Flow battery maker Avalon has initiated a novel business model aimed at lowering the cost of deployment of its energy storage units, effectively ‘renting’ the electrolytes in the devices to a customer in California.

VRB Energy, a maker of flow batteries headquartered in Canada and owned by a metal resources and mining company, said the first phase of a 40MWh flow battery project in China has now been commissioned.

News in brief from around the world in the energy storage industry.

Iowa’s Maharishi University of Management has completed and powered up a new solar power plant featuring both single-axis tracking and vanadium redox flow battery energy storage.

China’s State Grid Corporation will build 6GW of pumped hydro storage as part of ongoing efforts to cut rates of wind and solar power curtailment.

In another eventful and exciting year, Energy-Storage.news has been able to capture conversations and interviews with leading industry figures.

The opening address and a handful of sessions took place on Monday for SPI/ESI at Anaheim Convention Center, California. While the two shows are national and international, it is expected there will be a great deal of attention paid to the state’s SB100 bill.

With a view to creating a mass market design for vanadium flow batteries, Australia’s Protean Energy will deploy a 4MWh battery energy storage project in South Korea that will be researched over eight years of operation.

Just over US$28 million has been awarded by the US Department of Energy to projects that could deliver energy storage durations of up to 100 hours, while also committing US$120m to the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR).

juwi Renewable Energy and the University of Queensland signed off on an agreement on 30 August 2018 to develop a PV / flow battery hybrid power solution at the Heron Island Research Station located in the Great Barrier Reef.