Lithium News

National Grid has begun operating a vanadium redox-flow battery (VRB) with its 1-MW solar PV array in Shirley, Mass., to demonstrate utility operation of storage.

The company was the prime recipient of an $875,000 Massachusetts grant awarded to an application team that also includes Vionx Energy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Energy Initiatives Group.

Carlos Nouel, vice president of innovation and development at National Grid, told RTO Insider that “the Shirley project will serve as a test bed for integrating storage and solar through the use of flow batteries, and support the development of new frameworks for dispatching stored solar power.”

Massachusetts lags far behind California in deploying utility-scale energy storage, but it is trying to integrate the technology into its power supply.

California utilities must procure more than 1.3 GW of energy storage by 2020. As of August, the state’s three largest investor-owned utilities are in the process of actually procuring nearly 1.5 GW, with about 332 MW currently online, according to a report last month by the California Energy Commission.

In contrast, Massachusetts last year said the state’s utilities must procure a combined 200 MWh of energy storage by Jan. 1, 2020. ISO-NE in April reported more than 500 MW of storage capacity in its interconnection queue. (See Overheard at the Energy Storage Association Annual Conference.)

Home-Grown Storage

Vionx (rhymes with “bionics”) is supplying the energy storage system for the Shirley solar project, which lies about 30 miles west of the company’s lab and headquarters in Woburn, Mass.

The company uses vanadium rather than lithium for energy storage, seeing the alternative flow battery technology as the best fit for utility-scale applications, including microgrids or industrial, behind-the-meter systems.

The use of vanadium in a flow battery was first explored in the 1930s and only made workable in Australia in the mid-1980s. Today, many companies use the technology, from giant Sumitomo to tiny CellCube, a VRB manufacturer trying to vertically integrate with its own vanadium mine in Nevada.

A VRB stores chemical energy in the form of vanadium-based electrolyte and generates electricity by inducing a reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction: that is, a transformation of matter by electron transfer across an ion exchange membrane, within a battery stack. The reaction is achieved by either applying an electrical load (discharge) or an electrical supply (charge) to the battery stack as the electrolyte is flowing or being pumped across the membrane.

“Lithium is dominating the storage market, but it is not always the best tool for the job,” said Jonathan Milley, director of business development at Vionx. “Lithium batteries are really for power applications, best-suited for short duration purposes, while vanadium flow batteries are for energy applications, and are therefore a more serious tool for keeping the lights on overnight.”

A lithium-ion battery undergoes a physiochemical change that degrades the electrodes during charging and discharging, but with a VRB, the charge differential is created by an ion exchange across a membrane, meaning the element does not wear out.

“So unlike the lithium-ion battery in your laptop, you never have to replace a Vionx battery,” Milley said. “Certain applications in the grid can cause huge challenges for a lithium-ion system. If you’re trying to drive a screw in, don’t use a hammer.” The Vionx system is also safe and cannot burn because the electrolyte is 70% water, he added.

Elemental Capacity

“The vanadium doesn’t wear out; it doesn’t degrade; it doesn’t need to be replaced or augmented,” Milley said. “The vanadium goes in the electrolyte on Day 1, and if 30 years from now you want to take the whole system apart, the vanadium is fully recoverable. It retains its commodity value [it is a key component in steel production] because it’s not consumed.”

Because the electrolyte is flowing past the electrode, a flow battery allows for the physical separation of capacity and energy, or megawatt and megawatt-hours. Vionx takes an architectural design that capitalizes on that ability and separates the two intentionally, Milley said.

“This allows for scaling at increasingly greater economies of scale; since we are adding only electrolyte to get an additional hour of run time, the cost per kilowatt-hour is much less for a 10-hour system than for a four-hour system. Also, if we have a customer who’s looking at eventually using the system to clear in the PJM capacity market or to be used as a reliability product, but in the near term needs ramping support and load reduction, then a four-hour system can be installed initially, and in the future another six hours of electrolyte can be added to achieve a 10-hour duration system,” Milley said. “Only the electrolyte is added, not any battery stacks, pumps or control components.”

