“In the opening Formula One Grand Prix, we had three different manufacturers with vastly different cars on the podium. My question is, what is going to join lithium-ion on the energy storage podium?” said Mark Croudace, executive representative of the LDES Council and CEO of MGA Thermal, at the Energy Storage Summit Australia 2025 last week.
LDES Council, launched in 2021 at COP 26 climate talks, is a trade association representing technology providers, services and large corporate offtakers in the emerging long-duration energy storage (LDES) space.
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With renewable energy capacity growing rapidly and coal-fired power plants phasing down, over the next decade Australia’s need for LDES is expected to become increasingly more pressing, as was heard in many panels and presentations at the two-day conference, hosted by our publisher Solar Media in Sydney.
Meanwhile, the Australian Grand Prix, which took place the weekend prior to the Summit, saw Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, and George Russell of McLaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes, respectively, on the podium at the end of the race. Relating this to energy storage, Croudace believes lithium-ion will take the top spot, yet the silver and bronze medals are still up for grabs.
“The majority of investment in the world today has gone into lithium-ion. Lithium-ion, as a battery technology, has been invested in since the 1960s, so they have a good head start. They have been commercialised since the 90s,” Croudace said.
“If you look at some of the limitations for batteries, these would be high costs, although that can be debated with some of the cost curves coming out and limited lifespan and longevity. We’ve also definitely got temperature sensitivity.
“The question for today starts to become, what alternate battery technologies will supersede lithium-ion, and what long-duration energy storage technologies could supersede it.”
However, Croudace added that economics is the most significant consideration for alternative technologies that could join lithium-ion on the podium.
Sodium-ion and flow batteries
Question marks remain about the types of alternative energy storage technologies that could compete with or complement lithium-ion. Some of these, such as pumped hydro, are already in operation and are steadfast in their role in the energy transition.
However, there are newer entrants to the race such as sodium-ion and flow batteries, both of which had been noted by the Australian government’s Department of Industry, Science and Resources as technologies to watch.
Sodium-ion batteries could be one of the emerging technologies that could compete with lithium-ion for durations under 8-hours. These batteries use technologies and manufacturing processes similar to lithium-ion, but crucially, they do not require any critical minerals; instead, they use sodium, which is naturally abundant.
For sodium-ion batteries to be cost-competitive in short-duration (less than 4 hours) stationary storage, they will need to outcompete the current lithium-ion batteries. Longer life cycles and safer scalability could make sodium-ion batteries a strong candidate for medium-duration stationary storage.
Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) are another technology that could enter the energy storage debate and win a place on the podium.
Carl Christiansen, associate director, business development & transactions for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) highlighted the surge in recent vanadium flow battery players in Australia.
“We’ve seen a whole lot of flow batteries in our time. We did support a 2MW vanadium flow battery in South Australia, and that’s now commissioned and operational. There are a lot of vanadium players in the Australian market. I think it’s evident that also, on the mining side, they’re trying to support green technologies,” Christiansen said.
“There’s a bunch of alternative technologies coming through. We need it, but we cannot quite do it yet. We’ll see what is going to happen.”
The gravity energy storage opportunity
Another interesting technology that could compete for a podium place in energy storage is gravity storage solutions. Several companies, such as Energy Vault and Green Gravity, are exploring the use of their respective technologies and how they could fit into the broader debate and complement more established technologies.
Green Gravity’s technology transforms legacy mine shafts into a base for its gravity-based energy storage technology. Due to the world-leading mining operations home to Australia, the technology could provide vast quantities of energy storage capacity to the country.
This potential saw Green Gravity sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with mining company Wollongong Resources in 2023 to study the application of gravity-based energy storage at eight potential sites in Australia.
On the panel discussion, Mark Swinnerton, CEO and founder of Green Gravity, highlighted that the company had discovered around 750,000 potential sites in the US to deploy its technology.
“There’s a huge number of legacy parts of land out there, often connected to the grid in our country [Australia], that our technology is uniquely designed to take advantage of,” Swinnerton added.
The industrial sector’s renaissance
The scale of the opportunity to decarbonise the industrial sector is a test for energy storage technologies. On the topic, Croudace said the industrial sector is “experiencing a renaissance.”
“It’s going through enormous change, and it’s at the very start of it. In contrast to the residential sector, the industrial sector is at least 400% bigger in terms of energy and opportunity.”
Croudace explained that the industrial sector will likely need a dual-purpose solution, with much of the energy being utilised to generate heat. As such, a technology that could marry energy storage solutions while granting heat could become integral to the market.
“The next wave of technologies that may be joining lithium-ion on the podium are those that can provide industrial heat. Between pulp and paper, petroleum and chemicals, you’re probably looking at 50% of their total energy use in the form of heat,” Croudace said.
Thermal energy storage has been touted as a solution for the industrial sector’s energy transition. Sand batteries, a technology extensively covered on Energy-Storage.news, and molten salt-based thermal energy storage technology have been regarded as attractive means to decarbonise industrial heat.
“Use cases are emerging around thermal energy storage for an extremely large industrial sector. This could see this sort of technology being one of the parties on the podium,” Croudace concluded.
