Vanadium and the Future

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Flow Battery Vs. Tesla Battery Smackdown Looming

June 21st, 2015 by Tina Casey
Yes, they went there. A little-known startup energy storage company called UET just announced a major milestone for its latest flow battery project, and the folks over there couldn’t resist the opportunity to take a poke at the much-publicized Tesla battery, too.
The new UET flow battery is part of a major energy storage project supported by the US Energy Department. The goal is to compare and contrast the performance of  flow batteries with lithium-ion batteries — such as the Tesla battery —  when it comes to utility-scale performance and grid integration. So, hold on to your hats, this could get interesting.



Energy Storage & Flow Batteries

For those of you new to the topic, the energy storage market is set to take off like a rocket, running apace with the renewable energy market and the boom in electric vehicle sales.
Since wind and solar energy come and go, energy storage fills a critical gap in terms of availability and reliability. That goes for utility-scale operations and the booming small-scale sector consisting of homes, businesses, and other relatively small users.
So far, lithium-ion (Li-ion) technology has staked a claim to the gold standard for energy storage in terms of performance relative to cost. To gild the lily, Li-ion batteries are easily scalable — hence the Tesla Motors Li-ion battery and coming Gigafactory.
Best known for its application to the already-legendary Tesla electric vehicle, the Tesla battery was recently introduced to the small-scale stationary energy storage market in the form of the Powerwall battery, and the company is also diving into the utility-scale market.

However, other energy storage technologies have an eye on the prize as well, which brings us to redox flow batteries (redox is fancyspeak for the transfer of electrons).
“Flow” literally describes how flow batteries work. They consist of two tanks of liquid, which simply sit there until needed. When pumped into a reactor, the two solutions flow adjacent to each other and generate a charge.
Earlier versions were costly, inefficient affairs but in recent years flow battery technology has leaped several hurdles. The main driver here in the US has been the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).