RE: Vanadium - refreshes the ports other batteries cannot reach4 Apr 2021 11:44
In August last year, Huang — who was previously the company’s chief technical officer and who holds 12 flow battery materials and systems design patents himself — said that the company’s newest Gen3 cell stack design enables a 30% increase in energy density based on proprietary materials developed in-house. VRB Energy meanwhile claimed in a statement that it was a “leading contender” to deliver many of those large-scale systems under the Chinese government programme.
VRB Energy is led by chairman Robert Friedland, a well-known name in the minerals and mining industry whose minerals exploration and development company High Power Exploration bought an 82% stake in VRB Energy when it was a Chinese company called Pu Neng.
“This project is a massive catalyst for VRB Energy's global growth and further demonstrates that we are developing the absolute best technologies to support the worldwide green energy revolution. China wants to install over 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of new solar PV and wind power by 2030 and they are not alone in the commitment to decarbonisation and the 'greening' of their power grids; with both the US and the European Union prioritising renewable power solutions,” Friedland said in yesterday’s statement.
“Energy storage remains a key challenge in the mass adoption of renewable energy, and we're extremely proud to be leading the way in creating cutting-edge solutions at VRB.”
In an online conference hosted by our publisher Solar Media in May last year, VRB Energy vice president of business development Jim Stover talked up some of the potential competitive advantages that vanadium flow battery technologies can have, including safety (VRFB stacks do not encounter thermal runaway like lithium-ion cells can), long system lifetimes and durability (the batteries do not experience cell degradation even after up to 20 years in use) and the ability to recycle components including the electrolyte after project lifecycles are complete.
Cell stacks at the Hubei demonstration plant. Image: VRB Energy.
The project will be considerably larger than the world’s largest existing vanadium flow battery system, which is 60MWh and is in Hokkaido, the main northern island of Japan. While the company behind that project, Sumitomo Electric Inudstries, recently announced another 51MWh project using the technology at a wind farm in the region, which has mandated the use of energy storage for new large-scale renewables, elsewhere in the world VRFB projects for the grid have been relatively limited in size and scope.
The largest project so far announced as under development through the Chinese strategic programme is a 200MW / 800MWh system by Rongke Power in Dalian Province. The first phase of 100MW / 400MWh was originally scheduled for completion during 2020, but this is yet to be announced. Interestingly, the duration of storage at four hours for that one is a full hour less than VRB Energy’s Xiangyang project.
A government-backed proje