Utilities Are Trying Enormous 'Flow' Batteries Big Enough to Oust Coal Power Plants (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0175566777
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/11/30/0659210/utilities-are-trying-enormous-flow-batteries-big-enough-to-oust-coal-power-plants
- Source link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/batteries-could-harness-wind-sun-172548718.html
"The Hokkaido Electric Power Network (HEPCO Network) is deploying flow batteries, an emerging kind of battery that stores energy in hulking tanks of metallic liquid."
> [F]low batteries are making their debut in big real-world projects. Sumitomo Electric, the company that built the Hokkaido plant, has also built flow batteries in [2]Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, Morocco and California . Hokkaido's flow battery farm was the biggest in the world when it opened in April 2022 — a record that lasted just a month before China built one that is [3]eight times bigger and can deliver as much energy as [4]an average U.S. natural gas plant . "It looks like flow batteries are finally about to take off with interest from China," said Michael Taylor, an energy analyst at the International Renewable Energy Agency, an international group that studies and promotes green energy. "When China starts to get comfortable with a technology and sees it working, then they will very quickly scale their manufacturing base if they think they can drive down the costs, which they usually can...."
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> Lithium-ion batteries are perfect for smartphones because they're lightweight and fit in small spaces, even if they don't last long and have to be replaced frequently. Utilities have a different set of priorities: They need to store millions of times more energy, and they have much more room to work with. "If you think about utility-scale stationary applications, maybe you don't need lithium-ion batteries. You can use another one that is cheaper and can provide the services that you want like, for example, vanadium flow batteries," said Francisco Boshell, a researcher at the International Renewable Energy Agency...
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> Flow batteries are designed to tap giant tanks that can store a lot of energy for a long time. To boost their storage capacity, all you have to do is build a bigger tank and add more vanadium. That's a big advantage: By contrast, there's no easy way to adjust the storage capacity of a lithium-ion battery — if you want more storage, you have to build a whole new battery... One major barrier to building more of these battery farms is finding enough vanadium. Three-quarters of the world's supply comes as a by-product from 10 steel mills in China and Russia, according to Kara Rodby [a battery analyst at the investment firm Volta Energy Technologies] who got her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying the [5]design and market for flow batteries . Australia, South Africa and the United States also produce vanadium, but in much smaller quantities. [6]Mines that have been proposed could [7]boost supply . And [8]some flow battery start-ups are trying to sidestep the vanadium problem entirely by using different materials that are easier to buy.
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> The other hurdle is their up-front cost. Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries, Rodby said, and banks are hesitant to lend money to fund an unfamiliar technology. But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they're easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. "There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion," Rodby said.
Here's an interesting statistic from the article. "Over the next six years, utilities will have to build [9]35 times as many batteries as there are today to soak up all extra renewable energy that will come online, according to the International Energy Agency."
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/batteries-could-harness-wind-sun-172548718.html
[2] https://sumitomoelectric.com/products/redox/cases?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[3] https://www.energy-storage.news/first-phase-of-800mwh-world-biggest-flow-battery-commissioned-in-china/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[4] https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/power-plants-average-capacities/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[5] https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/145016/Rodby-krodby-phd-chemE-2022-thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[6] https://www.miningweekly.com/article/first-us-primary-vanadium-mine-approved-2023-10-30?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[7] https://www.australianvanadium.com.au/our-assets/the-australian-vanadium-project/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[8] https://elestor.com/technology?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
[9] https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/grid-scale-storage?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
units (Score:2)
> [the battery] can deliver as much energy as an average U.S. natural gas plant.
This is painful to read.
The way it's stated, it's objectively false, but it's not even easy to figure out what they intended.
Re: (Score:1)
Is that like 2 football fields worth, or as much as an Olympic size swimming pool. Those seem to be the favorite analogies.
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It's like two football fields worth of weight, or totally Olympic size pool of lightning bolts pounds but tell me in stones.
That's how much battery bon be bo 9be.
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TFA says the Vanadium electrolyte is stored in 130 tanks of 10,000 gallons, which is nearly exactly the volume of 2 Olympic swimming pools (of nominal 2 meter depth).
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How many humans would they need? I haven't watched all The Matrix prequels but...
'How was your weekend? Did you lose weight? Your skin looks fabulous.'
'Oh, I was at the health spa. They put you in this pod full of Tritium-Fluorine-Thorium electrolyte soup and jack you into a multiplayer virtual reality metaverse.'
Re: (Score:3)
They designed a power plant based on flow batteries that generates the same instant power as a typical power plant based on burning natural gas.
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Batteries do not generate; they store and releases.
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That depends on how technical you want to get. If you can say that coal plants generate energy, which is just a chemical reaction based on energy stored in the coal, then you can say that batteries generate energy, since the electrical energy is the result of chemical reactions of the electrolyte.
