies rely on batteries that use iron, one of the most abundant materials on the planet. This means that their offerings could eventually be cheaper than other grid storage candidates, like lithium-ion and vanadium flow batteries. Form says its batteries could ultimately cost just $20 per kilowatt-hour, lower than even optimistic projections for lithium-ion batteries in the next several decades.
There are still challenges to address: iron batteries typically have low efficiency, meaning a good fraction of the energy that''s put into them can''t be recovered. Unwanted side reactions can also degrade them over time. But if iron-based batteries can be deployed widely, at a low enough cost, they could help power more of the world with renewable energy.
As part of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies series, learn about ESS''s ambitious plans to install iron batteries for grid storage around the world.
As the climate changes, genetic engineering will be essential for growing food. But is it creating a race of superweeds?
Jennifer Doudna, the co-developer of CRISPR, says there''s a "coming revolution" in climate-adapted crops and animals.
Researchers, farmers, and global agricultural institutions are embracing long-neglected crops that promise better nutrition and more resilience to the changing climate.
As the world considers how to establish a path toward limiting the rise in global temperatures by curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is widely recognized that the power-generation sector has a central role to play. Responsible for one-third of total global carbon emissions, the sector''s role is, in fact, doubly crucial, since decarbonizing the rest of the economy vitally depends on the growing demand for renewable electricity (for example in electric vehicles and residential heating).
This article is a collaborative effort by Alberto Bettoli, Martin Linder, Tomas Nauclér, Jesse Noffsinger, Suvojoy Sengupta, Humayun Tai, and Godart van Gendt, representing views from McKinsey''s Electric Power & Natural Gas Sustainability Practices, and the Battery Accelerator Team.
Most projections suggest that in order for the world''s climate goals to be attained, the power sector needs to decarbonize fully by 2040. And the good news is that the global power industry is making giant strides toward reducing emissions by switching from fossil-fuel-fired power generation to predominantly wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) power.
However, the rising share of renewables in the power mix brings with it new challenges. Not least of these are the structural strains on existing power-generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure created by new flows of electricity and by the inherent variability of renewables, including potential imbalances in supply and demand, changes in transmission flow patterns, and the potential for greater system instability.
One answer, explored in a new industry report with insights and analysis from McKinsey, is long-duration energy storage (LDES). The report, authored by the LDES Council, a newly founded, CEO-led organization, is based on more than 10,000 cost and performance data points from council technology member companies. It argues that timely development of a long-duration energy-storage market with government support would enable the energy system to function smoothly with a large share of power coming from renewables, and would thus make a substantial contribution to decarbonizing the economy.
The various novel LDES technologies are at different levels of maturity and market readiness, but they are attracting unprecedented interest from governments, utilities, and transmission operators, and investment in the sector is rising fast: more than five gigawatts (GW) and 65 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of LDES capacity has been announced or is already operational.
This is only a start: McKinsey modeling for the study suggests that by 2040, LDES has the potential to deploy 1.5 to 2.5 terawatts (TW) of power capacity—or eight to 15 times the total energy-storage capacity deployed today—globally. Likewise, it could deploy 85 to 140 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy capacity by 2040 and store up to 10 percent of all electricity consumed. This corresponds to a cumulative investment of $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion (Exhibit 2).
We estimate that by 2040, LDES deployment could result in the avoidance of 1.5 to 2.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent per year, or around 10 to 15 percent of today''s power sector emissions. In the United States alone, LDES could reduce the overall cost of achieving a fully decarbonized power system by around $35 billion annually by 2040.
The scale of these numbers reflects the multiple use cases for LDES technologies and the central role they can play in balancing the power system and making it more efficient. These include support for system stability, firming corporate power-purchase agreements, and optimization of energy for industries with remote or unreliable grids. But by far the largest proportion of deployment is expected to be related to the central tasks of energy shifting, capacity provision, and transmission and distribution (T&D) optimization in bulk power systems (see Exhibit 2).
One key benefit of LDES is that it entails low marginal costs for storing electricity: it enables the decoupling of the quantity of electricity stored and the speed with which it is taken in (charged) or released (discharged); it is widely deployable and scalable; and it has relatively low lead times when compared with the upgrading of T&D grids. This makes it competitive with other forms of energy storage such as lithium-ion batteries, dispatchable-hydrogen assets, and pumped-storage hydropower, and economically preferable to expensive and protracted grid upgrades. Indeed, the evidence shows that in many applications, it is likely to be the most cost-competitive solution for energy storage beyond a duration of six to eight hours.
As a result, while novel LDES technologies are still nascent, deployment could accelerate rapidly in the next few years. Our modeling projects installation of 30 to 40 GW power capacity and one TWh energy capacity by 2025 under a fast decarbonization scenario.
A key milestone for LDES is reached when renewable energy (RE) reaches 60 to 70 percent market share in bulk power systems, which many countries with high climate ambitions aim to reach between 2025 and 2035. This would likely include the United Kingdom, the United States, and many other developed countries which have made net-zero commitments prior to the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November. This RE penetration catalyzes widespread deployment of LDES as the lowest-cost flexibility solution.
Hitting these targets requires significant reductions in the cost of LDES technologies. But projections provided by LDES Council member companies show these are achievable and in line with learning curves experienced in other nascent energy technologies in the recent past, including solar PV and wind power. In turn, cost reductions will be dependent on improvements in R&D, volumes deployed, and scale efficiencies in manufacturing. Similarly, total LDES deployment is closely tied to the rate of decarbonization of the power sector and the deployment of variable RE generation.
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