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UK’s largest flow battery energised

66 points by vanburen 5y ago

retzkek 5y ago
Since TFA didn't really explain what a "flow" battery is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
- elithrar 5y ago
  > In the ESO hybrid energy storage system, Invinity’s vanadium flow batteries are used to ‘front-end’ the energy asset, acting as a first line of response when the system is called into service; only after the required response exceeds the capacity of the Invinity battery does the lithium-ion battery get called into service. Since Invinity’s flow battery does not degrade with use and can cycle indefinitely, it performs much of the ‘heavy-lifting’ required from the system while reducing wear on the lithium-ion battery. From TFA.
- yob28 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TradingPlaces 5y ago
Vanadium flow batteries have gotten lots of interest because vanadium has 4 oxidation states, so the positive and negative electrolyte tanks have distinct charged and discharged chemistries. This adds a ton of flexibility to usage from multiple cycles per day to seasonal storage while the battery is still operating daily. Manufacturers are advertising 20k cycles vs 6-7k for Li-ion, but in theory, flow batteries can last forever with maintenance.
apendleton 5y ago
The mix of lithium ion and flow batteries here (50MWh of the former vs. 5MWh of the latter) kind of makes this feel like a proof of concept to me on the flow battery side -- I'd sort of expect the reverse, and to want to mostly lean on the flow batteries because of their suitability for long-duration storage and their tolerance of lots and lots of cycles, and mostly only use the lithium ion when you needed lots of power or to handle rapid changes in demand. But maybe I misunderstand the dynamics here?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  If you think of the flow battery as a fast cache and the Lithium Ion as a slower one then that might help you form a better picture.
- tacLog 5y ago
  I think they covered this question pretty well here: > Invinity’s vanadium flow batteries are used to ‘front-end’ the energy asset, acting as a first line of response when the system is called into service; only after the required response exceeds the capacity of the Invinity battery does the lithium-ion battery get called into service. Since Invinity’s flow battery does not degrade with use and can cycle indefinitely, it performs much of the ‘heavy-lifting’ required from the system while reducing wear on the lithium-ion battery. What I think this means, is the the 5Mhw of flow batter covers demand spikes and the 50Mhw allows for larger longer draws during off peak renewable times. I am just an enthusiastic auteur in this field and could be very wrong.
  - squeed 5y ago
    I think you're basically right. I know some people that looked in to building a flow battery (it didn't pan out for other reasons). The utility wanted it for frequency regulation - in other words, extremely short timescale response times.
  - aftbit 5y ago
    But why? I thought one of the chief advantages of flow batteries was a lower cost per kWh at scale, as the expensive electrodes can be sized for peak power, while the cheaper electrolyte can be sized for capacity. Perhaps the economies of scale in lithium-ion batteries have had a bigger impact on cost than this clever split, so lion is actually cheaper per kwh?
    - apendleton 5y ago
      Yes, exactly, this was my question as well. I understand their explanation for how they're using it, but it seems like the economics would be much better if configured differently.
trebligdivad 5y ago
They don't say why it's combined with traditional lithium ion - wasn't one of the promises of Flow that they can scale it up for longer storage just by adding more liquid?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It's not a matter of being able to scale it up, it is mostly a cost optimization.
- Trombone12 5y ago
  Guessing blindly here, but maybe the liquid is pretty expensive still?
jacquesm 5y ago
This is a very interesting development. 55MWh is a drop in the bucket at grid scale but it definitely is a step forward if the installation performs as designed over a longer period of time without reliability issues. For comparison purposes, also in the UK, Cruachan Dam has 7+ GWh worth of (pumped) storage, but this one even in its present state should be able to spin up even faster (though Cruachan Dam is very impressive in that respect).
- layoric 5y ago
  At this size, it is likely acting as a grid stabilizer rather than any kind of backup. Even 'drop in the bucket' size batteries can have a very positive impact on a grid when used in this way that bring down costs for network operators, and increase allowable renewable generation on the network. They can do this because of their response times being in the millisecond range, rather than seconds/minutes for hydro(15+ seconds) and other generation types. Eg, Tesla battery in South Australia mainly saves the operator money this way [0]. [0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/12/05/south-australias-tesla-big-battery-saves-40-million-in-grid-stabilization-costs/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/12/05/south-australias-tesl...
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, precisely. The alternative is to have a much larger installation running idle 'just in case', this thing can react in the time it takes to spin up the larger installation if the load surge persists. They are super useful, the effect is the same as if you hook up a large flywheel to the grid.
zeristor 5y ago
Its like no one has heard of Stocking Pelham from 4 years ago: https://stateraenergy.co.uk/Energy%20Storage%20Facility/pelham-storage/ https://stateraenergy.co.uk/Energy%20Storage%20Facility/pelh...
- jacquesm 5y ago
  But that's just Lithium Ion cells.
rkwasny 5y ago
5 MWh = 370 tesla powerwalls - for a grid energy storage this is a small POC
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That is true. But the Tesla powerwalls would be using Lithium Ion tech, and that is used here too but 50 MWh worth of it. So the whole installation is considerably larger than what you write.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Or two megapacks at about $2.5M which is product targeting this commercial / utility space. https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design Be curious what this cost. Sure, li-ion has poor endurance but we can't really compare without a cost number.
