Electrical Energy Storage Strategy to Support Electrification of the Fleet

The design, development, and fielding of new and emerging technologies onto Navy vessels is driving an increase in power requirements. The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations Warfare Systems (N9) office requires research be conducted to assess the current employment of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries within the Navy fleet and to aid in determining future battery requirements to power a wide variety of vehicles, weapons, and other subsystems. Li-ion technology has quickly become the power source of choice for systems that have large instantaneous and continuous power needs, and the Navy currently expects that Li-ion battery technology will continue to be needed to support many future systems. This research is intended to inform the Department of the Navy (DON) of the current state of Li-ion battery use and to substantiate requests to secure more resources to appropriately equip the fleet through 2045. A literature review of naval Li-ion battery uses and possible future capacity requirements was conducted using unclassified sources. This review, provided in the following chapter, can be broadly split into four categories: current lithium battery use cases, future lithium battery use cases, U.S. Navy doctrine driving lithium battery adoption and battery storage considerations. Gaps in publicly available literature were noted in the areas of current use cases and future power requirements, likely due to the sensitive nature of many of the relevant systems. Areas where significant, open-source information exists are reviewed in detail. It is found that lithium batteries are already used in some limited applications in the fleet, and their use will likely grow exponentially in coming decades due to new, power-hungry technology developments.