"Recycling a lithium-ion battery consumes more energy and resources than producing a new battery, explaining why only a small amount of lithium-ion batteries are recycled," says Aqsa Nazir, a postdoctoral research scholar at Florida International University's battery research laboratory.
As an energy intermediary, lithium-ion batteries are used to store and release electric energy. An example of this would be a battery that is used as an energy storage device for renewable energy. The battery receives electricity generated by solar or wind power production equipment.
To boost their storage capacity, all you have to do is build a bigger tank and add more vanadium. That’s a big advantage: By contrast, there’s no easy way to adjust the storage capacity of a lithium-ion battery — if you want more storage, you have to build a whole new battery.
“If you think about utility-scale stationary applications, maybe you don’t need lithium-ion batteries. You can use another one that is cheaper and can provide the services that you want like, for example, vanadium flow batteries,” said Francisco Boshell, a researcher at the International Renewable Energy Agency.
The lithium-ion battery, which is used as a promising component of BESS that are intended to store and release energy, has a high energy density and a long energy cycle life .
As the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid intensifies, the efficiency of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs), particularly the energy efficiency of the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries they employ, is becoming a pivotal factor for energy storage management.