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I suppose if we want to be complicit in the leakage of stupidity into the world, where a battery is an electric generator. Harbor Freight and the like have been engaging in this for a few years now.
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I hate the whole idea of calling a battery power station a "generator", but in HF's defense they did not invent that description for it. It is very widely used. The solar panel is the "generator", the solar controller+battery+inverter in a single box with a single PCB is best described as a "bad idea" first and a "power station" second, or possibly even "power storage station" but I think it can have a pass since it has the inverter in it as well.
Converged devices are a real bad plan any time you aren't tig
Re: (Score:2)
Agree on all points. Though i've seen that [1]power station [harborfreight.com] name used with things that are *just* a battery and inverter. They even link to 'generator safety' on the web page which is doubly confusing for the normie.
The Brother MFC I have, and the one before it, have been stellar. Not that I send faxes either. But I do copy things and the like, and if i needed the capability it is a nice to have.
[1] https://www.harborfreight.com/350-power-station-350-running-watts-294-wh-capacity-70082.html
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And then I saw the "MPPT Solar Controller" thing there so I stand corrected.
Re: (Score:2)
The operation cycle of a battery has two phases. When a source of energy is applied to a battery, it accumulates. When an electrical load is applied to a battery, it generates.
This battery in particular is clearly composed of a storage unit (the electrolyte tank) and a generator unit (a flow cell).
When an EV is equipped with a hydrogen tank and a flow cell, we still say the hydrogen generates energy. Here it's a tank full of a vanadium solution. The only difference is the vanadium electrolyte is operated in
Re: (Score:2)
Did you mean fuel cell vs flow cell? It makes more sense with the former.
I'm not arguing the vanadium thing, I presume if you added more vanadium to one side of the reaction, you'd get power out the other side. Which is electric generation of a sort, though expensive, and mostly not what you would be doing, which would be pumping in juice and getting it back out cyclically. I'm arguing about those batteries at HF that are advertised as power stations and as alternatives to generators, and people believin
Re: (Score:2)
Several ways to answer your comment:
1) The plant generates power to the customers, independently of the technology it is based on.
2) In all rigour, nothing generates energy (First law of thermodynamics).
3) If we consider from operational point of view that burning methane (a redox reaction in gas phase) generates energy, then it's the same when the redox reaction happens in an aqueous solution.
4) Nothing prevents someone to build a natural gas plant that reverts the cycle and produces back methane from carb
Re: (Score:2)
So you’re suggesting pouring a constant supply of electrolytes into a flow battery?? A BATTERY is a storage device. You CHARGE and discharge them. A GENERATOR converts one form of energy to another. You can always put more wind, steam, water, into a turbine. The process happens in one direction. You dont run a turbine backwards to make steam. You dont run a boiler backwards to make coal. When you drain a battery you have to REVERSE the process to charge it back up. Otherwise its a chemical plant gener
Re: (Score:2)
It would be possible to provide a constant supply of electrolytes. The charge and discharge cycle could be split.
I doubt this makes sense at the moment, but who knows. Imagine a mid oceanic floating wind farm. You might charge the electrolyte there. When it's full, you swap the charged electrolyte for discharged from a tanker. The tanker then ferries the charged electrolyte to where ever you need it.
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Extremely inefficient. Factor in the transportation cost. Batteries are NET0 when it comes to energy production. A water reservoir is not a water source for your town. You either get it from rivers, lakes, rainfall, or underground aquifers. The reservoir is a water reserve. It fills in the gaps. When you drain a swimming pool it doesnt magically respawn full again. A grain silo doesnt produce food. These all have one similarity. They all have a very finite resource that is very short term.
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Offshore power generation makes more sense to create hydrogen. You dont have to ship in the water. Do the conversion right there and ship out the hydrogen. Its lighter factoring in energy density and your transportation costs are all in one direction. Its a battery when EnergyOUT never exceeds EnergyIN within the scope of the cycle. Generation takes externally stored energy and coverts it for less energy than we extract. Oil was stored a million years ago. Solar was stored billions of years ago on another c
Re: (Score:2)
My UPS generates energy for my computer to use when needed. It does so by transforming chemical species, and of course it has the advantage that it is reversible; but I don't see a difference with a UPS that wouldn't be reversible, either because it use classical alkaline batteries, or because it uses gaseous reactants (oxygen). I wouldn't call the UPS a generator, because it plays two functions; that of a generator, and that of an accumulator.
> you’re suggesting pouring a constant supply of electrolytes into a flow battery?
That the Vanadium battery can be recharged by replacing the elec
Re:units (Score:4, Informative)
Even worse in that they even compare power generation to power storage. A battery does not generate power. It stores and releases power. You cannot replace power generation with s battery. You can replace power losses with a battery. Its like saying you can replace a river with a water tower or reservoir. They serve different functions. A battery still has to be charged. A solar cell generates power, a turbine, whether its steam, wind, or water propelled, generates power, a battery does not.
