Batteries International issue 115 - Spring by hamptonhalls

Issue 115

Spring 2020

Life after lockdown Why the lead battery industry will ride the Covid-19 tempest

Systems Sunlight set to take new world by storm Nickel-iron pairing returns to fore, one century later

Hammond and why TTBLS boosts formation efficiency Advanced welding skills: new approaches to seals

Bringing the industry together

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CONTENTS COVER STORY: COVID-19

Light at the end of the tunnel The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on most aspects of the world economy is now starting to become clear. But, for the battery industry, the outlook is far better than for many other business sectors. Batteries International demonstrates the reasons why — and how our industry has performed to date.

EDITORIAL 4 Reasons to be positive in post-Covid era PEOPLE NEWS

Craig Brunk leaves testing firm Bitrode • Teliska moves to Northeast Battery as sales director for stationary power • Luminous appoints Niharika Mohan as head of human resources • Hammond Group completes first step to employee ownership • Bühler appoints new HR head • BCI reveals innovation award entries for 2020 convention • Conference freeze, cancellations as Coronavirus takes hold worldwide • 19th Asian Battery Conference: it’s Kuching!

Bitrode’s Brunk: moving on

Teliska: moving into sales

NEWS 11 Exide research shows EFBs could be a ‘game changer’ in the US• Covid claims first insolvency victim, Moll, but future may not be so bleak • EnerSys wins contract to supply batteries for fleet of electric street sweepers • Lead and lithium rejected as New York looks to zinc air • US DoE sets out aims to reduce dependence on foreign materials in energy sector • Gopher begins year-long project with Oak Ridge Lab to advance lead recycling • Aqua Metals rethinks business model after insurance pay-out — totals $10m to date • Davos annual meeting warns battery industry over sustainability• Lead battery groups adopt seven guiding principles • Rules on tin in lead batteries to change across the EU next January GRID NEWS

Long Island issues RFI explicitly open to all battery chemistries • Sonnen and Centrica form network of 100 residential storage systems • Five key grid trends in 2020 says Wood Mackenzie Australian energy reforms to enable more grid-scale storage projects • 100MW/100MWh UK battery to be the largest in Europe • IRENA makes case for V2G storage: ‘massive capacity of batteries on wheels’ ALTERNATIVE ENERGY NEWS

19ABC: It’s Kuching in 2021! 10

Azelio, Masen complete thermal storage system by world’s largest solar plant • Avalon, RedT near closing merger to form Invinity • ‘Needle in a haystack’ discovery to revolutionize fuel cell technology FINANCE NEWS

CIT arranges $140m for esVolta in 136MW of California storage • Sumitomo makes $46 million investment in partnership with Highview Power • Koolen Industries launch Smart Grid to specialize in large scale energy storage • Leclanché secures $64 million to fund expansion plans, operations • Crowd funding to pay for largest battery project in the Netherlands • Rolls-Royce increases stake to 73.1% in energy storage firm Qinous PROFILE: SYSTEMS SUNLIGHT

Robby Bourlas, chief executive of Systems Sunlight, talks to Batteries International about the firm’s expansion plans into the US, its strategy in advancing its lithium product line while expanding its lead operations and how the firm coped with the devastating fire that ravaged its operations in 2018. www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries for everything!

System Sunlight’s Bourlas

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 1

CONTENTS 44 • Hammond Group researchers have analysed the way that PbO2 conversion during formation can be overcome for cured positive plates with 4BS crystals. The results suggest a leap forward in formation efficiency. CONFERENCE IN PRINT

FEATURE: UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID

Is a post-subsidy UK solar market about to unleash huge opportunities for battery storage? Equally importantly, argue industry players, what potential markets will now come from this? UK renewables: money, ideas 48

INTERVIEW: BOB GUYTON, ENCELL

Nickel iron batteries find another lease of life says Encell CEO, FEATURE: THE TRAILBLAZERS

As a counterpoint to the present doom and gloom created by the Corvid-19 pandemic, we look back to some of the figures that have shaped the technology behind the energy storage industry. An idiosyncratic view from our discussions at a team meeting.

Guyton and the joys of NiFe

Gaston Planté: father of the battery industry • George Leclanché: an early pioneer • Otto Jache: the great leap forward • Ernst Voss: a lifetime in lead • Detchko Pavlov: The expert’s expert • John Devitt: the patent that opened up VRLA • Ken Peters: VRLA, the next step • Kathryn Bullock: faith, reason and batteries • John Pierson: a new manufacturing logic • Jeanne Burbank: pushing out the boundaries • Lan Lam, Jun Furukuwa: the UltraBattery two FEATURE: CAES/LAES 96 Compressed air energy storage: a new twist on an old technology The founding trailblazers 63

100 • The industrial blue laser is in its infancy but holds a promising future for the technology as it develops. Its high speed and defect-free quality makes it suitable for the battery business CONFERENCE IN PRINT

EVENTS SECTION CAES/LAES: definitely not hot air 96

103

A comprehensive, if changing by the moment, view of this year’s conference and convention events including details of cancellations and postponements.

Publisher Karen Hampton, karen@batteriesinternational.com, +44 7792 852 337

Finance administrator Juanita Anderson juanita@batteriesinternational.com +44 1 243 782 275

Production/design Antony Parselle, aparselledesign@me.com +44 1604 632 663

Editor Michael Halls, editor@batteriesinternational.com, +44 7977 016 918

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International advertising representation advertising@batteriesinternational.com

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Deputy editor Debbie Mason debbie@batteriesinternational.com

Researcher, journalist Hillary Christie hillary@batteriesinternational.com

The contents of this publication are protected by copyright. No unauthorized translation or reproduction is permitted. ISSN 1462-6322 (c) 2020 Mustard Seed Publishing, UK company no: 5976361. Printed in the UK via ThisismethodUK

Disclaimer: Although we believe in the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this magazine, Mustard Seed Publishing makes no warranties or representation about this. Nor should anything contained within it should be construed as constituting an offer to buy or sell securities, or constitute advice in relation to the buying or selling of investments.

2 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

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EDITORIAL Mike Halls • editor@batteriesinternational.com

The state we’re in Unprecedented. What an over-used, over-abused and useless word to describe the coronavirus state we’re in! If there’s any real use to the word in 2020 it should now mean — as in a phrase such as an “unprecedented situation caused by Corvid-19” — the user of it doesn’t have a clue. Not the faintest. Amid a human tragedy with precious lives being lost every day, the media and let’s face it the world’s politicians, have had a field day. They’ve dispensed scare stories and informed opinion (that sometimes changes by the hour) with an evenhanded ignorance that is breathtaking. If only in it’s barefaced audacity.

sudden stoppage of necessary parts from China.

But even though Google says the word “unprecedented” can now be found in 135,000,000,000 places on the internet, our situation is far from being without precedent.

But this isn’t, of course, China’s fault. It’s the responsibility of all supply chain managers to have contingency plans and resources for stoppages. Blaming the supplier is neither fair nor honest.

At its most basic, pandemics are as old as mankind — from Biblical plagues to the 60 million dead a century ago with the Spanish flu and the over 30 million people with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. (And that’s not so many years ago.)

There are other, more subtle, lessons to be learnt from the crisis.

And in modern times huge shocks to the world economic order, similar to pandemics, happen as frequently as hurricanes reach land in Florida. Our cover story in this issue focuses on the Covid pandemic — we could hardly ignore it — but we will show two things. First, there is enough data for us all to make informed decisions about the direction of the battery industry. And it’s positive. Moreover we’re aware — even if the media commentators aren’t — that wiser heads than our own are already making decisions that will have huge implications on the future direction of the battery business. The most obvious area will be supply chain management. One knee jerk reaction seen in the ‘unprecedented’ members of the press is to blame problems in the automotive industry (and to a lesser extent the battery business) due to the 4 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

For many years business management theorists have been prating on about ‘road warriors’ ‘hot desking’ ‘virtual offices” and the like. But only a modicum of attention has been given to the efficiencies that can be made. The lockdown created the perfect situation where remote working could be tried in an enforced fashion and the results so far have been encouraging. Yes, it won’t work for some, but it has demonstrated leaps in efficiency in others. The second area we need to focus on is how certain parts of our industry have come out of this crisis showing what a positive force for good we can be. In the local community we’ve seen firms as diverse as Abertax helping with its sensor technology to work in Malta’s hospitals, or Chinese firms ripping up existing machinery lines to make face masks. Other battery linked firms are donating money and assistance to help. This is an industry that has every right to be proud of itself. And, I’m proud to say, that that’s not unprecedented. www.batteriesinternational.com

PEOPLE NEWS

Craig Brunk leaves testing firm Bitrode

Craig Brunk, the well known and popular vice president of sales and marketing at Bitrode, left the firm in February. He has relocated from St Louis in Missouri to be near his growing family

based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Brunk told Batteries International that although he had enjoyed working for Bitrode, the growing needs of his children’s children made the relocation inevitable. “My family are very important to me and my wife and we want to play a useful role helping our children and grandchildren,” he said. “I enjoyed working for Bitrode, they are a world class company.” CEO Cyril Narishkin said: “he will be missed. He has been a pillar of our Bitrode community, setting an example of ethics and hard

work. Under his four years of leadership, Bitrode saw steady revenue growth and the establishment of a new and robust sales processes. “He also oversaw the hire and development of several new members of the sales and customer service teams.” He received an enormous tribute from his sales team and Eli Valencia, a regional sales manager, who said: “What Craig brought to this company was an ethos of leadership and ownership. Way before I thought I’d have the opportunity to work in sales, I’d see Craig occasionally out on the floor

with his sleeves rolled up doing work in production when others wouldn’t. “Craig was someone who would never ask you to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself. Leaders lead from the front, and that is what Craig did. By doing this, he fostered a level of respect and loyalty from his subordinates that I have never seen before in my career.” Although Brunk leaves the battery industry he remains linked to the power industry and has started work as a sales director for the Gund Company, based in Milwaukee.

Teliska moves to Northeast Battery as sales director for stationary power

Maggie Teliska, a popular and well known figure in the lead battery business, moved to the Northeast

Battery & Alternator, the largest independent battery distribution company in that region, in January and is a director for stationary sales initiatives. Her focus is on providing power and energy products to stationary markets, including telecommunications, data backup, energy storage, and many other renewable markets.

Before this Teliska spent two years as a technical specialist at Caldwell Intellectual Property Land and worked as a consultant to many companies along the battery supply chain in addition to being CTO of Regent Power, a Smart City host integrator. Before that she spent nine years with Johnson Controls Power Solutions,

Luminous appoints Niharika Mohan as head of human resources, CSR Luminous Power Technologies, India’s third largest battery manufacturer, announced in January it had appointed Niharika Mohan as the vice president of human resources, admin and corporate social responsibility. Mohan previously spent six years as HR director for parent company Schneider Electric. Vipul Sabharwal, managing director at Luminous, said: “Niharika is

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a valuable asset considering her achievements in nurturing talent; we are confident she can build a

brand that supports the company’s vision.” In her new job, Mohan will be responsible for leading people strategy and workplace compliance for all business divisions. “Human resource management is a top business priority for Luminous and by creating the right work environment I can drive future innovation,” Mohan said.

firstly as a specialty product and markets manager, then later as sales manager for the AutoZone and finally as director of aftermarket engineering for the Americas, In her new job she reports to Rick Swan, vice president for Northeast Battery. The two had worked together many years ago for what was then known as Johnson Controls Power Solutions. “I’ve been in the battery business for more than 15 years wearing many different hats, including sales, operations, and engineering,: says Teliska. “My background and expertise along the supply chain makes Northeast Battery a perfect fit because of our scale: we are the preferred distribution partner of all major DC Power manufacturers.” Earlier this year and outside her work environment, Teliska became responsible for marketing and communications for the Women’s Energy Network Boston Chapter.

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 5

PEOPLE NEWS

Hammond Group completes first step to employee ownership Hammond, the international lead oxide and specialty additives firm, announced in January it had completed the first step in its employee stock ownership plan. An ESOP is a retirement benefit plan, governed under the US federal government’s ERISA regulations,

that annually transfers a portion of Hammond’s share ownership to its employees. Shares are redeemed upon retirement at their market value as determined by an independent trustee. “Hammond is a special company in many respects,” says Terry Murphy,

Bühler appoints new HR head

Irene Mark-Eisenring will take over as chief human resources officer on September 1, Bühler announced on February 4. She takes over from Dipak Mane, who will pursue other management tasks within the organization, the firm said. Mark-Eisenring joined Bühler in 2016 as head of corporate personnel development. She has spent 20 years in human resource projects and related management, primarily in the financial industry, since her MBA from the University of Applied Sciences in St Gallen, Switzerland. Mark-Eisenring said: “I aim to develop the attractiveness of Bühler as an employer and to create tangible value for our customers and

6 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

for the company on the basis of our highly-skilled and dedicated workforce. Our people are key for the future success of Bühler.”

the firm’s chief executive and himself a family member with ownership and management links to Hammond’s start in 1930. “Special in that we benefit from multi-generational plant and staff employees with a strong sense of family and company loyalty. The ESOP gives us an ownership structure to reward their commitment and to participate in the company’s continued growth. There are restrictions and requirements for the ESOP’s employee-shareholders. Shares awarded are based on time with the company from January 1, 2019 and will fully vest in five years. “So far, we have allocated 30% of our share ownership to the ESOP which is financed by a loan from the company. Our ambition is to transfer 100% of the stock over time.” Murphy said the move is an alternative to a more recent trend of privately owned companies selling to private equity investment firms. “Some of our longterm shareholders were looking to further diversify their assets,” he said.

