Redflow lands potentially massive battery supply deal with Soul Energy

ASX-listed Redflow has won “preferred supplier” status to New Zealand-based infrastructure company Soul Energy, in a deal that could lead to orders for hundreds of the Australian company’s zinc bromine flow batteries.

Hot on the heels of a deal to supply 100kWh of its ZBM2 batteries for a solar and electric vehicle smart grid project in China, Redflow said on Tuesday that the Soul Energy deal had secured it the first of a number of expected infrastructure projects throughout Australasia.

The total potential requirement for the first customer was as many as 200 batteries, Redflow said, and was likely to commence with an initial small order as early as June 2019.

But it stressed that the financial implications of the opportunity would only become apparent after the finalisation of the terms of the deal, including project staging and delivery schedules.

Soul Energy managing director Mark Christensen said the company had chosen Redflow because of the “compelling long-lived alternative” its zinc bromine flow batteries offered to the lead-acid alternative, which need replacement every few years.

“Also, Redflow is a great company to work with because they combine deep technical and operational expertise in flow batteries with a willingness to work closely with us to design energy storage systems that meet our customer’s needs,” Christensen said.

Redflow’s managing director, Tim Harris, said this latest project win further validated the company’s value across a number of sectors.

“We are winning more of these initial deployments which are the key to accessing a huge market with growing and recurring demand,” he said.

Indeed, the deal is the third such supply agreement Redflow has made over the past week, including a deal to supply batteries for leading South African mobile network provider, Mobax, as part of that company’s efforts to cut its use of costly and unreliable diesel generation.

And as we reported here, Redflow also revealed over the weekend that it had cracked the China battery market, with a deal to supply 100kWh of its ZBM2 zinc bromine flow batteries for a solar and electric vehicle smart grid project.

The company has been going from strength to strength over the past two years, since its decision to shift its focus from residential battery storage – where it was competing with lithium-ion technologies – to the off-grid, telecom, commercial and industrial sectors, as a lead-acid replacement.

The company also shifted its manufacturing to Thailand, where it began producing battery stacks in January of last year.

And in April, Redflow launched an $18.1 million equity fund raising to help it scale up production of its flow batteries, and grow sales in Australia and overseas.