UK Government-backed feasibility study aims to deliver UK’s largest co-located solar + storage project with Invinity’s flow batteries
Wednesday 23 February 2022
Invinity Energy Systems has been named as a winning recipient of more than £700,000 of funding from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as part of the £68m Longer Duration Energy Storage (LODES) Demonstration competition. This award will fund a comprehensive planning and feasibility study on what could become one of the UK’s largest co-located solar and energy storage projects. If Phase 1 is deemed successful, the Company then expects the project to progress through financial close and to the construction of a 40 MWh Invinity Vanadium Flow Battery (VFB) funded in part by BEIS via Phase 2 of the LODES programme.
In consortium with Pivot Power, part of EDF Renewables, and EDF R&D UK, Invinity is leading the comprehensive feasibility study into this first-of-a-kind co-located 10 MW / 40 MWh UK LDES project that will generate low-cost, low-carbon dispatchable energy for the UK grid. It will also serve as a template for other grid-constrained solar generation sites that will accelerate the progress towards Net Zero both in the UK and globally and provide vital backup for times when renewable energy is not being produced.
This competition forms part of the £1bn Net Zero Innovation Portfolio under the UK Government’s 10 Point Plan, announced in November 2020, which committed £100m to address “Energy Storage and Flexibility Innovation Challenges”.
“Driving forward energy storage technologies will be vital in our transition towards cheap, clean and secure renewable energy.
It will allow us to extract the full benefit from our home-grown renewable energy sources, drive down costs and end our reliance on volatile and expensive fossil fuels. Through this competition we are making sure the country’s most innovative scientists and thinkers have our backing to make this ambition a reality.”
– Greg Hands MP, Energy & Climate Change Minister
Vanadium Flow Batteries (VFBs) are considered one of the leading alternatives to Lithium-ion batteries that have been more widely deployed to date. A form of longer duration energy storage, Invinity’s VFBs are designed to make renewable power available around the clock and mitigate intermittency issues caused by overcast or still weather conditions and seasonal fluctuations. Due to these highly cyclical requirements, VFBs are ideally suited because of their unlimited cycling capacity and lack of degradation. They are also non-flammable and can be almost fully recycled at End of Life.
Invinity recently installed a 5 MWh VFB in Oxford alongside a 50 MWh Lithium-ion battery as part of the Energy Superhub Oxford project, developed by Pivot Power, part of EDF Renewables. Earlier this year, Scottish Water also announced they had commissioned a 0.8 MWh Invinity VFB co-located with a 1 MWp solar array at their Perth waste water treatment works to support their transition to Net Zero.
In addition, Invinity has also signed large scale collocated PV + Energy storage projects in Canada (8.4 MWh VFB) and Australia (8 MWh VFB).
“The LODES initiatives are yet another demonstration of the UK’s commitment to building a thriving low carbon economy. Invinity greatly appreciates BEIS’s vision for that future, especially the vital role that safe, reliable and robust long-duration energy storage has to play on a Net Zero UK electric grid. In realising that vision, we are tremendously pleased to be working again with BEIS, Pivot Power and EDF to plan the deployment of a vanadium flow battery eight times the size of the one currently operating at Energy Superhub Oxford.”
– Larry Zulch, Chief Executive Officer, Invinity Energy Systems
