The thing is that there are like 50 other options for energy storage, it's not just lithium-ion that flow batteries have to out compete. Everything from electrolyzed hydrogen, to hot sand, to air pressure tanks, to sodium-ion and zinc air and LiFePo batteries.
Flow batteries are cool because the storage element is extremely easy to scale. But its not even that great because you also need to scale the amount of cells dramatically to make it useful outside of edge cases. At which point it probably makes more sense to just use another storage mechanism.
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The thing is that there are like 50 other options for energy storage, it's not just lithium-ion that flow batteries have to out compete. Everything from electrolyzed hydrogen, to hot sand, to air pressure tanks, to sodium-ion and zinc air and LiFePo batteries.
Flow batteries are cool because the storage element is extremely easy to scale. But its not even that great because you also need to scale the amount of cells dramatically to make it useful outside of edge cases. At which point it probably makes more sense to just use another storage mechanism.