pphysch 5y ago
Why is this news? It's a 5MWh vanadium flow battery. Another country put online a 800MWh vanadium flow battery (160x larger) this year [1]. > Not only will this be the largest directly-transmission-connected battery installed in the UK to date, it will be the largest vanadium flow + lithium-ion hybrid battery ever deployed. This is like boasting you have the world first, largest ever potato+nuclear reactor energy source by throwing a potato in an existing nuclear reactor. Good PR for securing the next contract from dimwitted bureaucrats, I guess, but hardly a genuine exposition of cutting-edge technological development. [1] - https://www.power-technology.com/marketdata/dalian-uet-rongke-power-battery-energy-storage-system-china/ https://www.power-technology.com/marketdata/dalian-uet-rongk...
- gandalfian 5y ago
  "Why is this news? Another country put online a 800MWh vanadium flow battery" Did they actually finish building it and get it working and achieve a reasonable cost? Or is it just a big announcement and PR release so far? But yes if they do manage it that is amazing. Otherwise just peacocking.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Yes, the project started 5 years ago IIRC and completed this year.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      It was scheduled to complete this year (in fact, it was originally scheduled to be completed in 2019, then 2020, and then it was supposed to be 2021), but it has as far as I know not been completed yet and has not been taken into general service. Proof to the contrary would be gladly accepted, if they get it to completion and it functions as advertised it will instantly be the largest of its kind in the world.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    From what I know about it it got delayed twice by more than a year and isn't operational.
gandalfian 5y ago
27x 20ft shipping containers combine to form a 5mw vanadium flow battery buffering a 50mw lithium battery. Which is interesting but the fact it's not 100% flow battery suggest lithium must still be sufficiently cheaper to overcome its shorter life.
- ok_dad 5y ago
  > 27x 20ft shipping containers combine to form a 5mw [it's 5MWh, not 5MW] vanadium flow battery This seems like a LOT of space required for such a low capacity. For a 5MWh flow battery, I wonder what the peak power output actually is from the system? for LiIon, you would see about ~1MW peak power from such a small reserve of energy. Flow batteries are longer lasting, so I assume this battery is less peak output. I am pretty sure that the LiIon battery will be doing the heavy lifting here, sized as it is. This isn't a huge leap forward.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Why do you say the enrrgy desnsity is low? Comoared to hudro this is very dense storage, an ordinary warehouse would back up multiple Gwh
robocat 5y ago
Spec sheet of a VS3-022 container (note website slow response - hug of death?): https://invinity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Invinity-VS3-022-Vanadium-Flow-Battery-Data-Sheet-MAR00016-2021-09.pdf https://invinity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Invinity-VS3... Non-flammable Safe by design 25 year lifespan Unlimited cycles Lowest LCOS High recyclability CUMULATIVE ENERGY DELIVERED OVER TIME INVINITY VS3-022 3783000kWh versus LITHIUM 973kWh (Assumptions: 220 kWh DC capacity installed, 2 cycles per day, 100% DoD per cycle, 365 days a year). [Note corrected for typo in PDF: 3,783.000kWh should be 3,783,000kWh] PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS Ambient Operating Temperature 25°F to 110°F (-5°C to 45°C) Nameplate Rating DC Voltage 1000 VDC Operating Voltage, Nominal 850 VDC Operating Voltage Range, Full Power 750 to 950 VDC Max. Continuous DC Current ±104 A Max. Continuous DC Power 78 kW Energy Storage Capacity 220 kWh Energy Storage Duration 2.5 hours @ 78 kW 4 hours @ 56 kW 8 hours @ 28 kW Max. Recommended Depth of Discharge 100% Cycle Life > 20,000 cycles Lifetime Throughput 3,783 MWh Annual Capacity Degradation < 0.5% per year Max. DC Round Trip Efficiency (RTE) > 78% Annual DC RTE Degradation < 0.1% per year
- tuatoru 5y ago
  3.8 GWh lifetime? 78 kW DC, so about 70 kW delivered? Hardly seems a big battery.
  - robocat 5y ago
    Site had 27 containers installed, so maximum ~2MW delivered (really depends on configuration of inverters). Implied by the installation is that the price of the batteries is a bit more expensive than Lithium batteries (risk adjusted price given the technology is less proven so perceived as higher risk). Vanadium batteries can do many more cycles before they lose efficiency, and presumably the liquid is easy to replace and recycle, so lifetime costs should be lower for Vanadium batteries in high duty cycle applications (as the article talks about). About their cost: example 1: “The 0.5 MWh system would comprise two Invinity VS3 flow batteries, and was expected to contribute revenue [to Invinity] of approximately £0.48m, relating to the Invinity battery system itself, ancillary components and associated services.”; example 2: “Last week the company announced the world’s largest solar-plus flow battery project so far. The Yadlamalka project in South Australia will pair a 6-megawatt solar project with an 8-megawatt-hour vanadium flow battery. The project, worth 20 million Australian dollars (USD $15 million)”. It is hard to know what else is in those systems (solar panels? inverters? support contracts?) so you can only infer the batteries cost less than those implied prices. I am guessing another major advantage is reduced fire risk, albeit at 1/8th the density of LiIon. Nobody wants a Lithium battery fire like this 2MWh installation: https://spectrum.ieee.org/dispute-erupts-over-what-sparked-an-explosive-liion-energy-storage-accident https://spectrum.ieee.org/dispute-erupts-over-what-sparked-a... “[The fire] was initiated by an internal cell failure within one battery cell, identified as cell 7-2 on Rack 15.” “thermal runaway cascaded from cell 7-2 through every other cell and module in Rack 15 via heat transfer.”

