Singapore has added a new pillar to its long-duration energy storage effort: Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and local flow-battery developer VFT have launched a S$15 million joint research laboratory dedicated to safer, more durable and more cost-effective batteries for grid-scale renewable electricity storage.
The four-year collaboration, run through NTU's Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), was announced at the Asia Clean Energy Summit during Singapore International Energy Week 2026 and is supported under the country's Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 plans.
Why vanadium flow chemistry is central
The NTU-VFT Joint Lab will advance vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs), which store energy in non-flammable aqueous electrolytes held in external tanks rather than inside the cell stack itself. That architecture sharply reduces fire risk compared with lithium-ion systems and lets developers scale storage capacity simply by adding larger tanks, extending discharge duration without redesigning the core battery.
Those characteristics matter for a grid that must absorb growing volumes of intermittent solar output and discharge it for hours rather than minutes.
Research priorities for the four-year programme
The laboratory's work programme spans several engineering fronts: more powerful and efficient battery stacks, improved cooling and thermal management, power conversion and control systems, AI-based performance monitoring and fault detection, and electrolyte recovery and recycling.
VFT chief executive Dr Vidal Bharath said the goal is to overcome technical and cost barriers to wider adoption of new energy-storage technologies and to accelerate commercial deployment.
From spin-off to commercial supplier
VFT was founded in 2018 as an NTU spin-off built on technology developed at ERI@N and now develops commercial energy-storage systems. In 2025 the company raised US$20.5 million to expand manufacturing and deployment of its flow-battery systems — capital that gives the new lab a commercial route to market rather than a purely academic one.
Beyond the hardware itself, the Joint Lab is intended to strengthen Singapore's talent base and R&D capability in long-duration energy storage, generating new intellectual property and prototypes that will be progressively validated and folded into commercial energy-storage products.
The project reflects a broader pattern in the flow-battery sector, where university research groups and spin-off manufacturers are increasingly pairing on stack efficiency, thermal control and digital monitoring — the areas where vanadium systems still carry cost and performance penalties relative to incumbent lithium-ion installations.
This article was assisted by AI analysis. Please refer to the original source for official information.