Milley acknowledged that vanadium can be expensive, but he said it is still cheaper for long-duration applications than a solid-state battery that requires the purchase of more cells to expand its capability.

“In our case, you’re simply buying one component or one aspect of the system,” he said.

Team Effort

Vionx is owned by Starwood Energy Group, Vantage Point Capital and other private equity firms, and by United Technologies, whose battery stack design is under exclusive license to Vionx.

3M supplies the membranes and Jabil is the system fabricator. Glencore is currently supplying the vanadium electrolyte, by sale or lease, depending on whether the buyer wants to book it as a capital expenditure or operating expense. Siemens cooperates on a project-by-project basis.

Over the past few months, US President Donald Trump has seemed infatuated with outer space. He and Vice President Mike Pence have made grandiose announcements about US space policy, foremost among them, the controversial plan to set up an “American Space Force” as a sixth branch of the US military. Trump even invited his supporters to vote on a possible logo for the proposed space force.

At first sight, it appears that the Trump administration has been consistently and vigorously engaged in the area of outer space. But a closer look reveals a sense of lack of detail and cohesion.

Like its terrestrial foreign policy, the actions of the Trump administration in space are framed by an “America First” approach. The administration aspires to promote US interests in space largely through unilateral actions and the interruption of existing cooperative scientific work considered not sufficiently beneficial to the US.

In practical terms, the Trump administration has recently taken several policy steps.

First is the signing of three Presidential Directives. The most notable of these is Space Policy Directive 1, which calls for a manned return to the Moon.

Second is the release of a number of official statements, including the announcement of plans to develop the space force.

Third is increased support to legislative initiatives in the US Congress that are aimed at promoting the interests of US private entities engaged in innovative space activities, such as space mining.

Though these steps indicate significant changes to US space policy, the administration’s agenda does not appear to have an overarching space policy. A close reading of the administration’s actions show they are not as novel as presented, face feasibility challenges, and some policy initiatives are inherently conflictual.

Much of what has been heralded as new policy of the Trump administration is a continuation of initiatives begun by the Obama administration or a repackaging of existing proposals. A key example is the legal protection of US private interests over space resources, which was already enshrined in the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act adopted in 2015.

Even the “space force” is not entirely original. Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, put forward a proposal for a “space corps” under the Department of the Air Force in early 2017, which was largely ignored by the Trump administration.

The feasibility of what has been announced remains doubtful. The administration has set lofty goals: to return to the Moon and to possibly build a space station in lunar orbit. Momentum on this proposal depends on Congress – only an act of Congress can create a new branch of the military. But the administration’s space force proposal faces opposition, from members of both parties, the Pentagon and Air Force leaders.

Space policy objectives require substantial funding and a pre-determined timeframe. Regrettably, none of these elements are present.

Indeed, the 2019 budget request for NASA is largely similar to those of previous years. And no specific timeframe has been set to implement these plans.

Similarly, the proposal for a “space force” has remained extremely vague, to the point that no one clearly knows how such a force will be structured, managed and financed.

There are inherent contradictions among some of the policies sponsored by the administration. Currently there are two parallel bills, the 2017 American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act and the 2018 American Space Frontier Act, under consideration in the House of Representatives and in the Senate respectively. These two bills offer opposing solutions on how innovative private space activities should be licensed. It remains to be seen which one of the two approaches the administration will eventually endorse.

Despite the lack of cohesion of the Trump administration in the field of space, US actions in space will have significant implications for other players in space and for scientific cooperation.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which the US is party, establishes the principles that outer space shall be explored and used for peaceful purposes only and that nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction cannot be placed in Earth’s orbit or on a celestial body’s surface.

The key fear is that, depending on how the Trump administration fills in the details of its space policy, and what it does next, the right of all nations to freely explore and use outer space and the peaceful, conflict-free, nature of outer space might be endangered.

The US could strike a balance between protecting its national interests in outer space and maintaining the strategic balance existing in the space environment. However, the unpredictability of the Trump administration and its willingness to undermine and withdraw from international frameworks bodes ill.

