Australia's first commercial vanadium grid battery

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Australia's first commercial vanadium-flow battery has been completed in South Australia's mid north and is expected to be running and exporting power by August.

Yadlamalka Energy has been undertaking the Spencer Energy Project at Bungama, outside of Port Pirie, where the 2-megawatt/8MW-hour battery is connected to a grid of solar panels.

The battery will store around 10 gigawatts of dispatchable solar power each year and charge from excess electricity produced by the solar panels when the sun is at its peak.

The power will be delivered to households at night when the grid loads are high from demand and when no solar generation is available.

Yadlamalka Energy chairman Andrew Doman said this would also be the first commercial use of the battery in the Southern Hemisphere.

"This is a battery that has significant advantages over lithium-ion ones; the most important one is the duration of this battery is four hours, unlike lithium batteries which typically last half-an-hour or two hours," he said.

"Introducing vanadium batteries will reduce peak energy prices in Australia.

"When electricity prices are negative, we'll be buying the electricity and that will help stabilise the grid, and when prices are high, we'll be selling power into the grid — that margin will have the effect to reduce prices.

The vanadium-flow battery was invented at the University of New South Wales during the 1980s.

Mr Doman said vanadium was ethically sourced as it was more widely abundant in Australia than other critical minerals like copper, nickel and cobalt.

The vanadium is then converted into an electrolyte which holds the ions and stores the electricity inside the battery.

University of Adelaide associate professor Nesimi Ertugrul will be monitoring the battery's performance and said the main difference between vanadium and lithium batteries was that the electrolyte could be replaced in a vanadium battery.

"That replacement simply makes them last longer," he said.

"Companies claim different life cycles for lithium batteries, but those life spans depend on environmental conditions as well as operating patterns.

"Lithium batteries last five to 10 years and vanadium batteries claim to last up to 20 years."

Associate Professor Ertugrul said lithium batteries were better for mobile objects like vehicles whereas vanadium was better suited to stationary conditions.

The vanadium-flow batteries are also non-flammable and are almost completely recyclable.

This text below is taken from the company's website:

Yadlamalka Energy comprises of co-located Vanadium Flow battery energy storage (2MW – 8MWh AC) and Solar Photovoltaic (PV) farm (6MWp DC), integrated behind a DC-coupled inverter. We want to commercialise breakthrough technology to help meet Australia and the world’s future energy needs.

Our first project Spencer Energy is located near Bungama Sub-Station, Port Pirie, South Australia, an area with very favourable solar radiation.

Spencer Energy Project will supply a combination of solar power and battery storage services to the grid. The vanadium flow battery will take advantage of the significant intraday price variation in South Australia to time shift power from midday to peak periods in the evenings and mornings.

The Project will also participate in the Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) market which helps maintain stability of the electricity system.

Through using breakthrough technology in the form of vanadium flow batteries, Spencer Energy Project, can deliver strong, economic infrastructure benefit to South Australia and at the same time support a low carbon economy.

Vanadium flow batteries are fully containerised, non-flammable units reusable over semi-infinite cycles, able to discharge 100% of the stored energy and do not degrade. In the words of Barack Obama “They are the multi-mega watt energy solution” and “one of the coolest things” he has ever spoken about.

Vanadium flow batteries have significant advantages over lithium in longer duration time shifting applications. The batteries will be able to discharge at a power of 2MW per hour for four hours. They are suitable for heavy cycling because, unlike lithium, they do not degrade.

The plan is to fully charge and discharge the battery at least once a day and possibly twice, depending on pricing conditions.

Spencer Energy Project, will contribute to solving the distributed and intermittent energy problems that exist in South Australia, which are expected to intensify as renewable energy sources are relied on more and more.

Yadlamalka Energy will monitor and report on the progress and outcomes of the first project, with the aim to continue to expand across Australia using this innovative breakthrough technology.

Largest vanadium-flow battery in the southern hemisphere.
Source: RenewEconomy

 Port Pirie is about 200 k's north of Adelaide and 50 k's south of Port Augusta (where a concentrated solar power plant is being built)  It all looks very green because it's mid-winter here in Oz, and it's the rainy season in the southern half of the country.