Australian firm Redflow has opened a battery laboratory to progress its software and to enable its zinc bromide flow batteries to be used with multiple inverters.
The Adelaide based laboratory will develop battery management system software for Redflow’s 10kWh residential battery, which is being launched this month.
The laboratory will focus on delivery, demonstration and training as the firm positions itself for Australia’s predicted rise in demand for ESSs.
Redflow is also aiming to simplify the deployment process for installers by ensuring its batteries work with inverters from different manufacturers.
Australia’s energy storage market could grow to more than 5,000 installed systems in 2016, as households seek to use energy storage, according to research from US-based IHS Technology.
Redflow’s executive chairman Simon Hackett, said: “The obvious next step is to embrace batteries for energy storage – in homes, businesses and indeed the entire electricity grid – to allow us to ‘time shift’ renewable energy from when it’s generated to when it’s needed.”
Hackett added that widespread dispersion of residential energy storage, coupled with grid-scale storage, would transform how the electricity network operated.
Redflow partners with manufacturing company Flextronics, to produce Redflow batteries from North America.
Redflow batteries are already installed in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, North and Central America and Europe.
Branded as ‘workhorses’ by the firm, their zinc bromide flow batteries can operate at 50 degrees Celsius without ancillary cooling, and do not carry the risk of thermal runaway as the electrolyte is a fire-retardant material.
