Research Articles

While they may have struggled to find their place in the market over the past few years, there will be significant adoption of redox flow batteries towards the end of the next decade according to a new IDTechEx market report, "Redox Flow Batteries 2021-2031".

The Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) has been the first redox flow battery to be commercialized and to bring light to the flow battery technology. In the latest update of the IDTechEx report, "Redox Flow Batteries 2021-2031", a substantial forward-looking approach has been assumed in forecasting the trend of adoption of this technology, with a multi-billion market size in 2031.

The stationary energy storage market is growing very fast, with daily news of large installations announced at both sides of the power grid: Front-of-Meter and Behind-the-Meter.

The energy scenario is changing as a result of years of green policies adopted by the major countries in the world. With energy storage playing a key role toward the integration of variable renewable energy (VRE) in the power grid, will Li-ion batteries keep dominating the stationary storage market?

Why should people buy a hydrogen car, if they will barely opt for an electric one?

The strong potential of hydrogen is driven by the fact that it is impossible to electrify some of the most polluting sectors, including the steel, ammonia, and glass industries. In these sectors, hydrogen will be produced from renewable energy employing electrolyzer systems.

Among the Li-ion batteries competitors, the Redox Flow Battery (RFB) system is one of the main competitors currently approaching the market.

With more than 1TWh of battery capacity installed in the ten-year forecast and a market size of $56bn, the "Batteries for Stationary Energy Storage 2021-2031" report shows the fast-growing scale of this market, analyzing the main technologies involved in this energetic revolution.

Electricity generation from renewable energies is growing on a daily basis and, to integrate their variable nature, energy storage systems are growing in parallel. IDTechEx have investigated the evolution of the energy storage market, forecasting its growth in the next ten years, in the new report: "Batteries for Stationary Energy Storage 2021-2031".

IDTechEx investigate the evolution of the hydrogen market and the development of the hydrogen economies of the major countries around the world in their new report "The Hydrogen Economy, Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Production Methods".

In this second article from IDTechEx, a more detailed analysis about the different chemistries will show the main RFB technologies currently available or under development, beginning with the most adopted and investigated Redox Flow Batteries (RFB), the Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFB).

In this first part of a series of articles from IDTechEx, an overview of the flow batteries characteristics is provided, extrapolated from IDTechEx's recent report "Redox Flow Battery 2020-2030: Forecast, Challenges, Opportunities".

The electricity market is evolving to allow a higher integration of variable energy sources and a new class of devices is approaching the market to satisfy this necessity.

The electricity grid is undergoing its first evolution since the invention of the power transmission system, and energy storage devices, particularly mechanical energy storage devices, will play a solid role in this evolution.

Fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are considered by the most, as two competing technologies. Although both technologies power an electric motor, they have different properties and each of them is well suited for some uses more than others.

Once every ten years the promising future of a hydrogen economy and fuel cells is announced. Hydrogen over the years has had several periods of hypes, which always blow off as nothing concrete, but why are we still talking about it? And why is there still the belief of a hydrogen economy, when Li-ion batteries are dominating the market?

While Li-ion batteries have totally conquered the electric-vehicle industry, and currently dominating the energy storage sector as well, the redox flow batteries are silently (but not too much) taking their share of the stationary energy storage market.

An increasing number of news articles about "Redox Flow Batteries" are present on the web. This technology, mostly adopted in on-grid and off-grid applications, has been studied for the last 50 years, and it is currently being commercialized (most of the time) in a containerized size, for medium- and large-scale applications.

The pandemic infection of COVID-19 has led to the lockdown of a considerable number of cities, leading to reduced pollution activity. With the large number of renewable energy sources employed in the last decades to decarbonise the energy sector, a growing number of energy storage devices have been coupled with renewable energy sources.

The redox flow battery market is growing. After more than 40 years of research, and 20 years of testing and demonstration projects, the flow batteries are now technologically ready to compete on the energy storage market. With a forecasted CAGR of 30% in the next years, this technology is looking to have all the characteristics to address each segment of the energy storage market, from residential to grid scale application.