Sumitomo Electric brings 51MWh flow battery online in northern Japan

• Among the globe's biggest vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) power storage systems has actually come online on the north Japanese island of Hokkaido in the last few days.

Technology carrier Sumitomo Electric said that the 17MW/51MWh VRFB system it mounted to assist integrate regional wind power onto the grid has actually been in operation because 1 April after setup was finished a day earlier.

The project has actually been appointed in accordance with a schedule introduced by the firm in July 2020, as reported by Energy-Storage. news at the time. It will directly contribute to decarbonisation as well as raised renewable energy penetration on Hokkaido.

Due to large areas of suitable land, Hokkaido has actually become a hotspot for clean energy however has actually had a hard time to accommodate the raised power capacity on its grid, which has just limited interconnection to Honshu, Japan's primary populated island to its south.

As a consequence, Hokkaido Electric Power, one of the country's main, regional monopoly electric utilities and driver of the area's grid presented rules in 2015 that new renewable resource centers have to be paired with energy storage space.

This has caused various battery storage projects on the island including the first installations in Japan for Tesla's Megapack BESS service and also a recently-completed solar-plus-storage project provided by Sungrow.

For Sumitomo Electric, the project follows up an also larger VRFB project in Hokkaido, a 15MW/60MWh system appointed in 2015. Currently still the biggest flow battery project on the planet-- although a number of bigger systems are in advancement in China-- that system has been working well given that its installment in collaboration with Hokkaido Electric, the business stated.

Vanadium flow batteries provide a potentially long lifetime power storage space resource, efficient in sturdy cycling over an anticipated 20+ years in the field. They likewise provide the ability to scale up energy storage space capacity simply by enhancing the size of liquid electrolyte tanks, unlike lithium batteries, which need to include even more cell stacks as well as even more equilibrium of plant devices as they add capacity.

VRFBs are also considered to be safer than other batteries, as a result of their procedure at room temperature and absence of combustible materials utilized in their building and construction.

The brand-new system will support the grid-side as well as has been mounted by Hokkaido Electric at its Minami-Hayarai substation. The power and grid business got offers from applicants that intend to adjoin their renewable energy centers to the grid and 15 firms will share the capacity the flow battery systems helps to free up. Costs of the battery will be shared by Hokkaido Electric as well as the various other stakeholders.

Sumitomo Electric's 2MW/8MWh VRFB project in California, inaugurated in 2017 as well as the largest project of its type in the US to day has been used to trial the use of VRFBs for microgrid applications by California utility San Diego Gas & Electric, along with being used to provide grid services.