“So, we assessed what private equity firms offered and determined that a well structured ESOP met our need for manageament and business continuity as well as the best interests of our shareholders, employees, and local community. “Certainly, our shareholders, management team, and employees are enthusiastic about this decision. We’ve been proud to do this transaction for our people.” ESOPs are becoming more common in the US and can offer useful tax benefits to both shareholders and employees. There are some 7,000 active plans in the US with some 13 million participants. “For shareholders, ESOPs are a valuable liquidity mechanism that minimizes business disruptions,” says one business advisory firm. “For employees and management, ESOP participation is a reward for years of dedication and hard work and an incentive for future business growth. Further, the benefits of ESOP ownership can be accomplished on a taxadvantaged basis.”

Other news in brief Global smart grid solution provider Networked Energy Services announced February 4 the appointment of Jonathan Main as chief operations officer. Main has more than 25 years’ operational experience in the energy and automotive industries and, was last an executive director at TMD Friction. US independent power company Leeward Renewable Energy announced

February 4 that Mary Doswell had joined its board of directors. Doswell has 30 years’ experience in the energy industry from her time as vice president at Dominion Resources. Chicago-based energy infrastructure firm Lundy announced in January that battery storage expert Michelle Hack had been appointed a senior vice president. She is senior project director for the company’s

electric grid infrastructure business. Six other staff were also appointed SVPs. Israeli energy start-up Brightmerge announced in January the appointment of Seth Kiner as senior adviser on the company’s advisory board. Kiner is the founder and managing director of Charlotte St. Advisors and former VP of customer programs and services at Southern California Edison.

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PEOPLE NEWS

BCI reveals innovation award entries for 2020 convention Battery Council International has closed its annual innovation award contest and the judging panel met on February 24 to assess the merits of this year’s entries. The result of the 13 applications and the winner of the award and two runners-up will be announced on April 27, which would have been the opening day of the BCI annual conference but looks set to be announced through an internet platform. The panel consists of Dick Amistadi, a US veteran of the lead industry; Don Karner, president of Electric Applications Inc and a key figure in the liaison work between National Argonne Laboratory and the US lead battery industry; Boris Monahov, former chief technical officer of ALABC before his retirement; and Geoffrey May, a long time consultant to the lead battery business.

The 13 nominations are: 1-800-Battery

This is the first e-commerce marketplace/Saas platform that focuses on the problems of retailing lead acid batteries on the internet. (Saas stands for software as a service.) It says it is the pioneer of a disruptive business model — connecting geolocated consumers with independent retail brick and mortar and mobile service providers. The service was launched last November.

Abertax

The company says it already has a successful electrolyte level sensor in its product line. This presently carries a lead probe. The latest development replaces the lead with composite carbon fibre. This has health and safety advantages and contributes to a greener environment.

Arc Active

This New Zealand firm has re-engineered the negative electrode of the battery to remove the lead grid and replace it with a non-woven carbon fibre fabric called AACarbon. This solves the number one technical challenge facing the industry — achieving high and sustained dynamic charge acceptance while delivering very low water consumption. The product will be launched this year.

8 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

CMWTEC Technologie

This is an advanced high rate discharge test machine with integrated impedance and DC internal resistance measurement for automotive lead-acid batteries. This new feature presents the new approach of an endof-line test machine in terms of its assembly, programming flexibility and the ability to accurately discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable batteries. The product was announced in September 2018.

Daramic

Daramic has invested heavily in research to understand how the separator may influence achieving CBI battery targets in partial state of charge cycle life, dynamic charge acceptance, water loss and corrosion. This has led to the development of a separator that increases acid to the negative, prevents active material swelling, and adds carbon that intimately contacts the negative plate. The latest product was launched last September.

Flow-Rite Controls

The Flow-Rite sensor suite measures, collects and tracks the characteristics of a deep cycle battery pack. These sensors allow one to manage the care of deep cycle batteries either wirelessly or through a vehicle’s on-board computer. This enables it to monitor, track and control a fleet 24/7.

An individual entry from Chittaranjan and Jayanta Ghosh This is a battery charging method which includes a combination of CC (constant current) and CV (constant voltage) modes to reduce the emission of harmful gases, conserve electrical energy and extend the life of flooded type lead acid batteries during jar formation of VRLA batteries. Initial

charging is done in CC mode to achieve a higher state of charge. This product was launched this January.

Mega Amps International

EQLYTE (pronounced ee-kew-lite) optimizes electrochemical hydrodynamics within flooded lead acid cells, yielding increased discharge capacity and active material utilization. Electrolyte optimization is conducive to 25%-35% more discharge capacity and improves the PbSO4 solubility, facilitating a more efficient charge and discharge process with less raw material usage. The product was introduced in August last year.

Power-Sonic

The e-co2Tainer (pronounced Ecotainer) is a mobile unit where drivers can charge their electric cars at project locations. The required electricity is generated with solar panels and wind turbines on top of the unit and a generator placed inside the unit that works exclusively on biofuel. The firm says it is a completely independent off-grid solution. The product was launched last November.

PRO Charging Systems

The battery optimization system is an active balancer for multiple batteries in a series configuration. The optimization system will keep the batteries balanced during charge, discharge and rest. This allows for greater run times as well as prolonging battery life by means of energy shuttling, which can be monitored via wireless communication to a phone or tablet with the ProView Link app.

TBS Engineering

This is an automatic plate loader — effectively automation equipment to load positive and negative plates into

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PEOPLE NEWS a stacker without human intervention. The equipment scans a pallet of plates to determine the position of the stacks, lifts the stack and loads the plates into a plate shuffler designed to stop the plates from sticking together. The shuffler then loads the plates into the feeders of the stacker. Plate loading speeds of up to 360 per/min are possible.

Wirtz Group of Companies

The RTR is a lead acid battery breaking and separation system and is a complete, fully assembled, piped and electrically integrated, skidded breaking and separation system that

can be shipped worldwide, installed and started up in less than a day, does not require special foundations, and can be run by a single operator. RTR stands for ‘ready to run’. The product was launched in September.

Very

A collaboration between Interstate Batteries and Very to design and build an IoT-powered inventory management system to track the location of batteries in retail stores and mechanic shops across the US, this new system allows drivers to use much smaller, more fuel- efficient trucks and drive shorter routes because of the more efficient inventory management the solution enables. The product was launched in July 2018.

Conference freeze, cancellations as Coronavirus takes hold worldwide The Covid-19 virus crisis is hitting this year’s conference season. Some events, such as the International Battery Seminar meetings in Florida and the ELBC congress are still — for the moment — going ahead. But many aren’t. As this magazine was published, and with the situation changing on an hourly basis, a variety of energy conferences and meetings had been postponed. These include: • BCI’s annual convention and powermart‚ originally for April 27-29 near Las Vegas; • the Energy Storage Association show, listed for April 8-10 in Arizona, US and rescheduled for August 26-28; • Energy Storage Europe, which would have been March 10-12, in Düsseldorf, Germany, no rescheduling as yet announced; • the Battery Show Europe 2020 set for April 28-30; and reset for October 15-17; • The 6th Residential Energy Storage Forum in Munich, Germany rescheduled from March 31-April 2 to November 16-20, and will now be held back to back with the 13th Energy Storage World Forum (large-scale applications); • The ILA’s DCA & Heat meeting has been postponed until October 7-8. The related CBI technical

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workshop will be postponed until October 8-9. The schedule for meetings will remain the same and the location for both is still the Royal Scots Club, Edinburgh, Scotland; • BuildingEnergy Boston on March 23-24 has been cancelled with the intention of rescheduling in the summer; • IHS Markit, the conference organizer and market analyst, cancelled its CERAWeek, which should have begun on March 9 in Houston, Texas, and is one of the largest energy industry gatherings in the world; • Other postponements or cancellations include Power Utility Conference, Large-Scale Solar Europe and PV India • The International Flow Battery Forum will change to become an interactive web seminar on June 30 but the main event has been postponed to the third week of January 2021. This event will continue to be held in Düsseldorf, Germany. For the lead battery industry, the most important event of the year, the European Lead Battery Conference in Milan in September, was still going ahead as the magazine went to press. Many other events have warnings on their websites that they may have to change their dates.

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 9

PEOPLE NEWS

19th Asian Battery Conference — it’s Kuching! The venue of the much-awaited 19th Asian Battery Conference was officially announced on March 12 — it’s Kuching, Sarawak on the island of Borneo. It’s a place quite far away from the usual Asian tourist destinations, but it is full to the brim with culture, exoticism and will make an

ideal place to mix a break from work with a working week. “The Asian Battery Conference has become a must-attend conference and we’ve had to choose venues appropriate for the size of the gathering and the quality of the delegates,” says Mark Stevenson, a well known indus-

try figure and also one of the organizers of the conference. “Kuching is a magnificent spot and about an hour and a half’s flight from the Asian flight hubs of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. “It may be early days yet but we’re already choosing some of the finest speakers in the industry and we will have a very lively agenda for delegates.” The 19th Asian Battery Conference will be preceded, as is customary, by the International Secondary Lead Conference, another fixture in the industry’s diary.

The 19th Asian Battery Conference and Exhibition will be from Tuesday August 31, to Friday September 3, 2021. It will be held in the Borneo Convention Centre in Kuching, Sarawak Province in Borneo. The 7th International Secondary Lead Conference will be held on Monday 30 & Tuesday August 31, 2021 in the Hilton Kuching.

Bali children’s project thanks ABC, delegates, other sponsors for generosity One Bali charity for which delegates to the Asia Battery Conference in September raised money says the donations have helped to build 21 schools and libraries during 2019 — which has become the single biggest year in the charity’s history. “On top of the schools and libraries, we sponsored hundreds of children to stay in school. We improved home lives and sleeping conditions. We gave life-

saving knowledge in both health and education,” said the team in their 2019 Year Review. “We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for choosing to support our work. We cannot wait to deliver more in 2020.” Delegates at the 2019 Asia Battery Conference held in Nusa Dua, Bali, took part in a ‘One Minute Giveback’, the brainchild of conference co-organizer Mark Richardson. In all

10 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

nearly $40,000 was raised for three local charities. In the give-back delegates were asked to spend one minute packing backpacks with essential items for schools — such as stationery and uniforms — and donate whatever they could. It was the first time the lead battery industry had done anything of the kind. “The backpacks were a huge success,” said the charity’s executive direc-

tor, Linda Venter. “It’s an inexpensive (for us) way to instantly change a child’s life and future. It saves the family going to the bank to take out a loan, where they might be in debt for years to pay off $60, much less $100.” In view of how much the lead battery industry managed to raise in this one event, it is likely that other international conferences will add charitable causes to their agenda.

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NEWS

Exide research shows EFBs could be a ‘game changer’ in the US An independent study of enhanced flooded batteries commissioned by lead acid battery giant Exide Technologies has revealed findings that could change the face of the start-stop battery industry in the US, the Atlanta-based battery firm announced on February 25. The results revealed that EFB technology surpassed AGM batteries in major areas, including battery life, heat tolerance and mid-depth cycling resilience, challenging conventional wisdom about the two technologies, which has long been that AGM batteries were the go-to technology for start-stop applications. Speaking to Batteries International on February 26, Alex Templeton, director of marketing, transportation, and John Miller, senior director, product engineering, said they were surprised at how well the technology performed in the tests. “In a way we all went into it knowing that the EFB was a capable product because it does have a track record in Europe,” said Templeton. “But when we saw some of the places and weaknesses where EFB was outperforming AGM I think we were surprised.” The study, by the unnamed third party, looked specifically at Exide’s Marathon range of EFBs, and found that they exceeded AGM performance in battery life, heat tolerance and mid-depth cycling resilience. Exide the findings would be likely to be repeated across all EFB technology. EFBs are not new to the industry, of course, and in fact Exide claims it was they who invented the technology and introduced it to the European market in 2008. However it has never really taken off in the US for various reasons, says Templeton. “It goes back to how AGM batteries landed in the US, originally through the enthusiast market — die-hard enthusiasts got turned onto the technology and it’s a longstanding belief here that it’s the only battery that should be used in startstop vehicles — consequently 99.9%

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of start-stop in the US market is fitted with AGM,” Templeton says. “It’s completely different from the dynamic in Europe, which is about 50-50 for start-stop, AGM versus EFB. Maybe even more. There it was all AGM but over the years EFB performance grew, and as OEMs in the US are always behind Europe — by about 10 years — we expect it to change here too.”

