ENERGY NEWS BULLETIN 7 December 2016
WAVE power firm Protean Energy, which is under the command of former Woodside Petroleum veteran Stephen Rogers, is expanding beyond its core renewable energy technologies by buying a 50% interest in a Korean battery storage manufacturing development.
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Steve Rogers
Protean will buy the stake in the vanadium redox flow battery energy storage system (VRFB-ESS) from its Korean partner Korea Resource Investment & Development.
The company said yesterday that the system was at an advanced stage of commercialisation and would offer to global markets a “durable rechargeable flow battery designed with the ability to store energy more effectively and for longer than existing battery solutions”.
“Vanadium batteries have a significant role to play in the renewable energy sector,” Rogers said.
“The potential of the VRFB-ESS to store large quantities of energy for extended periods of time make it the ideal solution to power grid scale energy projects.
“Incorporating a storage solution into our offering will deliver Protean a genuine competitive advantage and is consistent with our strategy focusing on providing clean affordable and reliable energy.
“With the potential for global sales into the emerging micro grid market it can add significant value generation for our shareholders”.
Other vanadium battery systems are being worked on by companies such as Vanadium Australia.
The technology is expected to drive the adoption of clean energy solutions more widely by eliminating concerns about the intermittency of renewable energy, which in the long term could encourage the adoption of Protean’s wave energy converter, which is also on a path to commercialisation.
KORID’s battery technology can store between two kilowatts and 25kW, and the flow battery concept allows scaling of design to meet potentially very large storage needs for industry and communities.
Protean said the investment made sense, as it could offer hybrid energy solutions in the transition from fossil fuels to clean affordable and reliable energy.
“With a battery that can store a surplus of energy generated from clean energy technologies the batteries will provide the ultimate solution to ensure a consistent supply of renewable energy thereby eliminating concerns around intermittency and reliability,” the company told the ASX.
The VRFB-ESS system employs vanadium ions in different oxidation states to store energy in the form of two liquid electrolytes, and the batteries have an estimated lifespan of 15-20 years.
Similar batteries are already used for grid scale energy storage applications where large-scale and long duration electrical energy storage is required and are an ideal solution for the broadening renewable energy generation sources such as wave, tidal, solar and wind.
KORID has developed its VRFB-ESS over the past five years and patents have been granted to protect the design, and it has tested them over thousands of cycles in that time.
The system can be scaled up to five megawatts.
Today two 25 kW stacks are undergoing field trials as part of a solar photovoltaics and VRFB-ESS combination trial with Korea Conformity Laboratories.
A key selling point is the proximity to one of Protean’s remaining mineral assets, the Daejon vanadium/ uranium prospect in Korea.
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