Beijing-based energy storage firm Pu Neng has been awarded a contract to provide what it said will be “China’s largest flow battery” as part of a pilot energy storage project.
A 3MW/12MWh vanadium flow battery will be installed in a 10MW/40MWh battery demonstration facility as the first phase of integration with a photovoltaic system to supply the grid in Zaoyang, Hubei Province.
Pu Neng said it signed a contract for the project on 18 October with the Hubei Pingfan Vanadium Energy Storage Technology Company.
Under the terms of the deal, Pu Neng and Hubei Pingfan will jointly develop a vanadium electrolyte supply from local vanadium sources, helping to “revitalise the local industrial base to meet future demand for energy storage”, Pu Neng said.
Installation of the battery system will start this month and is expected to be completed in early 2018.
Pu Neng also confirmed it was developing a bigger— 100MW/500MWh energy storage project— that will become “the cornerstone of a new smart energy grid” in the region, “to serve as a critical peak power plant, maintaining electric reliability and reducing emissions”.
In October, BBB reported how China’s government is encouraging the “transformation“ of its energy storage industry over the next decade by establishing clean energy pilot projects.
Robert Friedland, chairman of Pu Neng, said the government’s policy “will result in vanadium flow batteries revolutionising modern electricity grids in the way that lithium-ion batteries are enabling the global transition to electric vehicles”.
Friedland said: “China has the largest and highest-grade vanadium resources in the world and is poised to use this miracle metal to fundamentally transform its electricity grid.”
Hubei Pingfan’s chairman, Guangguo Xie, said: “We selected a vanadium flow battery because they have superior safety, reliability and lifecycle economics compared to lithium-ion and other battery types.”
