Testing a Flow Battery for a California Health Center Serving a High-Fire-Risk Community
In the high-fire-risk community of Lancaster, California, Los Angeles County operates the High Desert Regional Health Center, which has no electricity backup despite its urgent care function within the community.
That means when Southern California Edison (SCE) implements public safety power shutoffs aimed at avoiding fires sparked by utility electrical equipment, the hospital goes dark, said Edward Chiao, managing director of Long Hill Energy Partners, a clean energy developer.
To help provide energy resilience, the California Energy Commission (CEC) has awarded Quino Energy, a startup company developing water-based flow batteries, and Long Hill Energy Partners a $10 million grant that will support the installation of an 8-MWh water-based flow battery as part of a solar microgrid at the health center. The grant comes from the CEC’s Electric Program Investment Charge program.
Flow battery expected to back up 100% of hospital’s demand
If all goes as expected, the battery will back up as much as 100% of the health center’s energy demand during on-peak and off-peak hours and is expected to save more than $10 million in electricity costs over its 20-year operating life.
The health facility is expected to add solar to the existing 300 kW of onsite solar, but no decision has been made about how much solar, Chiao said.
The key to the resilience will be the flow battery from Quino Energy, which is cost-competitive with lithium batteries, said Eugene Beh, CEO of Quino Energy.
Flow batteries are electrochemical devices capable of storing hundreds of megawatt-hours of energy. They are seen as potentially having long lifetimes and low costs in part because of their design. With the more commonly used lithium-ion batteries, the materials that store the electric charge are solid coatings on the electrodes. A flow battery, on the other hand, takes solid-state charge storage materials and dissolves them in electrolyte solutions, which are then pumped through the electrodes.
The Quino Energy electrolyte can be dropped into vanadium flow battery hardware, providing a less expensive electrolyte. The Quino Energy batteries last longer, are not susceptible to fires and may degrade less from repeated charging cycles over time than other chemical battery technologies, Beh said.
In this project–the first U.S. commercial deployment of the Quino Energy battery–the battery is expected to island for 15 to 24 hours. The length of islanding depends in part on the load that will be served–critical or non critical, for example– and how much solar is available, said Chiao.
Quino battery only 25% of the cost of vanadium flow batteries
The Quino battery is a quarter of the cost of vanadium flow batteries, said Beh. If it runs for 10 hours, it can be up to two-thirds less expensive than vanadium flow batteries, he added.
The battery, which Beh first developed while a student at Harvard University, uses cheaper materials that are sourced in the U.S. The electrolyte in the battery is made from byproducts of coal and can also be created with wood tar from trees, he explained.
“It’s the same thing as vanadium, where the fluid is 70% of the cost,” he said.
He compared the Quino Energy battery to a car that can use cheaper gas. “We invented something where the gas is 25% of the cost. It’s the same car, but the gas is cheaper,” he said. The Quino Energy battery has the same energy density as a vanadium flow battery, he added.
Aiming for levelized cost of 5 cents/kWh for long-duration storage
The federal Department of Energy (DOE) has set a target of lowering the levelized cost of long-duration energy storage to 5 cents/kWh. The DOE established the Long Duration Storage Shot in 2021, which aims to achieve 90% cost reduction by 2030 for technologies that can provide 10 or more hours of energy storage.
“The Quino Energy technology has a clear path of achieving below 5 cents/kWh. Long Hill Energy Partners wants to scale up these promising technologies,” Chiao said.
The battery will be owned by Quino Energy and Long Hill Energy Partners and the health center will receive 100% of the energy savings. Quino Energy will be responsible for long-term operations and maintenance. It’s possible the battery will be turned over to the health center at some point, Chiao said.
The project costs more than the $10 million CEC grant, and Long Hill expects to attract additional investors.
By adding the battery to the existing and planned solar, the project participants will be able to take advantage of California’s net billing program, under which adding battery energy storage to solar makes the program more economical.
Planning for resilience instead of offering grid services
The project partners decided to focus on resilience rather than trying to sell grid services, Chiao said.
“When you look at those grid services versus the value of resiliency in Los Angeles County, you find that the value of resiliency is much higher than the incremental income of gid services,” he said.
The battery could island up to 15 hours without solar power, and with solar, could island up to 24 hours, Chiao said.
“It depends on the season, the amount of heating and cooling and the load profile of the hospital,” he said.
The estimates are based on Clean Coalition’s standardized value of resilience methodology, which establishes three load tiers:
- Tier 1: Mission-critical, life-sustaining loads that should be maintained indefinitely to yield 100% resilience. This is usually about 10% of a facility’s total load. Maintaining 100% resilience for critical loads is worth three times the average price paid for electricity, according to the Clean Coalition.
- Tier 2: Priority loads, usually about 15% of the total load, that should be served by the microgrid as long as this does not undermine the ability to serve priority loads.
- Tier 3: Discretionary loads–about 75% of total load– that should be maintained if serving them doesn’t hurt a microgrid’s ability to maintain resilience for Tier 1 and Tier 2 loads.
The value of resilience provided by the solar microgrid at the High Desert Regional Health Center is expected to be “substantial,” said Craig Lewis, executive director at the Clean Coalition.
That’s important to the health center, which provides outpatient primary care, urgent care and specialty services in the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles County to people of all ethnic backgrounds who live in high fire-risk zones.
“The solar microgrid is intended to deliver an unparalleled trifecta of economic, environmental and resilience benefits,” Lewis said.
The High Desert Regional Health Center (pictured at top) was designed by the Lionakis architectual firm to replace an aging clinic and utilize sustainable principles in construction. The 142,365-square-foot building is certified LEED Gold for energy efficiency.
