Lead-acid (Pb) battery for large-scale temporal electricity storage

Lead-acid (Pb) batteries store electricity through a reversible chemical reaction. The basic components are a container, electrodes, and an electrolyte. By loading the battery, the electricity is transformed into chemical energy, while during discharge, electrochemical reactions occur at the two electrodes generating a flow of electrons through an external circuit (DNV KEMA, 2013).

Lead-acid batteries can be used for a variety of applications such as bulk storage, frequency regulation, peak shaving, and time-of-use management (IRENA, 2017). This factsheet focuses on large-scale solutions (utility-scale or large distributed systems) for storage applications such as time-of-use management (discharge times of >1 hour).