https://www.copyright link/policy/energy-and-climate/unconventional-battery-tech-start-ups-look-to-seize-market-share-20230601-p5dd64
Jun 2, 2023 – 5.00amDevelopers of zinc bromine and vanadium “flow” battery technologies – who for years have toiled tirelessly in the shadows of the juggernaut that is the lithium-ion battery industry with little reward for their troubles – are having a brief moment in the sun.
Whether that turns into a more durable moment depends on how things develop at the cutting edge of the energy transition – more specifically at the “medium-duration” storage niche of four hours to 12 hours.
This market is gaining increasing attention as grid policymakers and managers come to grips with the complex, multifaceted challenges of firming up power systems dominated by wind and solar energy. It should continue to grow and accelerate as grid storage and other energy storage uses grow to fill some gaps in renewable supply.
The big question is: which technologies will get a piece of this growing market?
Redflow, a Brisbane-based company which makes zinc bromine flow batteries in Thailand, has just won a potentially game-changing contract to supply a 20 megawatt hour storage unit to the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians, a Native American nation near Corning, northern California.While smaller than some giant grid-scale lithium-ion batteries being announced in Australia – which run to many hundreds of megawatt hours – this is ten times the size of Redflow’s largest current deployment, which is also in California. Redflow also has more than 50 smaller batteries deployed at Optus mobile sites around Australia.
Redflow chief executive Tim Harris says the deal is a game-changer because it takes the company into deployments of tens of megawatts and more, demonstrates the scalability of its zinc bromine flow batteries and “showcases our ability to support critical infrastructure and use our chemistry at that size and scale”.
The company’s shares popped 35 per cent after the news was reported in The Australian Financial Review early on Thursday, to be up 47 per cent over the past five days.
That’s a small but welcome reprieve for the company’s long-suffering shareholders, who include internet service pioneer Simon Hackett.
They have seen the value of their investments whittled away over the past five years as lithium-ion batteries opened up a huge gap in production costs and capacity, propelled by massive investments by Chinese, Korean and US makers such as Elon Musk’s Tesla.Shares in Tivan – an aspiring vanadium producer and battery maker – are also up 6 per cent this week after executive chairman Grant Wilson lured vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) inventor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos and former Rio Tinto executive Stéphane Leblanc onto its advisory board and laid out the company’s ambitious plans in the Financial Review.
Tivan bought the world’s largest hard rock vanadium deposit from King River Resources in February and plans to develop a vanadium processing business and ultimately VRFB battery-making business in the Northern Territory’s Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct.
The company was formerly focused on extracting titanium from its Mount Peake deposit in the Northern Territory, which also contains a world-class vanadium resource. Its shares have gone mostly down over the past five years as it wrestled with its plans.Niche market
So, where do zinc and vanadium flow batteries fit in the storage market?
Lithium-ion batteries dominate the so-called short-duration energy storage market which includes electric vehicles, grid-stabilising services and grid storage of typically one to two hours. They are the best option for supplying the intense bursts of energy required for these functions.
But – as CSIRO, the top national science agency, said in its Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap published in March – under the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan Step Change scenario, total storage in the eastern states’ National Electricity Market is set to jump from less than five gigawatts/50 gigawatt hours in 2025 to 13 GW/420 GWh in 2030, and to 44 GW/550 GWh in 2050.
Western Australia’s grid will see similar growth to 1 GW/7 GWh by 2030 and to 12 GW/74 GWh by 2050.
As the charts show, medium-duration storage is expected to account for a large chunk of this growth; the share is larger in WA, and much larger under the AEMO’s Hydrogen Superpower scenario, under which overall grid generation is more than double Step Change capacity in order to fuel green hydrogen production.
(The road map didn’t estimate costs for zinc bromine flow batteries, citing insufficient data.)
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