Eday Flow Battery Project

Flow batteries housed in EMEC’s energy storage building (credit EMEC)

Project: Eday Flow Battery Installation

Funder: The Scottish Government via Highlands and Islands Enterprise

Funding: £1.8 million

Project overview

EMEC will deploy an Invinity Energy Systems (AIM:IES) 1.8 MWh flow battery at the tidal energy test site on the island of Eday in 2021. This unique combination of tidal power and flow batteries will be used to power EMEC’s hydrogen production plant, demonstrating  the world’s first continuous hydrogen production from variable renewable generation.

Invinity’s vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) are a form of heavy duty, stationary energy storage which are deployed in high-utilisation, industrial applications. They provide hours of continuous power, one or more times per day, through decades of service. This makes them the perfect candidate for regulating the generation of tidal energy, an application where more conventional lithium-ion batteries would degrade and eventually wear out.

Tidal generation is predictable yet variable, with two high and two low tides occurring each day. This is an extremely heavy cycling application, requiring up to four cycles per day, compared to solar coupled energy storage projects which typically require just one charge and discharge each day.

At EMEC’s site, the system will store electricity generated by tidal turbines during high power periods, and discharge it during low power periods. This will ‘smooth’ tidal generation to create continuous, on-demand electricity to turn into hydrogen using EMEC’s 670 kW hydrogen electrolyser. This will optimise hydrogen production at the site to enable tonnes of green hydrogen generation each year.

EMEC’s Neil Kermode with Michael Mathieson MSP, Graeme Harrison of HIE in the energy storage building (Credit EMEC)

Partners

• EMEC
• Invinity Energy Systems (AIM:IES)

Project news

• November 2020: Flow Batteries to combine with Tidal Power to produce World’s First Continuous Green Hydrogen