Hydrogen bromine flow battery aims for GigaWatt-scale production

Elestor, an electricity storage business located in Arnhem, will be able to accelerate the commercialization of its hydrogen bromine flow battery with a €30 million investment. It intends to reach manufacturing capacity on the gigawatt scale.

Energy goliath Equinor of Norway headed the funding round. The investment consortium also includes current owners EIT InnoEnergy and Enfuro Ventures, tank storage provider Vopak, Somerset Capital Partners, and Invest-NL.

Hydrogen and bromine, both of which are nearly endlessly accessible on Earth, are used as active components in the flow battery Elestor has created. Additionally, the idea opens up a number of new opportunities for integrating hydrogen infrastructures and electrolyzers because the battery produces hydrogen while it is being charged. Elestor does this by fusing the worlds of battery-based energy storage with hydrogen-based energy storage.

The technique enables the cost-effective, efficient, reliable, and scalable storage of renewable energy generated by wind or solar farms, for example.