Vanadium flow battery maker preps for UK long-duration storage tender

VFB maker Invinity Energy Systems says renewable energy infrastructure investor Frontier Power Ltd has reserved up to 2 GWh of its manufacturing capacity as it plans to rollout the technology on an “unprecedented scale” in the United Kingdom.

Invinity and Frontier announced the partnership ahead of the first round of an LDES procurement program in the United Kingdom which is expected before July.

UK energy regulator Ofgem is due to publish a technical outline of how its “cap and floor” procurement scheme will run this month, ahead of the first application window in the second quarter of the year. The cap and floor system will see energy consumers refund LDES project owners if their revenues fall below a minimum, “floor” level. If revenues exceed a specified maximum, the “cap,” LDES operators will refund the difference into a public fund for consumers.

Multiple projects

Frontier, based in the English county of Warwickshire, has stated an intent to lodge multiple bids to establish vanadium-flow based LDES projects in the first round of the much-anticipated procurement program. It is likely projects allocated in the first round of the Ofgem tender will have to take shape by 2030, or 2033 at the latest.

Announcing the partnership with Frontier, Invinity said the investor has experience with bidding in cap and floor procurement exercises as that system is used to allocate electricity interconnectors which Frontier has backed.

Invinity, which has 500 MWh of annual VFB production capacity at production sites in central Scotland, said the partnership could be expanded to accelerate VFB deployment in other global markets, and noted Frontier’s experience in the Asian energy market.

A call for input made by Ofgem in relation to the cap and floor procurement rules suggested the regulator may consider imposing a minimum 100 MW/800 MWh or 100 MW/1 GWh scale for mature-technology LDES projects, with a similar eight- to ten-hour storage requirement for less mature technology, which would have a minimum project scale of 50 MW.

To be eligible to participate in the exercise, projects must have grid connections secured for 2030 or 2033, with priority being given to the former, and must have planning consent before October, or be likely to receive it. A possible floor price of 80% of allowable project costs could be determined by estimated industry costs or by a reverse bidding auction and other potential requirements could include mandatory, 100% participation of LDES sites in the UK grid capacity market and third-party operation of the projects commissioned.