Energy storage emerging: A perspective from the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research

Abstract

Energy storage is an integral part of modern society. A contemporary example is the lithium (Li)-ion battery, which enabled the launch of the personal electronics revolution in 1991 and the first commercial electric vehicles in 2010. Most recently, Li-ion batteries have expanded into the electricity grid to firm variable renewable generation, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of transmission and distribution. Important applications continue to emerge including decarbonization of heavy-duty vehicles, rail, maritime shipping, and aviation and the growth of renewable electricity and storage on the grid. This perspective compares energy storage needs and priorities in 2010 with those now and those emerging over the next few decades. The diversity of demands for energy storage requires a diversity of purpose-built batteries designed to meet disparate applications. Advances in the frontier of battery research to achieve transformative performance spanning energy and power density, capacity, charge/discharge times, cost, lifetime, and safety are highlighted, along with strategic research refinements made by the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) and the broader community to accommodate the changing storage needs and priorities. Innovative experimental tools with higher spatial and temporal resolution, in situ and operando characterization, first-principles simulation, high throughput computation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence work collectively to reveal the origins of the electrochemical phenomena that enable new means of energy storage. This knowledge allows a constructionist approach to materials, chemistries, and architectures, where each atom or molecule plays a prescribed role in realizing batteries with unique performance profiles suitable for emergent demands.

Keywords: Joint Center for Energy Storage Research; batteries; energy storage; grid; transportation.

Fig. 1.

Global average levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, wind, and Li-ion batteries. Reproduced with permission from ref. .

Fig. 2.

Capacity versus cycle number for bulk electrolysis cycling of the thioether-substituted cyclopropenium derivative 2-Me⁺, shown above. Pairing this monomer with an unoptimized organic negative electrolyte (N-alkylphthalimide 6) enabled the demonstration of a 3.2-V all-organic nonaqueous flow battery. Reprinted with permission from ref. . Copyright (2019) American Chemical Society.

Fig. 3.

PIMs can be synthesized for size selection with adjustable pore sizes up to 1.5 nm and for adaptive charge selection by incorporating redox switchable monomers that acquire charge after reaction with redox-active species in solution. Reproduced with permission from ref. .

Fig. 4.

Crystal structure of chemically magnesiated ζ-V₂O₅ derived from synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Mg resides in a pseudosquare-pyramidal site with a frustrated fivefold coordination. Reprinted from ref. , with permission from Elsevier.

Fig. 5.

Select performance and cost priorities for two hypothetical battery applications (i.e., A, electric car transportation; B, battery storing solar or wind energy for the grid). These distinct applications need separate purpose-designed batteries. Even for a single application, batteries typically cannot meet all of the performance needs simultaneously. These two challenges—a diversity of batteries for a diversity of uses and meeting all of the performance requirements for a given application—are the frontier of energy storage research.

Fig. 6.

JCESR pursues transformative materials, chemistries, and architectures designed at the atomic and molecular level and built from the bottom up, atom by atom and molecule by molecule, where each atom or molecule plays a prescribed role in enabling targeted overall performance. These transformative materials, chemistries, and architectures can be mixed and matched to purpose-design batteries for current and future applications.