The search for long-duration energy storage

If we’re going to fully decarbonize the electric grid, we’re going to need longer-duration energy storage. Second, it doesn’t cost much to scale up their storage capacity, so that adding additional duration is mostly a matter of https://themors.com/two-silvers-one-surge-how-hall-and-ogden-rewrote-the-days-script-for-team-usa/ bigger storage reservoirs, like larger tanks, basins, or underground caverns. Massachusetts defined three buckets of longer-duration energy storage – mid-duration for energy storage between 4 hours and 10 hours, long-duration for between 10 hours and 24 hours, and multi-day for anything over 24 hours. There has been a lot of excitement in the energy world around the promise of long-duration energy storage (LDES) and emerging technologies challenging the dominance of lithium-ion batteries. Optional personal message to include with the shared article. ESS has already installed a 2 MW flow battery for a utility in Sacramento, California, and has received state-level funding to add an additional 3.6 MW battery.

• That can mean remote sites replacing diesel, industrial facilities protecting critical operations, hyperscalers managing power constraints, or grids preparing for extended renewable shortfalls.
• Technologies within each emissions scenario include different combinations of existing storage technologies (including lithium ion and pumped hydro storage in the base case), redux flow batteries, thermal storage, and hydrogen electrolysis at different prices.
• The agreement includes a 300 MW / 30 GWh iron-air battery system from Form Energy, designed to discharge for up to 100 hours.
• Some incubator projects being championed in New York include a sodium-ion battery, a vanadium redox flow battery and a super-capacitor demonstration.
• Interconnection backlogs are slowing the deployment of new solar and wind at a time when load forecasts are anticipating significant growth due to new demand from data centers, manufacturing, and electrification.

These are becoming a structural feature of high-renewables grids. They are starting to face multi-day gaps in supply, where wind and solar output drop simultaneously. In partnership with Third Derivative, this article explores where long-duration energy storage is already becoming relevant, which technologies are best positioned, and what needs to happen for the market to scale. Focuses on emerging long-duration energy storage solutions and their potential to store renewable energy for extended periods, enhancing grid reliability. Clean Energy Group will be hosting a panel discussion on long-duration energy storage with experts representing state, utility, and academic perspectives on June 2. In the coming months, we will be releasing more resources to raise awareness of the value that long-duration storage can deliver and overcome the challenges the sector is facing.

Utility-scale energy storage systems are large rechargeable batteries that store energy and discharge it into the grid when needed — including during extreme weather events or periods of high grid strain. Lithium-ion is the dominant chemistry for battery energy storage systems today, thanks to its high energy density and ability to withstand many charging and discharging cycles, the same factors that have made it the default choice for electric cars. It uses lithium-ion batteries to capture excess electricity from the grid and release it when needed later, typically during solar and wind down times. But during times of peak load, grids need more power. These battery energy storage systems (BESS) store intermittent renewable energy generation and quickly release it when it’s most needed, smoothing out the country’s power production curves.

1.2. Ancillary Services

Parker knows this firsthand because he previously led business development at VionX Energy, a vanadium flow battery company that fell on hard times and was sold to the vanadium miner Largo. While adding long-duration batteries to the grid brings major benefits, companies developing them acknowledge that getting the timing right is tricky. “Those performance advantages for the lithium-ion batteries have come from the automotive industry,” he says.

A full-sized battery could include dozens of shipping containers spread out over a few hectares. The Long Duration Energy Storage Council, a group that advocates on behalf of companies developing these technologies, estimates that the amount of long-duration energy storage could reach 1.5–2.5 TW by 2040. A 2023 DOE report estimated that the US would need 225–460 GW of long-duration energy storage—defined in the report as 10–160 h of battery duration—to build a fully decarbonized electricity grid by 2060. But the market for long-duration energy storage is only just starting to materialize, and many utilities are hesitant to jump from lithium-ion systems that last a few hours to multiday batteries like Form’s. As solar and wind farms proliferated, he predicted, utilities would need batteries cheap enough to supply electricity for multiple days during cloudy spells or wind lulls. Now several companies say they have developed cheaper technologies, including flow batteries and metal-air batteries, that promise to unlock long-duration energy storage.

