In December 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released the Energy Storage Grand Challenge Roadmap, the Department’s first comprehensive energy storage strategy. DOE previously released a draft version of this Roadmap in July 2020 along with a Request for Information (RFI). The Department reviewed the comments from stakeholders and made updates and modifications to the Roadmap based on this feedback.

Announced in January 2020 by DOE, the Energy Storage Grand Challenge (ESGC) seeks to create and sustain American leadership in energy storage. 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 competitively manufacture technologies at scale in the United States, and ensuring secure supply chains to enable domestic manufacturing. The Roadmap includes an aggressive but achievable goal: to develop and domestically manufacture energy storage technologies that can meet all U.S. market demands by 2030.

The Roadmap outlines a Department-wide strategy to accelerate innovation across a range of storage technologies based on three concepts: Innovate Here, Make Here, Deploy Everywhere. Recognizing the breadth of storage technologies and the ambitious nature of the goal, DOE has identified initial aggressive 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. 

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

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.

DOE values stakeholder input and will continue to offer opportunities for feedback. Register to receive ESGC news to receive updates. 

Download the final Roadmap below.