“As fuel economy standards have changed, OEMs have pursued smaller engine displacement and used superchargers and the like to get more output out of less displacement, with less lead having to be turned over with the battery.” Batteries have had to change because of changing needs, for example the declining CCA requirement, which traditionally was how a battery was rated. “There was a time when engine size increased year by year and so need bigger batteries — the larger displacement an engine had, the larger CCA you needed to get it moving,” says Templeton. “As fuel economy standards have changed, OEMs have pursued smaller engine displacement and used superchargers and the like to get more output out of less displacement, with less lead having to be turned over with the battery. “But all the add-ons in vehicles now mean that the battery capacity is used over time, and this is more important than the CCA rating. Twenty years ago the battery was only necessary to start the vehicle; once the engine was running the alternator powered it.” The longer life offered by EFBs is a strong selling point because battery

lifespan has actually decreased in recent years, says Templeton. “This research could be a game-changer for EFBs in the US,” he says. “The key thing in the US market is when you look at average life. In the US, battery returns through retailers are monitored every five years, for the reasons why they went out of service and so on. “Between 1965 and 2010, the average life span increased every year. It continued to improve. “Then for the first time between 2010 and 2015 it started declining. Roughly 50% of the batteries have been going out of service because of grid failure — but in the past five years we’ve been seeing a 30% increase in failure with cycling, and it’s because of the inclusion of all these additional electronic features.” Another finding of the study was how much better EFBs appeared to fare in high temperatures. “We definitely see a difference in lifespan in warmer climates,” says Templeton. While Exide maintains that where a vehicle’s battery should be replaced with like for like, ie if it began with an AGM battery, that should be replaced with an AGM battery, and likewise for EFBs, the new battery management systems becoming available would soon be able to probe the batteries much further and possibly identify better alternatives. “The main concern of a BMS is that it is closely tuned to the battery it’s fitted with, but we’re learning that the BMSs have progressed and have a learning sequence now that can probe the battery, understand it better and go from there,” says Miller. The message from Exide is that instead of relying solely on one-dimensional CCA ratings to measure a battery’s performance, the market should focus on what’s really important today: the battery’s ability to last longer, stand up to high under-hood temperatures and to durably cycle through its depth of discharge. So what about cost? “Without giving away too much, there is definitely a cost incentive with EFB versus AGM, and this to some extent is why you’ve seen the growth in Europe of EFB in the start-stop market,” says Templeton. “All the materials aside, the process for initially forming an AGM battery is considerably longer than forming an EFB.”

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NEWS

Covid claims first insolvency victim, Moll, but future may not be so bleak One of the industry’s best known family battery businesses, Akkumulatorenfabrik Moll, one of the best known family battery businesses, has said it is confident of finding a solution after being forced to file for insolvency on March 30 because of the coronavirus. Gertrud Moll-Möhrstedt, whose father, Peter Moll, founded the business some 75 years ago, told BESB the firm was working on a ‘continuation concept’, had some ‘good and promising ideas’, and that there was more than one option available for finding a solution. “It is too early to go into details about this, but there are several possibilities of getting help from the government and currently we are investigating what can be appropriate for us,” she said. Moll announced it was filing for insolvency on March 30 because of the coronavirus pandemic. “It was indeed a difficult, not to say a heart-breaking step to apply for the opening of insolvency proceedings at the district court in the 75th year of our company,” said Moll-Möhrstedt. “However, the corona crisis has farreaching consequences for the whole automotive industry. “As our focus is on the OE battery business, and as we are a strong development partner for the car industry, we are much affected by the shutdown of all car manufacturers in Europe. “In the current situation, it is not possible to predict whether and when sales will recover. It is highly probable that even if automobile production resumes, it will take many months, perhaps even years, for sales to return to the level seen at the beginning of the year. “Therefore we thought that it would be appropriate to act very early.” But Moll-Möhrstedt says some good has come out of the bad – and for Moll it has been the reaction of the company’s employees, business partners, customers and suppliers. “I am really overwhelmed by the numerous encouragements we have received,” she said. “And there is a clear message from all of them — we want Moll to continue, and we are still delivering batteries to customers. I am deeply impressed by the engagement of our employees. We are standing together like a family.” The news comes after a series of partnerships that Moll had made in recent years, including with the Chinese battery maker Chaowei in 2014 and in 2017 a 25% stake taken by the South African battery and auto component manufacturer Metair. The partnership with Metair was hailed at the time as an opportunity to meet the ‘unrelenting high demand’ for Moll’s EFB starter batteries in Europe, which could simply not be met by its facility in Bad Staffelstein, even when the facility doubled its capacity. “Through this strategic partnership, Moll will soon be able to considerably increase the production volumes available to its customers and take another important step on the path to becoming a global supplier,” the firm said at the time.

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Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 13

NEWS

EnerSys wins contract to supply batteries for fleet of electric street sweepers Lead batteries entered into a new area of business according to EnerSys on March 10 —the firm’s batteries have been selected for use in Tenax International’s Electra 01 fleet of street sweepers. Tenax International is an Italy-based company that sells its sweepers to city councils across Europe including contracts with Paris, Brussels, Krakow and Vigo. They are used in locations such as factories, wineries and campsites.

“While its electrical concept offered significant ecological and energy-saving advantages, it had to compete in an almost totally diesel-dominated market,” says EnerSys. “To succeed, the electric street sweeper had to provide the same level of autonomy as a diesel solution.” Previous attempts to commercialize an electrical solution for street sweepers had failed because the machines could not guarantee

sufficient operating times, EnerSys said. “Therefore, the first request to EnerSys was to provide energy to the sweeper machine for an entire shift of eight hours. Based on this, EnerSys identified a solution based on 48V 620Ah battery, which guaranteed this coverage.” The machines also achieved a 90% reduction in operating costs, the firm said, compared with those associated with diesel machines.

Lead and lithium rejected as New York looks to zinc air Zinc air storage company Zinc8 Energy Solutions has been awarded its first commercial contract with private company Digital Energy to install a 1MW/1.5MWh energy storage system in New York City, the company said on March 11. The choice is interesting in that Zinc8 was chosen above the more common-

place lead and lithium alternatives. The installation will support and enhance the economics of a CHP (combined heat and power) system at Brooklyn, New York, and could be the first of many since Digital develops CHP plants, solar systems and microgrids. It is the second contract to be awarded to Zinc8

within two months, both of them in New York State. The first project — which will get a contribution of $2.55 million over three years from the New York Power Authority, the largest state public power utility — will install a 100kW/1MWh behind-the-meter storage system. This will be at a demonstration site for an

Firm launches 5G radio UPS for lead or lithium US-based Facility Solutions Group, an electrical construction and services company, has launched a UPS system for radio networks that can be installed within a day as an interim measure until utility power is connected, which can take weeks, the firm announced on February 11. FSG’s 5G Power Pack solution is compatible with lead or lithium batteries and powers 5G small cell node equipment, which is used by wireless

14 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

network operators to improve their radio network capacity by increasing the number of cell sites they operate. Once utility power is connected, the system can be used as a long-term battery back-up solution. “Utility power hookups can take weeks before energizing, which can directly impact the activation, commissioning and testing of new small cell node equipment,” said FSG Smart Buildings vice president of solutions and

co-inventor Joe Hill. “The FSG 5G Power Pack — a UPS with modular plug in, rechargeable batteries — can support both lead acid and lithiumion batteries with runtimes of up to 48 hours. “FSG can deploy crews to recharge batteries until utility power is connected, install a generator charge port on the system to support on-site recharges, or supply telecom contractors with modular charge stations to service the 5G systems as needed.”

unnamed commercial and industrial customer. The project was a winner through the NYPA Innovation Challenge under New York state governor’s Andrew Cuomo ‘Green New Deal’, which aims to have 3GW of energy storage installed by 2030. “This opens a brand new market where there is no competition except for pumped hydro, for which you need a lake — it’s very location specific,” said Zinc8 president and CEO Ron MacDonald. “We are the first company to use zinc air and separate the power and the energy capacity components. Our approach was to start with long duration storage, which lithium-ion cannot reach because it’s simply too expensive. “Utilities are looking for safe technology, with long duration and competitive cost — we are way cheaper than any equivalent technology, and offer a 20-year life span. “As storage capacity increases there is no need to increase power capacity. Adding on capacity would cost between $300-350/ kWh for a vanadium flow battery. With our system it’s $45/kWh.”

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NEWS

US DoE sets out aims to reduce dependence on foreign materials in energy sector The US Department of Energy launched an Energy Storage Grand Challenge on January 8, which in part aims to reduce the country’s dependence on ‘foreign sources of critical materials’ in the sector. It also aims “to accelerate the development, commercialization and utilization of next-generation energy storage technologies and sustain American global leadership in energy storage,” the department said. “The vision for the Energy

The challenge’s goals are listed under the five categories: Technology Development; Technology Transfer; Policy and Valuation; Manufacturing and Supply Chain; and Workforce. They aim to accelerate research, technology, data, analysis and training across the energy storage sector. As a first step, the DoE will release requests for feedback to stakeholders on what it is seeking to address, before holding a series of information-sharing

workshops to learn about barriers to deployment and help shape the work that will being new technologies to market. This will lead to developing an R&D roadmap ‘for a broad suite of storage and flexibility technologies’. “This roadmap will be guided by a set of use cases that describe the ambitious grid applications that can be accomplished with advancements in these technologies,” the department said.

Gopher begins year-long project with Oak Ridge Lab to advance lead recycling

batteries.” The project is funded by a $2 million US Department of Energy ‘High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation’ initiative, which is ‘meant to advance the national energy innovation agenda’. It means the project can use the ORNL’s Summit Supercomputer, the fastest supercomputer in the world, which was developed by IBM especially for the laboratory and was unveiled by the ORNL in June 2018. It is capable of doing 200,000 trillion calculations per second, or 200 petaflops. “The main objective is to better understand the impact of furnace design and operational parameters on energy efficiency, productivity and refractory lifetime for Gopher Resource’s reverb furnaces,” the firm said. “Summit will model the complex multiphysics interactions that occur within our furnaces. The computer’s HPC will increase model complexity and reduce the time to get results.” Anderson said the project had a potential impact on the complete value chain for the battery industry, and that it could also be applied to other metals manufacturing processes. Gopher’s results are expected in 2021.

A year-long project between lead battery recycling firm Gopher Resource and the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been launched to try to advance the sustainability of lead, Gopher announced on December 18. The Reverb Furnace Productivity Project, the first

Storage Grand Challenge is to create and sustain global leadership in energy storage utilization and exports, with a secure domestic manufacturing supply chain that is independent of sources of critical materials by 2030,” the DoE said. “While research and development is the foundation of advancing energy storage technologies, the department recognizes that global leadership also requires addressing associated challenges.”

of its kind for lead furnaces, will look at how to improve reverberatory furnaces, which transform battery scrap into high-purity lead without allowing the material being processed to come into contact with fuel. “The learning gained from this project will enable Gopher Resource to make ef-

Recycled lead batteries to offer extra life in solar panelling Chinese scientists say they have developed a process which means they can recycle lead batteries without causing secondary pollution and instead use it in a perovskite structure to make cells for solar panels. The Lead Acetate Produced from Lead-acid Battery for Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells study, published in the March 2020 issue of the journal Nano Energy, was carried out by a group of scientists mainly from Xidian University in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. “Fabrication of perovskite solar cells with lead from spent batteries

reduces the environmental impact of battery waste and promotes the development of new energy technology,” the paper says. But the term ‘perovskite’ can also be used for any compound that has the same generic ABX3 crystallographic structure, which the scientists at Xidian University have produced with spent lead from batteries. “Perovskite materials exhibit intriguing and unusual physical properties that have been extensively studied for both practical applications and theoretical modelling, and the materials science and applications of perovskites

16 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

fective design and process changes that increase the energy efficiency of our reverb furnaces,” said Alexandra Anderson, an engineer with Gopher Resource and the research project’s principle investigator. “That will reduce the overall amount of energy needed for the continued recycling of lead have been a broad research area open to many revolutionary discoveries for new device concepts,” the portal says. Lead is one of the most important components of perovskite solar cells, and the scientists say the lead mud recovered from both the anode and the cathode reacted with acetic acid to produce a high purity lead acetate which was used ‘to fabricate normal planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells with a power conversion efficiency reaching 17.83%’. “CH3COOH (acetic acid) is beneficial for a compact and crystalline perovskite film and improves the device performance,” the study said.

