Redflow battery customer trials give the final finesse before production begins

Redflow CEO, Tim Harris, is confident the company’s Gen3 flow battery will go into production in the first half of this year, once the results from its customer trial are evaluated.

January 6, 2021 Bella Peacock

Emmett James has been using Redflow’s ZCell batteries in his off-grid system since 2017. His Queensland home is now the site for the company’s Gen3 customer trial.

Redflow

Redflow’s Gen3 battery customer trial, which is already underway and scheduled to be complete by the middle of the month, is one of the final steps before the Australian energy storage company begins producing its latest model. Already boasting the world’s smallest commercially available flow batteries, the ZCell and ZBM2, Redflow are looking to move into mass production techniques for the first time with its Gen3, ultimately lowering cost barriers.

To assess how the Gen3 battery performs in a live environment, Reflow installed two of the new models in doctor James Emmett’s off-grid Mount Tamborine property in Queensland in December.

“After the end of the trial in mid-January, Redflow will take the batteries back to its headquarters in Brisbane to examine their performance compared to its current generation of zinc-bromine flow batteries,” Redflow CEO and Managing Director, Tim Harris, told pv magazine Australia.

“Battery performance will be evaluated from a broad range of measures including battery efficiency, temperature tolerance and discharge curves, allowing Redflow to tweak and refine the Gen3 battery design, if necessary, before going into production in the first half of this year.”

“This is an important development milestone for Redflow’s Gen3 battery to become customer and production ready in 2021,” Harris said.

Reflow’s 10 kWh zinc-bromine flow batteries are designed for deep cycling, long-duration stationary energy storage applications and are able to tolerate harsh work conditions. The company’s Gen3 model has a number of design changes from the previous ZCell and ZBM2 models. These include a side by side tank design and a single, rather than double, stack – both of which the company say will reduce manufacturing costs.

“With Gen3, we are confident of achieving a 30% reduction in manufacturing costs through supply chain and engineering productivity impacts,” Harris said in a statement about the customer trial announcement.

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