Dalian Rongke Power, a service provider for vanadium redox flow batteries, has connected the world’s largest redox flow battery energy storage station to the grid, in Dalian, in China's Liaoning province.
The station is expected to start operations in mid-October, following its approval by the Chinese National Energy Administration in 2016. The technology was developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The first phase of the project has a capacity of 100 MW/400 MWh, for an investment of about CNY 1.9 billion ($266 million). The second phase of the project is expected to push the full capacity to 200 MW/800 MWh. That will bring the total investment to CNY 3.8 billion, according to the Chinese Energy Storge Alliance.
The Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station will perform peak shaving and valley-filling grid auxiliary services, to offset the variability of the city’s solar and wind energy supply. Solar and wind will be used to charge the station's batteries during the grid load valley period by converting electrical energy into battery-stored chemical energy. Later, at peak grid load, the stored chemical energy will be converted back into electrical energy and transmitted to users.
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That would be about 5 times more expensive per energy unit (MWh) than battery storage.
No. That’s about $2.66/Watt….which is almost same as todays Li-ion with the advantage it can be scaled up or down and can deliver for longer hours.
This VRFB technology was designed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory not Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This technology was illegally transferred to China by UniEnergy Technologies. This is misleading reporting although it is good to see the technology being put to use.
As Bill says, it’s misleading at best to say that Rongke was a spinoff of tech developed at DICP.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-technology-china-vanadium
Here are a few quotes from the above article (outermost quotes indicate contiguity):
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“This is technology made from taxpayer dollars,” Skievaski said. “It was invented in a national lab. (Now) it’s deployed in China, and it’s held in China. To say it’s frustrating is an understatement.”
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The idea for this vanadium redox battery began in the basement of a government lab, three hours southeast of Seattle, called Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It was 2006, and more than two dozen scientists began to suspect that a special mix of acid and electrolyte could hold unusual amounts of energy without degrading. They turned out to be right.
It took six years and more than 15 million taxpayer dollars for the scientists to uncover what they believed was the perfect vanadium battery recipe. Others had made similar batteries with vanadium, but this mix was twice as powerful and did not appear to degrade the way cellphone batteries or even car batteries do. The researchers found the batteries capable of charging and recharging for as long as 30 years.
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In 2012, Yang applied to the Department of Energy for a license to manufacture and sell the batteries.
The agency issued the license, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies. He hired engineers and researchers. But he soon ran into trouble. He said he couldn’t persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard.
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He said a fellow scientist connected him with a Chinese businessman named Yanhui Liu and a company called Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd., along with its parent company, and he jumped at the chance to have them invest and even help manufacture the batteries.
At first, UniEnergy Technologies did the bulk of the battery assembly in the warehouse. But over the course of the next few years, more and more of the manufacturing and assembling began to shift to Rongke Power, Chris Howard said. In 2017, Yang formalized the relationship and granted Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. an official sublicense, allowing the company to make the batteries in China.
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