UniEnergy Technologies (UET)'s strategic partner and affiliate Rongke Power will deploy the world's largest battery, rated at 800MWh. UET and Rongke Power have worked closely together since 2012 to develop large-scale Vanadium Flow Batteries (VFB's) to meet the challenges of grid modernization, renewable penetration, and resiliency.
The VFB battery will provide peak-shaving and enhance grid stabilization on the Dalian peninsula in northern China. Even more storage capacity is anticipated in the future to facilitate additional intermittent renewable energy deployment in the region. The China National Energy Administration approved the strategic application of Rongke's VFB into the utility grid due to its competitive price and lack of emissions, as well as demonstrated longevity, operational flexibility, and class-leading performance.
Flow batteries were originally invented by utilities in the United States to offer MW-scale buffer capacity. After decades of development and deployments, only close collaboration between the US and China has yielded the scientific and engineering breakthroughs needed to meet stringent requirements for utility performance, reliability, and safety.
Collaboration between UET and Rongke Power will be memorialized in a US-China EcoPartnership signing ceremony attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Beijing on June 7, 2016. UET will be represented by Rick Winter, UET's President and Chief Operating Officer.
The battery arrays approved by the China National Energy Administration will be made up of ten (10X) 20MW/80MWh VFB systems deployed on the Dalian peninsula, which during extreme weather events has experienced stress on the electricity grid. After full commissioning, the VFB battery will be able to peak-shave approximately 8% of Dalian's expected load in 2020. In addition, the large-scale battery will form an additional load center, which will enhance grid stabilization including securing the power supply and providing black-start capabilities in the event of emergency.
The VFB battery will be built at Rongke Power's new GigaFactory to be opened in the fall of 2016, with a phase 1 capacity of 300MW of VFB electrode stacks, a phase 2 capacity of 1GW, and a phase 3 capacity of 3GW. Both Rongke Power and UET's deployments of VFB systems will be supported by production from Rongke Power's GigaFactory.
UET President and COO Rick Winter stated: "This visionary project is a watershed moment for the energy storage industry, vaulting China's electric grid into the 21st century, supplying tremendous resilience and enabling seamless deep penetration of renewables. The massive scale of the project was made possible by years of reliable field performance of vanadium flow batteries, and allows us to rapidly optimize our supply chain across our product lines."
