"Metal-H2 Batteries for Large Scale Stationary Energy Storage" 

Yi Cui  
Stanford University  

Grid scale stationary energy storage is critical for integration of renewable electricity such as solar and wind into electric grid, and also enable the new opportunity for resilient and smart grid. The cost, life and temperature range of batteries need to be significantly improved for this purpose. My lab we developed a breakthrough metal-H2 battery chemistry to meet the needs of grid scale storage, in which hydrogen gas electrodes is anodes and transition metal oxides are cathodes. This battery chemistry is low-cost, with long life over 30,000 cycles and 30 years. It can be operated in a wide range of temperature of -40 to +60 degrees Celsius and is maintenance-free. The fast charging/discharge up to 10min is possible in this chemistry. The spinout company EnerVenue has realized very exciting commercial prototypes based on this technology. The metal-H2 battery affords an ideal storage solution to integrate solar and wind electricity into the grid.

Yi Cui is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received B.S. in Chemistry in 1998 at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Ph.D in 2002 at Harvard University. After that, he went on to work as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. In 2005 he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. In 2010 he was promoted with tenure.

He has published ~500 research papers and has an H-index of 203 (Google). In 2014, he was ranked NO.1 in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters as “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”. He is a Fellow of Materials Research Society, Electrochemical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry. He is an Executive Editor of Nano Letters. He is a Co-Director of the Bay Area Photovoltaics Consortium, a Co-Director of Battery 500 Consortium and Co-Director of Stanford StorageX Initiative.

His selected awards include: Dan Maydan Prize in Nanoscience (2019), Nano Today Award (2019), Blavatnik National Laureate (2017), MRS Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience (2015), the Sloan Research Fellowship (2010), KAUST Investigator Award (2008), ONR Young Investigator Award (2008), Technology Review World Top Young Innovator Award (2004). He has founded four companies to commercialize technologies from his group: Amprius Inc., 4C Air Inc., EEnotech Inc. and EnerVenue Inc.