VRFB News https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-02-02/vanadium-redox-flow-battery-and-future-of-grid-energy-storage/101911604
Vanadium redox flow batteries can provide cheap, large-scale grid energy storage
Excerpt
The rise of renewable energy has exposed a new problem: energy storage.
Solar and wind can generate very cheap electricity, but they're intermittent. For entire grids to run on renewables, enormous amounts of storage are needed to avoid blackouts.
The two main options, pumped hydro and lithium-ion batteries, each have their drawbacks, such as high costs.
Fortunately, there may be a third option.
A type of battery invented by an Australian professor in the 1980s has been growing in prominence, and is now being touted as part of the solution to this storage problem.
Called a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), it's cheaper, safer and longer-lasting than lithium-ion cells….
Cheaper, safer, more recyclable
When a commercial district in Trondheim, Norway, recently commissioned battery energy storage, it made an unusual choice.
Instead of ordering lithium-ion, it went with VRFB.
One of the main reasons for this was the lower cost, said Besart Olluri, co-founder of the Norwegian company that installed the battery, Bryte Batteries.
Another related reason was that, with proper maintenance, the battery could technically last forever.
"You get huge benefits both in terms of environment but also lifetime costs," Mr Olluri said, speaking from Trondheim.
"Even after 20 to 30 years of lifespan, you're able to easily recycle or refurbish the system to make it into a new one."
This remarkable property of VRFB has seen them being described as the next big technology for large-scale storage.
Dozens of companies around the world are now manufacturing and installing megawatt-scale VRFB.
Late last year, renewables developer North Harbour Clean Energy announced plans to build what would be Australia's largest VRFB — with 4 megawatts of power (the amount of energy that can flow in and out of the battery in any given instant) and 16 megawatt-hours of capacity.
Along with a joint venture partner, they also promised to build a VRFB assembly and manufacturing line in eastern Australia to "meet GWh demand for long-duration energy storage in the National Electricity Market"....
How much storage do we need?
The National Electricity Market (which supplies the grid for most of the country, except WA and the NT) has about 1.5GW of batteries and pumped hydro.
By 2050, the Australian Energy Market Operator says, it'll need about about 46GW/640GWh.
By comparison, the Victorian Big Battery is 300MW/450MWh. So the need for storage is roughly equivalent to adding more than five very large batteries per year for the next 27 years.
Andrew Blakers, director of the Australian National University Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, estimates the need for storage to be even greater: about 50GW/1,000GWh of storage.
This is because electricity production will have to triple as the economy is decarbonised and sectors like ammonia production and steel-making are electrified.
"We have to do this inside 20 years," he added.
VRFB has the potential to store energy at a scale that would dwarf today's largest lithium-ion batteries, Professor Skyllas-Kazacos said.
"They are ideal for massive-scale energy storage," she said.
"They can be made in gigawatt-hours."
Almost 40 years since leading the team that invented the VRFB, Professor Skyllas-Kazacos can see the technology's potential is finally being realised.
And after failing to commercialise homegrown tech, Australia may soon be manufacturing VRFB in large quantities.
"It would have been wonderful if we could have developed it in Australia sooner," Professor Skyllas-Kazacos said.
"[But] all we know how to do is construction and mining.
"[The companies] couldn't see beyond that. They couldn't see the big picture."