Recently, Professor Chen Wei of the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China was invited to publish a review article entitled "Rechargeable Batteries for Grid Scale Energy Storage" in the internationally renowned review journal Chemical Reviews (DOI: 10.1021 / acs. Chemrev. 2 c00289), secondary battery for power grid was discussed the present situation of the application level of large-scale energy storage, the prospects and challenges, especially emerging battery technology in the process of practical problems and solving strategy, and the systematic summary and discuss a series of typical are excellent prospects for large-scale energy storage battery technology.

The increasing global energy consumption has promoted the multi-faceted development of renewable energy technologies to cope with the large amount of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution, and help carbon neutrality. Battery energy storage technology with excellent electrochemical performance can be well combined with intermittent renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, wind energy, etc., to achieve large-scale energy storage applications. In recent years, many battery technologies have shown great application potential in grid-type large-scale energy storage. However, due to the difference between academic research and industrial applications, the practical application of battery energy storage technology has been greatly hindered. This review makes an in-depth discussion and comprehensive analysis on the research of large-scale energy storage batteries at grid level. In addition, the review discusses the latest advances and challenges in a range of typical promising battery energy storage technologies, including metal ion batteries (lithium-ion batteries, sodium ion batteries, potassium ion batteries, aluminum ion batteries, magnesium ion batteries, zinc ion batteries), lead-acid batteries, molten salt batteries, alkaline batteries, flow batteries, metal air batteries, and hydrogen batteries, etc. Some standardized test and parameter analysis criteria for batteries have been developed, providing an effective way for large-scale energy storage applications of batteries (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Development and application of grid-level large-scale energy storage batteries.

In recent years, Professor Chen Wei's research group has been committed to the research and application development of large-scale energy storage batteries, and has worked on rechargeable hydrogen battery energy storage system (Nat.Energy3 (2018) 428-435; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA115 (2018) 11694-11699; Nano Lett.20 (2020) 3278-3283; Adv. Funct. Mater.31 (2021) 2101024; Energy Storage Mater.42 (2021) 464-469; Mater. Today Energy19 (2021) 100603; J. Am. Chem. Soc.143(2021) 20302-20308; Nat.Commun.13 (2022) 2805) (FIG. 2) and water metal ion battery Energy storage system (Adv.Energy Mater.9 (2020) 1902085; Adv.Energy Mater.5 (2021) 2002904; Small17 (2021) 2103921; ACS Mater. Lett.11 (2021) 1558-1565; Nano Lett.20 (2021) 8863-8871; eScience1 (2021) 178-185; Energy Storage Mater.47 (2022)113-121; Adv.Energy Mater.12 (2022)2103352; Adv.Energy Mater.12(2022)2103705; Adv.Mater.34 (2022) 2203249) (Figure 3) and other research directions have achieved a series of important phased results.

Figure 2. Hydrogen secondary battery.

Figure 3. Water metal ion secondary battery.


Zhengxin Zhu, postdoctoral fellow at the National Research Center for Microscale Matter Science, USTC Hefei, and Taoli Jiang and Mohsin Ali, PhD students at the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, USTC Hefei are co-first authors of the review paper. Wei Chen, Professor at the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, USTC Hefei National Research Center for Microscale Matter Science, is the corresponding author of the paper. Yahan Meng, a master's student at the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, and Yi Cui, Professor of Stanford University and Yang Jin, Professor of Zhengzhou University are co-authors. The large-scale energy storage battery series research work has been funded by the Talent team project of China University of Science and Technology and the special fund for basic scientific research business expenses of central universities.

(School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Department of Scientific Research)