The company has secured $12m (A$18m) in funding from the California Energy Commission (CEC) for the development, which is expected to begin operating in 2025. Redflow will supply 2,000 of its ZBM3 batteries in its 200 kilowatt-hour modular energy pods for the project.
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The battery energy storage system will be paired with a 5MW solar installation, forming a renewable energy microgrid serving the indigenous Paskenta tribe of northern California. Reflow claims that "the project is part of the Tribe''s efforts to achieve greater energy sovereignty through control over their own energy resources, reduce fossil fuel consumption and assert responsible land stewardship."
California developer and contractor Faraday Microgrids will serve as the project lead for the microgrid development.
Commenting on the announcement, Redflow CEO and managing director Tim Harris said: "The market for long-duration energy storage is accelerating. CEC approval firmly establishes our presence in California, which is leading the development and support of non-lithium technologies to achieve its net-zero goals.
"This project is a great example of US-Australian collaboration in renewable energy and supports the aims of the recent Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact, which cites clean energy as the third pillar of the alliance," he added.
Jonah Steinbuck, director of the Energy Research and Development Division at the CEC, called the project "an important step in California''s clean energy transition", adding that "it reflects the CEC''s goal to commercialise proven long-duration energy storage solutions and support the energy sovereignty of tribal nations such as the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians."
Steinbuck also remarked that new energy storage technologies will make California "better positioned to expand and diversify California’s energy storage portfolio, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and enhance the reliability and resilience of our grid”.
"The resiliency, operational performance and safety of Redflow''s zinc-bromine flow battery technology will support the sustainability, reliability and energy self-sufficiency goals of both the state of California and the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians," said David Bliss, CEO of Faraday Microgrids.
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Zinc-bromine flow battery manufacturer Redflow''s CEO Tim Harris speaks with Energy-Storage.news about the company''s biggest-ever project, and how that can lead to a "springboard" to bigger things.
Interest in long-duration energy storage (LDES) continues to grow around the world. We heard that since 2019, more than US$58 billion in commitments have been made to LDES by governments and companies globally, in our recent contributed article from Julia Souder, CEO of the LDES Council trade group, published in PV Tech Power Vol.35.
In terms of the broad suite of diverse technologies involved, potential customers could have many options to choose from in the coming years, and flow batteries have long been part of that conversation.
But when we talk about flow batteries, we tend to largely mean vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs), which tend to be considered the frontrunner, with perhaps the iron electrolyte flow battery made by ESS Tech Inc somewhere in the mix too.
Zinc-bromine electrolyte, as chosen by Australia-headquartered Redflow to pursue when founded as far back as 2005, is less often considered, but the company believes that its time has come. The company launched its third generation device, the ZBM3, in mid-2022.
As reported by Energy-Storage.news, Redflow''s battery tech was recently selected for a 20MWh installation at a renewable energy microgrid in California. Aimed at helping the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians indigenous community increase its resiliency against grid power disruptions, the project is being financially supported with a grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC).
In our interview with CEO Tim Harris, we hear that the microgrid represents a "culmination of a journey" for Redflow, from primarily serving small businesses as well as large residences, to rolling out distributed flow battery systems for telecoms providers, to now serving up LDES at multiple megawatt-hour scale.
While the company''s heritage is in smaller systems, Redflow realised that "to get scale and accelerate, you really need to kind of be playing in that multi-megawatt-hour system [space]," Harris says.
The first step into that space came a couple of years ago, with a first California project at the site of bioenergy company Anaergia''s Rialto Bioenergy Facility waste-to-energy plant. At 2MWh, and also supported with CEC funding, Harris said as it came online in late 2021 that it would provide a "high visibility reference" for what the technology could do at that megawatt-hour scale.
From there to the latest 20MWh project, it''s been a relatively fast ride, but one that''s been enabled by years of groundwork by Redflow, both under the stewardship of Harris and his predecessor as CEO, Australian tech entrepreneur Simon Hackett.
Although quite well known in Australia, Redflow has largely flown "under the radar" in North America, Harris says. That’s starting to change, not just with its recent projects, but also reflected in deals and agreements with the likes of Black & Veatch, and Ameresco.
"It’s a culmination of a journey that Redflow has actually been on for many years. In terms of when I joined the company five years ago, but [accelerating] over the last couple of years, where we’ve orientated ourselves towards bigger systems and set some of the foundations for long-term growth, and build some foundations so that the pathway forward is good and exciting."
With funding coming from California''s efforts to fund scale-up, reference points and learnings in long-duration energy storage, Redflow joins a "reasonably limited number of other technologies" that the CEC is funding.
"Hopefully, that sets us up as a springboard of bigger projects and market validation, and proves to be a really strong reference point for us in the US, but also in other markets as well," Harris says.
Long time readers of this site may recall Redflow making a push in its home country towards larger systems some years ago under Simon Hackett, where the system size created by stacking up 10kWh flow battery units reached 450kWh in a containerised system, for a project in Adelaide.
Harris says the 2MWh system for Anaergia built on this foundational effort, with one key difference being that the voltage had to be stepped up to 48V for the larger-scale project. At the same time, Redflow''s options in terms of inverter providers comfortable with working alongside that has grown in the past few years, making it far less challenging than may have been first thought.
One question it''d be reasonable to anticipate readers asking, is: when most of the flow battery industry is focused on different electrolyte chemistries, why zinc, why bromine and why zinc-bromine?
"What that also provides us with is much higher energy and power density. So when you look at the power energy density of our zinc bromine battery versus other flow batteries, notably vanadium and iron, we’re about 1.8 volts per cell, I think those other ones are about sort of 1.3, 1.4. So you automatically get a density advantage. We don’t see any other chemistry, at that kind of commercially proven level that we do, that has the same energy density outside of lithium."
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