RE: Shanghai electric 200mw VRFB in operation..24 Oct 2020 13:14
China’s plan to cut coal and boost green growth
https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-020-02464-5/d41586-020-02464-5.pdf
Power storage in action
The city of Dalian in Liaoning province, north east China, has a population of around seven million people, and is a test site for Xianfeng Li’s work. Winter temperatures there can drop to -20 °C, putting the city’s electricity grid under pressure to provide sudden intense bursts when residents turn up their heating, he says.
To help address this need, Rongke Power, a company that was spun off from the DICP, plans to open a 400-megawatt-hour (MWh) energy-storage facility in Dalian this year. It is the first stage in a project to provide an 800 MWh facility by 2023, and will use vanadium flow batteries — huge rechargeable devices that store liquid electrolyte in massive tanks. The final capacity should meet about 0.5% of the total power demand of Liaoning, where Dalian is the second-largest city.
Xianfeng Li says that the project will be able to contribute an uninterruptible power supply to the city, while storing and regulating the supply of energy to the grid for the entire province, which receives 16.2% of its power from renewable energy sources. Provinces vary widely in how much of their energy comes from renewables: for instance, it is 2.7% for the southern Chinese province of Jiangsu, but 30.1% for sunny, sparsely populated Inner Mongolia. Among Liaoning’s neighbours, Jilin receives 8% of its power from non-fossil fuels, and Hebei 9.1%.
Vanadium flow batteries of the kind Xianfeng Li is testing in Dalian have some advantages over standard lithium-ion batteries for large-scale applications such as grid power: because the vanadium electrolyte is stored in a tank, it can be scaled up much more cheaply than can discrete lithium-ion batteries. Vanadium batteries are also less likely to catch fire, and have around ten times the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries.
Xianfeng Li says that in recent years, he’s seen funding for his work on vanadium flow batteries increase sharply, along with interest from companies in partnering with his team. He says that the DICP is currently working with around 30 companies that have been spun off from the institute.
“Businesses are now interested in developing this technology, because they know the government is focused on it and so feel confident to invest,” he says.
Yu says local governments are now keen to support companies to build battery-storage facilities. “At a time when policymakers are looking for new ways to stimulate growth in their regions, the battery-manufacturing industry looks very promising, so governments are motivated to encourage this type of investment.”
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