Flow Battery

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have demonstrated the use of sugar water to improve the performance of flow batteries for grid-scale energy storage.

Sumitomo says that its 2MW/8MWh vanadium redox flow battery achieved a 99% operating rate at San Diego Gas & Electric’s (SDG&E) facility in California. The battery is expected to retain a capacity rate of 90% or more for 20 years in the electricity market.

US-based Salgenx says it has successfully integrated ultracapacitors with its saltwater redox flow batteries, resulting in significantly better power response and system performance.

While still using conventional lithium-ion raw materials, 24M’s technology is said to reduce the number of steps required to manufacture battery cells and thereby the cost by up to 40%. The US company’s SemiSolid design is also said to deliver improved energy density, safety and recyclability.

Scientists in the United States turned to artificial intelligence to speed up their search for new materials for use in a flow battery. The group developed a machine learning algorithm that could search a dataset of potential materials and identify those with the ideal balance of different characteristics that make it suitable for use in a flow batteries. The group says its algorithm could be applied to other battery technologies, and even in other fields.

Developed by Honeywell, the flow battery is currently being tested by U.S. utility Duke Energy. The battery can reach a storage capacity of 12 MWh and be used through a modular approach in large scale renewable energy projects.

US scientists claim to have discovered a membrane which could lead to cheaper large scale flow batteries. The material is an ion-selective, aqueous-compatible polymer with intrinsic microporosity known as AquaPIM and is said to have tunable thickness and high conductivity in aqueous electrolytes.

To get long-duration storage costs down to $0.05/kWh, research teams funded by ARPA-E are pursuing breakthroughs in flow batteries, hydrogen storage and other technologies – even thermovoltaics.

A team at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a type of battery which it says could store energy for long durations at a fraction of the cost of current storage technologies.

The Texas-headquartered firm will provide grid stability for Power Grid Corporation of India Limited in Puducherry with its flow battery systems.