Much of the activity for solar + storage the past few years has been in the commercial & industrial sector. Now, there is an increasing interest in energy storage coming from utilities. Utilities are exploring large-scale energy storage as a means of delivering various services such as frequency response, peak shifting and transmission and distribution upgrade deferral.
Flow batteries are designed to provide long-duration energy services, but most options on the market are not able to perform in applications that require high power like frequency regulation. ViZn’s flow battery technology is designed for both energy and power applications, which provides more value to the end user. Energy storage investments that can provide multiple revenue streams through a number of different applications offer a higher rate of return. Additionally, Vizn is positioned to deliver additional services into day-ahead capacity markets that strictly require four-hour service windows.
Technology roots in Lockheed Martin
ViZn was founded in 2009 to commercialize technology originally researched by Lockheed Martin and the Department of Energy. We’ve taken the technology to a point where it is ready for the grueling demands of utility customers. Our engineers have built and tested more than 300 prototypes in search of perfecting a system that will last 20 years—about the life of a solar project. Today, we are able to offer a robust system that delivers energy and power in an economical and safe package.
Why zinc-iron works
ViZn’s zinc-iron chemistry has tremendous safety, capacity and cost advantages over other flow battery chemistries, like vanadium. Our chemistry is non-toxic, non-flammable and non-explosive. This is crucial in deployments near critical infrastructure and in places where people live and work. Energy storage can provide maximum value when it is deployed toward the edge of the grid near the end user. These are typically highly-populated areas where toxic chemicals present obvious concerns. ViZn’s inherently safe alkaline chemistry doesn’t pose the health, safety or environmental risks present with other flow battery chemistries or lithium-ion. In fact, zinc and iron are food-grade additives that can be found in a large number of off-the-shelf products at your local grocery store.
Lithium-ion batteries have strict limitations on their ability to perform certain functions because of safety concerns (like thermal runaway), resulting in fewer available cycles per day. Typically, lithium-ion is not recommended for use at high or low state-of-charge (SOC) (above 80% or below 30%). Half of the battery capacity is off limits, governed by the control system, to prevent accelerated degradation. Lithium-ion batteries experience rapid degradation in their capacity even under normal use. Typical economic models of storage projects call for complete replacement of lithium-ion battery stacks within the project’s life, while the ViZn cells last 20 years with limited and low cost O&M. Lastly, lithium-ion battery performance and degradation are greatly impacted by ambient temperature, whereas ViZn’s technology is unaffected. Lithium-ion uses massive HVAC systems to cool them under strenuous duty cycles. These HVAC systems increase the parasitic load on Li-ion batteries, lowering their round trip efficiency. The more demanding the situation, the less efficient they are. ViZn’s flow batteries can safely operate at high ambient temperatures without HVAC loads and don’t pose any fire risk.
From a cost perspective, both zinc and iron are globally abundant and exceedingly cheap compared to vanadium, and they are not as subject to price fluctuations in the same way that less abundant chemicals like vanadium are. When we ship a flow battery to a customer, we are typically able to source the chemical powders locally, saving on logistical costs.
In addition to providing multiple revenue streams and quicker payback periods, the multi-use capabilities of our flow battery future-proofs the technology against a changing mix of application requirements. It is difficult to predict which kind of services energy storage will be required to fulfill 10 or 15 years down the road. Will you need long-duration or high-power capabilities? If a battery with a 20-year life can fulfill both applications, the end user doesn’t run the risk of ending up with a stranded asset that can’t perform.
Installations
- An installation at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia is a PV-integrated flow battery project in partnership with Dominion Virginia Power, an East Coast utility. The system was commissioned and unveiled in April of 2015.
- BlueSky Energy partnered with ViZn for an installation in Austria as part of a community microgrid project in 2013.
- Hecate chose ViZn for a 2-MW (6-MWh) flow battery system that will be deployed in 2016 with the Ontario IESO.
- A 128-kW (320-kWh) order from the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory is also scheduled for deployment in 2016.ViZn currently has about 50 MWh of business under contract and will be announcing specific projects and customers in the coming months.
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