Flow Batteries

Filed in archive Storage on November 28, 2006

Renewable energy technologies, particularly solar generators and wind turbines, are often criticized for their inability to store electricity in large amounts. It looks like this will change soon, as advancements in Flow Batteries are now nearing commercialized applications. onclick="tracking(this); return

Flow batteries are fuel cells that allow the storage of active materials external to the battery and the appropriate reactants circulating through the cell stack. According to MPowerUk, flow batteries were first made of zinc/chlorine and was used as early as 1884! In the Mid seventies the technology regained interest and in 1986, the Vanadium Redox Battery was patented by the University of New South Wales in Australia. This flow battery elimated the problem of cross-contamination by diffusion of ions across the cell's membranes. The vanadium redox battery offers almost unlimited capacity by simply increasing the size of the storage tanks. In addition to tat, it can be left without any charge without affecting the physical storage capacity of the cell and can be recharged by replacing the electrolytes. Its main problem has been the low energy-to-volume ratio compared with standard storage batteries.

VRB Power Systems, Inc. is changing that by proving that mass storage capacity. They have recently signed with a 1.5 MW storage system for the Sorne Hill Wind Farm in Ireland which they say will demonstrate Flow Battery's upgraded storage capacity.Read more here.

Thanks to Axeon Power, which is the source of the image used in this post. You can find the original image here.