The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) has added long-duration energy storage (LDES) as one of three new focus areas for its Future Energy Systems Center, alongside grid modeling and carbon management. The areas were announced at the Center's fall workshop with member companies in late September 2026. The LDES work will be led by MITEI research scientist Ruaridh Macdonald.
A technology-agnostic research agenda
Macdonald said the focus area is intended to identify the key challenges facing member companies and direct research where it can have the most impact. Core questions include what value batteries and storage actually bring to the grid, how well revenue matches that value, and what characteristics — independent of chemistry — storage needs to succeed in different markets and grid roles.
That framing is a shift from the way the sector has traditionally compared technologies. Macdonald argued that storage duration is no longer the only feature differentiating storage types; degradation, stability across states of charge and reliability are now critical in storage assessments.
Technology signals the researchers are tracking
Two examples cited illustrate where the technical frontier is moving. A research team in China developing an all-iron redox flow battery reported almost no degradation over 6,000 cycles — a durability result with direct implications for the levelised cost of long-duration assets. Separately, a German laboratory is developing electrodes three times thicker than current designs, which improves system energy density and could be applied across a variety of battery types.
Storage duration is no longer the only feature differentiating storage types; degradation, stability across states of charge and reliability are critical in storage assessments. — Ruaridh Macdonald, MITEI
Why the research is timely
Global utility-scale storage discharge capacity additions grew from roughly 5 GW in 2020 to almost 90 GW in 2025, with most of that growth in China. Macdonald described China as the global leader in storage development and deployment while noting that large installations are now appearing in grids worldwide.
The commercial use case is also in flux. Revenue from ancillary services has shrunk over the past five years, while energy shifting — charging in low-priced periods and discharging in high-priced ones — has been growing. That transition raises questions about whether market revenues reflect the reliability value storage provides, exactly the mismatch the MITEI focus area intends to study. A further variable is regulation, which Macdonald said continues to shift both between and within countries, adding uncertainty for developers and investors.
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