The Anonymous Widower

A Different Energy Storage Technology

Recently, two articles on the web have been caught in my Google alerts.

• This article on Energy Storage News, which is entitled ‘Flow Machine’ Maker RedT Gets £3.2m Funding Needed To Power Projects
• This article on Mining Review Africa, which is entitled Bushveld Minerals: A Large-Scale Battery Storage Contender

Both articles are about energy storage using a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery.

This is a paragraph from the Bushveld article.

The project will be implemented in two phases for a total of 1 400 MWh of energy storage capacity – 800 MWh in Phase 1 and an additional 600 MWh in Phase 2.

When you consider that with lithium-ion technology battery capacity is normally talked about in kWH, these are impressive amounts of stored energy.

Reading the Wikipedia post shows that the batteries rely on toxic chemicals like sulphuric acid and vanadium oxide, which would probably rule out mobile applications.

Conclusion

Having read all the two articles and the Wikipedia entry, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some form of technology like this emerge for large scale energy storage to back up intermittent power sources like solar, wind and wave.

May 7, 2019 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Energy Storage | Bushveld Minerals, RedT, Solar Power, Vanadium Redox Flow Battery, Wind Power