Stryten Energy, a US-based battery technology company, recently installed a pilot-sized version of its vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) at a facility operated by Snapping Shoals EMC, an electricity cooperative in Georgia, United States.
The battery is a 20 kW/120 kWh VRFB with a recharge time of 7.5 hours and connected to the grid at 480V. It is made of several modules with built-in safety features, each operating independently at 6.67 kW/40 kWh per cycle.
“We specifically designed and sized this system for an initial evaluation phase with Snapping Shoals where we will conduct long-duration testing that is six hours or more,” Scott Childers, Vice President, Essential Power, Stryten Energy, told pv magazine.
The vanadium electrolyte aqueous solution is a proprietary combination of sulfuric acid and vanadium oxides. It is stable up to 50 C, but the system can be designed to mitigate external temperature effects beyond this range, according to Childers. Furthermore, the VRFB system is supported by remote management software, and the ability to track and store performance data.
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“As product commercialization matures, Stryten Energy’s VRFB will be highly scalable in order to serve kW to MW to meet the needs of commercial and industrial customers through to full-scale utilities,” said Childers.
The VRFB technology, originally developed with Storion Energy, a US-based startup that Stryten acquired last year, is not yet used by a solar PV customer, but a prototype VRFB system is installed at a PV plant in the Colorado test facility, known as Solar Technology Acceleration Center (SolarTAC). It has already dispatched 30 MWh of energy over 1,100 cycles, demonstrating that the system is capable of storing solar energy to be deployed on demand as needed, according to Childers.
Stryten Energy anticipates the VRFB will be commercially available in January 2025. The company plans a complete US-based supply chain and manufacturing of all components of the VRFB system, including the vanadium electrolyte. A manufacturing location has not yet been selected.
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