INDUSTRY TRACK: Innovation in Long-Duration Energy Storage—Tackling Today’s Challenges to Enable Tomorrow’s Successes

The way we generate, store, transmit, and distribute energy is undergoing a radical, revolutionary transformation. Electrical energy storage, and long-duration energy storage (LDES) in particular, will feature prominently in the global energy infrastructure of the future. Historical pumped storage hydropower and modern lithium-ion batteries have opened our collective eyes to the realistic possibilities and potential value of deployed grid-scale energy storage. Still, anticipated extraordinary demands on energy storage will require new or improved technologies based on earth-abundant, environmentally sustainable, cost-effective materials and manufacturing processes. Today, however, these technologies remain technically underdeveloped, unproven at scale, or commercially immature. As electrical grids continue to grow at a historical pace while also racing toward cleaner, lower-carbon operation, there is an urgent opportunity and responsibility among innovators and technology developers to improve the performance, lifetime, safety, and value of emerging batteries beyond lithium-ion. By addressing fundamental technical challenges across battery structures, innovations not only offer show what new technologies are possible, but they lay a framework for performance validation and surety central to new technology adoption. Here, I will present a vision for technology-diverse LDES and highlight current efforts and opportunities where the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is working to support and enable the innovation, development, and commercialization of LDES. Through collaborative engagement and support of academia, national laboratories, and industry stakeholders, the DOE is working to support the advances needed to realize the future widespread deployment of emerging LDES technologies the world will need.