Energy storage: constant challenges vs. huge potential
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2020/12/16 10:09:15
For sectors such as stationary storage or EVs, regulation and government support play a key role, with the potential to both stifle and encourage growth. There are challenges inherent in the sector, such as the constant trade-off between the existing capabilities of energy storage technologies and the demands they are required to meet. For example, while current lithium-ion battery technology, and some supportive regulations, have allowed EVs to become part of the mainstream discussion for transport decarbonization, they still constitute a tiny portion of the total on-road transport market. Improvements to battery performance are still required. One option for this comes from solid-state batteries utilizing lithium metal anodes, which offer the possibility for improved safety and greater energy density. However, challenges remain for the deployment of large solid-state batteries at scale.
While the widespread use of solid-state electrolytes for automotive batteries is still some years away, they have already found commercial use in other sectors, such as medical devices. Solid-state electrolytes can also be used in flexible, printed, and thin-film batteries in applications such as wearables or skin patches, demonstrating potential growth applications for batteries outside the widely discussed stationary and EV markets. Figure 1 shows how sector demand will drive the development and application of flexible, printed, and thin-film batteries.
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