[2] A similar demonstration plant located at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) facility in Columbus, Mississippi, United States, was never completed.
[3] They secured a DOE grant for detailed studies that revealed MoS2 as a preferred (yet less than ideal) electrocatalyst for the negative electrode reaction.
In 1992, National Power PLC (formed in 1990 as a result of the privatization of the UK's electricity market) acquired from the Institute of Gas Technology the original US patent by Remick and Ang,[3] and started a research and development program in the field of polysulfide–polybromide RFBs.
[9][10][11] During the reorganization of the UK electricity market in the 1990s, the National Power patents were transferred to Innogy Technology Ventures Ltd, which became in 2002 a subsidiary of the German multi-utility RWE group of companies.
In 2001, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry funded approximately 50% of the total £2 million cost (with an expected cost-share from RWE-Innogy) of building a 100 kW Regenesys® battery at Little Barford in central England next to an existing gas-peaker plant and a proposed windmill site.
[16][17] Nevertheless, the commercialization of SBBs has been limited due to technical challenges such as sulfur deposition in the porous negative electrode during long-term cycling and the success of vanadium redox flow batteries.