Reshaping the future of the electric grid through low-cost, long-duration discharge batteries Credit: Courtesy of JCESR Form Energy sprang out of JCESR research on the air-breathing sulfur battery. A new era of energy provided by renewables may be close at hand, thanks to research begun at the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub led by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, and continued at spinoff company Form Energy. The challenge JCESR addressed is long duration storage — stabilizing a renewable grid against several consecutive days of calm or overcast days when wind and solar generation is absent or severely limited. Today’s lithium-ion batteries can discharge at full power for 4-6 hours, enough to stabilize against most intra-day variations due to passing clouds or fluctuating winds, or to extend solar electricity a few hours past sunset to serve the evening demand peak. A full day or consecutive days of windless or overcast weather is stabilized by natural gas peaker plants that can run indefinitely as long as they are supplied with fuel. The downside of this solution is the carbon dioxide that gas peaker plants emit, adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that accelerate harmful climate change. In the net-zero carbon emissions world that suppresses climate change, these emissions must be eliminated or captured and sequestered away from the atmosphere.