Optimization and Control – Meet Di Wu
Meet Di Wu, a chief research engineer and a team leader within the Optimization and Control group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). A key partner of the Consortium for Lead Battery Leadership, an effort launched in 2024 and managed by Battery Council International, Di provides key insights into the techo-economics of lead batteries in grid storage applications.
As a public-private partnership between BCI member companies and the U.S. Department of Energy, the consortium’s underlying goal is to research the value proposition of grid storage in real-world settings – and ultimately, drive real-world economic benefits to end-users.
Di leads key research projects on energy storage at PNNL that include building-to-grid integration, and microgrid design. Di is also an expert on advanced grid analytics, and serves as chair of the IEEE Task Force on Data Analytics of Energy Storage.
BCI conducted a brief Q&A with PNNl’s Di Wu to learn more about him, and what he’s working on right now.
Question #1: How did you arrive at your current research focus, and what has kept you engaged in advancing grid modernization and energy storage for what has become a long and prolific career at PNNL?
I earned my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering with a focus on power systems. My PhD research focused on the integration of electric vehicles into the grid, modeling how their batteries meet driving needs while being optimally managed to provide grid services. That work naturally expanded into broader energy storage research at PNNL, where similar principles apply at larger scales—optimizing where, when, and how storage operates to improve grid reliability and economic performance. What has kept me engaged in this field for the past 15 years is how central storage has become in addressing today’s grid challenges—aging infrastructure, increasing complexity, and growing demand from data centers. The opportunity to solve these real-world problems with tangible impact continues to drive my work.
Question #2: Your techno-economic assessment work has spanned lithium-ion and flow batteries, pumped storage hydro, hydrogen energy storage, and storage hybridization — methodologies that weigh capital costs, operational characteristics, degradation, and value streams across multiple grid services. To what extent do these frameworks transfer to other electrochemical technologies like lead-acid batteries, and do you think a rigorous techno-economic analysis could reveal untapped economic viability for advanced lead-acid battery variants?
Many of my team’s techno-economic assessment (TEA) frameworks transfer directly to lead-acid batteries because they are fundamentally technology-agnostic: we define grid use cases, prepare inputs, optimize charging and discharging, simulate system operation, and quantify life-cycle cost and stacked value streams. The difference lies in how each technology is modeled in TEA. For example, lead-acid chemistry requires dedicated performance and degradation models that capture its distinct techno-economic characteristics, such as costs, usable depth of discharge, efficiency, charge acceptance under partial state-of-charge conditions, temperature sensitivity, and maintenance or replacement behavior. With those characteristics properly represented, a rigorous TEA can reveal “untapped” viability for advanced lead-acid variants by identifying duty cycles where they are well suited and by reflecting full life-cycle economics, including realistic replacement strategies and end-of-life value.
Question #3: Given your extensive research evaluating energy storage systems across diverse deployments — from behind-the-meter use cases to utility-scale shared storage — how do you assess the roles of lead acid batteries in grid energy storage, which still dominate certain backup power and off-grid markets?
I see lead-acid batteries playing a targeted, important role in grid storage, especially in applications and markets where they already dominate. In backup power and off-grid deployments, lead-acid batteries offer proven reliability, a mature supply chain and service ecosystem, and well-understood safety and end-of-life pathways. Those benefits translate well to grid use cases that prioritize resilience and standby capability, or power-oriented needs with limited cycling. Where lead-acid is typically less competitive is in high-cycling, energy-shifting profiles that demand frequent deep cycles and high round-trip efficiency. The opportunity is to be intentional about “fit,” including hybrid approaches where different technologies split duties so each is used in the operating regime where it delivers the best reliability and economics.
Question #4: What do you see as the most significant remaining technical barrier (or opportunity) to widespread grid-scale energy storage deployment in the next decade?
Integration is the central challenge. Storage must be incorporated into grid operations, planning, and infrastructure development in a way that reflects its system-level role rather than treating it as a conventional generation asset. Market and planning structures are still evolving. Compensation mechanisms and long-term planning tools do not always fully capture storage’s value, and interconnection processes can slow deployment. Better alignment between technical capability, market design, and planning frameworks represents a major opportunity. At the same time, long-term cost and revenue uncertainty increases investment risk. Greater confidence in performance, degradation behavior, and supply chain stability will be essential to support sustained, large-scale deployment over the next decade.
Question #5: The Consortia for Lead Battery Leadership includes eight North American manufacturing partners. How do you translate cutting-edge research into actionable guidance for battery makers? For policymakers?
Our role as subject matter experts is to translate research into decision-quality insights. For storage developers, that means providing independent evaluation and system-level analysis to identify grid use cases where their technologies can be most competitive. We translate performance characteristics into practical guidance on duty cycles, design priorities, and operational strategies, helping align product development with real market needs. For policymakers, the focus is on technology-neutral analysis. We provide rigorous comparisons across storage options, quantify system-level impacts, and evaluate how different market mechanisms, policies, and incentive structures influence deployment and economic outcomes.
