A 1.8MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has been installed and energised at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) test site in Scotland’s Orkney Isles.
The energy storage technology will be combined with generation from tidal power to produce continuous supply of green hydrogen at the facility on the Orkney Island of Eday, about 24km north of the Scottish mainland in the UK.
As reported by Current as the project was announced in November 2020, tidal power is predictable, but its generation profile is highly variable between two high tides and two low tides each day. That makes smoothing its output a very heavy-duty cycling application for batteries.
Technology provider Invinity’s flow batteries, capable of more rugged performance and thousands of duty cycles without degradation, are being trialled to see if they will be a more suitable fit for the project than lithium-ion, which is considered to have technical limitations in that regard.
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