CRADA final report: Technical assessment of roll-to-roll operation of lamination process, thermal treatment, and alternative carbon fiber precursors for low-cost, high-efficiency manufacturing of flow battery stacks and other energy devices

Among the various stationary-storage technologies under development, redox flow batteries (RFBs) offer the greatest potential to deliver inexpensive, scalable, and efficient grid-scale electrical-energy storage. Unlike traditional sealed batteries, in a flow battery power and energy are decoupled. Cell area and cell count in the stack determine the device power, and the chemical storage volume determines the total energy. Grid-scale energy-storage applications require megawatt-scale devices, which require the assembly of hundreds of large-area, bipolar cells per power plant. The cell-stack is the single system component with the largest impact on capital cost (due to the large number of highly engineered components) and operating costs (determined by overall round-trip efficiency).