Quino Energy Announces 100kWh Flow Battery Pilot, Plans Global Expansion

Quino Energy also announced plans to expand its manufacturing operations into the European Union and prioritize field pilot development and commercial sales on a global scale.

This milestone complements the company’s recent successes with a 6 kW/24 kWh pilot system and two other 1.5 kW/6 kWh systems currently operating at its facility. With these pilot systems, Quino Energy has demonstrated the performance of its chemistry in full systems – originally designed for vanadium but adapted for use by Quino Energy with minimal modifications – manufactured by two independent flow battery manufacturers.

Interestingly, all four laboratory pilot systems use the same full-size stacks found in megawatt-scale systems, and active material manufactured in Buffalo, N.Y. by Electrosynthesis Company, a Department of Energy (DOE) project partner, Quino Energy. As part of the DOE project, Quino Energy will send one of its laboratory pilots to the Grid Storage Launchpad at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory later this year for external validation.

Quino’s production process, which has already reached ton scale, represents the first real example of domestic production of active materials for flow batteries in the U.S. and is proof of how easily Quino Energy’s innovative, zero-waste production process can be scaled to reduce costs. With average American electricity consumption at about 29 kWh per day, the 100 kWh Quino pilot could meet the total electricity needs of a home for more than three days, or three homes for one day. That’s roughly equivalent to more than seven fully charged Tesla Powerwalls combined.

“I continue to be impressed by the rapid progress Quino Energy has made in scaling its innovative zero-waste process for producing organic electrolytes for flow batteries,” said Changwon Suh, technology manager in the Department of Energy’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technology Office (DOE AMMTO). “With its low-cost, high-performance quinone chemistry and general backward compatibility with vanadium flow battery equipment, Quino Energy’s technology enables rapid acceleration of time to market and scale-up. This next-generation storage technology lowers production costs and eliminates the need for critical materials, supporting greater commercial acceptance and innovative applied R&D. Quino’s organic electrolytes for flow batteries exemplify DOE AMMTO’s vision of bridging the gap between academic discovery and commercialization through collaborative R&D and the application of innovative materials and manufacturing that support a clean, decarbonized economy.”

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