The Dalian vanadium flow battery station. Credit: DICP The world’s largest flow battery has opened, using a newer technology to store power. The Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station, in Dalian in northeast China, has just been connected to the grid, and will be operating by mid-October.
A second phase will bring it up to 200MW/800MWh. It was the first project to be approved under a national programme to build large-scale flow battery demonstrations around China back in 2016 as the country’s government launched an energy storage policy strategy.
Flow batteries are a newer type of battery technology that operate by combining tanks of liquid electrolytes, rather than using static electrodes. They use cheaper and more sustainable materials than lithium-ion batteries, and are longer-lasting: theoretically, vanadium flow batteries could charge and discharge indefinitely.
Together, the academics have worked with Rongke Power on almost 40 commercial demonstration flow battery projects already, the alliance said, including projects both in China and overseas, such as a 10MW/50MWh system which was the world’s biggest when completed in 2013 and a 10MW/40MWh project at a wind farm.
The Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station, in Dalian in northeast China, has just been connected to the grid, and will be operating by mid-October. The vanadium flow battery currently has a capacity of 100 MW/400 MWh, which will eventually be expanded to 200 MW/800 MWh.
As a vanadium flow battery, the new energy storage system differs from the common lithium-ion batteries in use in today's electric vehicles and smartphones. They use massive tanks to store chemical energy in the form of liquid electrolytes, which can be converted into electricity by passing the fluid through a special membrane.