DOE, partners sign agreement to accelerate long-duration energy storage technologies
Storage

DOE, partners sign agreement to accelerate long-duration energy storage technologies

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and several partners have signed an MOU aimed at accelerating the commercialization of long-duration energy storage.

Long-duration energy storage is becoming increasingly important as more renewable energy sources are added to the grid. LDES systems can store and discharge a significant amount of energy, from hours to days or even weeks. Different conventional and novel technologies are being explored and developed, including compressed air energy storage, flow batteries, pumped hydro and thermal energy storage.

The Biden Administration wants to jumpstart the development and domestic manufacturing of these technologies by 2030. DOE’s Long Duration Storage Shot program establishes a target to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade.

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Goals of the MOU include:

-The dissemination of knowledge about the technological, economic and resilience benefits afforded by long duration energy storage.

-Providing access to specific DOE and national lab core competencies in energy storage and infrastructure integration for supporting research, development, demonstration and deployment purposes.

-Using knowledge provided individually by regulators, electric companies, technology vendors, and the financial community to identify barriers to LDES deployment and potential solutions to those barriers.

Among other highlights, DOE and its partners plan to host an industry-focused LDES technical summit in 2024.

Parties involved in the collaboration include the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions (OTT), the Edison Electric Institutes’ Institute for the Energy Transition, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council).