A Canadian-UK partnership intends to bolster the UK energy storage market with proposals for 15 projects, totalling 20MW/80-120MWh.
CEO of UK-based Immersa, Robert Miles (pictured), said that the partnership with Toronto-based vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) producer Cellcube would address a gap in the UK energy storage market, which he attributes to “a lack of regulatory focus”.
“The UK energy storage market had a stuttered start due to continuous policy change, contract ambiguity, and a failure to recognise the benefits of battery storage projects under legislation demands”, Miles said.
The systems will be delivered under a strategic partnership formed in January of this year to meet demand from “a definite move towards longer duration batteries as energy users look to become more independent from the grid”.
The companies intend to “straddle both short and long term markets”, and will use VRFBs to enter the UK’s firm frequency response and demand side response markets— “despite flow batteries being traditionally associated with the longer duration and longer response applications”.
Cellcube CEO Mike Neylan said the partnership with Immersa “further recognises our VRFB as the energy storage system of choice to support renewables and the power grid”.
Immersa said it is in talks with a number of potential developers to provide battery storage to be coupled with generation from wind, solar, combine cycle gas turbines, and to speed up the decommissioning of diesel generators.
