Prospective improvements in cost and cycle life of off-grid lithium-ion battery packs: An analysis informed by expert elicitations

Sheridan Few, Oliver Schmidt, Gregory J. Offer, Nigel Brandon, Jenny Nelson and Ajay Gambhir

Energy Policy, 2018, vol. 114, issue C, 578-590

Abstract: This paper presents probabilistic estimates of the 2020 and 2030 cost and cycle life of lithium-ion battery (LiB) packs for off-grid stationary electricity storage made by leading battery experts from academia and industry, and insights on the role of public research and development (R&D) funding and other drivers in determining these. By 2020, experts expect developments to arise chiefly through engineering, manufacturing and incremental chemistry changes, and expect additional R&D funding to have little impact on cost. By 2030, experts indicate that more fundamental chemistry changes are possible, particularly under higher R&D funding scenarios, but are not inevitable. Experts suggest that significant improvements in cycle life (eg. doubling or greater) are more achievable than in cost, particularly by 2020, and that R&D could play a greater role in driving these. Experts expressed some concern, but had relatively little knowledge, of the environmental impact of LiBs. Analysis is conducted of the implications of prospective LiB improvements for the competitiveness of solar photovoltaic + LiB systems for off-grid electrification.

Keywords: Lithium ion batteries; Electricity storage; Innovation; Research, development, and demonstration; Expert elicitation; Off-grid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517308595
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:114:y:2018:i:c:p:578-590

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.12.033

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().