First phase of 800MWh world largest flow battery commissioned in China

• Commissioning has occurred of a 100MW/400MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage system in Dalian, China.

The largest project of its enter the globe today, the VRFB project's planning, layout and building and construction has actually taken 6 years. It was connected to the Dalian grid in late May, according to a report today by the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA) industry team.

The system remains in Dalian City's Shahekou District, which remains in Liaoning Province in northeastern China. It will add to reducing the height tons on the grid in Dalian City and also might even play a role at rural degree, boosting power supply as well as the capability to connect new generation sources like renewable resource to the grid.

VRFB designer as well as maker Rongke Power provided the battery technology. The company is a spin-off from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and also the institute has actually overseen the project through doctoral manager as well as head of its energy storage department Li Xianfeng.

Rongke Power had been cited to be dealing with US-headquartered flow battery technology business UniEnergy Technologies on the project previously, however that company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy was extensively reported late last year and also its website currently seems offline.

An update on the project's progression which was issued in June by the trade group Zhongguancun Energy Storage Industry Alliance from Beijing claimed the VRFB modern technology was created by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics team.

Together, the academics have collaborated with Rongke Power on practically 40 commercial demonstration flow battery projects currently, the alliance stated, consisting of projects both in China as well as overseas, such as a 10MW/50MWh system which was the globe's largest when completed in 2013 and also a 10MW/40MWh project at a wind farm.

Formerly, the greatest flow battery setup on the planet was a 15MW/60MWh system deployed in 2015 in north Japan by Sumitomo Electric. Sumitomo Electric brought online a 2nd, 51MWh large-scale system in April this year, which once again would still rank among the globe's largest for a technology which is regarded highly for its technological capabilities however has thus far largely been not able to scale up.

Nevertheless, the Dalian project is, along with being a demonstration project and part of a wave of large-scale VRFBs China is wanting to deploy, just at its very first phase of building. A second phase will bring it up to 200MW/800MWh.

Scale of China VRFB projects overshadow anything else in the world until now

It was the very first project to be approved under a nationwide programme to construct large-scale flow battery demonstrations around China back in 2016 as the nation's federal government released an energy storage plan approach. It is thought that different variables including unforeseen volatility in the cost of vanadium as well as need for the metal in other industries like construction had actually reduced the programme rather according to sources Energy-Storage. news had actually talked to formerly.

In other places, in China's Hubei Province, another (extremely) large-scale VRFB is being built in phases that was approved via the same programme. Canada-headquartered VRB Energy is constructing that 100MW/500MWh facility, with an event held to signify the start of building in August last year for a first 100MWh phase.

VRB Energy and also its local partners had currently built an effective 3MW/12MWh demonstration project in Hubei as well as a VRFB manufacturing facility with 1,000 MWh annual production capability could be constructed at the site at a later date as well.

The Hubei project's price for 500MWh of VRFB, in addition to a combined 1GW of solar PV as well as wind generation where it will certainly charge, was cited as around US$ 1.44 billion.

The initial phase of Rongke Power's Dalian project on the other hand was provided as RMB1.9 billion (US$ 298 million) in CNESA's news, comparable to RMB4.75/ Wh (US$ 0.7/ Wh).

Although not on the scale independently of either Chinese project, some megawatt-scale flow battery projects have actually been finished, revealed or begun building and construction in recent months all over the world.

In the UK, the globe's biggest battery storage system to hybridise lithium-ion and vanadium flow went officially right into commercial operation this summer, pairing 50MW/50MWh of lithium with a 2MW/5MWh VRFB system.

The flow battery business behind that project, Invinity Systems, is likewise supplying Australia's initial grid-scale flow battery storage, a 2MW/8MWh system co-located with a 6MWp solar PV plant in South Australia. Invinity will likewise supply a 2.8 MW/8.4 MWh battery storage system at a demonstration project in Alberta, Canada

At the larger end of the scale, California non-profit energy vendor Central Coast Community Energy (CCCE) picked 3 VRFB projects as part of a procurement of sources to find online by 2026, varying from 6MW/18MWh to 16MW/128MWh as well as totalling 226MWh.

One thing restricting the size as well as scale of flow batteries today is access to vanadium pentoxide, which is made use of in their electrolytes. While vanadium itself is plentiful in both its raw key form and also as an additional byproduct of steel production, very few centers to refine it right into electrolyte exist.

This has actually led some flow battery firms like Austria's CellCube and also others to focus on the commercial as well as industrial (C&I) as well as microgrid segment of the energy storage market, at the very least for the time being.