Lockheed Martin Corporation, Bethesda, Maryland, United States, is closer to powering clean energy after installing the first commercial product variant of GridStar® Flow, the innovative long-duration energy storage technology.
GridStar Flow Serial Number One (S/N01) is an internal asset that will be used to test the energy storage system’s performance.
This testing will determine the performance capabilities available to meet customers’ needs for customer-sited, long-duration, large-capacity energy storage systems.
S/N01 is designed as a 2.5 MWh system, projected to discharge at full nominal power (500 kWAC) for five hours or up to 10 hours at half discharge power. Prior to S/N01, Lockheed Martin installed and operated two precommercial GridStar Flow prototypes. Key learnings from those systems were incorporated into the final S/N01 design, which will form the basis for commercial systems for customer-sited projects.
“S/N01 demonstrates GridStar Flow’s unique chemistry and architecture in a commercial system for the first time,” said Tom Jarvi, GridStar Flow program director. “This installation marks an important milestone for the program and the initiation of a rigorous test campaign to demonstrate GridStar Flow’s performance, reliability and maintainability for use cases including the effective deployment of clean, renewable energy.”
GridStar Flow is a redox flow battery based on the principles of coordination chemistry. This new electrochemistry consists of engineered electrolytes made from earth-abundant materials that enable GridStar Flow to deliver durability, flexibility and safety. GridStar Flow is designed for more than six hours of flexible discharge and is estimated to achieve 100% depth-of-discharge with minimal degradation for a design life of 20 years. These attributes would enable GridStar Flow to manage variability for extended periods, capture value across a wide range of time horizons and applications, including renewable energy integration, and evolve with market needs.
“The commissioning of S/N01 is a huge leap forward in the development and commercialization of GridStar Flow,” program chief engineer Mike Bufano said. “Each member of the program team contributed to this milestone, and it’s a testament to their dedication, resilience and creativity. With this installation in place, we are one step closer to creating a cleaner, more sustainable future.”
S/N01 is the first GridStar Flow product instance before early customer installations. As our team tests S/N01 to validate and verify performance, we will continue working toward the first customer-sited long-duration energy storage systems.