I know they mention price at one point in the article, but for something that's bound to have a massive impact on a huge variety of industries, I can't imagine that the money hurdle is insurmountable.
This also explains why we get so many breakthroughs- a breakthrough in one area alone is usually of no practical use. Where they are they tend to be of niche interest.
Batteries are largely only a major problem in the electronics industry; and the car industry as that goes electric. There are a lot of other ways to store energy which are used in heavy industry where portability isn't required- flywheels, supercapacitors, even HEP stations are used as energy stores by the power grid.
It could be an interesting option for electronics as power draw continues to fall [eg. would be good in a kindle now], but long life over lighter/longer battery life is a hard sell for both consumers (short termist) and manufacturers (reduced planned obselescence).
It seems like every single research institution in the past 10 years has announced some battery breakthrough, via metamaterials, carbon nano-tubes, super-capacitors, etc.
I've yet to see much follow through. It's getting tiresome to read about.
The battery chemistry is cheaper than lithium ion, but also heavier for the same energy storage. Sounds like more than a few times heavier, but hard to tell from the article. In any event, aimed at grid storage, energy density isn't as important as for portable electronics.
The fly in the ointment is that they do not have a suitable anode terminal, but as researchers that just gives them something to work on.