Western Australia could soon be the world’s powerhouse in raw materials supplied to the electric vehicle industry, thanks to a surge in demand for EV battery metals and products, a demand that could spark a new mining and manufacturing boom, create 100,000 jobs and be worth $56 billion a year.

Welcome to WA’s Lithium Valley where mining companies – both established and up-and-coming – are not only drilling and extracting for rare earth minerals, lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, tin, copper, manganese as well as vanadium – all minerals and metals Australia has in abundance –but they are also value-adding, and in at least one case turning mine waste into lithium ion for the batteries powering new electric vehicles.

Speaking at the launch of Regional Development Australia’s Lithium Valley: Establishing the Case for Energy Metals and Battery Manufacturing in Western Australia, Curtin University professor of sustainability Peter Newman said. “We are the only place in the world that has them all.”

Some in the industry see WA becoming the battery equivalent of Silicon Valley and tapping into a supply chain worth tens of billions of dollars.

The problem, as the report highlighted, is that WA currently could miss out on 99.5 per cent, or $213 billion, of the potential value of its lithium assets because it doesn’t have any downstream processing like electrochemical processing, battery cell production or product assembly.

But Professor Newman says: “Not only do we have the resources, we also have the technological capability and skilled workforce to service this emerging industry. The world needs us and we can create Lithium Valley to service this need.”

The Regional Development Australia report paints a picture of a minerals boom like never before.

It details how Perth should become the global centre of excellence and leadership. From mining, to processing and manufacturing high-end battery products, for export around the world.

The coming boom is partly driven by the growth of EVs, as well as electronic devices including smartphones, laptops, and home appliances.

Then there is the trend toward off-grid home power systems and industrial scale grid storage, to handle the ebbs and flows of power from renewable energy sources, like wind and solar.

For this, vanadium is set to be play a major role, and Australia has access to the raw materials to produce copious reserves of the rare earth metal. Vanadium prices are surging globally.

The price of lithium has also increased dramatically as EV battery demand increases. Several new mines have opened up in Australia in the last year, and many more on the way, with WA set to supply half of the world’s raw lithium needs in the next 10 years.

Demand for graphite, another mineral required for battery production, is also projected to increase by as much as 500 per cent on the next few years, the annual Diggers and Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie heard last year.

France, Britain and Norway are banning fossil-fuel cars in the coming years, and Chinese-owned Swedish car maker Volvo have said they will dump ICE powered cars entirely and produce only electric and hybrid vehicles by 2021.

In July, BMW said at least 25 per cent of its total car production by 2025 will be electric and the company has signed a $5billion deal with a Chinese battery company to help make that happen.

To meet this projected demand, in Perth’s south, at Kwinana, there are two major projects already up and running.

A $700 million lithium processing plant is under construction, built by Chinese lithium producer Tianqi.

And Tesla is also looking to Perth for lithium hydroxide for its battries and has signed a deal with mining company Kidman Resources and Chilean-based producer SQM, also from a proposed plant in Kwinana.

In Kalgoorlie, Neometals will build a $200 million lithium processing plant in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

But some fear this massive new mining vehicle could soon have the brakes slammed on as the Federal Government caps investment in new research and development grants and rebates in its latest Budget.

Perth based ASX listed lithium explorer and technologist, Lithium Australia has warned that the proposed new R&D grant restrictions could kill off the opportunity for WA to become an all encompassing, globally significant lithium hub before it even begins.

In a world-first the Australian company has just this month successfully produced lithium from mine waste for use in lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles.

The development is another bit of the jigsaw that should rightly place Australia at the forefront of the electric vehicle revolution.

Perth-based Lithium Australia carried out the trial process at NSW’s ANSTO (Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) minerals piloting facility late in August and are now ready to power on with a larger scale operation which will see them produce lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium extraction from the lepidolite recovered from West Australian mine waste peaked at 97.5 per cent during the full-scale trial with a steady 94 percent delivery of lithium during the overall process using a SiLeach pilot plant.

