Engineers have developed a water-based battery that could help Australian households store rooftop solar energy more safely, cheaply and efficiently than ever before.

Their next-generation “flow battery” opens the door to compact, high-performance battery systems for homes and is expected to be much cheaper than current $10,000 lithium-ion systems.

Flow batteries have been around for decades but have traditionally been used in large-scale energy storage due to their large size and slow charge speeds.