The first vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) installation in Norway, a 5kW/25kWh system, was unveiled this week.
Local firm Bryte Batteries installed the 5kW/25kWh system at the Sluppen commercial district, in Trondheim, owned by property development company R. Kjeldsberg, the customer of the project. It was installed in a former warehouse which has been refurbished into a food court, pictured above.
VRFB firm Pinflow provided the battery itself while Bryte will optimise it with its energy management system (EMS) platform.
The system will be mainly used for peak shaving and flexibility markets, Ellen Loxley, head of growth at Bryte Batteries told Energy-Storage.news.
The project was part-funded by state-owned company and bank Innovation Norway and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology will assess how it can be used in the flexibility markets.
For future projects, Loxley said: “Other installations will be bigger and of industrial scale. This one is only for demo purposes, although future installations also will perform peak shaving, arbitrage and services for flexibility markets.”
The company says that most demand for its energy storage solution is coming from the real estate, transportation and land based fish-farming sectors.
With virtually all of Norway’s electricity demand being serviced by its huge hydroelectric power portfolio the country’s need for new energy storage is lower, so downstream news particularly on the grid-scale front has been quiet.
On the upstream side, companies based there have made significant moves in battery production (FREYR), recycling (Northvolt) and repurposing used EV batteries into second life energy storage (Evyon). Statkraft, the state-owned firm which runs its hydroelectric portfolio, is also very active across renewables internationally, particularly energy storage in Ireland.
Read Energy-Storage.news’ coverage of recent developments in the VRFB space here.
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