66 points by vanburen 5y ago

Since TFA didn't really explain what a "flow" battery is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery

elithrar 5y ago
> In the ESO hybrid energy storage system, Invinity’s vanadium flow batteries are used to ‘front-end’ the energy asset, acting as a first line of response when the system is called into service; only after the required response exceeds the capacity of the Invinity battery does the lithium-ion battery get called into service. Since Invinity’s flow battery does not degrade with use and can cycle indefinitely, it performs much of the ‘heavy-lifting’ required from the system while reducing wear on the lithium-ion battery. From TFA.
yob28 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TradingPlaces 5y ago

Vanadium flow batteries have gotten lots of interest because vanadium has 4 oxidation states, so the positive and negative electrolyte tanks have distinct charged and discharged chemistries. This adds a ton of flexibility to usage from multiple cycles per day to seasonal storage while the battery is still operating daily. Manufacturers are advertising 20k cycles vs 6-7k for Li-ion, but in theory, flow batteries can last forever with maintenance.

apendleton 5y ago

The mix of lithium ion and flow batteries here (50MWh of the former vs. 5MWh of the latter) kind of makes this feel like a proof of concept to me on the flow battery side -- I'd sort of expect the reverse, and to want to mostly lean on the flow batteries because of their suitability for long-duration storage and their tolerance of lots and lots of cycles, and mostly only use the lithium ion when you needed lots of power or to handle rapid changes in demand. But maybe I misunderstand the dynamics here?

jacquesm 5y ago
If you think of the flow battery as a fast cache and the Lithium Ion as a slower one then that might help you form a better picture.
tacLog 5y ago
I think they covered this question pretty well here: > Invinity’s vanadium flow batteries are used to ‘front-end’ the energy asset, acting as a first line of response when the system is called into service; only after the required response exceeds the capacity of the Invinity battery does the lithium-ion battery get called into service. Since Invinity’s flow battery does not degrade with use and can cycle indefinitely, it performs much of the ‘heavy-lifting’ required from the system while reducing wear on the lithium-ion battery. What I think this means, is the the 5Mhw of flow batter covers demand spikes and the 50Mhw allows for larger longer draws during off peak renewable times. I am just an enthusiastic auteur in this field and could be very wrong.
- squeed 5y ago
  I think you're basically right. I know some people that looked in to building a flow battery (it didn't pan out for other reasons). The utility wanted it for frequency regulation - in other words, extremely short timescale response times.
- aftbit 5y ago
  But why? I thought one of the chief advantages of flow batteries was a lower cost per kWh at scale, as the expensive electrodes can be sized for peak power, while the cheaper electrolyte can be sized for capacity. Perhaps the economies of scale in lithium-ion batteries have had a bigger impact on cost than this clever split, so lion is actually cheaper per kwh?
  - apendleton 5y ago
    Yes, exactly, this was my question as well. I understand their explanation for how they're using it, but it seems like the economics would be much better if configured differently.

