Daniel and Jens from CENELEST attended this year’s 241st spring meeting of the Electrochemical Society in Vancouver, Canada. Together with Prof. Dr. Piotr de Silva from the SONAR project, they gave two keynote lectures, three additional lectures and chaired two sessions in the area of redox flow batteries and computational electrochemistry.
SMART Energy is one of the largest renewable energy events in Australia. As at the last event in 2020, CENELEST participated again with a booth at the fair. The content of the exhibition was the presentation of the possibilities of CENELEST as well as showing the results of some projects and cooperations.
Among other things, a technology demonstrator for the High-Throughout screening process, which is being developed in the international SONAR project, was represented. The software for the search for new active materials for aqueous organic redox flow batteries could be tested on a laptop. In addition, materials of cells, electrodes and a small demonstration redox flow battery were shown. The booth was supervised especially with the support of UNSW students from UNSW Challeng program NextGEN.
After almost two years, it was possible to travel to Australia again in March 2022. During the same period, work at UNSW was limited. For this reason, mainly inventory work took place in preparation for future projects, as well as preparation for participation in Smart Energy 2022 in Sydney. If all goes well, the work in CENELEST will intensify significantly again in the course of the year. Furthermore, the exchange of staff will hopefully also increase significantly again.
With the onset of the war in the Ukraine, it has become clearer than ever that the European Union must work towards its energy independence and self-sufficiency. However, the EU must also avoid jeopardising its climate commitments by turning back towards fossil fuels. Instead, the EU must stand firm in its commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, which includes the transition to a renewable-based energy system. Flow batteries, as an important long-duration storage technology, can play a significant role in supporting this transition.
Since renewable energy is inherently variable, solutions are needed to ensure power availability and grid stability. Curtailment is not only highly inefficient, but is also costing a lot to the EU Member States. For example, in 2020, Germany curtailed 5900 GWh of wind energy, or about 5% of its total production, costing EUR 730 million in total.1 In the same year, Austria curtailed 80% of its wind production at 5590 GWh, costing EUR 510 million.2 It is possible to substantially increase the proportion of generation from renewable energy, provided that the energy system is set up to be more flexible and allow to add capacity, shift energy, and improve power quality through energy storage solutions. Energy storage technologies therefore have a fundamental role to play in the clean energy transition, ensuring that more renewable energy can be introduced and used efficiently within our power system.
Download the full statement here: http://jens-noack.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Flow-batteries-and-security-of-supply-position-paper-final.pdf
At the end of November 2021, the autumn school of the “Nordic Flow Battery Network” took place in Turku, Finland. It was hosted by the University of Turku under the leadership of the EU-funded COMPBAT project. Similar to SONAR, COMPBAT is concerned with the development of a high-throughput screening process to search for new organic active materials for redox flow batteries.
Over the three-day event, a variety of speakers reported on different topics in the research and development of redox flow batteries. PhD students were given the opportunity to present posters on their work, give talks or exchange information. The last day of the autumn school was entirely organised by the PhD students in Turku. The speakers were from a mixture of academic and commercial backgrounds, so that application-related content was also presented beside basic research.
Among the invited speakers were Prof. Dr. Piotr de Silva from the Technical University of Denmark and Prof. Dr. Jens Noack from Fraunhofer ICT, who are both involved in SONAR. Piotr gave a talk on DFT calculations (DFT – density functional theory) in general and specifically in relation to flow batteries. Jens gave a short overview of the development of flow batteries over the last 15 years at Fraunhofer ICT.
