3 ms·

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.”

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.”