Story 2014-06-02 3NB Iron-Chromium Flow Battery Aims to Replace Gas Plants

Iron-Chromium Flow Battery Aims to Replace Gas Plants

by
in science on (#3NB)
story imageThe last major problem of renewable power is energy storage for off-production times. The sun may go down at night, but our electricity demand continues. Towards solving this problem, EnerVault has created a 250-kilowatt iron-chromium redox flow battery at a demonstration storage project in California's Central Valley.
One of the advantages of a flow battery is that the energy capacity can be expanded by installing larger tanks of the active material. Also, flow batteries are relatively inexpensive per kilowatt-hour compared to lithium-ion batteries and can provide power for multiple hours.
At less than $250 per kilowatt hour, redox flow batteries are cost comparable with gas-fired peaking power plants and are logical companions to renewable power generation.
Reply 3 comments

Exciting if it works and scales (Score: 2, Insightful)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-06-02 16:47 (#208)

Definitely like the idea of being able to use relatively abundant, low cost materials in a system that can be indefinitely charged and discharged... wow!

But it takes a lot of space (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-02 20:08 (#209)

From what I've read flow batteries have some very nice features, if you can get the price down, but they *do* take up a lot of space.

Re: But it takes a lot of space (Score: 2, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-06-02 20:59 (#20A)

but they *do* take up a lot of space.
So does a peak plant, but these seem much more flexible.