U.S. industrial conglomerate Honeywell has unveiled a new flow battery for renewable energy storage.
The battery is designed as a “safe” plug-and-play solution, as it is equipped with a non-flammable electrolyte. Its total rated active power at 25 degrees Celsius is 1 MW and the storage capacity ranges from 4 to 12 MWh. The device's discharge duration is between 4 and 12 hours and DC-DC round-trip efficiency ranges from 70 to 75%.
The manufacturer claims the battery can operate for over 20,000 cycles and at operating temperatures between -10 and 50 degrees Celsius. “The battery is designed with recyclable components and does not degrade over time,” it said in a statement. “It maintains system performance, providing a reliable and cost-efficient system for 20 years.”
The novel battery technology will be tested by U.S. utility Duke Energy at its Emerging Technology and Innovation Center in Mount Holl, in North Carolina, where a 400 kWh device will be installed.
Honeywell said the battery solution may also be used in combination with its system for process, business and asset management – Experion PKS – and its remote monitoring solution Honeywell Forge, without providing more technical details on the battery technology.
“By partnering with Duke, we can implement this [innovative] energy storage technology at scale and bring to market a revolutionary flow battery to meet growing energy storage demands while assisting companies in meeting their carbon-neutral goals,” said Honeywell vice president Ben Owens.
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It’s good to see a US company getting invested in rolling out storage. But the real true benefits will not be recognized by bolstering the failing centralized grid model of the past. Too bad Honeywell haven’t concentrated on residential or C&I scale systems for storage for ground up sustainable generation rather then top down.
Hopefully a really disruptive company will take out the dinosaurs that keep thinking about the 1900’s model of energy.
The true ability of distributed energy production paired with the electron mobility offered by EVs presents an awesome new way for the individual to labor multiply on a scale that Henry Ford’s tractors only dreamed of. A producer nation is possible again but depends not on backwards thinking of old grid model Honeywell is embracing.
While you do make a very valid point about where Honeywell have positioned their product it is as well to remember that mega-scale projects drive costs down faster than small ones. To start at the small end makes it very challenging to amortise development costs, leading to a product that has a limited market due to the price it would have to be sold at to get a return on the capital invested. Domestic flow batteries will come when the LCOE is low enough to compete with grid supplied power, that is battery plus solar makes economic sense.