DICP vanadium redox flow battery hits 10,000 charge/discharge cycle mark
09 June 2011
Researchers at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences report that a 2 kW vanadium redox flow battery under development there for grid storage has been in operation for 1,429 days as of 4 June, with a total running time of more than 34,000 hours and 10,000 charge/discharge cycles.
This is the second vanadium flow system to attain the 10,000 charge/discharge mark, the first one being done by Sumitomo Electric in Japan, DICP said.
The DICP team led by Hua Min Zhang began work in 2000. To speed up the development of flow energy storage battery technology, the research team and the Industrial Investment Co., Ltd. set up Dalian Raycom Energy Storage Technology Development Co., Ltd. in October 2008, specializing in fluid engineering and industrial storage batteries. In 2010 they developed the first set of 260 kW vanadium redox flow battery energy storage systems for wind power, laying the foundation for the development of MW-class flow battery energy storage systems.
A redox flow battery (RFB) stores electrical energy typically in two soluble redox couples contained in external electrolyte tanks sized in accordance with application requirements. Liquid electrolytes are pumped from storage tanks to flow-through electrodes where chemical energy is converted to electrical energy (discharge) or vice versa (charge). The electrolytes flowing through the cathode and anode are often different and are referred to as anolyte and catholyte, respectively.
Ten plus thousand cycles is equivalent to 27.4+ years at one cycle/day for a solar energy system. That could be about the equivalent duration to the rest of the system.
Large units could make large solar energy system viable. Could it be made small and cheap enough for domestic systems?
Posted by: HarveyD | 09 June 2011 at 07:48 AM
A domestic system was tested in a small asian country a few years ago for solar voltaic storage. My understanding is that it was successful. Cost of the flow battery though was high.
Posted by: Mannstein | 09 June 2011 at 07:52 PM
Vanadium redox batteries will be juiced up by wind and solar generators. These batteries have a storage capacity of the size of the container the vanadium pentoxide liquid solution is stored to be charged, and discharged. This is the coolest set up I have ever seen. You could live any remote jungle or mountain peak as long as you had the vanadium redox battery, and a solar panel or wind turbine.
http://www.vanadiumsite.com/vanadium-redox-battery-wind-turbine-generator-and-storage/
Posted by: Vanadium Investing News | 15 June 2011 at 11:03 AM