Aerospace and defense company Lockheed Martin has developed a chemistry flow battery that outperforms lithium-ion designs.
Lockheed’s “GridStar Flow” products will be scaled to handle multiple megawatts of storage and suitable for use on a utility or industrial level. The new battery is poised to disrupt the growing energy storage market, which supports the deployment of renewable energy by providing stored power during periods of non-production.
“So we invested in (Sun Catalyx), a technology that’s a spinout of MIT, to create a coordinated compound chemistry flow battery, that is human- and environmentally-safe, that is balance-of-plant cost-effective and that is deployable worldwide …We begin serial production on our unit number 1 towards the end of the year and we’ll go for full launch in the market sometime next year,” said Lockheed’s VP for business development Dan Norton in an interview taped at this year’s Solar Power International in late September but only cleared for publication approval later.