Research and analysis of performance improvement of vanadium redox flow battery in microgrid: A technology review

The vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has the advantages of flexible design, high safety, no cross-contamination, long service life, environmental friendliness, and good performance. VRFB has become the best choice for large-scale electrochemical energy storage. Renewable energy has severely restricted the development and use due to its discontinuous, unstable, and uncontrollable output power. The microgrid (MG) composed of VRFB, wind energy, and photovoltaic renewable energy is an effective solution to the random and intermittent nature of renewable energy. The work analyses the development status and existing problems of renewable energy power generation, VRFB energy storage technology, and microgrid. Without involving the development of the key components of the VRFB, research how to improve the performance of the VRFB to make it in the best operating state in the microgrid. The main contribution of this paper are to combine the application background of the microgrid to improve the overall performance of the battery from the aspects of VRFB modeling, battery structure design optimization, flow field and flow optimization, stack design, thermal treatment, and temperature characteristic distribution. Finally, this review offers insights for improving the performance of VRFBs in microgrids. Highlights Analysis of renewable energy, energy storage technology, and microgrid framework. Systematic analysis of the problems of vanadium flow battery in microgrid. Researched how to improve the overall performance of the vanadium flow battery without developing new component materials.