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NEWS

Aqua Metals rethinks business model after insurance pay-out — totals $10m to date Aqua Metals, the lead battery recycling firm that was forced to shut down last year when a fire ravaged its operations in Reno, Nevada, announced it had received a third insurance payment on March 11 and intended to pursue a different and potentially controversial business model. Aqua Metals said it was ‘developing and analyzing a proposed capital-light business strategy intended to optimize shareholder value by focusing on licensing opportunities’ — effectively deciding not to rebuild the Reno factory but earning revenue from selling the intellectual property through licensing the technology’s use. “We believe this path has the potential to maximize shareholder value and could be far less capital intensive and potentially more value maximizing than a rebuild and could possibly be funded solely or primarily from a combination of cash on hand, insurance proceeds and asset dispositions,” an Aqua Metals statement said. “A capital light strategy is consistent with our longheld business strategy and objectives. The approach for developing this strategy is to pursue potential licensing opportunities within the lead battery recycling marketplace while strengthening our cash position first, working on the successful collection of insurance proceeds.” One internet site for commentators in the Aqua Metals stock reported a variety of opinions. One such commentator wrote: “I’m glad that they’re not pouring millions of dollars back into the plant and hitting us with more dilution [the value of their shares]. It makes perfect sense at this stage of the game to pivot to a licensing-only strategy. I mean, why rebuild TRIC? [the Reno factory]. It was

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always meant only to be a prototype plant. “Why waste the money rebuilding when they can go straight into that first site (Clarios?) and set up shop there? They’ve already achieved steady state production with limited modules. Veolia and their engineering staff have been there for a solid year now. They were what, 95% of the way to ramping all 16? “Why not go into that first site, set up shop and tweak the process right there? Why pour all your resources back into TRIC?” Others were sceptical about the turn-around. Another person wrote. ““I thought the purpose of Nevada operation was to continue to refine our processes, make it more commercially viable, and make some money refining and selling lead — a higher quality lead. “With the opportunity to reconstruct the processes from scratch after the tragic fire, I thought that they would be better positioned to optimize their processes

“It makes perfect sense at this stage of the game to pivot to a licensing only strategy. I mean, why rebuild TRIC [the Reno factory]? It was always meant only to be a prototype plant” and have a live, breathing example to demonstrate to prospective licensees. “Why does management think that now after six months of disruption, no operational model, and no little counter on the wall showing how much lead we are refining, that we are going to get people flocking to our company to license a technology they cannot see, touch, and measure?” This latest insurance payment was for $5 million, which makes a total of $10

million so far. The company said it was working with the insurers to collect additional losses of up to $50 million. The fire occurred on November 29, causing $40 million-$50 million in damage and business interruption. The statement also said the firm’s ‘go forward capital light technology licensing business’ would require less space and equipment to enable a better focus on client needs, and that it was working on demonstrating improved electrolysers.

“Why does management think that after six months of disruption, no operational model...that we are going to get people flocking to our company to license a technology they cannot see, touch, and measure?”

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 17

NEWS

Davos annual meeting warns battery industry over sustainability The World Economic Forum at its annual meeting in Davos on January 1424 gave stark warnings about lithium batteries and lead battery recycling if the industry is to be sustainable. The Global Battery Alliance has more than 60 members from battery firms such as Saft and Amara Raja; public and international organizations such as the African Development Bank and the Faraday Institution; associations such as the ILA and Pure Earth; and academic partners from institutes across the world. It is part of the WEF’s ‘Shaping the Future of Energy and Materials’, ‘Shaping the Future of Global Public Goods’ and ‘Shaping the Future of Mobility’ platforms. “Mobile technology and a low-carbon future are unthinkable without batteries, a core technological enabler of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” the WEF says. “The lithium-ion battery market — the strongest growing battery market

segment — increased by 15% CAGR between 2005 and 2015 and the global battery market is estimated to see continued growth from $65 billion to $100 billion by 2025.” But the GBA also warns that the enormous costs, such as the toll on the environment and child labour issues when exploiting raw materials, needed to be solved to sustain the industry. It stresses the need to solve a looming lithium battery crisis, with “11 million tonnes of spent lithium-ion batteries forecast to be discarded by 2030, with few systems in place to enable reuse and recycling in a circular economy for batteries”. “Meanwhile,” it says, “inappropriate lead-acid battery recycling causes severe health risks to millions globally. “Third, significant innovation potential remains unexploited along the value chain to ensure that batteries fulfil their promise for sustainable development.” The Global Battery Alliance says it

seeks to address these challenges for a “sustainable battery value chain by 2030”, as follows: • Maximize battery first life productivity • Enable productive and safe second life use • Ensure circular recovery of battery materials • Ensure transparency and progressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions • Prioritize energy efficiency measures, • Increase use of renewables • Foster battery-enabled renewable energy integration, focusing on developing countries • Support job creation and skills development • Immediately eliminate child and forced labour • Foster protection of public health and environment • Support responsible trade and anti-corruption practices

Lead battery groups adopt seven guiding principles Industry groups representing lead and lead battery manufacturers and recyclers announced on January 21 that they had signed up to seven key principles and launched a task force to implement a wide-ranging material stewardship programme. The industry groups — the ILA, USbased BCI, the Association of Battery Recyclers and EU-based automotive and industrial battery association EUROBAT — together represent battery manufacturers in the US and Europe and battery recyclers globally. The guiding principles represent an agreement between the organizations, and participating member companies, to develop performance indicators and policies that will ensure continuous improvement in the management of lead exposure and emissions and further minimise the environmental impact of used lead batteries. The principles also promote the adoption of responsible sourcing policies, working through supply chains to ensure that the lead used for battery manufacturing is produced from environmentally sound recycling practices. David Shaffer, CEO of US-based EnerSys and head of Battery Council In-

20 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

ternational, said: “This is a significant moment for the lead battery industry and its lead suppliers in North America and Europe. In September we agreed to move forward with this programme, and have collaborated over the past four months to agree to this set of guiding principles.” Marc Zoellner, EUROBAT president and CEO of EU-based Hoppecke Batteries, said: “The main goal of this programme ... to help improve global standards especially in low and middleincome countries. “As a responsible industry, we commit ourselves to developing a formal sourcing policy and health and safety performance with the ultimate objective of establishing a new set of targets. This Material Stewardship project will supplement another self-imposed initiative from the battery industry, namely its successful employee blood lead reduction programme, which was implemented in Europe and the US more than 20 years ago.” These are the seven guiding principles: • Support responsible battery manufacturing and recycling by placing environmental health and safety excellence at the heart of our opera-

tions. • Promote the sound management of lead exposure and emissions by setting continuous improvement targets and sharing best practices. • Adopt responsible sourcing policies for lead containing materials, seek to identify risks in the supply chain, and use our influence to promote best practices for EHS performance in suppliers’ operations. • Minimize the environmental impact of our products by encouraging the development of programmes that ensure the effective collection, transport and environmentally sound recycling of used lead batteries. • Adopt business practices that consider the communities impacted by our operations, respect the human and labour rights of our employees and work against corruption in all its forms. • Proactively engage key stakeholders in an open and transparent manner. • Partner with key stakeholders and government agencies to share our expertise and promote environmentally sound recycling of lead batteries in low and medium-income countries.

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NEWS

Rules on tin in lead batteries to change across the EU next January A new law will come into full force across the EU on January 1, 2021 that will affect parts of the lead battery industry. Called the Conflict Minerals Regulation, this aims to help stem the trade in four elements — tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold — which sometimes finance armed conflict or are mined using forced labour. Tin is added at up to 1.6% in positive lead-calcium battery grids to improve casting and cycling performance in high end AGM/VRLA products, especially in automotive batteries. Up to 0.4% tin is typically added to the negative grid. Further details of the regulation, released by the European Commission in early March said that the aim

was “to ensure that EU importers of these metals meet international responsible sourcing standards, set by the OECD, that global and EU smelters and refiners of source the metals responsibly. “It should help break the link between conflict and the illegal exploitation of minerals and also put an end to the exploitation and abuse of local communities, including mine workers, and support local development.” “This approach to responsible stewardship is very much in line with our thinking”, said an ILA spokesperson. “We believe that the whole of our industry should be at the forefront of any discussions over the ethical direc-

“We are working with the LME to develop responsible sourcing guidelines for lead.” tion of responsible sourcing. We are working with the LME to develop responsible sourcing guidelines for lead.” The inspiration behind the ruling comes from the United States, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed by the US Congress in July 2010. Specifically, Section 1502 requires US stock exchange listed companies that manufacture, or contract to manufacture, products containing conflict minerals in their supply chain to disclose

annually whether any of these minerals originated in the Democratic Republic of Congo or nearby countries. The EU approach is broader in scope and the proposed import restrictions will apply globally and all areas affected by conflicts. However, the issue is of greatest concern in Central Africa —particularly in the Great Lakes region — where the trade in minerals provides armed movements with funding. The European Commission will publish annually a list of ‘high risk’ countries under its guidelines.

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Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 21

GRID NEWS

Long Island issues RFI explicitly open to all battery chemistries The Long Island Power Authority — better known as PSEG Long Island— in New York City is seeking energy storage of up to 200MW as its contribution towards the New York State’s goal of installing 1,500MW by 2025 and 3,000MW by 2030, the authority announced in a Request for Information published on March 3. Final responses for the RFI, which is a tool for gathering input from energy storage companies, must be submitted by April 15,. A Request for Proposal will then be issued later in

the year, after the power authority has gained a better understanding of the storage technologies that could bid into the RFP. It is explicit that all battery technologies will be considered. “The RFI notes that PSEG Long Island is interested in learning if any new energy storage technologies are available in the market that can provide value to its customers,” says the American Public Power Association, a US trade body. “By allowing proposals to include any energy storage technology, PSEG

Long Island recognizes that this has impacts on its evaluation criteria, as for example round-trip efficiencies can vary greatly between different technologies. Therefore, PSEG Long Island contemplates not imposing a minimum round-trip efficiency requirement in the RFP. “There are likely to be other impacts on evaluation criteria as a result of allowing submittals using all types of energy storage technologies.” Energy storage targets are gradually being set all over the US, with Nevada proposing to set a 1,000MW

target by the end of 2030, to be reached with gradual increments over the years. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute lists the targets by US state as follows: • Massachusetts: 1,000MWh by the end of 2025 • New York: 1,500MW by 2025 • California: 1.825MW by 2025 • Oregon: 5MWh by 2020 • New Jersey: 2,000MW by 2030 • Arizona: 3,000MW by 2030. Market analysis firm Wood Mackenzie predicts total deployed MWh will be 14 times the size it is now within five years.

NYSERDA agrees 20MW storage project for US town of Ulster Lincoln Park, a subsidiary of GlidePath Power Solutions, announced in December it had signed a contract with NYSERDA (the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) to install a 20MW storage project in the town of Ulster. The project will replace previously planned projects that would have used fossil fuels to generate power for

the local community, the announcement said. “Advancing energy storage installations across the state enables more renewables to be integrated into our electric grid,” said president and CEO Alicia Barton. “We will continue to forge partnerships with stakeholders such as GlidePath to further grow the rapidly expanding energy

storage sector and our green economy.” Originally proposed in 2018, the design of the facility included a natural gaspowered peaking plant, but after concerns were raised in the community GlidePath announced plans to install a battery instead. NYSERDA handed over $8.8 million under its market Acceleration Bridge In-

centive Program, which provides incentives for bulk and retail storage projects. This is part of a $405 million energy storage investment in the state to help accelerate industry growth and cut energy storage costs. The New York Power Authority in December also committed $250 million for grid-scale energy storage projects.

Sonnen and Centrica form network of 100 residential storage systems German battery firm Sonnen and energy provider Centrica have installed a network of 100 domestic batteries in southern England to form the most advanced virtual power plant in the UK, Centrica said on January 17. The decentralized home energy storage network, was approved by National Grid, the multinational electricity and gas utility company. The network allows the batteries to be aggregated in a cloud platform to provide ‘Dynamic Firm Frequency Response’ — selling storage space when the grid is overloaded, or providing stored energy during periods of peak demand. “In the past, automated demand response was the domain of large

22 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

industrial and commercial energy users,” said Centrica’s global optimization director, Pieter-Jan Mermans. “In the last 12 months we have shown that networks of devices such as home batteries and hot water tanks can also take part, putting the customer in greater control of their energy, making them more sustainable and helping lower their bills.” Founded in Germany in 2010, Sonnen is among the among the growing number of companies making batteries for residential storage, such as Tesla, with its Powerwall, LG Chem, Solax and BYD. Almost all use lithium ion chemistry. Sonnen’s range of batteries are lithium iron phosphate.

“The digital energy transformation towards a clean energy system is taking place all over the world and our technology is an important key to its success,” said Sonnen eServices managing director Jean-Baptiste Cornefert. “Sonnen is the first provider in the UK to prequalify with a virtual power plant of decentralized home storage systems. Every megawatt provided across the network replaces one that would have been generated by conventional fossil fuel power stations.” Centrica says its FlexPond software platform has been combined with Sonnen’s batteries that can control exactly when to charge and discharge the batteries, or when to adjust electricity consuming devices.

