Empower Energies, Redflow In Tie-up for Solar and Flow Battery Solutions in North America

US based renewable energy player Empower Energies and Australian company Redflow have signed a ‘Letter of Intent’ to develop integrated solar and flow battery solutions for the North American commercial and industrial (C&I), remote community micro grid, and utility markets.

The official statement of Empower Energies held that the integrated solar and Redflow energy storage solution architecture was developed through the companies’ joint engagement with a Fortune 100 company. This company is interested in deploying solar and flow battery storage projects at some of its commercial campuses.

Michael Belko, CEO, Empower Energies, said, “Our new offering could be of great interest to customers seeking robust Energy Storage Solutions (ESS), but that require an alternative to lithium-ion.”

Patrick Corr, CSO, Empower Energies, stated, “We’ve found that our integrated solar and flow battery solution is of particular interest to certain C&I customers looking for an alternative ESS solution for load shifting, peak shaving or ancillary services on their corporate campuses to reduce energy costs and meet their ESG goals.”

Mark Higgins, Redflow’s President of North America and CCO, opines that this co-developed solution will present a new, safer alternative to traditional solutions. He calls the integrated solution a unique, innovative, and stress-tested alternative to the status quo solar and lithium-ion solution.

Higgins informed, “Our integrated offering provides a safer, rugged, more sustainable and cost competitive alternative to lithium-ion batteries + solar, and our batteries don’t materially degrade over their useful life, unlike lithium ion.”

As per the official statement, the zinc bromine chemistry has no risk of thermal runaway, making the solution better to deploy in urban and suburban environments where safety is a paramount consideration. Also, the hibernation mode enables the batteries to be used for backup power and resilience deployments in a very cost-effective manner versus lithium.

They said that the agreement is non-binding and non-exclusive. Plans are underway to conduct webinars and provide educational materials about the integrated solution in the coming months.

A Peek Into Profiles

Empower Energies has built over 200 MW of clean energy projects in the US and it has over 800 MW of solar and storage projects currently in development. Their leadership team represent a combined 1.7 GW in clean project experience.

Australia based Redflow Limited manufactures zinc-bromine flow batteries known to tolerate daily hard work in harsh conditions. Redflow says its batteries are designed for high cycle-rate, long time-base stationary energy storage applications and are scalable from small systems through to grid-scale deployments.