Development of inexpensive long-duration energy storage supports widespread deployment of variable renewable energy resources onto the electricity grid. Flow batteries are a promising class of devices for long-duration energy storage. Techno-economic modeling is needed to evaluate commercial feasibility of existing technologies and to help guide research and development of new technologies. Levelized cost of storage is a useful metric that accounts for capital and operating costs and energy throughput over the life of a project. This metric is used to compare the economic prospects of lithium ion to eight aqueous and two hypothetical nonaqueous flow batteries in four use cases. Flow batteries with inexpensive active materials are favored in long-duration applications.

开发廉价的长期储能支持将可变的可再生能源广泛部署到电网上。液流电池是一类很有前途的长期储能装置。需要技术经济模型来评估现有技术的商业可行性并帮助指导新技术的研究和开发。存储的平准化成本是一个有用的指标，它说明了项目生命周期内的资本和运营成本以及能源吞吐量。该指标用于在四个用例中比较锂离子与八个水性液流电池和两个假设的非水性液流电池的经济前景。具有廉价活性材料的液流电池在长期应用中受到青睐。