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BRINGING THE INDUSTRY TOGETHER FOR BETTER BATTERIES The GreenSeal® Alliance is a group of companies with a common objective: to promote and improve lead batteries throughout the world using GreenSeal® Technology.

GRID NEWS

Five key grid trends in 2020 says Wood Mackenzie Over the next decade, traditional fuel-based generation will shrink as a proportion of the power mix. This will increase the flexibility needs of utility and power markets, according to Wood Mackenzie. Additional capabilities will be needed to solve the increasing number of grid-balancing challenges associated with a more intermittent and renewable generation fleet. The imperative to identify and implement these solutions will lead the industry to continue to experiment with innovative market reforms to unlock the growing and as-yet-unrealised flexibility potential of distributed energy resources (DERs). Efforts to integrate these

resources will lead to the creation of new revenue opportunities via wholesale and distribution value streams during the decade. According to Ben Kellison, Wood Mackenzie research director, and Elta Kolo, research manager says the biggest trends to watch in the global grid edge in 2020 and beyond are these: • Regulatory reform • Evolution of market models • Grid edge investment to compliment electrification • Grid-balancing will increasingly rely on flexible resources • De-risking investments so the DER market can scale Kolo said: “Today, the

US power system alone has more than 50 gigawatts of behind-the-meter flexible resources at its disposal from DERs enrolled in demand response programs. “Initially, flexible volume will be attained by dynamically leveraging what is already integrated into the grid. Resources already enrolled in existing demand response programs will be the lowest-hanging fruit. Flexibility portfolios will scale with resources situated on either side of the meter.” Regulations governing how DERs are compensated for capacity and energy services are trending away from simple, fixed, timeagnostic rates, such as net energy metering and volumetric charges.

Australian energy reforms to enable more grid-scale storage projects Legislation to fast track priority renewable energy projects such as grid-scale batteries will introduced in the state of Victoria ‘to improve the reliability of Victoria’s energy supply’, the Labor government announced on February 18.

Amendments to the National Electricity (Victoria) Act 2005 will give the state power to override outdated national regulations and focus on projects ‘that deliver clear benefits to consumers, while increasing our capacity to import

electricity during periods of peak demand’. In consultation with the Australian energy market operator (AEMO), the government plans to increase capacity to import electricity during peak demand and improve the reli-

100MW/100MWh UK battery to be the largest in Europe Installation of what some claim will be the largest battery storage project in Europe began at the start of December, to deliver 100MW/100MWh grid balancing power in Wiltshire, southwest England. The battery, by Chinese solar and battery firm Sungrow, will be installed in two adjacent containers with 50MW of lithium battery capacity in each. Power will be generated by wind turbines. The two containers circumvent current UK planning law, which says installations must be capped at 50MW; however consultations have begun at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to reverse this. The project, due to be completed by September, has been developed by Shellowned energy technology firm LimeJump

24 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

and China Huaneng, which is one of the five largest state-owned electric utility firms in China and is owned by the State Council of China. G2 Energy, a UK electrical engineering firm, will take care of the cabling and connective works. “In recent years, with the rapid development of wind power in the UK, the intermittence and fluctuation of wind power output is making the imbalance of time for supply and demand more and more obvious,” said China Huaneng. “After the project’s operation, it will become the largest battery energy storage project in Europe, providing power source emergency support when the main grid has an accident, and elevating effectively the safe operation level of the grid.”

According to Wood Mackenzie, this shift will increase the exposure of DERs to local power market and emerging distribution grid market constructs that dynamically determine the value of energy, capacity and ancillary services. “In the US, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is pushing regional market operators to formalise market designs that are inclusive of DERs. FERC has mandated operators under its jurisdiction to survey interconnection practices within their footprints and assess the economic benefits of ensuring individual resources and aggregations are on an equal footing with traditional system-balancing resources. ability of Victoria’s energy supply. Australia’s national energy network has been severely tested in recent months, with bush fires and severe weather bringing down transmission systems and prompting unprecedented demand for electricity. Since 2014, more than 1,200MW of renewable energy has been brought online, with more than 2,600MW under construction, the government says. “The government is also putting a power station on the roofs of Victorians through the Solar Homes program, which will see solar panels, solar hot water or solar batteries rolled out to 770,000 Victorian households over the next 10 years,” the government said. Lily Ambrosio, minister for energy, environment and climate change, said: “These reforms will help keep our energy system resilient as we face hotter summers, longer bushfire seasons, and increasingly unreliable coal powered generators.”

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GRID NEWS 8minute Solar Energy to provide 1200MWh solar+storage plant in US Private asset management firm Capital Dynamics and solar firm 8minute Solar Energy announced on January 22 a solar-plus-storage project that could be the second largest in the US. The Eland Solar and Storage Center, 70 miles north of Los Angeles, will have a 300MW/1200MWh energy storage facility and should be operational in 2023. It will serve the power needs of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Eland is a breakthrough project, setting records for low-cost solar, and incorporates a large battery energy storage centre that demonstrates solar’s ability to power California’s vibrant and growing economy 24/7,” said Tom Buttenbach, president and CEO of 8minute. Benoit Allehaut, managing director of Capital Dynamics’ Clean Energy Infrastructure team said: “This is our fourth solar project delivering power to LADWP. Eland will also be the third hybrid solar plus storage plant in our portfolio.”

Tesla prepares to switch on 25MW battery to support South Australian wind farm Electric car giant Tesla is about to switch on a 25MW Powerpack battery that will provide back-up storage for a 278.5MW wind farm in South Australia, the firm announced on January 22. The battery has a storage capacity of 52 MWh. Lake Bonney Wind Farm, which is owned and operated by Infigen Energy, generates electricity for 110,000 homes, which make up 14% of households in South Australia, Tesla said. It also said the $38 million project had been part funded with $5 million from the state government and another $5 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). “This will allow South Australia to incorporate more renewable energy into the system and move towards net 100% renewable energy in the 2030s,” said South Australia’s minister for energy and mining, Dan van Holst Pellekaan. Tesla’s Powerpack lithium-ion batteries were installed at the Hornsdale Wind Farm in South 26 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Australia, which is about to be expanded by 50%, Tesla said. Neoen, the French renewable energy developer that owns and operates Hornsdale, has said it will expand the 100MW battery, which was installed in December 2017, this March.

Tennessee awards 200MWh battery storage contract to Origis Energy The federal power agency Tennessee Valley Authority announced on February 11 it would install 200MW of solar generation and 200MWh of battery storage by the end of 2022. The contract to build, own and operate the system, in Lowndes County, has been awarded to solar firm Origis Energy. Four other projects were also announced, bringing the total of solar generation to 484MW, but they do not include storage capacity. Under its 2019 Integrated Resource Plan, the TVA says it plans to install up to 5GW of storage in the next 20 years, along with 14GW of solar power ‘if a high level of load growth materializes’. By 2028 it will add up to 2,400MW of storage, it says, and 5,300MW by 2038. Up to 4,200MW of wind power will be added by 2038 ‘if cost-effective’, the plan says. “Early experience with battery storage on the system would provide additional insight to how the various storage-use cases might be employed to provide economic benefit and system flexibility, especially with increasing penetration of renewables,” the plan says. Since the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933, the TVA has operated across seven states — Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia — in providing flood control, reforestation, agriculture, commerce and industry, as well as the hydroelectric Wilson Dam. It was given the authority to acquire lands along the Tennessee River to build reservoirs, transmission lines, power plants and hydroelectric dams, 16 of which it built up to 1944. The plan shows a determined shift by the TVA into renewables and storage, compared with today’s generation portfolio, which shows that just 3% comes from wind and solar sources.

Four battery projects approved for Dominion Energy in Virginia US power utility Dominion Energy, which provides power to customers in 18 US states, has had its first battery storage projects approved it announced on February 25 — and plans to install four utility-scale batteries totalling 16MW in the state of Virginia. They are the largest of their kind in the state. The pilot projects could pave the way for further battery storage as the company moves towards net zero carbon dioxide and methane emissions from its power generation and gas infrastructure by 2050. “Dominion Energy will pilot these 16MW of battery storage to better understand how best to deploy batteries across our system to integrate renewables and provide grid reliability by filling gaps due to the inherent intermittency of solar and wind power,” said Mark Mitchell, vice president of generation construction with Dominion Energy. “These pilot projects will also help us learn how to incorporate this emerging technology into our overall strategy.” Joe Woomer, vice president of grid and technical solutions, said: “Energy storage is emerging as a critical component to meeting our customers’ needs and providing continued grid stability. “Experience from these pilot projects will enable storage to complement or serve as an alternative to traditional grid enhancements needed to maintain reliable service for our customers as we work to integrate renewables and improve grid resiliency.” The projects will be evaluated over five years and should be operational in the first quarter of 2021.

Wärtsilä to ease grid, installs two 50MW batteries for UK EV charging Pivot Power, the EV battery and charging infrastructure start-up bought by EDF Renewables in November, has placed orders with Finnish technology company Wärtsilä to install two 50MW batteries for EV charging in the UK. The move will alleviate some of the pressure on the grid with the www.batteriesinternational.com

GRID NEWS

IRENA makes case for V2G storage: ‘massive capacity of batteries on wheels’ EVs will carry so many batteries by 2050 that there will be more than enough of them to support a grid system powered by wind and solar, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Francisco Boshell, IRENA’s team lead for renewable energy technology standards and markets, said in January that by 2050 the total storage capacity in electric vehicles would total 14TWh, compared with 9TWh in stationary batteries. “There is a massive electricity storage capacity available with all those batteries on wheels,” said Boshell. Arina Anisie, associate programme officer with the same team, also spoke in the webinar. “Vehicle-to-grid makes a lot of sense because cars are parked 90% of

demand expected for EV charging by providing balancing services for a transmission-connected battery storage network. The two projects, at Cowley in Oxford and Kemsley in Kent, should be fully operational before the end of this year and will be supported by Wärtsilä under 10-year service agreements with flexible performance guarantees. The two 50MW lithium-ion batteries will be the first projects completed as part of Pivot Power’s programme to develop, own and operate up to 2GW of grid-scale energy storage and high-volume power connections directly connected to the UK high-voltage transmission system. The firm says it will provide flexible capacity and reliability to support increased renewable energy generation and EV charging infrastructure. “These Wärtsilä energy storage systems allow us to harness cuttingedge technology to future-proof our investments in a changing energy market, supporting our long-term goal to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and bring us closer to net zero,” said Adrien Lebrun, Pivot Power’s engineering director. The systems are based on Wärtsilä’s energy management software platform GEMS and its GridSolv www.batteriesinternational.com

the time, and the battery is connected to the grid for such a long time that we can use it to offer some services back to the grid and help the grid increase flexibility and integrate a higher share of wind and solar,” she said. “So it would be a win-win situation for the transport sector and the power sector.” The other massive growth area is renewables, which is expected to take up 60% of generating capacity by 2050, compared with just 10% today. This will largely be needed by this growth in electric transport, which in 2016 consumed 1% of electricity, Boshell said, and would boom to 43% by 2050, with 1.66 billion EVs on the roads compared with 6 million today.

modular storage product, which supports stand-alone energy storage deployments and integrated hybrids with thermal or renewable generation assets. The contract is the first since EDF Renewables bought Pivot Power. EDF says its goal is to provide power for 600,000 electric vehicles and 75,000 charging points.

Total wins bid to install largest lithium battery project in France Total, the French energy giant, is to develop a 25MW lithium-ion storage system that will be the largest in France, its battery subsidiary Saft announced on March 12. The €15 million ($16.5 million) system will be sited at the Flandres Center in Dunkirk’s port district, and will be used to stabilize the French power grid as part of government policy “to support the development of electrical capacity through capacity mechanisms,” according to Total. “The system will be based on Saft’s Intensium Max 20 highenergy product and will comprise 11 integrated 2.3MWh containers, designed and manufactured at Saft’s production site in Bordeaux,” said the company. It is scheduled to be commissioned

“The power sector requires more flexibility,” said Boshell. “Transport and buildings are still relying on fossil fuels but with the ongoing growth in renewables we need to increase the share of clean energy and EVs can be a source of flexibility.” Electric vehicle charging points in Europe — which number 180,000 today — would need to be installed in Europe rapidly to meet a target of one public charging point per eight vehicles, he said. Currently the Netherlands has the most, followed by Germany, France, the UK and Norway. “Smart charging will be critical to avoid stress on the network with everyone charging simultaneously,” Boshell said, and emphasized the need for controlled uni- and bidirectional charging.

in late 2020. Total says the project is part of the company’s strategy to develop its energy storage business, which it says “are critical to the expansion of renewable energy, which is intermittent by nature. “It will contribute to the goal of increasing the share of renewables in France’s energy mix, while helping to stabilize the domestic power grid.” The project was awarded to Total by RTE — France’s Electricity Transmission Network — who selected Total’s bid as the winner of a call for tenders issued by the utility. In its December 2019 report France Power Market Outlook to 2030, Update 2019 — Market Trends, Regulations and Competitive Landscape, market intelligence firm GlobalData predicted France’s share of renewable energy would reach 12.9% of the country’s power mix by 2023, up from 19.9% in 2018. This could be a huge opportunity for storage technology companies. In 2018, the power mix was split roughly evenly among renewables, hydro and thermal energy, with between 20GW-30GW each and nuclear energy more than double with 65GW. The report predicts renewables will surpass nuclear energy by 2030 and reach up to 75GW. Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 27

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY NEWS

Azelio, Masen complete thermal storage system by world’s largest solar plant Swedish thermal energy storage company Azelio has completed the installation of a system that will store solar energy from what is claimed to be the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant project, Azelio said on March 9. The plant, which is owned and operated by the Moroccan agency for solar energy, Masen, is in the municipality of Ouarzazate in Agadir district,

which receives some of the most sunlight in the world. According to Lake Street Consulting it has a direct normal irradiation of 2,635 kWh/m2 a year. The complex is 2,500 hectares in size, and solar panels cover 1,000 square metres — which means it could potentially harvest a total of 2.6GW a year. Masen plans to develop the complex into a 500MW solar park to incorporate

several utility-scale solar power plants. The first, it says, is the 160MW Noor I, where three hours of thermal energy storage are used to deliver power during peak evening times. Azelio’s system uses recycled aluminium and the company says it contains no rare minerals and does not suffer from reduced capacity over time. The system is scalable from 100kW to 100MW.

