Excerpts from an article outlining new VRFB installations planned in Hungary and other EU countries. From an article published in early April 2023.
The VRFB revolution for long term storage is now upon us.
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Invinity Energy Systems and chemicals company BASF have announced the first deployments of their non-lithium battery storage technologies in Hungary and Australia respectively.
Anglo-American Invinity makes its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage systems, while BASF has the license to distribute the sodium-sulfur (NAS) battery storage technology developed by Japan’s NGK Insulators.
Both technologies are targeted at medium and long-duration energy storage (LDES) market segments, aiming to provide storage at discharge durations longer than the typical 4-hour upper limit at which lithium-ion is widely considered most economical.
Invinity said last week that it has sold a 1.5MWh vanadium flow battery to STS Group, a Hungarian renewable energy project developer. It will be installed at an STS solar-plus-storage project in central Hungary, near the municipality of Öskü.
The sale follows the signing of a multi-party commercial partnership agreement between Invinity, STS and the developer’s strategic partner Ideona Group, which is an asset management company also based in Hungary.
London Stock Exchange-listed Invinity said that the Hungarian partners have identified a potential pipeline of opportunities for VRFB deployments of more than 50MWh in the EU Member State. The flow battery maker has given its two partners a mandate to deploy its devices at solar-plus-storage and grid storage projects.
The initial 1.5MWh deployment will be coupled with a 2MWp solar PV array in an EU-funded project. Seven of Invinity’s VS3 model flow batteries will be installed with up to 6-hour discharge duration. Storing and dispatching surplus renewable energy, the batteries will provide grid-balancing ancillary services.
The project near Öskü will be owned by asset manager Ideona, and installed and integrated by STS Group, which won contracts for the project through a tender held by Hungary’s National Research, Development and Innovation Office.
Invinity has deployed or is contracted to deploy 65MWh of VRFBs at 70 sites in 15 different countries, with a factory in Scotland and offices and operations in the UK, Canada, the US, China and Australia.
Formed by the merger of the UK’s redT and North America’s Avalon Battery in 2020, some of the company’s bigger projects underway include a large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Alberta, Canada, a handful of US solar-plus-storage microgrids, a recent
15MWh order in Taiwan, and
Australia’s first-ever grid-scale VRFB installation, a 2MW/8MWh system.
(20min delay)