DTN 102: Metal made in space lands on Earth

“Today, most lithium-ion battery systems provide power for only a few hours at a time, but the technology continues to get cheaper and better, says John-Joseph Marie, an energy storage analyst at the Faraday Institution who recently authored a report on stationary batteries. Production and engineering improvements are allowing some companies to plan lithium-ion storage projects that could, in the coming years, discharge up to 8 h of energy, about 4 times as long as an average battery in 2023. ‘That’s made it really difficult for anything else to really compete,’ Marie says. ‘It’s a constantly moving goalpost.’

Combining lithium-ion batteries with the generation of huge amounts of renewable electricity plus lots of new transmission lines to move that energy could go a long way toward decarbonizing the power grid, but building that infrastructure would be incredibly expensive.”