Burgerland Energie has deployed a redox flow storage battery from the German battery manufacturer CMBlu in the immediate vicinity of the PV wind power hybrid power plant.
Austrian energy supplier Burgerland Energie has started construction of a 300 MWh storage project based on the “Organic SolidFlow” technology developed by the German company CMBlu.
The system is based on high-performance organic energy-storing molecules. The material used is lignin, which can be obtained as a by-product from pulp mills. It is filled into two separate tanks and combined for biochemical reaction in a special unit.
The material is organic, non-flammable, explosive and lasts for more than 10,000 charging cycles. The Flow battery system is a multi-cell stack design and is really only suitable for stationary storage applications, but it is easily scalable to the gigawatt level.
The project is located in Schattendorf, Burgenland, Eastern Austria and is connected to a solar hybrid wind farm. With the construction of the warehouse, the technology will be used in the field for the first time.
“One could have made it easy for themselves and relied on lithium-ion storage,” said Burgerland governor Hans Peter Doskozil. “But it would not have suited our attitude, that we want to produce energy from natural resources and fairly. Storage solutions where we accept the exploitation of mines and other continents are not the social image we accept during the energy transition. That’s why we chose a research collaboration with CMBlu to achieve and build a European model.
Burgenland Energie CEO Stephan Sharma said the goal is to supply electricity from wind and solar around the clock. He also warned that there is always a risk of under- and over-coverage in the network when there is a lot of solar electricity and wind power in the network.
“To compensate for this in an energy-independent system, we need a storage volume of around 300 MWh by 2030,” he added.
The storage system is tested directly in the hybrid power plant. Burgenland Energie completed the 15 MW solar power system at the beginning of the year. Connected to the solar park, the “Organic-SolidFlow” battery is originally housed as a “battery lab” in 40-foot, climate-controlled, location-agnostic tanks. The other batteries are then installed in different places.
CMBlu was among the winners of the 2018 pv Magazine Annual Award for its organic flow battery technology.
