Vanadium Redox Flow Battery - would You choose it?

Aleksei_Ilmenskii

Hello! Our student-team have a scientific project "Battery management system for redox flow batteries".
Vanadium redox flow battery is one of the promising technologies to support the grid, which has advantages compared with Lithium-Ion: scalability in energy and power, long lifespan, and low self-discharge rate. These properties allow building scaled-up storage systems and smooth load curves both on the local and system levels. However, redox flow batteries are not commonly used because existing control systems are poorly developed and cannot ensure stable efficient work. For example, currently used management systems do not control vanadium flow which should be different in different load conditions - otherwise it causes rapid failure of the battery. Our solution is the control system that collects data of current, voltage, temperature, and sends information to the computer. Also, we are going to measure the strength of the vanadium flow. On the computer, the program will analyze receiving measurements and show the battery parameters (state of charge, power flow, etc) to the engineer in the user-friendly interface. If the parameters are critical the system will send the signal to the relay in order to disable the battery from the grid.

To make this project we really need feedback from Renewable And Alternative Energy users. What do you think about Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries and about our management system for these?

P.S.: Here is a link about Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AagO07cHRG8&ab_channel=SCHMIDGroup

Marc Kurth

I know nothing about your systems, but your control requirements immediately brought to mind off-the-shelf PLCs. You described controller output decisions to be made based on inputs of flow, load, and potentially additional measurements. Lower cost systems from Omron, Schneider, Siemens, and Eaton are super fast with bulletproof reliability these days.