Bucharest, February 11, 2024 – # RBJ (photo: GridStar Flow Energy Storage Solution | Lockheed Martin) – GridStar Flow Energy Storage Solution | Lockheed – The Minister of Energy, Sebastian Burduja, signed, during his visit to the US, a letter of intent with Lockheed Martin, this being a first step for the development of the production technology of GridStar Flow batteries (flow battery redox) in Romania.
“On the occasion of the working visit to the United States of America, I signed a letter of intent in Boston with Lockheed Martin, a top American company in the aerospace, military and energy fields. It is a first step for the development of battery production technology in Romania. And not just any kind of battery, but Lockheed Martin’s state-of-the-art GridStar Flow (redox flow battery), an innovative large-scale energy storage solution for utility, commercial, industrial and military applications. It’s a cost-effective technology and efficient in the long term, with an operational lifetime of 20 years and which, very importantly, does not depend on critical raw materials and is friendly to the environment,” the minister wrote on Sunday on his Facebook page.
GridStar Flow is an innovative redox flow battery solution designed for long-duration, large-capacity energy storage applications. The patented technology is based on the principles of coordination chemistry, offering a new electrochemistry consisting of engineered electrolytes made from earth-abundant materials. These properties enable GridStar Flow to counter anticipated and unforeseen grid disruptions by a robust and flexible long-duration, clean energy storage solution with a competitive total cost of ownership.
Burduja emphasized that the American company is looking to establish strategic partnerships to develop GridStar Flow production capabilities in markets around the world.
“They chose to explore Romania because of the strategic position, the production capacity, the skills of our engineers, but above all because we have the potential to become a European leader in the field of energy security and long-term energy storage. All this means jobs well paid, prestige and exports of high added value for Romania. We have seen with our own eyes such storage capacity in batteries near Boston. It works perfectly, according to Lockheed Martin standards. We can thus develop in our country a production unit that will become a sole supplier of GridStar flow in the European Union and in the region. Storage in batteries is increasingly important for the national energy system, in the context of the increase in the share of intermittent production of energy from renewable sources,” explained the Minister of Energy.
He recalled that since the period of his former mandate as Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization he collaborated with Lockheed Martin, the American company then starting a partnership with the Technical University of Cluj Napoca for the development of solutions based on artificial intelligence.
“It is the second research and development center of Lockheed Martin worldwide, after the laboratory in Australia,” wrote Sebastian Burduja on the social network.
