Dive Brief:

• The overnight energy requirements of 16 MW solar farm in Puerto Rico will be supplied under a new agreement with Aquion Energy.

• Aquion will supply its 1.25 MWh Aqueous Hybrid Ion battery for the project.

• The battery will be powered by its own 250 kW solar array, making the larger facility almost grid-independent.

Dive Insight:

Flow batteries and their cousins, hybrid batteries, are finding increasing uses.

That is particularly true in island settings where fossil fuel generation is often expensive, making solar + storage more economically attractive. Puerto Rico, in fact, passed a mandate for energy storage in 2013.

One of the most recent storage deployments in Puerto Rico is at a solar farm where Aquion’s “saltwater” battery will be tested to shift solar power produced in the daytime for use at night.

In a project executed by Sonnedix, the battery will be powered by its own mini-solar array. The installation will be controlled using software developed by California’s Geli (Growing Energy Labs Inc.) and has been hailed by Sonnedix as a demonstration of making solar dispatchable and for providing baseload energy. The power controls will come from Flexgen, also based in California.

The Aquion batteries being used in the project are able to provide longer durations of storage and withstand full charge and deep discharge cycles. A project launched last November uses Aquion batteries to power night use of bicycle lanes.