Can Flow Batteries Finally Beat Lithium?

flango@lemmy.eco.br to Technology@lemmy.world – 202 points –
Can Flow Batteries Finally Beat Lithium?
spectrum.ieee.org

Amazing stuff.

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Flow batteries are great for long duration storage, but not good for high power delivery.

This means they will work far better as grid storage than as EV batteries.

What is your source?

High power is a matter of scaling (and size/space constraints). To increase the power output, the membrane size can be increased or multiple power cells can be installed as explained in the article:

If you want to store more energy, just increase the size of the solution storage tanks or the concentration of the solutions. If you want to provide more power, just stack more cells on top of one another or add new stacks.

https://piped.video/watch?v=YyzQsVzKylE

Lithium batteries scale power and capacity at the same time. Flow batteries can scale power and capacity independently.

The advantage of flow batteries is that they can have enormous capacities without the added cost of upgrading the power, making it ideal for grid scale storage.

Even if this new flow battery reaches the energy density of a lithium battery, and can output sufficient power, it would still need to reach price parity to be competitive.

The article is about advancements that are solving the density problem.