Earlier this year, the California Energy Commission (CEC) published a $20 million solicitation to fund research projects for the deployment of long-duration energy storage. The objective was to develop a clear understanding of the role that long-duration energy storage (10 hours or greater) can play in helping to meet the state’s mandates to decarbonize the electricity sector by 2045. Lithium-ion batteries were excluded from the solicitation. The CEC selected four energy storage projects incorporating vanadium flow batteries (“VFBs”) from North America and UK-based Invinity Energy Systems plc. The four sites are all commercial or industrial facilities that want to self-generate power (like solar) and in some cases have the ability to operate off-grid. Invinity’s total scope is 7.8 megawatt-hours (MWh) of batteries across the four projects. Part of the objective is to be able to take those facilities off-grid for an extended period of time, to avoid interruptions to […]