New Vanadium battery plant opens in Motherwell
New Vanadium battery plant opens in Motherwell
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TechTranscript
00:00Vanadium flow battery technology has been around for many years, but never really developed
00:12properly in our view.
00:14We've done the best job of packaging it all together into a working functioning system
00:18that is meeting all of the customer requirements at once.
00:24I'm Andy Clausen.
00:25I am the CTO here at InVinity.
00:26I'm responsible for all of the technology development and the core fundamental science.
00:31I run the R&D department, and we also do most of the work in the cell stack design and development.
00:39This is the InVinity VS3.
00:41It's designed with a modular scalable architecture so that we can put one, ten, or hundreds of
00:46these very same batteries on a site and connect them up to meet any customer system size requirement.
00:52The VS3 is comprised of six modular vanadium flow batteries integrated together into a
00:57single 20-foot unit that can be double stacked.
01:01So let's look inside a single VFB module.
01:05Like all flow batteries, it consists of a liquid electrolyte, and in our case, it is
01:08actually a liquid water-based material with dissolved vanadium salts in it.
01:13The vanadium flow battery technology is very safe because the vanadium electrolyte cannot
01:17catch fire or result in thermal runaway events as is common in lithium or some of the other
01:22battery technologies.
01:25That electrolyte is housed in plastic tanks that are below the belt line here.
01:29The plastic makes it a very recyclable material and a very low-cost material.
01:33And those plastic tanks also have a secondary containment system that protects against any
01:37leaks or spills to protect the environment.
01:40From the tanks, the liquid electrolyte is pumped through the variable speed pumps via
01:44the plastic hoses and into the devices up here.
01:48These are called the cell stacks and they are the electrochemical reactor devices.
01:54In a flow battery, we are connected to electricity which comes through a DC-DC converter.
01:59This changes the voltage and applies the current to the cell stacks.
02:03The flow of the electrolyte is a continuous loop to and from the tank.
02:07So once this flow is established through the cell stacks, that is where the electrochemistry
02:12takes place, allowing this module to behave like any other battery.
02:17It can charge, it can be discharged, and you can switch between charge and discharge
02:27without any interruption.
02:34We also have an auxiliary power unit and a battery management controller, which is actually
02:38the brains that just controls the whole system so that it can run completely independently
02:43and monitor its own safety while passing along information about performance and statistics
02:48to the higher level controllers in a system.
02:51On this cell stack, there is a reference cell.
02:54A reference cell is only available in flow battery technologies.
02:58That cell gives us the ability to tell any customer or user exactly how much energy they
03:02have left and how much time or duration they still have on the battery before it runs out.
03:07There are also cooling fans that regulate and monitor the temperature of the whole battery
03:11so that it can really operate independently as it sits there as a power generating unit.
03:18One of the key features of our battery is it does ship with the electrolyte in place.
03:22So it truly is a plug-and-play battery.
03:23You offload it from the truck, you plug it in, and you turn it on.
03:27That is different from some of our other flow battery competitors who still will ship the
03:31electrolyte separately and then have to load it on site, which is another chemical handling
03:38operation on a customer's site that we just concluded you don't need to do.
03:44The electrolyte itself can last indefinitely due to the kinds of reactions that happen
03:49in a flow battery.
03:50And so we're targeting a 25-year lifetime, which is very similar to what is required
03:54for most renewable applications.
03:57I'm very pleased to be working on vanadium flow battery technology.
04:00It's great to be developing the right product for the right markets at the right time, and
04:04I think everybody clearly can see this technology is needed.
04:08It meets all of the requirements of safety, durability, long life, and economy.
04:13In my mind, the vanadium flow battery technology is the best solution for large-scale energy storage.