The thirteenth edition of the IFBF showcased innovations in manufacturing, new battery chemistries, and industry standards for flow batteries. See you in Vienna on 23-26 June 2026 for the next edition!
Image © Fraunhofer UMISCHT, used with permission. “Bipolar »burger« flow battery – The modern voltaic pile”
Text written by Anthony Price, IFBF Director
“We need to look at how energy storage companies can grow”, said Jan Girschik, at Flow Batteries Europe’s meeting immediately before this year’s IFBF. Jan’s predictions for the size of the global energy storage market in 2030 were over 400 GW and 1,000 GWh – that is 15 times higher than the globally installed storage in 2021. This could represent US$ 500 billion by 2035.
“So not only do we need to plan tomorrow’s energy system today, We also need to start the training of tomorrow’s specialists today and motivate pupils and students to learn about energy storage and flow batteries in particular. But we are not going to meet this demand without specialists, scientists and specially trained decision-makers. We are not encouraging enough students in STEM subjects, and we are certainly not encouraging enough young people to get excited about flow batteries.”
Jan, and his team at Fraunhofer UMSICHT are working on a range of activities to demonstrate the potential of flow batteries, and they are on a mission to send hands-on demonstrators into schools and colleges and universities across Germany. His lively presentation had examples of how to create awareness now, in the short term and in the long term. And the best part is that one of the demonstrations looks like a bipolar hamburger!
There is no doubt that the market potential for better energy storage is immense, and several speakers at the IFBF forecast the growth of the supply chain so that we could scale up production of flow batteries to meet future demand. This theme ran through the conference: materials suppliers, including US Vanadium, Schunk and Avcarb, told us of their plans to increase production, we heard about new manufacturing techniques and we discussed the relevance of standards to reduce procurement costs. All this is necessary because manufacturers are pushing ahead with increased sales and a new optimism to gain market share in the competitive energy storage sector.
We had two sessions on manufacturing and scale-up. The industry is at a point of inflexion: currently, we are dealing with flow battery projects on a case-by-case basis – but we should look at the automotive industry, and move towards long-run production and millions of units.
Johannes Hantzschel of Prolux Solutions summarised his views with four challenge areas: manufacturing costs, awareness of the technology, professionalism and standardisation of materials and components.
Scale is not an issue for some flow battery manufacturers. Philip Krause of Rongke Power reviewed the 200 Mw / 800 MWh project in Dalian, China. It contains 3,024 flow battery stacks, and 716 electrolyte tanks in the basement. Built in a very dense urban area, the battery’s main revenue stream provides grid services.
Sumitomo Electric have gained accreditation from Tokio Marine to offer a warranty on flow battery sales. Invinity (our hosts for this year) have new orders for batteries from California, Australia and Europe. CellCube (our hosts for 2025) will be welcoming us to their base in Austria as they ramp up manufacture. The range of flow battery chemistries continues to grow, and we discussed Quino Energy’s new organic solution as well as several other organic and inorganic types.
Our aim each year at the IFBF is to raise awareness of flow batteries, and to share information on the technology and role of flow batteries. There was no shortage of news from the industry and research. The younger generation was well represented, and we were pleased to award prizes for outstanding posters to Greta Thompson, from the University of Cambridge for her poster on optimisation of pressure drop in flow through electrodes, Thomas Leckie, from the University of Strathclyde for his work on additives in lithium polysulphide flow batteries, Matyáš Marek of UCT Prague for his poster on multi-phase electrolytes. The best overall poster prize was awarded to Sakari Syväniemi of Aalto University for his study on the pre-commercialisation development of copper flow batteries.
Our congratulations – not only to the award winners – but to all the poster presenters who demonstrated the excitement and technical challenges of the flow battery world.
Next year, we are heading to Vienna to see CellCube, our hosts for 2025. Look out for more news about next year’s conference, save the dates of 23 – 26 June 2025, and also keep in touch.
We’d love to hear from you – please remember to send your comments on our 2024 conference through our electronical feedback form here.