Re: (Score:2)
You can replace peak-load generation with batteries, and that means you can make more use of base-load or intermittent generation sources.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. The article suggests batteries are somehow replacements for generators. Batteries prevent waste. They increase efficiency. They conserve fuel. At no time is my UPS for my PC replacing the permanent need for electricity from my utility company.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are in a very sunny part of the world with a large roof and lots of solar panels on it, then it could potentially allow you to go off-grid.
Without the batteries, you would need to buy electricity when the sun isn't shining, and either have wasted electricity in the middle of the day or have to sell it to the grid.
Re: (Score:2)
> A battery does not generate power. It stores and releases power.
It converts chemical energy into electrical energy.
A coal or natural gas power plant also converts chemical energy into electrical energy.
Whether a battery or a power plant "releases" or "generates" power is simply semantics, upon which Internet trolls love to pounce!
No, the real difference is that a battery has a fixed capacity, but up to that limit, it's significantly easier to convert electrical energy back into chemical energy in a battery
the most remarkable aspect of vanadium batts (Score:5, Interesting)
just leaving this here [1]https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03... [npr.org] tldr; vanadium reflows were developed in a us government lab and somehow the exclusive license to make them went to china
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-technology-china-vanadium
Re: (Score:2)
Vanadium flow batteries were invented more than 40 years ago.
Nobody needs a license to make them.
Perhaps the government lab built something new or different in 2017, but if so, the article you site doesn't mention it.
Re: (Score:2)
The article he cited does mention it.
> 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.
Re: (Score:3)
I am afraid it has been a general story of the renewable transition. The US in particular has dragged it's heels for what ever reasons and clung to its fossil fuel infrastructure. China is still earlier in it's development so it is still growing, but it has invested a massive amount into renewables, rather than just growing its fossil fuel.
End result. China is ahead with batteries, electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels and all of the electronics needed to drive it. And by ahead, I mean in terms of unde
Make Spying Cool Again (Score:2)
Surely we have the political will for industrial espionage, though! Electricity might sound "woke" to some people, but throw in "we're going to steal China's tech" and we all ought to be able to unite behind that.
Plain old Sand? (Score:2)
What ever happened to thermal sand batteries? Basically you filled the tank with plain old sand, insulated it heavily, and then heated it WAY WAY up. The medium was readily available and then you could just get it hot and pull it back out later. I assume that it is not as thermally dense as these "flow" batteries but goodness it has to be way cheaper to find sand than vanadium.
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> What ever happened to thermal sand batteries?
Thermal storage has horrible round-trip efficiency.
Re: (Score:1)
You can easy store a lot of heat.
But converting it into electricity is around 40% efficient.
Batteries are up to 99% efficient. But typical Lio batteries degrade. Not sure if they only lose capacity or also efficiency.
Storing heat is cute, if you want heat in winter. You can just pipe around the heat. It is un-cute, if you want to run a steam turbine and get electricity from it.
Re: (Score:2)
Sand batteries are for storing heat for district heating etc, not for electricity.
Re: (Score:2)
Thermal sand battery is used in Finland in a pilot project (8 MWh storage)
(article in Finnish) [1]https://www.vatajankoski.fi/in... [vatajankoski.fi]
Second one is also being build in Finland (100 MWh storage):
(article in Finnish) [2]https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/arti... [mtvuutiset.fi]
The reason why sand battery works in Finland is because there is a huge demand for heating during the winter. So it is not about storing electricity, it is about storing heat and then distributing the heat directly to the houses, which makes it really efficient. Especia
[1] https://www.vatajankoski.fi/innovaatiot/hiekka-akku/
[2] https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/hiekka-akku-tuottaa-pian-valtaosan-pornaisten-kaukolammosta-tallainen-on-hammastyttava-suomalaiskeksinto/9043918
Re:Bbbut ... (Score:4, Informative)
> Bbbut ... NUUUCUUULARRR?!?!?!
Even nuclear benefits from battery storage.
Nuclear produces steady power 24/7, but demand is not steady.
So battery backup can store energy when demand is low, like in the middle of the night, and provide power when demand is high.
The most difficult demand peak to serve is 4-7 pm, when solar is fading, but people are coming home from work, turning on the AC, and powering up the stovetop and oven to cook dinner.
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The latest proposals for nuclear is to actually have a thermal battery between the reactor and turbines. This would allow the turbines to not have to be nuclear grade regulated, plus you could install more turbine and be able to vary the production based on demand. Extra power is stored, excess demand pulls.
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The problem is always cost. Batteries make renewables able to deliver cheap energy 24/7, and nothing else can compete on price.
Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:4, Informative)
The flow batteries in this article use vanadium but there are other chemistries. Zinc-bromide for example. And I think there's an Iron salt flow battery. There are quite a few more. All have their pros and cons. And this tech has been around for decades.
Re: (Score:3)
> The flow batteries in this article use vanadium
Vanadium is expensive and in short supply.
We can't scale production enough to make a difference.
> Zinc-bromide for example.
ZnBr is cheap but has poor round-trip efficiency.
None of these flow batteries are as cost-effective as good ole' fashioned lithium-ion batteries.
Sodium batteries are even cheaper. Flow batteries can't compete with them.
Re: (Score:2)
> Flow batteries are the cheapest thing on the planet after pumped storage.
RTFA: "Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries."
If flow batteries were actually cheaper, greedy profit-seeking capitalists would be building them all over the world. They're not.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Flow batteries are the cheapest thing on the planet after pumped storage.
> RTFA: "Vanadium flow batteries are at least twice as expensive to build as lithium-ion batteries."
> If flow batteries were actually cheaper, greedy profit-seeking capitalists would be building them all over the world. They're not.
Try reading onward to the next paragraph: "But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they’re easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. “There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion,” Rodby said."
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
There's a huge difference between "Flow batteries are the cheapest thing on the planet" (False) and "Flow batteries might be cheaper at some hypothetical point in the future, assuming lithium batteries only last ten years and conveniently ignoring the fact that they already last far longer than that" (also False).
Re: (Score:2)
> There's a huge difference between "Flow batteries are the cheapest thing on the planet" (False) and "Flow batteries might be cheaper at some hypothetical point in the future, assuming lithium batteries only last ten years and conveniently ignoring the fact that they already last far longer than that" (also False).
Judging by TFA that depends on the time scale you operate on. If you don't thing farther ahead than a fiscal quarter Lithium is better, but utility companies tend to think in multiple decades so on that time scale flow batteries might actually 'the cheapest thing on the planet' .
Re: (Score:2)
> "But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run
Because we see business always, always go for the decades long ROI return rather than the bottom line, 4 month horizon CapEx profit?
The most dangerous engineers are those with an MBA and no engineering skills/education/experience.
The most dangerous managers are engineers with no business experience skills/education/experience.
Entropy, my friend, runs only one way. Downhill.
Re: (Score:2)
There's plenty of patient money. VCs exist to make multi-year investments. Sovereign wealth funds often have time horizons of decades. Even public markets can be patient. Amazon, Tesla, and Google lost money for years, even after their IPOs.
The problem is that the business case is based on false assumptions about the competition and financial illiteracy.
Grid-scale lithium batteries already last far longer than ten years and are improving. Sodium batteries for grid storage are already in production and will
Re: (Score:2)
>> "But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run
> Because we see business always, always go for the decades long ROI return rather than the bottom line, 4 month horizon CapEx profit?
> The most dangerous engineers are those with an MBA and no engineering skills/education/experience. The most dangerous managers are engineers with no business experience skills/education/experience. Entropy, my friend, runs only one way. Downhill.
Perhaps not in the USA where very few people seem to be capable of planning or thinking more than a fiscal quarter ahead. However, the USA is not the universe. Many countries have publicly owned energy companies or private ones that do think and plan on these long timescales. Build a nuclear power plant, a hydro or geothermal plant and you had better be prepared to think and plan in terms of multiple decade ROI timescales. These giant flow battery parks are literally designed to be an integral part of giant
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, more mature technology vs less mature. If flow had developed on a similar path, then it's costs would be more competitive.
Re: (Score:2)
> Basically, more mature technology vs less mature.
Flow batteries have been around for 40 years.
They are an older technology than lithium batteries.
You can do all the research on new electrodes or whatever, but that won't fix the fundamental problem that vanadium is expensive.
Re: Not all flow batteries use vanadium (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in the renewable insurance industry. The industry is very herd-like, and while there is skepticism on lithium's potential for fires, lithium is seen as the more mature technology (rightly or wrongly). Insurance companies also evaluate these kinds of projects on an estimated maximum loss basis- what is the biggest foreseeable insurance claim if something typical breaks. If we assume that lithium modules have sufficient spacing so that a fire is contained to a single shipping container, then lithium has lower risk due to the modular nature and more or less commodity replacement market. There is at least one flow battery company which uses many modular units, each with its own tanks, pumps, etc, but the economics for that system don't look great. Successful projects need to build a revenue model, project financing, permitting, and insurance structure to go forward. As quickly as possible, every delay or hiccup makes the project less attractive than alternatives. Lithium battery has a well beaten path at this point, with many teams of people who can get it done on time and on budget. Flow batteries don't have this and are therefore much more difficult to build.