Avalon, RedT near closing merger to form Invinity Flow battery firms Avalon and RedT have moved a step closer to merging into one £58 million ($69 million) company named Invinity Energy Systems, RedT said on March 16. Avalon is based in San Francisco, California and RedT in the UK. The new company, Invinity, will be headquartered in the UK and Canada, with a regional presence in the US, South Africa and China. The move would mean the new company would

have a reach in far more regions of the world. “We don’t have a foothold in the US but Avalon is in Asia and northeast America, whereas they don’t have a presence in sub-Saharan Africa or Australia, which we do,” said RedT head of communications Joe Worthington. “There are three areas – the first is solar panels on factory roofs with flow batteries in the car park; the second is utilities or aggregatory facilities that need

frequency response services; and the third is really big, co-located energy storage, hybrid systems that work with lithium batteries.” The terms of the merger were agreed in a Memorandum of Understanding last July. The deal will be signed off by shareholders in April. The firms have raised the £24 million ($30 million) needed to complete the merger, which Avalon chief executive Larry Zulch called ‘unprecedented in our segment’.

JenaBatteries, BASF develop new storage technology for flow batteries JenaBatteries and BASF are working together to produce a redox flow battery technology with organic materials in what would be the world’s first commercially available technology of the kind, they announced on February 6. German chemical giant BASF will supply one of two electrolytes based on an amine — an organic compound derived from ammonia — that the company can produce on an industrial scale. JenaBatteries, a German start-up specializing in metal-free stationary energy storage, will market the first redox flow battery in 2020. “Our partnership with BASF provides us with the knowledge and resources needed to produce electricity storage technology that is cost effective compared with our competitors,” said JenaBatteries managing director Olaf Conrad. Applications of this new technology are

28 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

particularly suited to stationary storage from renewable sources and for stabilizing conventional transmission grids. “This is good news for flow batteries — it shows that long duration energy storage has market value and is certainly an area of great business opportunity,” said Anthony Price, principal at battery consultancy Swanbarton. “Using a commodity chemical gives a stable price certainty in comparison to the volatile cost of vanadium.” Market analyst ReportsnReports.com forecasts redox flow batteries will account for $370 million in installations by 2025, more than doubling its 2018 value of $130 million, with North America and Asia-Pacific consuming more than 80% of capacity. There are seven types of flow battery, dominated by the vanadium flow battery, which has a 70% market share.

‘Needle in a haystack’ discovery to revolutionize fuel cell technology Researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have discovered a family of chemical compounds that could revolutionize fuel cell technology, they report in the March issue of Nature Materials. The results of their research are revealed in a paper, High oxide ion and proton conductivity in a disordered hexagonal perovskite. Professor Abbie McLaughlin, director of research in the University’s Department of Chemistry, led the study. “Ceramic fuel cells are highly efficient, but the problem is they operate at really high temperatures, above 800°C. Because of that they have a short lifespan and use expensive components,” she said. “For a number of years we’ve been looking for compounds that might overcome these issues in the relatively unexplored hexagonal perovskite family, but there are specific chemical features required which are hard to find in combination. For example, you need a chemical compound with very little electronic conductivity that is stable in both the hydrogen and oxygen environments of the fuel cell. “What we have discovered here is a dual proton and oxide ion conductor that will operate successfully at a lower temperature — around 500°C — which solves these problems. “You could say that we’ve found the needle in a haystack that can unlock the full potential of this technology.”

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FINANCE NEWS

CIT arranges $140m for esVolta in 136MW of California storage CIT Group has arranged $140 million financing for utility-scale energy storage systems developer esVolta to install more than 136MW/480MWh of energy storage units in California, the investment firm announced on February 24. The eight projects, which are all battery-backed renewable energy installations, have been agreed by Power and Energy, which is part of CIT’s Commercial Finance division. They form the company’s

‘esFaraday’ portfolio of energy storage projects, and on four of them esVolta will partner Southern Power Company. EsVolta has also developed an 8MW/41MWh energy storage system in Ontario, Canada. “Battery storage is helping revolutionize energy distribution, particularly for utility-scale renewable energy generation projects,” said esVolta vice president and chief financial officer Krish Koomar.

“We appreciate CIT’s expertise and agility in understanding our technology and arranging this financing package.” Arranging finance for battery/energy storage systems is one of CIT Power and Energy’s key areas of interest, along with distributed generation, renewable power and energy infrastructure. “EsVolta is recognized as an industry leader in utilityscale battery projects and we were pleased to work

Inside an esVolta storage installation

closely with them to meet their financing objectives,” said Mike Lorusso, managing director and group head for CIT’s Power and Energy unit.

Investment firm Blackstone buys storage supplier Nestor Canadian storage company NRStor, which in November claimed it had completed the ‘first commercial compressed air energy storage facility in the world’ in partnership with Hydrostor, has been bought by Blackstone Energy Partners, the investment firm said on March 4. NRStor, which began life in 2012, supplies many different kinds of energy storage technology, including flywheels and batteries, as well as CAES technology. In total it has more than 200MWh of projects throughout North America contracted, in construction or operating, Blackstone says. “Battery storage will play an important role in the North American power grid and will be critical to achieving ambitious renewable targets,” said Bilal Khan, senior managing director at Blackstone Energy Partners. “The partnership with Blackstone gives us the opportunity to accelerate our growth and solidify our mission to provide storage solutions,” said Moe Hajabed, founder and CEO of NRStor. Blackstone has invested $16 billion of equity globally in the energy industry, the firm says.

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FINANCE NEWS Sumitomo makes $46 million investment in partnership with Highview Power Japanese technology giant Sumitomo Heavy Industries has gone into partnership with cryogenic energy storage provider Highview Power with an investment of $46 million to grow the technology globally, the firms announced on February 25. The investment will be used to expand the CRYOBattery developed by Highview Power, which in October announced plans to build the first commercial liquid air energy storage facility in the UK. It has already connected two of its systems to the UK grid, and in December it teamed up with Encore Renewable Energy to begin building the first long-duration, liquid air energy storage system in the US. Highview says its CRYOBattery technology can

be easily scaled by simply adding more tanks, which means there are no size limitations or geographic restraints, says CEO and president Javier Cavada. The deal with Sumitomo — which says it intends to use its subsidiary Sumitomo SHI FW (SFW) as a ‘technology center and hub for the CRYOBattery business’ — signifies a move into the clean technology market for Sumitomo, which says it intends to expand the technology’s footprint in Europe, Asia and the Americas. “One of the biggest barriers to a carbon-free future has been the ability of renewables to perform as reliably and as cost-effectively as traditional fossil fuel sources,” said SFW CEO Tomas Harju-Jeanty, who has joined the Highview Power board.

Koolen Industries launch Smart Grid to specialize in large scale energy storage Dutch energy conglomerate Koolen Industries announced on February 6 the launch of Smart Grid, a company spun off from its lithium battery designer and producer subsidiary Super B, in response to demand for large-scale energy storage. Super B and Koolen Industries have invested more than €5 million ($5.4 million) in the smart grid concept to date, and will share resources and expertise in energy management, energy conversion and systems engineering and integration. The Smart Grid company will create complex software systems to link up and manage multiple batteries. “Smart Grid will create systems to help store energy from renewable sources on a large scale, providing power in periods of intermittence,” said CEO Kees Koolen. The storage systems link multiple batteries and are managed by smart software. The company says lowcost scalable systems will be offered throughout the product range. “We will specialize in large-scale stationary and mobile applications that offer storage capacity, with relatively short delivery times,” said Koolen. “Storage systems are a vital part of the energy transition, as they link energy generation with energy consumption.”

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FINANCE NEWS

Leclanché secures $64 million to fund expansion plans, operations Battery maker Leclanché has secured funds of up to $40 million to be spent on company operations and expansion, the firm announced on February 18. The company has signed an agreement with USbased investment firm Yorkville Advisors, which offers debt and equity financing to global, small and micro-cap companies.

The loan needs to be used within two years — and the first tranche, $2.9 million, has already been taken up. Leclanché’s majority shareholder, FEFAM, has also agreed to provide a $25 million working capital financing convertible facility. It means total growth funding for 2020 is around $64 million.

“This additional funding will support the implementation of our high growth business plan and will help finance the tripling of our manufacturing cell production capacity in Germany to 3 million cells a year to support delivery of the large order book we have in Leclanché’s eTransport business,” said Leclanché CEO Anil Srivastava.

“Not only are we securing important short-term financing to fund current operations and growth activities, but we are also taking on a financial partner with tremendous expertise in helping to build liquidity for companies’ listed shares.” One of Leclanché’s areas of expansion is into India, where battery maker Exide Industries has begun assembling Leclanché batteries in a joint venture with the firm.

Crowd funding to pay for largest battery project in the Netherlands A battery project by Netherlands firm Giga Storage that could be the largest of its kind in the country is to be installed by global energy firm NEC thanks to €3.6 million ($4 million) in crowd funding, NEC announced on March 13. NEC Energy Solutions, part of a test centre for renewable resources at Wageningen University & Research, says the 12MW battery, known as GIGA Rhino, will

provide grid resiliency for some 5,000 homes. Commentators say it is the largest battery storage system to be funded mainly from crowd funding. It is also being subsidized by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. “This is a landmark project since it is not only the most powerful energy storage system in the Netherlands, but it will also stabilize the grid and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,”

said Mark Moreton, sales director EMEA for NEC. “The fact that Giga Storage took such an innovative approach and successfully financed this project via crowd funding shows that the excitement in grid energy storage goes all the way to the people; individuals who are putting their own money into the project.” NEC intends to work with Giga Storage on similar projects throughout the

region. “The system will enable increased amounts of renewable energy on the grid, making it more stable through balancing the local smart grid,” the firm says. “The system is located at the WUR test center in Lelystad next to the Neushoorntocht wind farm and will also be used for frequency containment reserve and imbalance and curtailment services. The storage project will become an invaluable tool.”

Rolls-Royce increases stake to 73.1% in energy storage firm Qinous Rolls-Royce Power Systems has increased its stake in Berlin-based energy firm Qinous to 73.1%, both firms announced on January 15. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars was bought by German car company BMW in 1998, but the Germanybased Power Systems subsidiary still belongs to Rolls-Royce Holdings, which is headquartered in the UK. It bought a 19.9% stake in Qinous, then a start-up, in October 2018. Qinous makes battery storage systems and associated control systems and has a number of storage systems installed around the world. It designs and manufactures on- and off-grid systems that range in size from 40kWh to multi-megawatt hours. “Our new subsidiary is to play a pivotal role going forward,” said Rolls-Royce Power Systems Division CEO Andreas Schell. “This is where we are going to pool all the division’s microgrid

32 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

activities — from simple storage solutions to complete, complex microgrid solutions of various sizes and configurations. “As a young, start-up company, Qinous brings expertise that is an ideal complement to Rolls-Royce’s industrial credentials.” “This even closer partnership between Rolls-Royce and Qinous is a logical and consistent step towards opening up the rapidly growing microgrid market,” said Qinous cofounder and co-managing director Steffen Heinrich. “The functionality and reliability of the solutions have been proved in a large number of projects.” When Rolls-Royce made its first investment in Qinous in 2018, Schell said it was in answer to the company’s customers’ needs in terms of autonomous energy supply systems that are efficient, reliable and environmentally friendly. “For this reason, we are now

adding turnkey microgrids to our current portfolio,” he said. “In addition to the diesel and gas gensets, together with our partners like Qinous we will now offer battery containers, include renewable power generation plants, and combine that with intelligent control. “This strengthens our position as a provider of innovative power solutions able to supply our customers with microgrid systems tailored to their specific requirements.”

