Cost and performance analysis is a powerful tool to support material research for battery energy storage, but it is rarely applied in the field and often misinterpreted. Widespread use of such an analysis at the stage of material discovery would help to focus battery research on practical solutions. When correctly used and well detailed, it can effectively direct efforts towards selecting appropriate materials for commercial applications. Using sodium-ion batteries as an example, we simulate the energy density and the cost of battery packs with several sodium-ion cathode materials taken from the literature in three case studies that illustrate how to identify the most promising solutions from the results of the model. Using publicly available information on material properties and open-source software, we demonstrate how a battery cost and performance analysis could be implemented using typical data from laboratory-scale studies on new energy storage materials.

成本和性能分析是支持电池储能材料研究的有力工具，但在该领域很少应用，并且经常被误解。在材料发现阶段广泛使用这种分析将有助于将电池研究重点放在实际解决方案上。如果正确使用且详细说明，它可以有效地指导为商业应用选择合适的材料。以钠离子电池为例，我们在三个案例研究中模拟了采用几种钠离子正极材料的电池组的能量密度和成本，这些案例研究说明了如何从模型结果中识别最有前途的解决方案。利用有关材料特性和开源软件的公开信息，我们演示了如何使用新能源存储材料实验室规模研究的典型数据来实施电池成本和性能分析。