Australian flow battery manufacturer Redflow has resumed battery deliveries as of 8 May 2017, after laboratory test results revealed that a significant number of batteries in stock meet the company’s quality standards, enabling immediate delivery to customers.
The resumption follows a suspension on deliveries, announced 24 April 2017 after a number of unexpected product mode failures during remote monitoring at customer sites.
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Testing revealed 25 of the Redflow’s zinc-bromine flow batteries produced “satisfactory results”. At present, Redflow has 96 batteries in stock and another 120 batteries in transit from the factory.
Reflow trialled a chemical cleaning process to remove the battery impurities, with company CEO and executive chairman Simon Hackett expressing that this procedure yielded “positive results” and will be applied routinely to any batteries subsequently identified as requiring it.
Largest single sale of ZBM2 zinc-bromine flow batteries
In the wake of promptly resuming deliveries, Redflow secured its largest single order to date for its ZBM2 zinc-bromine flow batteries, worth about US$600,000 (AU$800,000), for multiple sites in the Pacific Islands.
The sale is being leveraged through Redflow partner Vertiv (formerly Emerson Network Power), a mature system integrator that has previously deployed ZBM2 batteries for telecommunications related energy storage systems in New Zealand and Australia.
Vertiv will provide the batteries for an energy storage solution being designed by New Zealand-based Hitech Solutions, which is building advanced hybrid systems to provide remote power to various sites in the Islands. This first AU$800,000 order is for the first stage of Hitech’s multi-stage project.
Redflow CEO Simon Hackett said this major sector sale recognised the unique advantages of its batteries. “This high-workload deployment in the tropics is ideal for our zinc-bromine flow batteries,” he said.
“The ZBM2 excels in hot environments, such as the tropics, for applications that require high cycle depth and cycle frequency, as in the deployment Hitech is planning. This sort of environment and application cycle kills lead-acid batteries in fairly short order, requiring their frequent replacement, whereas our batteries thrive on heat and hard work.”
Hitech Solutions chief operations officer Derek Gaeth said the company had chosen Redflow batteries as the best fit for purpose in this specific use case. “Redflow’s zinc-bromine flow batteries were our best choice because they meet the needs of this project,” he said.
“ZBM2 batteries are well suited to managing hybrid power, have a good charge/discharge profile and have a high tolerance of temperature variance, especially heat, which is important in the tropics.”
Redflow first made waves in the market after launching the first residential-level storage device to use a flow battery, in Australia in early 2016.