Experimental Aging and Lifetime Prediction in Grid Applications for Large-Format Commercial Li-Ion Batteries

Due to the growth of electric vehicle and stationary energy storage markets, the production and use of lithium-ion batteries has grown exponentially in recent years. For many of these applications, large-format lithium-ion batteries are being utilized, as large cells have less inactive material relative to their energy capacity and require fewer electrical connections to assemble into packs. And especially for stationary energy storage systems, where energy delivered is the only revenue source, the economics of these battery systems is highly dependent on cell lifetime. However, testing of large-format lithium-ion batteries is time consuming and requires high current channels and large testing chambers, making information on the performance of commercial, large-format lithium-ion batteries hard to come by. Here, accelerated aging test data from four commercial large-format lithium-ion batteries is reported. These batteries span both NMC-Gr and LFP-Gr cell chemistries, pouch and prismatic formats, and a range of cell designs with varying power capabilities. Accelerated aging test results are analyzed to examine both cell performance, in terms of efficiency and thermal response under load, as well as cell lifetime. Cell thermal response is characterized by measuring temperature during cycle aging, which is used to calculated a normalized thermal resistance value that may help estimate both cell cooling needs or to help extrapolate aging test results to different thermal environments. Cell lifetime is evaluated qualitatively, considering simply the average calendar and cycle life across a range of conditions, as well as quantitatively, using statistical modeling and machine-learning methods to identify predictive aging models from the accelerated aging data. These predictive aging models are then used to investigate cell sensitivities to stressors, such as cycling temperature, voltage window, and C-rate, as well as to predict cell lifetime in various stationary storage applications. Results from this work show that cell lifetime and sensitivity to aging conditions varies substantially across commercial cells, necessitating testing for specific cell formats to make quantitative lifetime predictions. That being said, all commercial cells tested here are predicted to reach at least 10-year lifetimes for stationary storage applications. Based on the aging test results and modeling, some cells are expected to be relatively insensitive to temperature and use-case, making them suited for simple use cases with little or no thermal management and simple controls, while the lifetime of other cells could be extended to 20+ years if operated with thermal management and degradation-aware controls.