25kW 200kWh Energy Storage System based on All-iron Hybrid Flow Battery

This ARPA-E SBIR project is to research, design, construct and field trial a cost-effective and efficient 25kW 200kWh energy storage system based on the all-Iron Hybrid Flow Battery (IFB) technology. Energy Storage Systems Inc. (ESS) develops and commercializes grid-scale energy storage systems based on flow battery technologies. Applying its proprietary flow cell design, ESS has demonstrated a 4-fold performance improvement of the IFB technology at a 50cm2 lab-scale. As the result, the proposed ESS stack is significantly smaller and cheaper than a conventional IFB stack. With support from Oregon BEST (Oregon Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies Center), Portland State Electric Avenue, Drive Oregon, and ONAMI (Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute), ESS requests support from ARPA-E to scale up this lab-scale performance to a 25kW 200kWh system, which will be demonstrated behind the meter at a customer site. This customer can immediately expect a payback of less than 5 years with a fully amortized cost of less than $200/kWh over 20 years, based on minimized time-of-use (TOU) and demand charges. Moreover, ESS has a financial model to project a development path to achieve <$100/kWh per system. Besides the cost, this system can also provide the customer additional benefits, such as back-up power capability and provisions for demand response.