VANADIUM DELIVERS A BATTERY OF POWER SOLUTIONS
By Tim McElligott
Jun 18, 2007 12:00 PM
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People tend to jump all over the idea of alternative power. It's fun. It's interesting. It's morally invigorating and environmentally popular. But it takes discipline for companies that are large consumers of power to remain objective and wait until the time and technology are right to implement alternatives. And it takes guts to pull the trigger when they think that point has come.
John Davis, director of business development for VRB Power Systems, thinks the time is right. And although his company is not a provider of alternative power generation, he thinks his alternative to traditional battery backup systems could help drive the use of alternative power.
He's getting a chance to prove it in countries such as Australia, Germany, Ireland and the U.S. The company will begin commercial deployments of its new vanadium Redox Batteries in 2008. It will be demonstrating the final, commercial version of its 5 kW system this week at NXTcomm in Chicago.
Forgive the anthropomorphism here, but power rooms are unnerving, even scary places. Rows of lead acid batteries stand — silent, expressionless, lined up in perfect rows like sleeping aliens or humans in cryogenic tanks — waiting for that spark, that simple charge to give them life. Yet even in their state of suspended animation, they possess tremendous power, enough to light and run a full central office (CO), a small town, a wind farm — enough to fry your brains if you touch the wrong connectors.
But more often than not, these monsters that serve their half-lives as mere backups to the vibrant power utility grid never see the light of day. They wait and wait and wait. And they cost — lots. And eventually, they're retired. Dismantled. At best, recycled. Davis wants to change that.
“We have applications whereby using your batteries actually saves you money,” Davis said.
First, the technology. The product, like the company, is called VRB. More specifically, it is called the VRB-ESS or vanadium Redox Flow Battery Energy Storage System. What makes it different from traditional lead-acid batteries, beside being made from vanadium metal, is that it can store electrical energy and discharge and recharge tens of thousands of times without degradation.
It also uses a vanadium-based redox regenerative fuel cell that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. Redox is short for reduction/oxidation and is a class of battery that employs an electrolyte where energy is stored and a cell stack where energy conversion occurs.
The VRB pumps the two different forms of electrolytes from two separate storage tanks into flow cells across a proton exchange membrane. There, one of the electrolytes is electrochemically oxidized, and the other is electrochemically induced (see diagram). The current created is made available to an external circuit. The key is that the reaction is reversible. This gives the VRB-ESS its ability to charge, discharge and recharge without degradation.
It is that capability, Davis said, that makes the VRB-ESS a great complementary tool to service providers' existing power systems, as well as to emerging alternative energy generating systems.
Referring to alternative energy sources such as windmill farms, Davis said, “It seems you always generate energy at exactly the wrong time. So the key to making them practical is to have an energy source that is efficient enough to store energy and deliver it when needed.”
More on alternative energy later. For now, more immediate benefits await service providers in both the CO and remote locations. In the CO, the VRB-ESS can be used as a backup power plant. In remote locations that are off the utility power grid and run on gas-guzzling generators, the rising price of fuel is making this already costly method almost prohibitive. VRB estimates there are about 2000 of these sites in the U.S. This is where VRB thinks it makes sense to run the batteries more often.
“Generators are incredibly inefficient. For every hour you turn that system off, you save money in fuel costs,” Davis said. However inefficient generators may be, the cost of running dual generators is justified by the even more costly solution of bringing utility power to some remote mountain site. Still, if there is a cheaper way…
Because the VRB-ESS can discharge completely with no ill effect to the battery and because it can do so approximately 12,000 times, the system itself has a life expectancy of more than 16 years (two and a half times the life expectancy of lead-acid batteries). During those 16 years, the system doesn't have to sit idle. It can turn, say, a remote microwave site from a prime power site, which is one that runs on localized diesel power generation, to a site that supports power cycling.
In this case, the working generator (the other is always a backup) can charge the VRB-ESS in 3 hours then shut down and let the VRB run for 9 hours. Two of these cycles per day lets the generator rest for 18 hours per day. That's 18 hours out of 24 that it is no longer consuming fuel.
“That's about a 75% cost savings in fuel, not counting the cost of helicoptering in the fuel,” Davis said.
For network providers uncomfortable with cycling their generators, the VRB-ESS comes with a management system that switches back over to the generator if needed.
Even in an environment where power is supplied by the local utility, the system allows what Davis calls “peak shaving.” It can be charged at night, then run during the day when peak rates are higher, and the utility can be turned off.
The company is working with a Tier 1 telecom carrier in California in conjunction with the California Energy Commission to approve the deployment of a 20 kW system that would power a site by day and let the grid power it at night.
In May, VRB began a trial with a Canadian service provider for a 5 kW system that would power a remote site along with diesel generators. But the company cut its teeth in Ireland where it proved its ability to complement alternative power generation systems.
Sustainable Energy Ireland and Tadbury Management Ltd. began funding a feasibility study in September 2006 to quantify the benefits of coupling vanadium Redox Batteries with wind farms. The study focused on the Sorne Hill Windfarm, a 32 MW windfarm in Buncrana, Inishowen (County Donegal), where wind is the most abundant natural resource.
This past March, VRB was asked to increase the size of its system for the project from a 1.5 MW by 8-hour system to a 2 MW by 6-hour system, raising the worth of the sale from $6.3 million to $9.4 million.
John Ward, director of Tadbury Management, said participants were delighted with the findings of the study, saying it provided technical and economic validation for a number of key revenue streams that had been identified for the planned implementation. “In particular, the study demonstrates the potential for purchasers of the VRB Energy Storage Systems in the Irish market to achieve a very healthy [internal rate of return] of 17.5% on their investment,” he said.
Davis said the key to renewable energy is reliable generation. Because some renewable energy today is not reliable, storage makes it a more complete solution. “Renewable energy is very inconsistent. When the wind stops blowing, you're not generating electricity, so you have to take energy when it is being generated and store it in a medium that is highly efficient,” he said.
Another problem with renewable energy is that is has thus far been trendy. When Americans perceive an energy crisis, they get behind alternatives, and when the cost comes down, they forget about it. Davis said it is an absolute must that industries like telecom engage in and evangelize alternative power. And he said that now they have good economic reason.
“Nobody is going to do this for the fun of it,” Davis said. “But this is a slam-dunk application. It works, and it has an immediate return on investment of two and a half years.”
He also said there are plenty of government subsidies from the Department of Energy available for those willing to look for them.
Davis said that vanadium, atomic number 23 on the periodic table, is an abundant element used elsewhere for the hardening of steel. He said it is non-toxic on its own and is very magnetic, which helps draw molecules closer together.
However, some on the blogosphere are concerned with the availability of the metal and don't believe is it all that abundant, and that this lack of abundance could affect prices.
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