Dive Summary:

• Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy and Stanford University have designed the "flow" battery to smooth the fluctuations of intermittent solar and wind power stressing the grid.
• The battery is less expensive than other batteries, lasts longer, and can improve scalability and cost-effectiveness, researchers said.
• So far, the battery has demonstrated impressive energy-storage performance through 2,000 charges and discharges which is the equivalent of 5.5 years of daily charge.

From the article:

“Wind and solar power show great potential as low-carbon sources of electricity, but they depend on the weather,” said co-author Sally Benson, a research professor of energy resource engineering at Stanford and the director of GCEP. “As the percentage of electricity from these sources increases, grid operators will need energy storage to help balance supply with demand. To our knowledge, this study is the first to actually quantify the energetic costs of grid-scale storage over time.”