Today at work I got to tour the largest Vanadium Flow Battery system in the world. I believe the figures quoted were 1200V and 3.4MWh (yes, megaWatt). It just went online at an onion processing plant. Four years ago they also put together a system that uses the skins and trimmings from the onions and bacteria to produce methane which is used in a pair of fuel cells that generate a combined 600KW.
The technology would scale for cargo sized vessels, but I'm not sure about the safety of flowing Vanadium laced concentrated Sulfuric acid around my boat... This place has 75,000 gallons of acid electrolyte in the system. I was there as part of the HazMat team, so we were particularly learning how to shut it down and secure any issues should it all go pear shaped. They've installed an impressive array of safety systems. And the whole thing fits in a building about 20' by 50'.
Not overly boat related, but very green. But I thought it was super cool, so I thought I'd share.
Josh
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