Navy Mobile Utilities Support Equipment facility in Port Hueneme, California, is introducing a new smart microgrid project that utilizes solar power in an island mode with the help of vanadium flow batteries for solar energy storage.
Navy is going through a transition phase from wind power to coal, oil, and nuclear energy.
Imergy Power Systems are technical providers of these vanadium flow batteries. It generates a charge by the inter
action of two liquids flowing next to each other.
The liquids are stored in separate tanks and flow batteries have a strong safety and scalability advantage. They also have advantage over lifecycle durability.
One challenge was for compressing the energy density of the system into a useful size and another challenge was a cost-effective solution to get the liquids close enough to interact without contaminating each other.
Vanadium is a silvery transition metal that offers to flow battery systems as it can exist in two states, which helps to cut down on the cross-contamination issue.
The energy storage system provided by Imergy to the Navy’s microgrid project includes three shippable vanadium flow batteries namely, ESP30.
Imergy unveiled ESP30 recently as a next-generation improvement of its earlier technology with a capacity of up to 50 kilowatts which can store up to 200 kilowatt-hours.
Besides, ESP30 delivers a cost of less than $300 per kilowatt-hour, an improvement from the first one which delivered in at $500 per kilowatt-hour.
The company is confident that it can meet the Energy Department’s energy storage goal of $220 per kilowatt-hour within about two years.
The microgrid projects are addressed by the Foresight Renewable Solutions and the three flow batteries will allow the naval base to optimize its energy usage.
It will also reduce the cost with a grouping of demand management, load shifting, and strategic deployment of solar energy.
A 50 kilowatt solar installation is also part of the project.
The island mode angle is important for base security and the Navy plans to showcase the microgrid’s skills for use in the civilian sector.
Imergy points out how quickly the energy storage sector is growing and the mobile energy storage sector is already in the process of developing vehicle-to-grid systems.
Sabeena Wahid
editor@greentechlead.com