VRFB News: UK https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/uk-battery-projects-awarded-30m-in-government-funding/
UK battery projects awarded £30m in government funding
Excerpt
New take on old tech
Invinity Energy will receive £11m to develop and manufacture their 7MW, 30MWh 4-hour vanadium flow battery (VFB), “the largest grid-scale battery ever manufactured in the UK”, the firm claims.
Along with being a proven, decades-old storage technology, flow batteries exhibit far greater capacity retention and less performance degradation over time than lithium-ion batteries. They are also safer than lithium-ion batteries as they cannot catch fire, more durable as they do not degrade with use, and more than 97% recyclable at the end of their 25+ year life, Invinity said.
Dubbed VFB LEAD (Vanadium Flow Battery Longer Duration Energy Asset Demonstrator), the project will see a 30 MWh Invinity VFB system deployed at a key node on the National Grid, the location of which has yet to be confirmed. The battery, which will be capable of delivering more than 7 MW of power on demand, will use the fast-response and high-throughput characteristics of Invinity’s battery technology to provide a broad range of services to the grid.
“With a capacity equivalent to the daily energy use of more than 3,500 homes, this battery will be the largest ever to be manufactured in the UK. Approximately six times larger than Invinity’s battery system at theEnergy Superhub Oxford, it will also be one of the world’s largest flow batteries. Furthermore, with the ability to deliver full power for a discharge duration of over 4 hours, it is expected to be the largest long duration battery asset connected to the UK grid,” Invinity said.