The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday announced three organizations will be awarded about $5 million each to help advance long-duration energy storage projects.
The projects, selected by DOE’s Office of Electricity, address research and development barriers in the domestic energy storage industry and must enable an LDES technology with a pathway to a $0.05/ kWh levelized cost of storage by 2030, the agency said.
The selected projects include a New Lab effort to enable high-capacity zinc utilization through electrode and electrolyte fundamentals; Battery Council International’s “Consortium for Lead Battery Leadership in LDES project;” and CleanTech Strategies’ work to accelerate the development of flow battery technologies.
The projects will address “key technical and non-technical challenges, emphasizing strong collaboration in the zinc, lead, and flow battery industries,” DOE said.
The agency announced the Long Duration Storage Shot challenge in 2021, seeking to reduce the cost of the resources by about 90%. And in 2022, the agency launched a $505 million four-year long-duration storage initiative to lower barriers to grid energy storage and support small-scale, behind-the-meter pilots as well as large utility-scale demonstrations.
“These funding opportunities help propel the future of energy storage and deliver cost-effective solutions for our nation’s electricity needs” Gene Rodrigues, assistant secretary for electricity, said in a statement. “These consortia will accelerate the race to achieve the Long Duration Storage Shot, fulfilling the promise of next-generation energy storage technologies.”
LDES can play a key role in decarbonization efforts, potentially helping to balance energy consumption and supply across days and seasons, two state reports concluded in February.
The California Independent System Operator could require from 5 GW to 37 GW of long-duration storage by 2045, depending on the retirement of in-state gas resources, the California Energy Commission said. And LDES could provide significant value to Maine’s grid during multi-day stretches of low wind and solar production, the Maine Governor’s Energy Office found.
