\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>hink of battery manufacturing and it may evoke images of Elon Musk and Tesla\u2019s sprawling \u201cgigafactories\u201d around the globe, or China\u2019s vast, hi-tech clean rooms churning out cells to go in anything from electric toothbrushes to mobile phones and cars. But at Invinity Energy Systems\u2019s small factory in Bathgate, near Edinburgh, workers slotting parts together are hoping that Britain can also play a part in the battery revolution.<\/p>\n These batteries, which rely on vanadium ions, are put in 6-metre (20ft), 25-tonne shipping containers. They will not go into cars, but the manufacturer hopes the technology can win a place in a global rush into storage to usher in the shift to net zero carbon grids.<\/p>\n Renewable electricity is the future of the global energy system: cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels. However, its main drawback is that renewables generation is tied to the weather, and the sun may not be shining or the wind blowing at the times when energy is most needed. \u201cTime shifting\u201d that energy generation with battery storage, so it can be stored and used later, will be crucial to the proper functioning of electricity grids.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat suddenly started to happen is that people have woken up to realise that energy storage is needed to be able to deploy more renewables on to the grid,\u201d said Jonathan Marren, the Invinity chief executive, at the factory where a row of the batteries is stacked, ready to be shipped.<\/p>\n Experts have long been grappling with the different options for storing renewable power, but the issue of the reliability of grids rose up the political agenda in April when Spain and Portugal suffered the biggest blackout in Europe in 20 years. Some people rushed to blame renewable energy, although a Spanish government report said that was not the case. Nevertheless, battery storage could help grids around the world to avoid Iberian-style chaos.<\/p>\n <\/span>The electricity blackouts in Spain and Portugal in April highlighted the issue of energy security.<\/span> Photograph: Ferm\u00edn Rodr\u00edguez\/NurPhoto\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Much of the focus on battery research has been on cramming as much energy as possible into the smallest, lightest container to go into electric cars. That work has been crucial for the switch away from the carbon pollution from petrol and diesel, a key contributor to global heating. It has also forced down the cost of lithium ion batteries dramatically.<\/p>\n As with much of the transition away from fossil fuels to electric technology, it is China that is driving an increase in demand at an astonishing scale. China has installed batteries with a capacity of 215 gigawatt hours (GWh) \u2013 two-thirds of the global total \u2013 according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a data company.<\/p>\n China\u2019s battery installations are due to nearly quadruple by the end of 2027 to 826GWh, if all planned projects are completed. For instance, the state-owned China Energy Engineering Corporation last month tendered for 25GWh of batteries using lithium iron phosphate technology that is being used in cheaper cars.<\/p>\n Global battery storage capacity by country<\/p>\n Iola Hughes, the head of research at Rho Motion, a Benchmark subsidiary, said falling prices and the growth of renewable energy were driving the rise in demand. By 2027 total global battery storage installations could increase by five times to 1,500GWh, said Hughes, and \u201cthis figure could increase even further as advancements in technology and declining costs allow developers to build battery energy storage systems at a faster pace than historically\u201d.<\/p>\n The vast majority of that rise \u2013 95% on current numbers \u2013 will be projects using lithium ion batteries such as those being used in Aberdeenshire by Britain\u2019s Zenob\u0113 Energy, which installed batteries with a capacity of 600MWh \u2013 enough to power all the homes in Scotland for an hour. They claim the site is \u201cEurope\u2019s largest battery\u201d.<\/p>\n Energy storage companies using different technologies must now run the brutal gauntlet of finding early stage funding as they try to prove that their technology will be economical. Invinity\u2019s flow batteries use vanadium, while in the US its rival Eos Energy is using zinc. However, flow batteries could find a niche for storage over six to eight hours \u2013 more than the two or so hours that lithium batteries tend to provide.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>Cara King, an R&D scientist at Invinity Energy Systems, seen holding vials of vanadium electrolyte in its different states of charge.<\/span> Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Flow batteries rely on the ability of some metals to exist stably with different numbers of electrons. One shipping container holds two tanks containing vanadium ions with different numbers of electrons \u2013 one \u201croyal purple\u201d, the other \u201cIrn-Bru red\u201d. A pump moves the vanadium liquid through a stack of membranes that allow protons to cross, while the electrons are diverted around a circuit, providing power. If electrons are forced in the other direction \u2013 by a solar panel or a wind turbine \u2013 the reaction moves in reverse, recharging the battery, which can hold 300 kilowatt hours of charge.<\/p>\n An important benefit of the flow battery is that it is much simpler to manufacture than lithium ion equivalents. Invinity has been able to make its stacks with 90 employees, mostly based in a part of Scotland that has deindustrialised.<\/p>\n Marren claimed that over the project lifetime \u201con a levelised cost basis, we are better value than lithium\u201d. The upfront cost is still higher than lithium batteries \u2013 Invinity hints that it costs above \u00a3100,000 for a container \u2013 but the batteries last much longer without losing capacity, and are non-flammable, so do not need expensive fire safety equipment. The shipping containers are already sitting beside wave machines in Bristol, car chargers in Oxford, a casino in California and a solar park in South Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can commission whole sites within days,\u201d Marren said.<\/p>\n Invinity is valued at just over \u00a390m on London\u2019s Aim junior stock market, and it is hoping the UK takes a lead in the flow battery niche.<\/p>\n British manufacturing could count in its favour in a government competition for support under a \u201ccap and floor\u201d scheme that will guarantee electricity prices within a set range \u2013 removing the risk from a sustained fall in prices. If successful, the company would require a big production expansion from the current ability to make five containers a week, Marren said. He dreams of employing 1,000 workers if the company takes off.<\/p>\n \u201cThe potential for expansion is enormous,\u201d Marren said. \u201cWe\u2019ve gone past the stage of \u2018does the tech work at scale\u2019? We\u2019ve got a long-duration storage that works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Think of battery manufacturing and it may evoke images of Elon Musk and Tesla\u2019s sprawling \u201cgigafactories\u201d around the globe, or China\u2019s vast, hi-tech clean rooms churning out cells to go in anything from electric toothbrushes to mobile phones and cars. But at Invinity Energy Systems\u2019s small factory in Bathgate, near Edinburgh, workers slotting parts together<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[9469,651,270,611,661,1545,3036,12314,6765],"class_list":{"0":"post-20044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-aim","9":"tag-battery","10":"tag-change","11":"tag-energy","12":"tag-firms","13":"tag-industry","14":"tag-net","15":"tag-powering","16":"tag-unlock"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}