November 7, 2025: Battery Council International has hosted the inaugural Flow Batteries North America (FBNA) conference, in partnership with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
BCI said battery industry executives, researchers, and innovators gathered in Chicago from October 27-29 for the event, which was devoted exclusively to flow battery technology — and marked a major milestone in the evolution of grid-scale energy storage.
More than 150 delegates attended, including representatives from utilities and grid operators, battery manufacturers and suppliers, project developers/EPC firms, research institutions and national labs. They were joined by energy policy and regulatory experts, as well as investors and analysts.
The conference featured presentations and panel sessions covering advanced electrolyte chemistry, next-generation membranes, real-world flow battery projects, permitting and funding strategies, and commercialization.
Speakers included Doug Scott, chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, and Vincent Sprenkle, PNNL’s strategic advisor for energy storage and co-chair of the FBNA organizing committee.
Delegates were also offered a behind-the-scenes tour of G&W Electric’s CellCube facility in Illinois — one of the most advanced vanadium redox flow battery systems in the US, which combines solar power and long duration energy storage.
Scott Childers, VP of Stryten Energy’s Essential Power division and chairman of BCI’s Flow Battery Industry Group, said: “Decoupling power and energy delivery is at the frontier of long-duration energy storage, and no other technology can separate these functions as efficiently as flow batteries.”
FBNA provided the perfect platform for the industry to discuss the latest innovations and market trends, and to look ahead to the bright future of flow battery technology, Childers said.
BCI launched its flow battery group in 2023 to maximize synergies with the lead battery industry in boosting energy security in North America.
The trade body said flow batteries are a natural fit with the association’s existing member services “given several key similarities and synergies between flow battery manufacturing and incumbent battery manufacturing technologies”.
Last May, PNNL was presented with BCI’s annual innovation award for its Grid Storage Launchpad.
The Launchpad is a new US national capability for speeding up energy storage research, bringing together all phases of the battery development and deployment cycle under one roof, ranging from fundamental materials and device prototyping through to 100kW-400kW scale testing and validation.
