Vanadium flow battery company Invinity Energy Systems has sold a 1.3 MWh system to Kinetic Solution for a microgrid project serving a data center in Arizona.
Invinity has placed an order for six of its VS3 batteries which will be installed next to a 400 kWp solar photovoltaic array in the data center in the border state of California and Mexico. Kinetic has paid a deposit and Invinity will begin building the batteries shortly for an early 2023 delivery date.
Invinity’s vanadium flow batteries were chosen because of their robustness in high temperature environments and their ability to perform a long duration energy discharge, defined as 4 to 24 hours, during power outages . Arizona has a particularly hot and dry climate, and a press release indicates that blackouts are frequent.
Kinetic will use the microgrid to provide 24/7 renewable energy and mitigate the risk of outages for the data center. The company provides distributed energy solutions, specializing in microgrid infrastructure for commercial and industrial (C&I) sites across the United States, including data centers, manufacturing sites, distribution centers and charging stations for electric vehicles.
The deal will generate investment tax credits (ITCs) for Kinetic through the recently passed Cut Inflation Act, the press release says (although ITCs have existed for co-located projects for some time). time).
“This agreement embodies a number of positive developments: growing awareness of the need to power data centers with renewable energy, an opportunity to work with Kinetic, an emerging expert in solar microgrids, and the receipt of the US government support for energy storage through the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Matt Harper, chief commercial officer of Invinity Energy Systems.
Data centers’ need for a steady supply of electricity and the potentially huge business ramifications of outages have made it fertile ground for non-lithium battery technologies that can claim to be tougher than the incumbent industry (though the lithium-ion battery system integrators are still winning orders in the segment).
A Microsoft data center in an undisclosed location, believed to be in the United States, recently installed a battery storage system from liquid metal battery solutions company Ambri. ZincFive, one of the few companies to use the mineral for its battery products, is installing its solution in Wyoming for a local data center company.
Similarly, iron-flow battery company ESS Inc also scored a 400 kWh order earlier this year for installation at a data security firm’s facilities.
Harper recently spoke to Energy-Storage.news on the benefits of obtaining key safety certification standards like UL1973 and NFPA855 for marketing.
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