Canada’s Largest Solar-Powered Vanadium Flow Battery
Canadian companies Invinity and Elemental Energy are planning to couple a 21 MW solar plant under development in Alberta with 8.4 MWh of vanadium redox flow battery storage capacity.
Invinity’s batteries at the Energy Superhub Oxford site, in the UK.
Image: Invinity
“The solar array will be coupled directly with the vanadium flow battery, improving plant efficiency, operating flexibility and costs,” Invinity said in a statement. “Compared with more common lithium-ion batteries, Invinity’s VFBs are a safer form of longer-duration, utility-grade energy storage, offering excellent operational longevity in ultra-heavy duty use while being fully recyclable at end of life.”
The project is being backed by the Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), which is a Canadian non profit organization that invests in environmental and cleantech companies.
“Alberta has a long history of leadership in energy; the fact that this shovel-ready project will expand that leadership in new directions while creating great new jobs is a testament to how Alberta caacln innovate and build,” said Invinity CCO Matt Harper. “Clean energy on demand is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity; in delivering solar and storage together at Chappice Lake, we will prove that solar generation plus Invinity’s utility-grade vanadium flow batteries can make Alberta a powerhouse for the North American grid.”
Vanadium flow batteries offer heavy-duty energy storage and are designed for use in high-utilization applications, such as industrial-scale solar PV generation for distributed, low-emissions energy projects. Energy is stored in a non-flammable, liquid electrolyte and the batteries do not degrade with cycling like lithium-ion options and they can be scaled and located with greater flexibility than pumped hydro energy storage.
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