trebligdivad 5y ago

They don't say why it's combined with traditional lithium ion - wasn't one of the promises of Flow that they can scale it up for longer storage just by adding more liquid?

jacquesm 5y ago
It's not a matter of being able to scale it up, it is mostly a cost optimization.
Trombone12 5y ago
Guessing blindly here, but maybe the liquid is pretty expensive still?

jacquesm 5y ago

This is a very interesting development. 55MWh is a drop in the bucket at grid scale but it definitely is a step forward if the installation performs as designed over a longer period of time without reliability issues. For comparison purposes, also in the UK, Cruachan Dam has 7+ GWh worth of (pumped) storage, but this one even in its present state should be able to spin up even faster (though Cruachan Dam is very impressive in that respect).

layoric 5y ago
At this size, it is likely acting as a grid stabilizer rather than any kind of backup. Even 'drop in the bucket' size batteries can have a very positive impact on a grid when used in this way that bring down costs for network operators, and increase allowable renewable generation on the network. They can do this because of their response times being in the millisecond range, rather than seconds/minutes for hydro(15+ seconds) and other generation types. Eg, Tesla battery in South Australia mainly saves the operator money this way [0]. [0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/12/05/south-australias-tesla-big-battery-saves-40-million-in-grid-stabilization-costs/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/12/05/south-australias-tesl...
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Yes, precisely. The alternative is to have a much larger installation running idle 'just in case', this thing can react in the time it takes to spin up the larger installation if the load surge persists. They are super useful, the effect is the same as if you hook up a large flywheel to the grid.

zeristor 5y ago

Its like no one has heard of Stocking Pelham from 4 years ago: https://stateraenergy.co.uk/Energy%20Storage%20Facility/pelham-storage/ https://stateraenergy.co.uk/Energy%20Storage%20Facility/pelh...

jacquesm 5y ago
But that's just Lithium Ion cells.

rkwasny 5y ago

5 MWh = 370 tesla powerwalls - for a grid energy storage this is a small POC

jacquesm 5y ago
That is true. But the Tesla powerwalls would be using Lithium Ion tech, and that is used here too but 50 MWh worth of it. So the whole installation is considerably larger than what you write.
onphonenow 5y ago
Or two megapacks at about $2.5M which is product targeting this commercial / utility space. https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design https://www.tesla.com/megapack/design Be curious what this cost. Sure, li-ion has poor endurance but we can't really compare without a cost number.

pphysch 5y ago

Why is this news? It's a 5MWh vanadium flow battery. Another country put online a 800MWh vanadium flow battery (160x larger) this year [1]. > Not only will this be the largest directly-transmission-connected battery installed in the UK to date, it will be the largest vanadium flow + lithium-ion hybrid battery ever deployed. This is like boasting you have the world first, largest ever potato+nuclear reactor energy source by throwing a potato in an existing nuclear reactor. Good PR for securing the next contract from dimwitted bureaucrats, I guess, but hardly a genuine exposition of cutting-edge technological development. [1] - https://www.power-technology.com/marketdata/dalian-uet-rongke-power-battery-energy-storage-system-china/ https://www.power-technology.com/marketdata/dalian-uet-rongk...

gandalfian 5y ago
"Why is this news? Another country put online a 800MWh vanadium flow battery" Did they actually finish building it and get it working and achieve a reasonable cost? Or is it just a big announcement and PR release so far? But yes if they do manage it that is amazing. Otherwise just peacocking.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Yes, the project started 5 years ago IIRC and completed this year.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It was scheduled to complete this year (in fact, it was originally scheduled to be completed in 2019, then 2020, and then it was supposed to be 2021), but it has as far as I know not been completed yet and has not been taken into general service. Proof to the contrary would be gladly accepted, if they get it to completion and it functions as advertised it will instantly be the largest of its kind in the world.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  From what I know about it it got delayed twice by more than a year and isn't operational.

