US-based all-iron flow battery system manufacturer Energy Storage Systems’ (ESS) is making its first foray into the Latin American market.
ESS is to design, install, commission and test its 50-kilowatt/400 kilowatt-hour ‘Energy Warehouse’ system in the Brazilian state of Goiás.
The system will be integrated with 100kW of photovoltaic (PV) in a $1.3 million project funded in part by a grant from the US Trade and Development Agency through a subsidiary of Brazilian solar investment firm Pacto Energia.
ESS founder and CEO Craig Evans said: “This project is not only our initial entry into the dynamic Latin American energy storage market, it’s also an opportunity to demonstrate the many advantages of long-duration storage in combination with solar PV assets.”
The project will help an unnamed local business “eliminate the use of diesel generators during peak hours”, ESS said.
Based on “the performance and benefits of the system”, EES said it would work with Pacto “to develop a technical and economic plan to prove the feasibility of deploying multiple distributed generation projects, ranging in sizes up to 5MW of PV and 20MWh of energy storage each”.
According to ESS, its batteries can reach more than 20,000 cycles at more than 80% depth of discharge during a 25-year-life because the battery’s electrolyte operates with a benign pH range of one to four. The technology also uses earth abundant iron chloride (FeCl2) as its electrolyte as well as salt and water.
Last March, ESS’ Energy Warehouse batteries made their debut in Europe under a contract with German chemicals group BASF.