Renewable energy is now central to the world’s ongoing energy transformation. Only one problem remains –intermittency – which leads to excess supply being wasted and under supply often being penalized. HydraRedox stands out as a strong contender, offering large scale energy storage solutions ideal for use with renewables to create clean and sustainable energy systems. The HydraRedox system is based on a proprietary radically new approach to vanadium redox technology. The system is very flexible, modular, scalable and can be designed to match exact power and energy requirements. Power can be scaled up to multi-MW while the duration of storage (MWh) can be independently sized from a few hours to 24hours. It is highly efficient (>80%, even at low charge), with 100% depth of discharge, a long-projected life (in line with that of renewables), unlimited cycling and requires low maintenance. Environmentally, the system is neutral when operated and when dismantled/disposed of; furthermore, the energy section, is entirely recyclable.
Why is it important for society?
Energy storage implementation will increase the levels of wind and solar that can be accommodated by the electricity system and is a crucial component for future renewables growth – but the positive ramifications go well beyond the energy sector. For government, industry and society, energy storage will trigger a chain reaction of benefits from power quality, reliability, security of supply, price stability to environmental and other social benefits. HydraRedox will create employment opportunities as the leader in this new disruptive sector and, additionally, as an enabling technology HydraRedox will boost demand for renewables as well as for supporting technologies such as manufacturers of inverters and software/controls, all of which are expected to see strong job growth.
Overall Objectives
The ultimate goal of the VR Energy project is to demonstrate that a plant of 500 kW is feasible and can be operated in the same conditions to be found at the client’s 1 MW installation, i.e. connected to large renewable energy sources.
To be a commercially viable partner, energy storage needs to adapt to renewables’ fast-changing landscape of ever growing size and lower costs. To be adopted on a large-scale energy storage must be technologically optimized, to provide scalable and modular units that can match the growth in scale of solar plants and wind turbines. In terms of costs, be implemented on a large scale and be economically viable, energy storage costs will need to fall rapidly in the next 3-5 years: the industry is giving aggressive guidelines of prices which need to fall sharply from the current broad range of €500-1200/kWh to below €300/kWh by 2020 towards a longer-term target of €100/kWh and below.
One of the main concern for the industry is whether technologies under development today will be able to satisfy these requirements - the support of the EU is therefore of paramount importance for our technological advancement and cost reduction. It is also crucial to be able to discuss this project with our clients to give them a sense of our vision and efforts to address their needs, giving them confidence in our abilities to meet these aggressive targets and be a contender in energy storage industry of the future.
HydraRedox Iberia was created with the initial objective to address that specific market of medium to large applications which lithium ion cannot fulfil. We therefore focused on scaling up our technology with the VR Energy project. In parallel we have actively pursued a marketing strategy, presenting the technology to a broad spectrum to potential users from farmers, to renewable operators all the way to the grid operators.
