Invinity awarded £11m for UK's 'largest grid-scale battery'

Invinity Energy Systems plc has been awarded £11 million in funding by the UK government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to build what it describes as the “largest grid-scale battery ever manufactured in the UK”.

The Vanadium Flow Battery (VFB) Longer Duration Energy Asset Demonstrator project will involve a 30 MWh Invinity VFB system deployed at a key node on the National Grid. 

The battery will be capable of delivering more than 7 MW of power on demand. 

With a capacity equivalent to the daily energy use of more than 3,500 homes, this battery will be the largest ever to be manufactured in the UK. Approximately six times larger than Invinity’s battery system at the Energy Superhub Oxford, it will also be “one of the world’s largest flow batteries”, an Invinity statement said 

“Furthermore, with the ability to deliver full power for a discharge duration of over 4 hours, it is expected to be the largest long duration battery asset connected to the UK grid,” the statement added.

Two other energy storage projects also received funding from DESNZ. They were:

• Synchrostor, Edinburgh, Scotland, which will receive £9.4 million to build a pumped thermal energy storage (PTES) grid-connected demonstration plant operating at 1MW, with the ability to charge and discharge for a period of ten hours.
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• Cheesecake Energy Ltd, Nottingham, which will receive £9.4 million to test their FlexiTanker technology which stores electricity using a combination of thermal and compressed air energy storage and uses a reversible air compression / expansion train to charge and discharge. Pilot units will be installed at two sites within a microgrid development in Colchester.

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