PNNL technology earns company EPA green chemistry award

A Washington state company has been honored by the Environmental Protection Agency for commercializing energy storage technology developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of Richland.

The storage can be used to help make variable wind or solar production more practical for the electric grid.

EPA gave a Green Chemistry Challenge Award to UniEnergy Technologies, which manufactures advanced vanadium redox flow batteries near Seattle using a new electrolyte chemistry developed at PNNL with Department of Energy funding.

The electrolyte can store 70 percent more energy and operates over a wider temperature range than conventional vanadium electrolytes. The cost of ownership is lower than lithium-ion batteries.

“Research at PNNL has led to considerable technical improvements and substantial cost reductions resulting in a commercially viable flow battery,” said Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research at DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.

UniEnergy Technologies recently installed an 8 megawatt-hour system, the largest flow battery system in containers in the world, at the Snohomish PUD in Everett.

It has installed more than 14 megawatt-hours of flow batteries for all its customers and has 155 megawatt-hours of flow batteries ordered. Its customers are in three countries and six U.S. states.

This story was originally published June 18, 2017 at 4:05 PM with the headline "PNNL technology earns company EPA green chemistry award."