A company from the United Kingdom named Renewable Energy Systems (RES) has published what they say are five lessons they have learned since investing a lot of their time and money into energy storage involving lithium-ion batteries. The company has experience with solar and wind technologies but in 2014 started using lithium-ion in Ohio, in the United States.
1- Controls and monitoring are essential to ensure safety and maximise value for owners
2 – Integrated solutons are essential for cost-effective design, sucessful operations and commercial simplicity
3- Financing a large-scale battery storage project is possible
4- Regulations and (the lack of) market rules continue to create unceratinly, which places additional burden on the early projects
5- Long-duration lithium-ion is becoming viable
– Extract fom Five lessons from the storage frontline
The company says the lack of control and monitoring will lead to battery fires and that is the last thing the industry needs right now. The list of lessons should be a good checklist for other companies interested in getting into the lithium-ion game.
However, is lithium-ion the only sustainable element we could use for sustainable energy storage?
Canadian Manufacturing has reported that vanadium is another element that could be used to build sustainable batteries in the future as well.
Tim Hennesy, president and COO of vanadium battery maker, Imergy Power Systems Inc. said: “Vanadium is the only metal on the planet which can act in its own right – just as one metal – as a complete battery. Every other battery you need two elements…to create this difference which allows a battery to exist.”
Another company involved in vanadium is Australian Vanadium (AVL) that in collaboration with Gildemeister Energy Storage will be selling a product named the CellCube. It is a vanadium redox flow battery.
AVL managing director, Vince Algar, told CleanTechnica, “The future of vanadium demand is strongly tied to the global need for large-scale energy storage.”
The distinction that must be made is that vanadium batteries cannot power devices like laptops or cell phones like lithium-ion can. However, for large-scale energy generation, it is used because it can be recharged thousands of times without dying like lithium-ion batteries. The only issue is “low energy density”. Could lithium’s reign but over soon when engineers figure out how to utilize vanadium for commercial purposes?
More news as this story develops .
