• Oil and gas shortages are accelerating interest in wind, solar, and especially battery storage as countries seek reliable alternatives.
• Researchers developed a low-cost “all-iron” flow battery with long life (6,000+ cycles), high efficiency, and no degradation—potentially a major improvement over lithium-ion.
• Cheaper, safer batteries could unlock large-scale renewable adoption, but concerns remain around scalability and global dependence on Chinese technology.

With oil and gas supply in a crunch, demand for alternatives has surged over the past two months. Analysts expect wind and solar to explode as countries seek to reduce their dependence on hydrocarbons that are now in short supply. For that to stand a chance of working, however, it needs one more thing: batteries. Cheap batteries. A team of Chinese scientists just announced a breakthrough in that area.

The news broke earlier this week, with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences saying they had developed what they called an “all-iron” flow battery that is a lot cheaper than the current market leader, lithium-ion technology, while also providing much better endurance than previous iron flow batteries.

“It offers a low-cost, long-life solution for large-scale energy storage,” the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a news release, as quoted by the South China Morning Post. The invention would help move low-cost battery storage for utility-scale wind and solar installations closer to reality. This has been challenging with lithium-ion technology because even though costs have fallen significantly, they are still uncomfortably high. There is also the risk of fire, which has made some communities reluctant to allow battery storage installations in their vicinity.

There is also the problem of degradation over time, which essentially limits the life of a lithium-ion battery, adding to the lifetime cost of the technology. According to news coverage of the new invention, the iron flow battery can endure more than 6,000 charge-discharge cycles, which is equivalent to 16 years of operating on a daily basis. Over that period, the researchers say their battery did not produce any harmful byproducts and demonstrated 99.4% leak-proof efficiency, according to Interesting Engineering reports.

The degradation part is important because previously degradation was the main problem of iron batteries, preventing them from becoming a serious contestant on the battery storage market. Leakage of materials from within the battery was also a challenge to be overcome by iron battery developers. Yet it appears it was worth it: iron is a lot cheaper than lithium, whose price has seen some wild swings over the past few years.

“The battery operated stably for over 6,000 cycles with no capacity decay. After 6,000 cycles, there was no precipitation, no accumulation of by-products and both the structure and reversibility remained intact,” the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in its news release, suggesting the biggest problem of iron flow batteries may have been solved.

The breakthrough comes at a very opportune moment for the solar and wind industries, as Europe and Asia scramble to keep the lights on amid the squeeze in natural gas. Both are betting big on alternative energy sources that need batteries for supply reliability. Indeed, in Europe, there is a push for bringing wind and solar on par with baseload generators in what the industry calls dynamic voltage control, that is, stabilizing the grid when voltage fluctuates. To be able to do this, wind and solar installations would need to be equipped with batteries so it could respond to a DVC situation regardless of the weather at the moment.

A cheaper, reliable battery has been elusive for years despite the strides made in battery storage technology. Whether this latest invention would live up to the promise remains to be seen—at first locally. Whether it would go international is also to be seen, as Europe worries about its dependence on Chinese technology for its promised transition to a net-zero energy system.

Various battery technologies are being pursued elsewhere as well, to offer diversification away from China, which completely dominates batteries, seeing its exports over the first quarter of the year surge by 50% on the year.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Irina Slav

Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

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