Cleanly and affordably expanding the U.S. electric grid will require large amounts of energy storage and the Department of Energy is asking stakeholders to shine a light on potential manufacturing and design challenges that could limit deployment.
DOE’s Office of Electricity on Monday issued a request for information to help better understand the design decisions that impact energy storage production. The agency said it is seeking input from academics, industry, research labs, government agencies and other stakeholders. Responses are due June 10.
DOE is “specifically interested in gathering information on domestic pre-production manufacturability challenges that energy storage technology developers face when making design decisions that impact production of the technology, including scaling,” according to the RFI.
The RFI includes questions regarding:
- Metrics used to measure pre-production manufacturability improvement;
- How stakeholder collaboration would help address pre-production challenges;
- What investment levels are required to identify, analyze and address pre-production manufacturing challenges for targeted energy storage technology systems.
In recent years, battery manufacturers have been sold out on a rolling basis of six to 12-month, “making availability of cells difficult and driving cost increases for the stationary storage market with smaller orders,” the agency said. DOE also noted that recent agency analysis indicates up to 15 GW per year of manufacturing capacity will be needed by 2035 “to support mature technology deployment at scale for long duration energy storage.”
The “Pathways To Commercial Liftoff” assessment of long-duration energy storage also found that compressed air energy storage, liquid air energy storage and lithium-ion batteries “have high risk for manufacturing and assembly capacity, while some varieties of thermal energy storage and electrochemical batteries were found to have medium risk,” DOE said.
“Manufacturing domestic energy storage technologies on an industrial scale is foundational to increasing the affordability and widespread use of these technologies,” Gene Rodrigues, assistant secretary for electricity, said in a statement. “Responses to this RFI will help shape our understanding of manufacturability challenges and inform how we prioritize solutions.”