LA’s managing director Adrian Griffin said the team looked forward to moving on to the next stage which will see lithium being produced from waste taken from mine operations at Kalgoorlie.

“We will then apply VSPC’s [a processing company owned by LA] proprietary process to that lithium chemical and, ultimately, produce a lithium-ion battery: a world first. And we’ll do so whether the Australian federal government chooses to back the Lithium Valley concept or just ignore it.”

Mr Griffin said VA was assessing the implications but was seriously looking at moving the company’s R&D department overseas.

“Lithium Australia is considering relocating its successful R&D activities elsewhere – perhaps Germany, which has a target date for the demise of internal combustion engines and is facilitating that by way of attractive R&D financial support,” Mr Griffin said.

Scotland’s first utility-scale battery storage facility has been officially opened today, having begun delivering sub-second balancing services to National Grid at the end of June under a bespoke agreement secured before the hotly contested Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) auction of 2016.

The 20MW Broxburn Energy Storage facility was built by RES, which had sold the project to The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) in August last year for £20 million. It was the first project to have been acquired by TRIG and RES’ fourth in the UK, with the company now managing the site.

Richard Crawford, director of infrastructure at TRIG’s investment manager InfraRed Capital Partners, said it was “an exciting day for the company” to see its first battery storage project completed.

Testing of the project, which uses batteries from Samsung SDI, commenced in May, enabling battery commissioning to be completed. This was followed by final testing under the EPC construction contract, which completed on 30 June when the battery began to deliver its contracted service to National Grid.

The project had secured an initial four-year bespoke bilateral agreement to provide dynamic, two-way import and export sub-second balancing services to National Grid. Sister title Solar Power Portal was told in 2017 that revenues over the contract are substantially based on pre-determined, RPI-indexed availability payments.

Such a bespoke agreement was no longer available when National Grid moved to a tender auction model for EFR services, when almost 1GW of storage projects competed to win 200MW in available contracts.

Opening the site today, Scotland’s minister for trade, investment and innovation Ivan McKee said: “I am very pleased to have the chance to open the Broxburn Energy Storage project today, which is Scotland’s first sub-second response energy storage project.

“A welcome addition to Scotland’s low carbon energy system, projects such as this one can increase system flexibility and create opportunities for the further decarbonisation of Scotland’s economy.”

Both TRIG and RES added that the battery would allow for greater levels of renewable energy to be brought onto the UK’s energy system by helping to avoid the cost of new grid infrastructure.

Rachel Ruffle, RES’ managing director, said: “We believe that this project will play an important role in demonstrating this and will encourage policymakers and regulators to accelerate the removal of barriers to wider deployment of energy storage in the UK.”

Broxburn represents Scotland’s largest energy storage facility, with a 2MW battery installed at a power station in Orkney thought to be the next largest. This is followed by the 1MW/1.3MWh ‘Batwind’ project, connected to an offshore floating wind farm, which was brought online by Younicos in July this year.

Food wholesaler Philip Dennis Foodservice has installed energy storage units totalling over 4MW at its Barnstaple offices in an effort to generate revenue from grid services, rather than making savings from behind-the-meter activity.

The £2.2 million ( almost $2.9 million) investment has seen three one-hour duration units from Anesco totalling 3.75MW energised and connected directly to the electricity grid at the end of May . At the same time, a 256kw/512kWh Tesla battery was also installed which will deliver firm frequency response (FFR) until April 2020.

The company is working with aggregator Limejump to bring together its capacity to deliver further services, with around £750,000 (~$983,000) in revenue expected over the next 20 months. The units will also be used to meet contracts secured for the UK’s Capacity Market contacts earlier this year.

According to Peter Dennis, director at Philip Dennis Foodservice, the Tesla battery had been intended as a proof of concept but was “linked” with the capacity of the Anesco units to ensure that the T-1 contract for delivery at the start of October could be met.

“Quite quickly the two projects became linked and so to pull out of one would have meant a loss of all our sunken costs, which were probably around £100,000 ($131,000),” he said.

The batteries will be monitored by Anesco’s operations and maintenance service, to ensure they continue to operate at their optimum efficiency.

