Low temperature affects energy storage power stations

At low temperatures (<0 °C), decrease in energy storage capacity and power can have a significant impact on applications such as electric vehicles, unmanned aircraft, spacecraft and stationary power storage.

The performance of electrochemical energy storage technologies such as batteries and supercapacitors are strongly affected by operating temperature.

As the performance and variety of potential usages for electrochemical energy storage increases, so does the variety of climates into which the technology is deployed. At low temperature (<0 °C) reduced electrolyte conductivity and poor ion diffusivity can lead to a significant reduction in the capacity and performance of batteries .

Reduced low temperature battery capacity is problematic for battery electric vehicles, remote stationary power supplies, telephone masts and weather stations operating in cold climates, where temperatures can fall to −40 °C.

Whilst there have been several studies documenting performance of individual battery chemistries at low temperature; there is yet to be a direct comparative study of different electrochemical energy storage methods that addresses energy, power and transient response at different temperatures.

In this work nine different electrochemical energy storage technologies are directly compared in terms of capacity, volumetric and gravimetric energy density, maximum power output and transient response (through EIS) as a function of temperature from +20 °C to −70 °C.