Any version of the future — even one under Trump — includes bits of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Long-duration energy storage (LDES) is a cost-effective option to increase grid reliability and resilience so that reliable, affordable electricity is available whenever and wherever to everyone. The labs, in partnership with a broad network of industry and community stakeholders, are working to develop a comprehensive plan for LDES commercialization that can be adopted by regions, markets, and communities across the country. The Consortium aims to examine the challenges facing LDES technologies as well as to collaboratively develop a set of actionable recommendations to address them. Other storage technologies exist, but some, such as pumped hydro and compressed air, present environmental and land-use challenges in addition to high costs.

DOE’s billion dollar bet: The largest-ever loan supporting long duration energy storage

Energy storage addresses traditional challenges like resource adequacy and transmission congestion. We emphasize energy storage benefits, from integrating renewable resources and reducing environmental impacts to saving customers money and improving grid reliability and resilience. Compared to regions with slow queues and a heavy reliance on clunky capacity markets like PJM, ERCOT has avoided the price hikes plaguing other regions. Unlike the solar and wind tax credits, which the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (“OBBBA”) will phase down quickly, the federal tax credits for energy storage have been left largely unchanged. They can smooth out supply and demand, improve integration with solar and wind energy, and support grid flexibility and reliability.

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This technology cleverly takes advantage of the unused capacity in the system, storing surplus energy during periods of low demand and dispatching stored energy when necessary. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) collect and store electrical energy generated from renewable and non-renewable energy sources for later use. Some incubator projects being championed in New York include a sodium-ion battery, a vanadium redox flow battery and a super-capacitor demonstration.

But sudden demand growth and the ravages of time have brought a new set of challenges. But the grid today may not be the grid of tomorrow — or at least that’s the argument of the long-duration energy storage industry. In much of the country, electricity markets are set up to optimize the delivery of energy on very short time frames at the lowest cost, and to ensure ancillary services that can keep the grid stable from second to second. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. Long-duration energy storage (LDES) is broadly defined as eight hours or more of discharge, up to multi-day.3 LDES installations rose by 49% in 2025 to more than 15 gigawatt-hours.

Battery technology selection is the first step in designing a safe, reliable, and efficient utility-scale energy storage system. This reduces reliance on immediate power generation and consumption, enabling faster response times and around-the-clock delivery of electricity during the most critical and strategic timeframes. With more pressure on an already strained system, utility-scale energy storage is critical to strengthening the electric grid. It repealed many of the Biden administration’s most aggressive climate policies, including tax credits for solar and wind energy. In this way, there is always something proleptic about discussing emissions policy — really, you are trying to secure additional emissions reductions.

• As we strive to scale clean energy and decarbonize grids worldwide, long-duration energy storage (LDES) is emerging as a crucial solution.
• The Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) program invests in projects that accelerate the implementation of long duration energy storage solutions to increase the resiliency and reliability of our energy infrastructure and meet the state’s energy and climate goals.
• Industry experts have also stated a need for additional financing support for these new technologies because of higher risks of technology nonperformance that are difficult to ensure against for very new technologies.
• Long-duration energy storage is one of the final keys needed to unlock full decarbonization of the energy system.

Scaling LDES to support energy suppliers in offering clean energy projects that meet their customers’ goals requires overcoming significant challenges, particularly in reducing costs and improving market viability. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), https://purrvilla.com/pet-tips-that-make-life-extra-pawsome.html additional annual renewable capacity grew by 50% globally in 2023, reaching a record 510 GW of annual capacity, with solar leading the charge. The variability of these energy sources necessitates storage solutions that can provide energy dispatchability over extended periods—sometimes for days or even weeks.

Batteries, Batteries Everywhere: Battery-Powered Appliances are Reshaping the Electric Grid

Policies that reduce fossil fuel generation could include renewable or clean energy standards, carbon emissions cap-and-trade programs, and emissions standards for power plants. Long-duration storage could potentially take advantage of this opportunity but would need to compete with other clean firm resources like advanced nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, and possibly gas with carbon capture. Compared with short-duration storage, long-duration storage may need to take greater advantage of long-term revenue opportunities like capacity markets, where suppliers are paid to be available to provide power when the system is running low on excess supply (Scott 2023). Integration of longer-duration energy storage can extend the duration of moderate prices, with those prices being determined by hydrogen or another advanced technology.