Value Streams from Distribution Grid Support Using Utility-Scale Vanadium Redox Flow Battery: NREL-Sumitomo Electric Battery Demonstration Project

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) collaborated with Sumitomo Electric to provide research support in modeling and optimally dispatching a utility-scale vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage. The objective of the project was to identify value streams from using utility-scale VRFB for local grid support use-cases, including voltage regulation (droop), capacity firming, peak shaving and valley filling, and energy arbitrage. This project was also supported by San Diego Gas and Electric (SDGandE). SDGandE provided data and approval to operate their VRFB energy storage system on an SDGandE distribution feeder. NREL worked with Sumitomo Electric to evaluate optimal dispatch strategies to VRFB, analyze the technical impacts, and calculate the associated cost-benefit ratio of substation-level energy storage on an SDG&E distribution feeder. To support this research, NREL evaluated the impacts of the battery use cases suggested by Sumitomo on the SDGandE host feeder. In addition to evaluating the battery use case, this effort identified possible ways to monetize the benefits from distribution feeder support.