Australian company Redflow is charged up to meet growing demand for robust long-life batteries that enable both homes and businesses to store electricity generated by their solar panels.
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Australian company Redflow is charged up to meet growing demand for robust long-life batteries that enable both homes and businesses to store electricity generated by their solar panels.
A recent report by the Climate Council states that Australia is predicted to become one of the world’s largest markets for battery storage due to its high cost of electricity, the large number of households with solar panels and Australia’s excellent solar resources.
The research by Morgan Stanley says that half of surveyed households were interested in solar systems with battery storage on the basis of $10,000 battery systems with a payback of 10 years, creating a market potentially worth $24 billion.
This means Australia is becoming a battery battleground with global giants such as Tesla and Enphase targeting it as an early market for their respective batteries.
Redflow, an Australian Stock Exchange-listed company (ASX:RFX) which has commercialised its innovative flow battery for use by enterprise, business and residential customers, welcomed this global focus on Australia as the sign of a market that is taking off.
Redflow Executive Chairman Simon Hackett believes 2015 will be seen as the year that the renewable-energy storage sector hit its inflection point.
“Converting the world energy grid to becoming majority renewable-sourced is now entirely achievable by using batteries to time-shift electricity. But it will take more than just Tesla to do it,” Hackett said.
During the past two years, Redflow has completed a decade-long research and commercialisation program to transform flow batteries from a pioneering idea to a proven product.
Hackett is also overseeing development of a Battery Management System that will make Redflow batteries easier to deploy and use, including for residential customers.
Today, Redflow has its senior management and R&D operations in Brisbane and partners with one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, Flextronics, to produce Redflow batteries from North America. This scalable manufacturing model enables Redflow to ramp up production rapidly as demand grows.
Redflow batteries are already installed around the world, from supplying power-deprived entities in South Africa to Australia’s Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. Redflow batteries are also installed in New Zealand, Asia, North and Central America and Europe.
With the growing global demand for power storage by homes and small businesses, Redflow has broadened its product range to tailor batteries for residential energy storage while maintaining its long-term focus on providing batteries for telcos and grid-scale storage.
Redflow is currently making its flow batteries even easier to install and operate by developing a Redflow-branded battery management system that will make it a compelling solution to the energy storage challenges faced by Australian households.