When the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity picked its horses in the long-duration storage race on April 8, three consortia split fifteen million dollars.
New Lab will tackle high-capacity zinc utilization through electrode and electrolyte fundamentals. Battery Council International leads the “Consortium for Lead Battery Leadership in LDES project.” CleanTech Strategies accelerates flow battery development. Each gets about $5 million. The condition: show a pathway to a levelized cost of storage of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour by 2030.
The projects address key technical and non-technical challenges, emphasizing strong collaboration in the zinc, lead, and flow battery industries, the agency said.
“These funding opportunities help propel the future of energy storage and deliver cost-effective solutions for our nation’s electricity needs,” Gene Rodrigues, assistant secretary for electricity, said in a statement.
The Long Duration Storage Shot launched in July 2021 under the Energy Earthshots Initiative, targeting a 90 percent cost reduction from a 2020 baseline by 2030. A $505 million four-year initiative followed in 2022, designed to lower barriers to grid energy storage and support both behind-the-meter pilots and utility-scale demonstrations. The three awards announced Monday are a slice of that effort.
Two state reports in February concluded long-duration storage could balance supply and demand across days and seasons. The California Independent System Operator may need 5 GW to 37 GW of it by 2045.
The technical reality: more than 90 percent of the roughly 20 gigawatts of storage installed since 2019 is lithium-ion limited to four hours or less. ScottMadden analysis shows California alone may need 37 gigawatts of 10-hour-plus storage by 2045 to retire its gas fleet.
DOE’s own liftoff analysis says system costs must fall 45 to 55 percent and round-trip efficiency must improve 7 to 15 percent by 2030 to compete with lithium-ion and hydrogen. Compensation mechanisms need to reach $50 to $75 per kilowatt per year. Supply chains must hit 3 gigawatts of annual manufacturing by 2030, then 10 to 15 gigawatts by 2035.
No single chemistry will dominate. The department hedges across electrochemical, mechanical and thermal pathways. Iron-air offers cheap materials but limited cycle life. Compressed air needs the right geology. Thermal systems are still scaling from pilots.
The Grid Storage Launchpad at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory opened in 2024 to test them all.
The department has not said which technologies move to the front of the queue.
Sources
- Long-Duration Energy Storage – Energy Industry Update V24 I2 – The Distance
- DOE taps 3 long-duration energy storage projects to receive $15M | Utility Dive
