Renewable Energy Dynamics Technology (REDT) has announced that it has won a major funding award of £3.6 million from the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) towards the demonstration and pre-commercialisation of a 1.26MWh utility scale flow battery system. This funding is part of an overall £17 million package available through the department’s Energy Storage Technology Demonstration Competition, a pre-commercial procurement scheme run by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and funded directly by DECC.
The competition forms part of the government’s Small Business Initiative and its aim is to encourage the development of innovative, pre-commercial energy storage technologies that can address grid-stale storage and balancing requirements in the UK electricity network. Earlier in the year DECC announced that REDT was one of 12 organisations selected to carry out Phase 1 feasibility studies of innovative and diverse energy storage ideas. With the funding award, the company has now been selected to proceed into Phase 2.
Electrical energy storage is seen as the next key step in enabling the advance of low carbon generation. It is also one of the fastest moving areas for innovation in the UK. The UK Government has set a target for more than 23GW of renewable energy generation by 2020 and a modernised grid will require a minimum of 2GW (5%) in new distributed storage for cost effective delivery of variable generation from renewables.
REDT works on clean energy projects with its partner company Camco Clean Energy, utilising that company’s extensive experience and international office network. The company’s Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) was successfully launched in 2012 following intensive research and development initiated by its predecessor RE-fuel technology working in partnership with the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The aim of the project is ultimately to demonstrate a cost-effective solution for the UK electricity grid thereby helping to alleviate long term energy prices, both in the UK and elsewhere.
The technology enables the efficient and sustainable storage of electrical energy in liquid form. The multi-valent properties of the Vanadium Redox electrolyte are used to provide a storage medium of virtually unlimited life with a system able to last more than 10,000 deep charge/discharge cycles. Combined with its very low maintenance requirements, the systems have been designed to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). In addition, the provision of extra elecolyte capacity is aimed to deliver long discharge durations at a relatively low marginal cost.
The proposed 1.26MWh VRFB storage system will be located on the island of Gigha, situated a few miles off the Kintyre peninsula, and with limited connection to the mainland via an ageing subsea cable. Project partners include Scottish and Southern Energy – Power Distribution (SSE), EA Technology Ltd., Community Energy Scotland (CES) and Gigha Green Power Ltd. (GGPL). Generation and distribution issues to be addressed on Gigha include storage of ‘wrong time’ wind energy produced by the established wind farm on the island and despatch at peak rates, peak shaving and power regulation, deferral of capital upgrades of over-utilised transmission assets, potential standby power for the island during network faults or power outages, and enabling a minimum 20% increase in wind and solar generation with associated additional income for the island.
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