Minister says Romania may build redox flow batteries with Lockheed Martin
Source：https://www.romania-insider.com/
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Bucharest
Update Time：2024/03/11
Minister of energy Sebastian Burduja announced the signing of a Letter of Intent with Lockheed Martin for constructing, in Romania, a redox flow battery plant based on the GridStar Flow.
"It is a cost-effective and efficient technology in the long term, with an operational lifetime of 20 years and which, very importantly, does not depend on critical raw materials and is environmentally friendly", the minister wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday, February 11.
The redox flow technology for batteries is not new and technically relatively simple, but it gained traction amid the need for power storage capacities to match the intermittent power generation of wind and solar energy facilities.
Such batteries can store energy for longer periods compared to the Li-ion batteries but have a lower energy density (meaning they need more space for the tanks with liquid where the chemical components participating in the redox reaction are dissolved). Another advantage of such batteries is that their storage capacity (MWh) and power (MW) can be independently set by the design of the tanks and the reaction device.
“During my working visit to the United States of America, I signed a letter of intent in Boston with Lockheed Martin, a leading American company in the aerospace, military and energy fields. It is a first step for the development of battery production technology in Romania. And not just any kind of battery, but Lockheed Martin's state-of-the-art GridStar Flow (redox flow battery), an innovative large-scale energy storage solution for utility, commercial, industrial and military applications. It is a cost-effective and efficient long-term technology with an operational lifetime of 20 years and, very importantly, does not depend on critical raw materials and is environmentally friendly.
The US company is looking to establish strategic partnerships to develop GridStar Flow manufacturing capabilities in markets around the world. They chose to explore Romania because of the strategic position, the production capacity, the skills of our engineers, but above all because we have the potential to become a European leader in the field of energy security and long-term energy storage. All this means well-paid jobs, prestige and exports of high added value for Romania. We have seen with our own eyes such capacity in batteries near Boston. Works perfectly, to Lockheed Martin standards.
We can thus develop in our country a production facility that will become a unique supplier of GridStar flow in the European Union and in the region. Storage in batteries is increasingly important for the national energy system, in the context of the increase in the share of intermittent energy production from renewable sources.
I have been working with Lockheed Martin since the last term as minister of research, innovation and digitization. The American company then started a partnership with the Technical University of Cluj Napoca for the development of solutions based on artificial intelligence. It is Lockheed Martin's second R&D center worldwide, after the laboratory in Australia.”
Source: https://www.romania-insider.com/