Energy · around 2032

Cheap long-duration grid storage

Projection

Batteries and other stores that hold days of power make solar and wind dispatchable around the clock.

Iron-air, sodium-ion, flow batteries, thermal and compressed-air storage aim at much cheaper energy per kilowatt-hour than lithium-ion. Multi-day storage would let grids run mostly on variable renewables.

Why it’s plausible: Battery pack prices have fallen steeply for decades and several multi-day chemistries are in pilot deployment; it depends on continued manufacturing scale and grid market rules that pay for firm capacity.

See it in the living treeWikipedia