SunEdison, Inc. (NYSE: SUNE), has announced it intends purchasing up to 1,000 vanadium flow batteries to store solar-generated electricity generated by the company’s rural electrification and solar powered minigrid projects in India.
The 100+ megawatt hours of batteries will be sourced from Imergy Power Systems, a leader in flow battery solutions.
A flow battery is based on two chemical components dissolved in liquids separated by a membrane. Unlike a standard deep cycle battery, the electrodes in a flow battery are not surrounded by all the electrolyte in the system, nor are they consumed.
When two liquids are pumped into the central stack ions pass through a selective membrane and energy is produced. The battery is ‘recharged’ by reversing the flow. While flow batteries tend to be large, they are cheap to produce and scalable.
According to Imergy, the simple yet robust system can be cycled thousands of times a year without impacting on the storage system’s lifespan.
“Integrated power electronics manage the charging and discharging processes, and the unique architecture allows the system to be scaled up in size by simply increasing the electrolyte volumes. Our Energy Storage Platforms (ESP) products inherently last longer than conventional batteries, with lower maintenance costs and fewer thermal management concerns,” states the company’s web site.
Imergy’s vanadium flow batteries were chosen by the US Navy last year for a Smart Microgrid project designed to optimise the storage and consumption of solar energy at military bases and other facilities.
“Energy storage is the perfect complement to solar powered minigrids because it enables us to provide dependable, 24/7 electricity,” said Ahmad Chatila, President and Chief Executive Officer of SunEdison. “And Imergy’s technology is a great fit for rural electrification because their systems are high performance, low cost, ultra-durable and need very little maintenance.”
“Imergy is proud to be working with SunEdison to bring electricity to the under-served in rural India,” stated Bill Watkins, Chief Executive Officer of Imergy Power Systems. “Imergy’s storage systems are safe and sustainable, and provide the lowest cost and most reliable way to store energy for these minigrids.”
Last month, SunEdison announced a goal of delivering clean, renewable electricity to 20 million people in underserved communities globally by 2020.
