By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
After receiving a grant from Massachusetts of $875,000, National Grid has added its first battery – a vanadium redox-flow battery (VRB) – in connection with its 1 MW solar farm outside of Shirley, Massachusetts, according to reports in the RTO Insider newsletter.
The battery setup is designed to demonstrate how utility-scale storage can work in this state, which is currently ranked No. 7 in the country in overall solar deployment.
As RTO Insider reports, “Carlos Nouel, vice president of innovation and development at National Grid, told RTO Insider that ‘the Shirley project will serve as a test bed for integrating storage and solar through the use of flow batteries, and support the development of new frameworks for dispatching stored solar power.'”
Integrating storage into the grid is the biggest challenge facing, and the group that won the grant decided to go with VRB instead of traditional lithium because of the utility-scale size. As RTO Insider explains:
A VRB stores chemical energy in the form of vanadium-based electrolyte and generates electricity by inducing a reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction: that is, a transformation of matter by electron transfer across an ion exchange membrane, within a battery stack. The reaction is achieved by either applying an electrical load (discharge) or an electrical supply (charge) to the battery stack as the electrolyte is flowing or being pumped across the membrane.
“Lithium is dominating the storage market, but it is not always the best tool for the job,” said Jonathan Milley, director of business development at Vionx, is quoted by RTO Insider as saying. “Lithium batteries are really for power applications, best-suited for short duration purposes, while vanadium flow batteries are for energy applications, and are therefore a more serious tool for keeping the lights on overnight.”
There are two important things to remember with RTO’s great story about Massachusetts:
1) There are actually markets outside of California where battery storage is being tested successfully. The hope is that this initial deployment will lead to more battery storage being installed in Massachusetts and, therefore, more solar along with it.
2) There are other battery technologies than lithium ion being deployed. While it’s easy to focus on lithium-ion batteries because it’s something with which we’re all familiar, there are other technologies out there, some of which may be better suited for different applications.
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