The US Department of Energy (DOE) released the Energy Storage Grand Challenge Roadmap, the Department’s first comprehensive energy storage strategy. Announced in January 2020 by US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette, the Energy Storage Grand Challenge (ESGC) seeks to create and sustain American leadership in energy storage.

Over the last four fiscal years (FY17–20), DOE has invested more than $1.6 billion into energy storage research and development—$400 million per year, on average. While technology offices have established individual goals and targets, the Department has never had a comprehensive strategy to address energy storage. This is why the US Secretary of Energy announced the Energy Storage Grand Challenge in January 2020.

In addition to concerted research efforts, the Roadmap’s approach includes accelerating the transition of technologies from the lab to the marketplace, focusing on ways to manufacture competitively technologies at scale in the United States, and ensuring secure supply chains to enable domestic manufacturing.

The Roadmap includes an aggressive but what it says in an achievable goal: to develop and domestically manufacture energy storage technologies that can meet all US market demands by 2030.

DOE also released two companion ESGC reports: the 2020 Grid Energy Storage Technology Cost and Performance Assessment and the Energy Storage Market Report 2020. These reports provide data that informed the Roadmap and provide accessible and easily referenced information for the entire energy stakeholder community.

The Roadmap outlines a DOE-wide strategy to accelerate innovation across a range of storage technologies based on three concepts: Innovate Here; Make Here; and Deploy Everywhere.

Recognizing the breadth of storage technologies and the ambitious nature of the goal, DOE has identified initial cost targets focused on user-centric applications with substantial growth potential.

With six use cases that identify energy storage applications, benefits, and functional requirements for 2030 and beyond, the ESGC has identified cost and performance targets, which include:

• $0.05/kWh levelized cost of storage for long-duration stationary applications, a 90% reduction from 2020 baseline costs by 2030. Achieving this levelized cost target would facilitate commercial viability for storage across a wide range of uses including: meeting load during periods of peak demand, grid preparation for fast charging of electric vehicles, and applications to ensure reliability of critical services.

  Other emerging applications for stationary storage include serving remote communities, increasing facility flexibility, increasing the resilience of interdependent networks, and facilitating the transformation of the power system.

• $80/kWh manufactured cost for a battery pack by 2030 for a 300-mile range electric vehicle—a 44% reduction from the current cost of $143 per rated kWh. Achieving this cost target would lead to cost competitive electric vehicles and could benefit the production, performance, and safety of batteries for stationary applications.

DOE recognizes that both operational cost and manufacturing cost declines are required to enable domestic manufacturers to produce technologies that are cost competitive. As markets evolve and R&D advances, the ESGC will refine these focal targets as well as other cost and performance targets, presented later in the Roadmap, for additional energy storage applications.

The ESGC employs a use case framework to ensure that storage technologies can cost effectively meet specific needs and incorporates a broad range of technologies in several categories: electrochemical, electromechanical, thermal, flexible generation, flexible buildings, and power electronics.

DOE is taking a holistic approach to meet the ESGC goal by establishing five tracks, starting with fundamental R&D for storage technologies and following through to production and deployment.

• The Technology Development Track aligns DOE’s ongoing and future energy storage R&D around Use Cases and long-term leadership.

• The Manufacturing and Supply Chain Track will develop technologies, approaches, and strategies for US manufacturing that support and strengthen USleadership in innovation and continued at-scale manufacturing.

• The Technology Transition Track will work to ensure that DOE’s R&D transitions to markets through field validation, demonstration projects, public-private partnerships, bankable business model development, and the dissemination of high-quality market data.

• The Policy and Valuation Track will provide data, tools, and analysis to support policy decisions and maximize the value of energy storage.

• The Workforce Development Track will educate the workforce, who can then research, develop, design, manufacture, and operate energy storage systems.

The ESGC groups storage technologies into three focus areas:

• Bidirectional electrical storage (stationary and mobile)

• Chemical and thermal storage<>/p>

• Flexible generation and controllable loads

US leadership in energy storage requires an approach that enables American firms to compete in markets around the world. The ESGC provides information and analysis on demand outside the United States and identifies related opportunities for domestic energy storage manufacturing.

DOE will engage with the US Department of Commerce and other federal agencies to locate competitive international markets for US firms and develop strategies that ensure sustained US competitiveness in this high-growth sector.

Increased renewable energy generation and a decrease in battery storage costs have led to a stronger global focus on energy storage solutions and grid flexibility services. Energy storage offers an opportunity to identify the most cost-effective technologies for increasing grid reliability, resilience, and demand management.