The installation of battery storage at the site is the latest in a series of investments made by Philip Dennis Foodservice in low carbon technologies, having installed two solar arrays at the Barnstaple site. The Tesla battery has been installed near to a 235kWp system, while a 97.5 kWp is helping to power the company’s butchery department.

It also boasts two 500kW wind turbines, which in Dennis’ words makes the site “quite unique” in having wind, solar, demand and now battery storage all in one place.

“Improving our carbon footprint through investment in renewable technologies is really important to us. It is a key USP and differentiates us from others in the market. We were quick to recognise the opportunity that solar and battery storage presents and are already achieving good returns,” he said.

Steve Shine, executive chairman of Anesco, said: “For commercial enterprises, manufacturers, farmers, landowners and others in industry, renewable technologies present a fantastic opportunity to diversify and capitalise on new revenue streams.”

With 1.5MW of grid capacity still unused on the site, Philip Dennis Foodservice is now considering more solar and is early talks with flow battery suppliers for future installations. While not currently used for behind the meter activity such as peak and distribution network charge avoidance, the company hopes to adopt these use cases in the future.

Anesco meanwhile is on track to more than quadruple its operational battery storage portfolio by 2020, as its order book swells to 380MW.

As the storage sector continues to develop, the utility-scale battery joint venture created by tech giants Siemens and AES Corporation is aiming to increase its market share in the commercial and industrial space.

Growing quickly in the nine months since its launch, Fluence expanded to new headquarters on Tuesday in Arlington, Va.

The company is largely known for utility-scale storage projects and replacing peaker plants with batteries in California, but now its leaders are eyeing more opportunities with renewable integration and storage applications for transmission. Its rapid rise, backed by the capital and experience of its parent companies, also enables its leadership to focus on large-scale behind-the-meter (BTM) opportunities.

“I believe transmission is going to be one of the next big things,” Stephen Coughlin, Fluence’s CEO, told Utility Dive. “You can move power around in times of less congestion, store it and then it’s already where it needs to be, and then release it.”

Battery storage: The grid’s Swiss Army knife?

By virtue of being able to capture energy and to feed it back into the grid, battery storage can play a lot of roles. However, as more uses are explored, U.S. regulations have yet to catch up.

“The problem with storage is that it does things that the current regulation doesn’t remunerate,” Andrés Gluski, AES president and CEO, told Utility Dive.

Gluski credits states for putting out legislation that provides the right incentives for storage, noting that it varies state by state.

Arizona, Colorado and Nevada are working on energy storage policies and the proposed targets to help develop the industry.

One issue is that storage largely lacks tax incentives when placed apart from renewables. Rules that would put storage on equal footing with renewable assets would make the top of the regulatory wishlist for Fluence’s chief operating officer, John Zahurancik.

“There are places that you could use energy storage that are in the center of the grid,” not necessarily paired with renewables, Zahurancik told Utility Dive.

And beyond its siting, Gluski pointed out that there are multiple potential capabilities where storage lacks regulations.

“Something as simple as a mandate to consider energy storage and the procurements is very helpful,” Coughlin said.

Coughlin also referred to transmission as an important application of storage.

“There’s a huge role for energy storage in transmission,” Gluski said, “basically allowing you to run the transmission lines closer to their nameplate capacity, rather than having to build out just for peak which may last an hour.”

In Virginia, home to AES and to Fluence’s headquarters, the state is currently working on a goal to cut carbon emissions in the power sector 30% by 2030. The goal, established by former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, includes an initiative in the state’s voluntary renewable portfolio standard program to use 15% renewable energy in Virginia’s energy mix by 2025.

Current Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam sees a role for storage in the state’s clean energy goals as technology is improving to help store intermittent renewable energy.

“I’ll work with our agencies and I’ll work with our private sector to do everything that we can to move that forward,” Northam told Utility Dive.

Northam, who participated in the ribbon-cutting for Fluence’s new headquarters, did not clarify the specific role energy storage would serve in the 2018 Virginia Energy Plan.