Yadlamalka, South Australia will take centre stage in the race to decarbonize our global electricity system when the world’s largest solar-powered vanadium flow battery (VFB) comes online there next year. In this pioneering project, a VFB supplied by Invinity Energy Systems will charge from a solar PV array and provide power to the local grid on demand.
Yadlamalka Energy Trust has developed this innovative $20m AUD project, combining an 8 MWh VFB with a 6 MWp solar array, to unlock low-cost, low-emission energy for the Australian grid, producing approximately 10 GWh of ‘dispatchable’ solar power each year.
The VFB will charge from electricity produced by solar panels when the sun is at its peak. This electricity can then be delivered when it is most needed, such as in the evening when grid loads are high from consumer demand, but solar generation is no longer available. By using vanadium flow batteries to complete this ‘time shift’, solar power becomes ‘dispatchable’, meaning it can be deployed to the grid when it is most valuable, at any time of day or night.
Australia’s rapid uptake of renewable energy in recent years has driven the need for investment in flexible energy storage technologies to manage the variable output from those generation sources. The Yadlamalka Energy project provides a glimpse into the future of electricity grids in Australia and around the world. It has been supported by ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, with a significant grant of $5.7m AUD.
“Yadlamalka Energy Trust is excited about being the first in Australia to construct a large scale dispatchable solar power plant. Through using breakthrough technology in the form of vanadium flow batteries, we can deliver strong, economic infrastructure benefit to South Australia and at the same time support a low carbon economy”, Andrew Doman, Yadlamalka Energy Trust founder and chairman.
“We hugely appreciate ARENA’s support and look forward to working with them on this exciting project to enable a sustainable energy future for Australia.
Our excellent team at Yadlamalka Energy have provided invaluable support through the development phase of the project, and include partners Invinity Energy Systems, Habitat Energy and DCD Electric and project managers Switchco and Birdwood Energy. We will continue to work closely as we start construction with commissioning expected at the end of 2021.”
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