Andreas Schell (right), CEO of R-R Power Systems Division with Steffen Heinrich, co-MD of Qinous

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COVER STORY: COVID-19

The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on most aspects of the world economy is now starting to become clear. But, for the battery industry, the outlook is better than for many other business sectors.

Light at the end Unprecedented. Unanticipated. And totally unwelcome. That’s been the world reaction to the arrival and spread of the Covid-19 virus. Whether it is as unprecedented or unanticipated as some commentators maintain is questionable. Scaremongers and conspiracy theorists have certainly had a field day. But certainly it’s been totally unwelcome. On March 11 the World Health Organization officially called the spread of the disease a pandemic — meaning its spread was both global and also, by implication, its contagiousness was largely out of control. The result has been an economic cri-

sis the like of which has not been seen in living memory. Or so the main media commentators say. The International Monetary Fund announced towards the end of April — amid what many thought was around the peak of contagion — that GDP for the world economy would fall by a negative 3% this year. In January it had predicted that it would grow by 3.4%. But amid the doom and gloom being chattered endlessly over the internet and the media, another figure is being overlooked. In 2021 the IMF now expects world growth to bounce back by 5.2%.

Scare stories galore in field day for the media

34 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Lead price stability

There are other immediate signs of an implicit longer-term health in the battery market — for lead and on a much smaller scale, with lithium. According to commodity price movements since the start of the year, lead prices have declined by only 10% compared to larger falls in copper, nickel and zinc. “A lot of this has to do with the demand for lead remaining pretty stable — even after the effects of Covid-19 are included,” said Farid Ahmed, principal analyst, lead markets with Wood Mackenzie. “The use of lead has suffered decades of substitution, so what’s left is mostly irreplaceable in terms of function, practicality or price. Also, around one half of all lead is used for automotive replacement batteries. “This type of demand is much more insulated from the variabilities of macroeconomics and geopolitics. And tends to plod on much less buffeted by the winds of economic downturns or demand spikes.” S&P Global Market Intelligence said: “The price of lead is traditionally less volatile than other base metals, so it is no surprise that it fell less than other base metals, by only 10% over the first quarter of 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The price is generally more stable because most lead production goes into lead-acid batteries for engines, which need to be replaced approximately every three years. Despite the pandemic, car and truck batteries still

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COVER STORY: COVID-19 The price is generally more stable because most lead production goes into lead-acid batteries for engines, which need to be replaced approximately every three years … so the hard base of battery replacement is shoring up lead demand.

of the tunnel need to be replaced, so the hard base of battery replacement is shoring up lead demand. “Given that China is both the largest producer and consumer of lead, when the city of Wuhan and then the rest of the country went into lockdown, the metal had a short, sharp price decline but as China has been emerging from its lockdown since the start of April, the supply chain and market for lead will not get any worse.” Clearly the weaker price of lead will be an opportunity for greater profitability for battery manufacturers but this has been hugely damaging for the secondary lead business, where smelters have been locked into (now uneconomical) prices for used battery feedstock. “Some of them will have been losing millions of dollars a week,” one secondary lead expert told Batteries International. Interestingly the price of lithium carbonate — the staple for lithium batteries — has remained largely unchanged over the first quarter. However, this appears to be largely due to a slump in supply rather than a maintenance of demand.

Service industries hit hardest

Although the battery business and the complete energy storage industry will have been hit by this slump in economic activity, the manufacturing sector is less vulnerable to the downturn than the dramatic collapses seen in other business sectors. “The Covid-19 crisis is different

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from previous economic crises in that it has most deeply affected consumerfacing industries like hospitality,” says an analyst at Arcadis, the engineering consultancy. It is worth delving into economic theory for a moment here because it is directly relevant to the future of the battery business. One contemporary school of economic thinking uses a model developed by Allan Fisher, Colin Clark and Jean Fourastié, who suggested there were three sectors of activity that could be defined as being: the extraction or cultivation of raw materials (primary), manufacturing (secondary), and services (tertiary). The theory behind the modelling then said that the ratio between these sectors would change over time. Pre-industrial society — largely based on farming — had a huge primary sector but little in the way of manufacturing and almost none in the service sector. This would then change to the industrial society, where manufacturing would account for around 40% of

activity and the service sector around 20%. But the third phase of civilization, sometimes called the post-industrial society — and which broadly equates to most of the developed world — suggests that manufacturing would account for around 20% of economic activity while the service sector would account for 70%. It is in this service sector that Covid-19 has wreaked the most havoc and where the downturn in GDP will be most acute. Many market analysts are producing forecasts, from the depths of the pandemic, that are increasingly positive. Trends Market Research, for example, predicted a compound annual growth rate for the lead battery market of 4.17% up to 2025, increasing in value up to $76 billion; and Allied Market Research claimed it would grow at 5.24% between 2019 and 2026. Mordor Intelligence predicted a 4.3% growth between 2020 and 2025. Market Watch was more conservative, forecasting a CAGR of 3.25% — but only to 2023.

“But this time the banks are awash with capital and are keen to lend. Well established businesses [such as battery manufacturers of size] will be able to benefit from business loans at some of the cheapest rates.”

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 35

COVER STORY: COVID-19 But amid the doom and gloom being chattered endlessly over the internet and the media, another figure is being overlooked. In 2021 the IMF expects world growth to bounce back by 5.2%.

The banks are open

Making historical comparisons with previous world crises is always tendentious. The nearest comparable seems to be the economic shock of the 2008 financial crisis, which took western economies almost a decade to recover from.

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL (ALMOST) The US Energy Storage Association released a survey of energy companies’ predictions for revenue, employment and projects in the second quarter relating to the Covid pandemic. In brief: 63% of respondents expected a decrease in revenues (with half of these expecting 20% or greater reduction), and 75% did not expect to reduce employment (inclusive of contractors). The top three reasons cited for potential reductions in revenues and jobs were: • Customer delays or cancellations; • Difficulty in obtaining equipment, supplies or logistical delays; and • Permit and approval delays.

“There is a difference, however,” says one business commentator. “Then the financial system was in crisis. The banks were not in a position to help fund a recovery. Credit lines were almost non-existent for a couple of years and for that reason many companies were forced into the wall. “But this time the banks are awash with capital and are keen to lend. Well established businesses [such as battery manufacturers of size] will be able to benefit from business loans at some of the cheapest rates.” One interesting aside is whether the economic blow will be the same on all sides of the energy storage business. In theory, start-ups will be more vulnerable to economic shocks since they are typically shorter of capital than established players, which would suggest that many of the new lithium firms will struggle in the coming months.

The Asia outlook

But the outlook is as varied as the countries where the virus has struck. The first is that the lockdown period is gradually being lifted across the world. China began to lift its lockdown in late March and in Hubei, the prov-

ince where the Covid-19 coronavirus originated, people are allowed out of doors, although they have to wear masks outside their homes. Wuhan, the city pinpointed as the centre of the pandemic, was opening bus lines and people were cheering in the streets after months of lockdown, Chinese media reported. Camel Battery, sited in Hubei, resumed production at its lead-acid battery and recycling plant, Shanghai Metals Market reported on March 11, along with all other lead-acid producers in China, with some recording operating rates of 70%. Leoch, which has several plants across China, said it was back up to 75%. Since then the general slowdown that happens around this time of year has caused production levels to slacken. Digatron facility’s in Qingdao, China returned to work on March 23 after two months of lockdown. The firm says that its first new order has come in as industry returns to productivity. He Zhou, general manager of the facility, said: “We are now 100% operational! We’re back in action with a full complement of staff and have returned to a normal working mode. “Most importantly we’ve been very careful about taking the right precautions for our staff — they’re our topmost priority — and we’ve also been fortunate not to have any Covid incidents.” However, He Zhou says the return to complete normal working mode is not yet complete. “We’re almost there but we’ll continue to wear face masks for the immediate future. However,

Of the 25% of respondents who expected to cut jobs, most expected reductions of up to 20% of their employees. The manufacturing segment of the industry expected more widespread and deeper revenue reductions than the industry segment that includes developers and installers who implement storage projects. An ESA official said: “It is clear the energy storage industry expects a deep, albeit brief, revenue downturn this quarter. Most companies are focused on retaining their employees during this time to better prepare and respond once business returns.” Digatron’s He Zhou: lockdown over but protections in place

36 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

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COVER STORY: COVID-19 “Lead demand is much more insulated from the variabilities of macroeconomics and geopolitics. And tends to plod on much less buffeted by the winds of economic downturns or demand spikes.”

the day we can remove them is not so far away. Moreover, we do believe that our colleagues in the rest of the world will make it as well. “We’ve also been surprised at the speed of new orders, we’ve already received a significant order from one of our major Chinese clients. This really gets us off to a great return to operations.” Kevin Campbell CEO at Digatron Power Electronics, said: “While the rest of the world continues to lock down, in China, however, hopeful news of positive signs for our industry are emerging. We are living in the most challenging and dynamic times of our lives, it is redefining the way we do business.” In India, lead battery production has stopped completely, according to L Pugazhenthy, executive director of the India Lead Zinc Development Association, as the government has enforced a total shut-down of the country. Reports from leading manufacturers in the country suggest much of their recent work has been humanitarian. Amara Raja, one of India’s largest lead battery manufacturers, announced it had donated Rs6 crore ($790,000) to two Indian relief funds, which grant help “to deserving families and individuals affected by natural calamities or loss of life of relatives due to accidents or for medical treat-

ment for major diseases”. Luminous Power Technologies, India’s third largest battery firm, has tackled the country’s lockdown in a variety of ways. Many of its contract employees are unable to return home because of the travel restrictions and the firm has been providing those workers with food and essentials for the interim — with management staff in Tamil Nadu and Himachal even packing up the parcels to give to employees. The firm has continued to pay basic salaries so that families can stay solvent. It has also provided medical support, such as intensive care unit beds and other equipment, for the Hosur Government Hospital in Tamil Nadu. “We’ve also been working with local governments in providing inverters and batteries for emergency back-up systems in hospitals in different states like Uttar Pradesh, Odhisa etc,” says Amlan Kanti Das, senior vice president for battery operations and R&D.

European perspective

Primary demand for batteries from car makers is likely to start up imminently. Volkswagen planned to restart car plants across Europe in the first week of May. Toyota, Renault, Hyundai and Volvo, have also announced plans to reopen soon.

A BRIEF ADVANTAGE OVER LITHIUM Different parts of the energy storage industry will be hit in different ways. The standard analysis of economic recessions shows that the smallest businesses — particularly start-ups — are more vulnerable to economic shocks than established firms. Larger firms typically have resources they can juggle for when lean times emerge, which may mean lay-offs and shorter working hours, but the viability of the business is less likely to be endangered. Although there are exceptions to every business — think Exide’s trips into Chapter 11 over the past 20 years — overall, battery

38 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

manufacturers are well capitalized and have sufficient inventory to tide them through more difficult times. This isn’t the case for many of the smaller start-ups trying to chip into various aspects of the lead business and it is likely to be an advantage, however brief, when compared to various firms in the lithium business. According to mining analyst firm Roskill, Covid-19 will wipe out about $1bn of lithium supply this year. This is unrelated to any drop of demand but is structural, where lithium production via brine salt extraction is favoured over mineral extraction.

In Europe the first signs of a reemerging lead battery industry started happening in April as the peaks in contagion started to fall. The worst hit area in Europe was Italy, co-incidentally where most of the continent’s battery related industries are based. Some firms, such as OMI Impianti, the Italian manufacturer of battery formation machinery, have remained open the whole time though maintaining the recommended distancing between employees. “That said we are looking forward to a fuller restart shortly,” said Melissa Maggioni, a sales director of the firm. A spokesperson for Sovema said: “We are keeping operations going by smart working (engineering, sales and service teams are fully equipped to work from their homes), staying in constant contact with our customers around the world to work both on current and future projects.” Alberto Bergamaschini, commercial director of STC, the engineering and contracting company, said the firm had worked hard to keep all the current projects on track. In April he told Batteries International: “We have just completed the delivery on time of a new rotary furnace complex, including charging system, oxyfuel burner, process fumes extraction and full air pollution control system, for one of our overseas customers. “Fortunately, our new projects are in the design phases and we were able to quickly reorganize our team to work remotely. “Using a product data management system and software tools such as Microsoft Team, regular e-mails, phone calls and even WhatsApp we ensured that every user in every engineering department received the right information in a usable format. “Video conferences and skype for business allow our commercial team and project managers to remain in contact with customers and potential customers.”

