Vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) specialist VRB Energy, whose Chinese operations now run through Beijing Puneng — 49% owned by VRB Energy and 51% by Shaanxi Red Sun — has provided a snapshot of how its VRB Pod product line is being deployed across very different duty cycles.
A 50 MW/200 MWh flagship, built in under four months
The Hubei Province New Energy Storage Pilot Demonstration Project is a 50 MW/200 MWh installation equipped with 100 units of the Beijing Puneng VRB Pod 500 all-vanadium system. It supports four hours of stable charging and discharging, smoothing peak-valley differences and adjusting output fluctuation — the profile of a large-scale main-grid asset. It was commissioned in January 2026 and built in less than four months.
Hybrid architectures in industry
At a cement plant in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, the Smart Energy Project pairs 9.225 MW/18.44 MWh of lithium iron phosphate batteries with 0.5 MW/2 MWh of vanadium flow batteries, balancing system economics against long-term stable operation. The work also covers integrated photovoltaic, storage and charging systems plus multi-stage robust optimisation and scheduling for green industrial transformation.
In Zhejiang, a glass factory hosts the first commercial application of Beijing Puneng's modular VRB Pod 250, integrating on-site PV with long-duration storage to enable high-proportion renewable self-consumption and flexible grid interaction.
Off-grid and high-altitude duty cycles
At Ivanhoe Electric's Santa Cruz copper mine in Arizona, a "photovoltaic-storage-charging integrated" project targets remote mining conditions — weak grid support and extremely high ambient temperatures — drawing on VRFB advantages of safety, stability, reliability and heat tolerance. In fully off-grid mode the system can provide continuous supply.
A campus microgrid in Hami, Xinjiang, combines photovoltaics, wind generation, storage and charging, with the flow battery providing inherent safety, ultra-long cycle life and stable operation across a wide temperature range in high-altitude, remote conditions.
Read-through for the sector
VRB Energy says it brings 18 years of R&D experience to these commercial applications; Ivanhoe Electric owns 90.025% of VRB Energy, while Sparton Resources' 90%-owned VanSpar Mining holds 9.975%. The spread of deployments — grid-scale, industrial hybrid, distributed and off-grid — suggests flow battery vendors are increasingly targeting niches where lithium-ion's thermal and degradation limits are weakest.
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