Lithium ion batteries enabled the revolution in personal electronics that gave us instant access to people and information, permanently changing the way society operates. Energy storage is now ready for two new transformative opportunities, electric vehicles and the electricity grid. Electric vehicles are more energy efficient, environmentally friendly and less expensive to operate, but have too short driving ranges, too long charging times and are too expensive to buy compared to gasoline vehicles. Storage on the grid enables widespread deployment of variable solar and wind electricity and breaks the historic coupling of instantaneous generation to instantaneous demand, but is too expensive compared to conventional generation and requires significant changes in grid operation and architecture for wide deployment. Electric vehicles and the grid require batteries of much greater energy and power at much lower cost than personal electronics.  Lithium-ion batteries continue to incrementally improve performance and lower cost at a steady rate; a new generation of beyond lithium-ion batteries has the potential for disruptively better performance and lower cost over today’s lithium-ion batteries.  These two technologies are the frontier in energy storage. The challenges for energy storage in transportation and the grid, and the opportunities for lithium-ion and beyond lithium-ion batteries to overcome them will be analyzed. <br/><br/>George Crabtree, Elizabeth Kocs and Lynn Trahey, The Energy Storage Frontier: Lithium-ion Batteries and Beyond, MRS Bulletin 40, 1067 (2015) <br/><br/>This work was supported as part of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, an Energy Innovation Hub funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences.

Energy storage for transportation and the electricity grid: Challenges and opportunities

251st National Meeting (2016)

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