Increasing battery cycle life has proven challenging across a variety of battery chemistries. The emergence of data center demand, coupled with growth in both physical AI and EV requirements for battery life, has spurred innovations in energy storage to improve cycle-life performance. When discussing this topic, it is important to differentiate between cycle life and life cycle. Cycle life refers to the number of charge and discharge cycles a battery can deliver over its useful life, often defined as the point when its available capacity drops to 80% of its initial capacity. Life cycle, alternatively, refers to a battery’s total lifespan.
Efforts to extend cycle life have focused on redesigning the batteries themselves, as well as developing drop-in solutions that work across a range of battery chemistries. Different battery chemistries and applications require different solutions to extend cycle life.
The challenge of extending battery cycle life is being addressed across the range of battery chemistries. Rincell has developed Silicon-Graphite Cells that maintain high energy density and fast charging while delivering over 800 cycles. They are currently working on military and commercial applications with a pilot manufacturing plant in California and are set to ship 500,000 cells by the end of the year. During a conversation with CEO and Co-Founder Jignesh Parikh, he explained how the company is leveraging cell design and manufacturing process optimization to prevent swelling in silicon graphite cells, which has historically been the biggest reason for shorter cell life.
Extending cycle life in solid-state batteries has been an important mission for Hayward, California-based Blue Current. Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Wujcik, explained that Blue Current has replaced liquid electrolytes with dry, solid electrolytes. Traditionally, liquid electrolytes continuously react with silicon as it expands and contracts during cycling. Addressing these challenges can require expensive raw materials and increase manufacturing costs. By adopting a dry, solid electrolyte, Blue Current unlocks a combination of high energy density and long cycle life. Their work in extending cycle life has allowed them to enter new markets, including grid storage and AI data center applications.
Rather than redesigning the battery cell itself, Ten-Nine Technologies has developed a cathode additive that improves cycle life across a number of battery chemistries. In an October conversation with Founder and CEO Paige Johnson, she explained that a drop-in cathode solution can extend cycle life without redesigning the cell from the ground up.
Johnson further outlined how the Ten-Nine Technologies cathode solution could play a significant role in increasing the share of Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) batteries on the market, which have high energy density rates but have struggled with cycle life. By extending cycle life, Ten-Nine aims to make NMC batteries a financially viable alternative to Lithium-Ion, particularly in electric vehicles. As of October, Ten-Nine has manufactured over two tons of material for testing and has begun scaling production in its Oklahoma facility.
To meet the growing power demand of physical AI, Nyobolt, a Cambridge-based energy storage company, has been developing a battery solution with as little downtime as possible. Across both physical AI and data centers, long cycle life is critical. Ramesh Narasimhan, Executive Vice President at Nyobolt, explained that the Nyobolt team’s goal was to enable fast charging and fast discharging without impacting cycle life. Narasimhan used the example of physical AI, in this case robots for physical work, which require constant charging and discharging during the course of a day. These machines need to charge and discharge many times in a single day, so developing a battery chemistry that doesn’t degrade under high cycling was a priority.
Extending cycle life for electric vehicles has been paramount for Adden Energy, which has developed a battery technology that uses a self-healing separator to counter rapid decay from high reactivity. Dendrites, which are growth instabilities that lead to short circuits in solid-state batteries, propagate through microscopic cracks common in traditional manufacturing methods. Adden Energy’s method, however, repairs imperfections during manufacturing and in real-time cycling. For electric vehicles to charge quickly and stay on the road for years, improving cycle life by reducing dendrite growth is critical.
During a conversation with Adden Energy Co-Founder and CEO William Fitzhugh, he explained that developing self-healing separators allows EVs to reach sub-10-minute fast charging with over 1,000 operational cycles. When asked what it would take to scale production after closing its Series A round in 2024, Fitzhugh described how the company uses production processes already established in battery gigafactories for drop-in scalability.
As demand for long-duration energy storage (LDES) grows because of renewable intermittency and grid strain, improving cycle life in LDES batteries is critical. AQUABATTERY, which has been developing a flow battery solution based on water and table salt, designed for a 20-year lifespan. This is because the saltwater electrolyte does not degrade over that time frame, allowing heavy industries, energy distributors, and distributed generation projects to guarantee a long-term electricity storage solution without loss of storage capacity. Chief Commercial Officer Janneke Tjon Pian Gi explained that the company currently has its fourth pilot operating and that its pilots have validated both the technology and the use cases. By providing long cycle life in flow batteries, AQUABATTERY can work alongside renewables to bridge intermittency challenges.
Readers can join our Climate and Clean Energy Network for updates and developments from companies across the emissions tracking and offset space, including Blue Current, Nyobolt, Rincell, Ten-Nine Technologies, Adden Energy, and AQUABATTERY.