gandalfian 5y ago

27x 20ft shipping containers combine to form a 5mw vanadium flow battery buffering a 50mw lithium battery. Which is interesting but the fact it's not 100% flow battery suggest lithium must still be sufficiently cheaper to overcome its shorter life.

ok_dad 5y ago
> 27x 20ft shipping containers combine to form a 5mw [it's 5MWh, not 5MW] vanadium flow battery This seems like a LOT of space required for such a low capacity. For a 5MWh flow battery, I wonder what the peak power output actually is from the system? for LiIon, you would see about ~1MW peak power from such a small reserve of energy. Flow batteries are longer lasting, so I assume this battery is less peak output. I am pretty sure that the LiIon battery will be doing the heavy lifting here, sized as it is. This isn't a huge leap forward.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Why do you say the enrrgy desnsity is low? Comoared to hudro this is very dense storage, an ordinary warehouse would back up multiple Gwh

robocat 5y ago

Spec sheet of a VS3-022 container (note website slow response - hug of death?): https://invinity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Invinity-VS3-022-Vanadium-Flow-Battery-Data-Sheet-MAR00016-2021-09.pdf https://invinity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Invinity-VS3... Non-flammable Safe by design 25 year lifespan Unlimited cycles Lowest LCOS High recyclability CUMULATIVE ENERGY DELIVERED OVER TIME INVINITY VS3-022 3783000kWh versus LITHIUM 973kWh (Assumptions: 220 kWh DC capacity installed, 2 cycles per day, 100% DoD per cycle, 365 days a year). [Note corrected for typo in PDF: 3,783.000kWh should be 3,783,000kWh] PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS Ambient Operating Temperature 25°F to 110°F (-5°C to 45°C) Nameplate Rating DC Voltage 1000 VDC Operating Voltage, Nominal 850 VDC Operating Voltage Range, Full Power 750 to 950 VDC Max. Continuous DC Current ±104 A Max. Continuous DC Power 78 kW Energy Storage Capacity 220 kWh Energy Storage Duration 2.5 hours @ 78 kW 4 hours @ 56 kW 8 hours @ 28 kW Max. Recommended Depth of Discharge 100% Cycle Life > 20,000 cycles Lifetime Throughput 3,783 MWh Annual Capacity Degradation < 0.5% per year Max. DC Round Trip Efficiency (RTE) > 78% Annual DC RTE Degradation < 0.1% per year

tuatoru 5y ago
3.8 GWh lifetime? 78 kW DC, so about 70 kW delivered? Hardly seems a big battery.
- robocat 5y ago
  Site had 27 containers installed, so maximum ~2MW delivered (really depends on configuration of inverters). Implied by the installation is that the price of the batteries is a bit more expensive than Lithium batteries (risk adjusted price given the technology is less proven so perceived as higher risk). Vanadium batteries can do many more cycles before they lose efficiency, and presumably the liquid is easy to replace and recycle, so lifetime costs should be lower for Vanadium batteries in high duty cycle applications (as the article talks about). About their cost: example 1: “The 0.5 MWh system would comprise two Invinity VS3 flow batteries, and was expected to contribute revenue [to Invinity] of approximately £0.48m, relating to the Invinity battery system itself, ancillary components and associated services.”; example 2: “Last week the company announced the world’s largest solar-plus flow battery project so far. The Yadlamalka project in South Australia will pair a 6-megawatt solar project with an 8-megawatt-hour vanadium flow battery. The project, worth 20 million Australian dollars (USD $15 million)”. It is hard to know what else is in those systems (solar panels? inverters? support contracts?) so you can only infer the batteries cost less than those implied prices. I am guessing another major advantage is reduced fire risk, albeit at 1/8th the density of LiIon. Nobody wants a Lithium battery fire like this 2MWh installation: https://spectrum.ieee.org/dispute-erupts-over-what-sparked-an-explosive-liion-energy-storage-accident https://spectrum.ieee.org/dispute-erupts-over-what-sparked-a... “[The fire] was initiated by an internal cell failure within one battery cell, identified as cell 7-2 on Rack 15.” “thermal runaway cascaded from cell 7-2 through every other cell and module in Rack 15 via heat transfer.”