Battery Technologies and Energy Storage Solutions

Energy storage has emerged as critical technology to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in the transportation and energy generation industries. Most research effort and investor interest is focused on battery technologies, which are the common denominator to electric vehicles and renewable energy grid storage applications. But the diverse use cases and cost/performance trade-offs mean tomorrow's energy landscape will feature a diversity of storage technologies. As Europe moves to a low-carbon economy, more investment in energy storage technologies will be needed to cope with the twin challenges of creating a greener transportation system and boosting renewable energy production. In 2012, 23.5 percent of electricity in the EU was produced from renewable sources and that share will need to grow to around 36 percent by 2020 if the European Union is to meet its targets to have reduced greenhouse emissions by at least 20 percent compared with 1990 levels. With the growth of intermittent renewable sources, power generators face an increasingly complex task trying to match supply to demand. Grid-scale storage technologies allow them to decouple fluctuations in supply from demand by storing the surplus energy until it can be released to the grid. Another big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions is transportation. Electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions and can reduce total CO2 emissions by up to 40 percent. In 2014, more than 75,000 new electric vehicles were registered in Europe, a 37 percent rise over the previous year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. However, EVs currently only represent 0.5 percent of new car sales, so clearly there is a lot of market resistance that advances in battery price/performance could help dispel. New Battery Technologies for Grid-scale Storage and EVs Chemical batteries are one of the oldest energy storage technologies and one of the most versatile. The same basic chemistry that powers a torch battery is also used in grid-scale power storage and EVs. Lead-acid batteries are not suited to these types of application, but NiCd batteries have been deployed in early EV models in the 2000s and in a few grid-connected storage schemes. On the Caribbean island of Bonair, a 3MW NiCd storage system is used to stabilize the energy fluctuations from wind farms. Newer technologies like Nickel-Metal-Hybrides (NiMH) and, more recently, Lithium-Ion (Li-ion) offer better energy densities than NiCd and do not use toxic cadmium. While initially more expensive, the cost of NiMH and Li-ion batteries have fallen significant thanks to economies of scale and technological improvements. One of the big challenges for battery manufacturers targeting grid-scale and EV applications is that the batteries need different characteristics to those used in consumer electronic devices. EV batteries, for example, are required to deliver high power and high energy capacity while conforming to space and weight limitations. Cost is another big factor and while EV adoption is subsidised by many governments, the high cost of EV battery packs remains a major obstacle to widespread EV adoption. "If developers can drive down prices to $200/kWh or less at the pack level, they have a chance of selling millions of EVs by the mid- to late-2020s," says Cosmin Laslau, Senior Analyst at Lux Research. The analyst firm estimates the current cost of Li-ion packs vary from $260/kWh to $360/kWh depending on manufacturer. One for the road: Li-ion The main contender for EV batteries today is Li-ion. While the standard Toyota Prius continues to use old fashioned NiMH batteries, recent Plug ins and pure electrics all use lithium-ion (Li-on). The use of Li-ion battery technology offers higher energy density and so its use is predicted to increase rapidly as the EV industry grows and battery pack costs fall. However, NiMH batteries might relive a comeback as chemical company BASF announced that the basic type of battery used now in hybrids could be improved tenfold, leading to cheaper electric cars. (1) As well as its applications in the EV market, Li-ion is poised to become a significant battery storage technology for power grid applications. According to analyst firm Navigant Research, Li-ion currently leads other battery techniques for grid-scale storage with 118 MW of installed capacity. The cost of Li-ion batteries for grid-scale applications is predicted to follow a similar downward trend to EV battery backs with $500/kWh predicted for 2025 by Lux Research. There are several other promising battery technologies that while less mature are also targeting automotive and utility-scale energy storage applications. Sodium-sulphur batteries have become available commercially in the past decade. NaS batteries offer relatively high energy density and offer much higher capacities than other types of battery. The materials used in the battery are easy to recycle but the main disadvantage lies in the high operating temperatures needed to keep the sodium and sulphur electrodes molten. Swedish utility Vattenfall uses a 1MW Na-S battery to balance short-term fluctuations in Berlin’s power grid. Targeting industrial and grid-scale storage Manufacturers of NaS batteries are exclusively targeting industrial and grid-scale storage as the technology proved ill-suited to automotive applications. In contrast, sodium-nickel chloride batteries, which have similar chemistry, have been used to power heavy-duty electric vehicles since the 1990s. Electric and hybrid buses in Bologna, Rome, Lyon, Barcelona and Madrid have NaNiCl2 batteries. Lithium–sulphur technology is still at an experimental stage but is attracting is receiving a lot of interest because its theoretical energy density exceeds that of lithium-ion batteries at much lower cost. Sources: - "Overview of current development in electrical energy storage technologies and the application potential in power system operation", School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Applied Energy 137 (2015) 511–536 - "Old battery type gets an energy boost", MIT Technology Review - "Commercialization of Energy in Europe", Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCHJU), European Commission, Final Report, October 2014

Battery Technologies and Energy Storage Solutions

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