How much storage do we need?
The National Electricity Market (which supplies thegrid for most of the country, except WA and the NT) has about 1.5GW of batteries and pumped hydro.
By 2050, the Australian Energy MarketOperator says, it'll need about about 46GW/640GWh.
By comparison, the Victorian Big Battery is 300MW/450MWh. So the need for storage is roughly equivalent to adding more than five very large batteries per year for the next 27 years.
Andrew Blakers, director of the Australian NationalUniversity Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, estimates the need forstorage to be even greater: about 50GW/1,000GWh of storage.
This is because electricity production will have to triple as theeconomy is decarbonised and sectors like ammonia production and steel-makingare electrified.
"We haveto do this inside 20 years," he added.
VRFB has thepotential to store energy at a scale that would dwarf today's largestlithium-ion batteries, Professor Skyllas-Kazacos said.
"They areideal for massive-scale energy storage," she said.
"They can be made in gigawatt-hours."
Almost 40years since leading the team that invented the VRFB,Professor Skyllas-Kazacos can see the technology's potential is finallybeing realised.
