A novel cerium-lead redox flow battery (RFB) employing Ce(IV)/Ce(III) and Pb(II)/Pb redox couples in the supporting electrolyte of methanesulfonic acid (MSA) is developed and preliminarily investigated. The RFB requires no additional catalyst and uses kinetically favorable reactions between low-cost reactants, and provides a desirable discharge voltage of approximately 1.7 V, with high average coulombic efficiency (CE) of 92% and energy efficiency (EE) of 86% over 800 cycles at 298 K. Stable cycling with an acceptable performance is achieved for a board operating temperature range of 253 K-313 K. The excellent performance obtained from the preliminary study suggests that the cerium-lead RFB promises to be applicable to large-scale energy storage for electricity grids. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.