Graphene Breakthrough Challenges Lithium Ion’s Dominance in Energy Storage

As the spread of renewable energy continues to ramp up around the world, finding more efficient and affordable technologies for energy storage has become a high-priority issue for global energy security.

While energy storage addition is making huge strides across the world, leading technologies – most notably lithium-ion batteries – have some critical drawbacks. As a result, the race to find the tech breakthrough to replace lithium-ion batteries is on as “clean energy’s next trillion-dollar business” heats up.

One of the newest breakthrough discoveries in this R&D race is a new form of graphene-based supercapacitor material that could have energy density comparable with lithium-ion batteries but would charge at a dramatically faster rate. The curved and accessible nature of the new graphene network design allowed the scientific team to break records for energy and power densities, potentially “paving the way for next-generation systems in electric transportation, grid support and everyday electronics” according to a recent report from ScienceDaily.

The study, which was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, noted that their new model shows great promise for durability in real-world applications. “Long-term stability is noted even under aggressive testing conditions,” the study states. This, too, shows great promise for competition with lithium-ion batteries, which are durable and perform well in a wide range of conditions and temperatures, all of which is critical for grid-scale energy storage solutions.

The issue with lithium-ion batteries is that, although they have high energy density and are extremely scalable, they can only hold onto energy for a maximum of about four hours. This poses a critical issue for long-term energy storage needs. In addition, lithium-ion batteries are associated with some critical safety concerns stemming from thermal runaway. Moreover, sourcing lithium comes with some serious downsides. Lithium extraction has heavy environmental and public health costs, and supply chains are dominated by China, presenting critical geopolitical trade-offs and vulnerabilities.

For this reason, a growing number of startups are racing to corner the market on the next-gen battery breakthrough that could unseat lithium from its dominant position in batterymaking. However, there is some question as to whether these ventures are actually financially viable. While lithium-ion batterymakers generally produce for electric vehicles as well as for energy storage, many alternative battery startups are focused on energy storage alone, meaning that their target market is both smaller and less diverse.

“This lack of revenue diversification poses a significant risk and leaves the companies more vulnerable to changes in market sentiment,” notes a recent Energy Storage News report. What’s more, “the non-traditional chemistry used means that currently the end market is considerably smaller than that for lithium-ion.” The financial future of leading alternative battery companies, including Invinity Energy Systems (vanadium flow), Eos Energy Enterprises Inc. (zinc), and ESS Tech Inc. (iron flow) is therefore uncertain, but there is cause for (cautious) optimism.

The energy storage market is on a massive growth trend, which is great news for battery-producers of all kinds. Despite a volatile policy environment, the renewable energy market is still going gangbusters on a global scale as solar and wind power have become too cheap to fail.

The tailwind that alternative battery companies are receiving from the rapidly growing storage sector “is aided by the increasing push towards long-duration energy storage (LDES), for which the battery chemistries provided by these companies are ideal,” Energy Storage News goes on to say. Long-term energy storage is set to be a critical component of global energy security and a massive industrial sector going forward, as renewable-dependent grids will need to balance energy demand and surplus over weeks, months, and seasons as opposed to hours.