View from North America

In the US the picture is yet different again. Thanks to the energy of individual battery manufacturers and lobbying pressure from Battery Council International, the basic intention was to prove that battery making is an essential occupation. Roger Miksad, executive vice president for BCI, told Batteries International: “When we started to see the Covid-19 business curtailment orders

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COVER STORY: COVID-19 coming out of various state governments, BCI quickly engaged with regulators, elected officials and our members — we don’t have a federal mandate for this, just guidance. “Where we have seen states implement stay-at-home orders, BCI has either directly lobbied and advocated that lead battery manufacturing and recycling needs to be recognized as a critical manufacturing sector, or we have supported any individual’s efforts if they’ve asked for our support. “We had to explain to the federal and state agencies that supply chains rely on batteries to start internal combustion vehicles, and rely on batteries to move forklifts and other equipment handling machinery.” East Penn, for example, the second largest battery manufacturer in the US, was part of a mandatory shutdown on March 19 ordered by the Pennsylvanian governor of all socalled “non-life-sustaining businesses” across the state. But on March 23 — after an appeal by the company — the governor approved a waiver effectively classifying East Penn as a life-sustaining business. This allowed the firm to return to work and operate at around 50% of normal staffing levels. East Penn said: “There is no timeline for recalling employees to work. This is due to the fact that order levels will vary based on the unpredictability of the Covid-19 pandemic, government mandates and our ability to keep our employees safe in the work environment.” This level of unpredictability has

“We’ve also been surprised at the speed of new orders, we’ve already received a significant order from one of our major Chinese clients. This really gets us off to a great return to operations.”

been matched in Europe. One leading CEO of a major lead battery manufacturer told Batteries International: “The problem for all of us at this time is that governments’ approaches are hard to gauge. “We need to make sales projections for us to set the right production levels. And it’s highly difficult to make those given that we are at the mercy of the vagaries of government decisionmaking.”

Long-term positives

In the lead-acid business world, the medium-to-long-term picture appears to be solid. Wood Mackenzie’s Ahmed said while demand would be deferred, it would not be destroyed — although there was inevitable uncertainty in such an unprecedented climate. “Replacement batteries will be needed, just a little later than expected due to people staying at home and not driving the miles,” he said. “OE batteries are obviously suffering while the auto plants are stalled, and there is likely to be some reluctance from many prospective buyers about investing in a new car when they’re fearing over job security and are generally less flushed with cash.

Midtown New York: late morning after lockdown

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“That’s a bit of demand destruction right there, but on the flipside, they’re going to keep the old banger running and will have to replace the battery in that, rather than swapping it for a new set of wheels.” So while there has been almost universal doom and gloom from the mainstream media, the batteries industry — from equipment suppliers to manufacturers to recyclers — is set to weather the storms ahead. “We’ve been through tough times in the past but we can always weather them,” said one US commentator. “One of the great things about our industry is our resilience and the fact that in times of trouble we all work together.”

ABERTAX PRODUCES VENTILATOR FOR COVID-19 PATIENTS Battery monitoring systems designer Abertax has designed a prototype ventilator that can be used by two Covid-19 patients at a time, said president George Schembri. Following a request from the Maltese government’s health authorities, the company is adapting its BMS and adding a respiratory function to enable oxygen to be supplied to two patients at once, while the equipment at the same time monitors the entire operation in safety and according to patients’ requirements. The prototype is ready and awaiting approval, when it will be available to hospitals in Malta. “The expertise of our engineers in R&D, including our CEO Malcolm Tabone, in sensor and battery monitoring technology, coupled with design, programming and manufacture of similar advanced equipment, has proved to be instrumental through this collective effort,” said Schembri.

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 39

COVER STORY PERSPECTIVE: WOOD MACKENZIE Farid Ahmed, principal analyst at natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie, gives his take on the factors affecting the price of lead and the battery industry.

Battered but unbowed

40 â&#x20AC;˘ Batteries International â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2020

longer, which will be closer to needing a new battery than would be the case for a shiny new car with a brand-new OE battery. Hence, losses in automotive OE batteries usually translate into increased replacement demand. The slowing global economy will also impact industrial batteries, which have a closer correlation to industrial output growth and GDP than automotive. In the wake of the coronavirus crisis and its macroeconomic consequences, motive power demand will suffer. The inevitable fall in the trade of physical goods will lower the projected need for mechanical handling at ports, warehouses and along the supply chain, reducing the overall usage of this equipment and the total number required. It will also weaken the ability for operators to finance upgrades or the replacement of existing fleets of forklift trucks and other equipment using lead batteries.

Demand for stationary batteries is often closely associated with infrastructure expenditure and advancing industrialization in developing countries. The weaker global financial outlook will curtail some of this spending. Corporates and governments will be less well placed to indulge in large projects such as energy storage for renewable power generation, standby power for hospitals and large office buildings, rail networks, data centres and mobile communications. The net effect of all the above is a combination of demand destruction â&#x20AC;&#x201D; usage of lead that is gone for good â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and demand deferral, where that requirement is delayed but will occur at a later point. Given that most uses of lead are essential, most of these will mostly return â&#x20AC;&#x201D; just a bit later than weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have anticipated before Covid-19 hit. Take heart, lead will ride this one out.

Covid-19 makes bigger dent in demand than GFC, but recovery to return quickly

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The coronavirus pandemic has thrown global markets into turmoil, and the lead business is no exception. However, the intrinsic resilience of our industry will ensure that it is less battered by the winds of this macroeconomic storm than most base metals. It is increasingly likely that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re heading into global recession after much of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic and social activity has been brought to an abrupt halt. To slow the rate of Covid-19 infection, much of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population has been under enforced lockdowns for weeks or months. It was inevitable that metals supply and demand would be hit. This effect has already started and we can already start to calculate the fallout. More uncertainty surrounds the key questions of: how long this will continue; how bad it will be; and what the medium to long-term impacts are once markets recover. What gives lead its resilience is a product of decades of relentless pressure and scrutiny over its continued use. Almost all replaceable uses of lead have systematically been substituted over the years. So those applications that remain are essentially irreplaceable in terms of cost, performance or practicality. Half of global lead demand is for automotive replacement batteries. The failure of these batteries is somewhat isolated from geopolitical or macroeconomic factors and much more influenced by their general age and the extremes of hot or cold weather they might endure. It follows that after a significant occurrence, such as the global financial crisis of 2008/09 or the current coronavirus outbreak, there will be fewer miles driven due to population lockdowns, or less commuting because many people are working from home or have lost their jobs. But this has more of an effect in delaying battery failure rather than preventing it. These situations also have an impact on original equipment automotive batteries, as people will become more cautious about buying a new car if they feel financially vulnerable or theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re worried about their employment. Conversely, though, it also implies that they will retain their old cars for

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PROFILE: SYSTEMS SUNLIGHT

Batteries International spoke to Robby Bourlas, chief executive of Systems Sunlight, about the firm’s expansion plans into the US, its strategy in advancing its lithium product line and how the firm has coped with the devastating fire that ravaged the firm’s operations in 2018.

The new world beckons Global reach. It’s more than fanciful business slang. It’s now the key concept for any industry wanting to succeed in business internationally. So when European battery maker Systems Sunlight announced in December that it was planning to launch

a subsidiary in North America and build a huge assembly plant, market reaction was swift. “It’s a huge move,” said one US battery machine manufacturer at the time. “This is Sunlight making a bid to be a player at the top table.”

“Basically we’re looking for a consumer friendly and customizable BMS. We’ve also spent much R&D time and money looking at all our lithium assembly and manufacturing processes” — Robby Bourlas

Another commentator remarked that the investment was a substantial one given that only one battery firm — Concorde Battery — had set up a major production unit in the US for more than a decade. The decision on when and how to open up a full battery operation was a huge step for Sunlight, according to Robby Bourlas, its chief executive. “But it was also a logical one,” he says. “We had been supplying industrial battery customers in the US for the past six years and we were aware that this was a market we could expand into. “The choice of North Carolina was also a logical one. The location was close to many of our customers — the state has the fifth largest manufacturing economy in the country and an excellent transp infrastructure — so as a hub it would provide some of the best possible delivery times to customers. “It also had a skilled labour force and management that were relatively knowledgeable about the battery business.” A more radical part of the proposal is that the new plant would make lithium batteries as well as lead ones —the traditional mainstay of Sunlight’s battery business. In this, Sunlight would be entering into a still emerging market in the US — all the mainstream lead battery manufacturers such as Exide, East Penn, Clarios and EnerSys have quietly been adding lithium to their battery offerings.

Main production facility Northern Greece

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Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 41

PROFILE: SYSTEMS SUNLIGHT FIRE AND THE FIGHT BACK One of the critical moments for Sunlight in recent years was a fire that raged through the firm’s factory in Xanthi in northern Greece in May 2018, causing all production to cease. What could have been a tragedy for the livelihood of the workforce was averted by speedy action, says Bourlas. “The very same day of the fire we held an emergency board meeting and decided that we would retain the jobs of every one of our 800 staff, in effect we sent them home with full pay for an entire year until we could get the factory up and running again,” he says. “In a strange way the fire brought out two very positive things for Sunlight. The first was that we have now an extraordinary work force, committed to what we are doing, and very high productivity and efficiency levels. As a legacy, we also have some of the lowest turnover of staff in the battery industry.” Another benefit came from the €66 million ($73 million) insurance pay-out — a record in the country — was the ability to re-equip the plant with state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. Given that many battery plants are frequently using machinery that could well be 20 years old, the result has been a more automated manufacturing line, greater productivity and, hence a more competitive product. The plant at Xanthi returned to full production in the summer of 2019. In October, Sunlight announced it would create 200 new jobs, which

it reckoned would bring it to a level of producing 2.8 million cells a year. The previous December, Sunlight had announced plans to almost double its production of lead-acid batteries at its plant in Xanthi, Greece to 3.5 million cells a year. When this happens it would make it the largest lead battery plant in Europe. Plans for the expansion were enabled following a €12.5 million ($13.9 million) loan from the European Investment Bank. The loan is the first support for industrial investment in a new EIB lending initiative backed by the European Fund for Strategic Investments, which aims to mobilize at least €500 billion by 2020. Part of the expected success of the new US plant, says Bourlas, will also be predicated on the fact that the equipment being installed in North Carolina will also be some of the most technologically advanced in today’s market.

“The very same day of the fire we held an emergency board meeting and decided that we would retain the jobs of every one of our 800 staff, in effect we sent them home with full pay for an entire year until we could get the factory up and running again.”

Production of the negative plate inside the plant

42 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

The move into lithium has been a long time coming. Bourlas says that Sunlight first started looking into lithium 12 years ago and that it now had one of the most advanced R&D units in Europe. Under changes made recently to EU rules — which allow so-called ‘Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI)’ to be funded disproportionately by domestic governments — Greece is investing heavily in Sunlight’s new R&D outfit, which will be based in Athens. Bourlas says a lot of recent research has been centred around battery management systems that optimize performance of the lithium cells. “Different ways of working require different battery management systems to get the most out of the cells. “So for example, a forklift truck could be used in a variety of different ways — one might require fast-charging at lunchtime, another might be working three shifts, another yet another work pattern — and in each instance the software in the BMS needs to be configured to get the maximum from the battery. “Basically we’re looking for a consumer friendly and customizable BMS. We’ve also spent much R&D time and money looking at all our lithium assembly and manufacturing processes.” The first fruit of Sunlight’s investment was the launch of its Li.ON Force product line of its so-called ‘smart lithium batteries’ for electrical industrial vehicles in April 2019. “This new, revolutionary series of smart batteries represents a global innovation and combines the advantages of batteries featuring lithium technology with innovative applications of Industry 4.0 technology, which pertain to the use of Internet of Things technologies in industry,” the firm said at the time of its launch. “Here we provide Glocal, the global technological innovation offering

Part of our growth plans includes looking at other firms that could fit in well with what we’re doing already … We’re not thinking of an acquisition of huge size — but a smaller, perhaps more specialized firm. www.batteriesinternational.com

PROFILE: SYSTEMS SUNLIGHT real time and two-way communication via the Cloud. The Li.ON Force product range will be assembled in the new US plant as well as the firm’s factory in Verona, Italy and Xanthi, Greece. Sunlight’s plans in the US don’t come cheap. The official subsidiary, known as Sunlight Batteries USA, will require an investment of some $10 million in the next three years. The local state government is supporting the move with a $400,000 grant. Of this $6.5 million will initially be used for equipment and infrastructure and the creation of a new assembly hub with a total area of 9,700m2. This would make it larger than Sunlight’s plant in Verona, which serves the European market. The firm anticipates a production capacity of traction batteries of some 200,000 cells per year. An official statement from the firm says: “Our investment… is a starting point to support our organic growth but we are also evaluating other strategic investment opportunities.” For this read acquisitions. Or potential ones. Bourlas is open about this. “Part of our growth plans includes looking at other firms that could fit in well with what we’re doing already, almost certainly those looking at lithium and probably with lead as well,” he says. “We’re not thinking of an acquisition of huge size — but a smaller, perhaps more specialized firm. “We’re also not confined by geographic region — we’re also looking across Europe too.” Bourlas says the company’s focus would be on Germany, France, Italy and Spain — countries where Sunlight has already a growing market presence. Bourlas is optimistic about the new plant’s success for a variety of reasons. One of them is simply technical.

In the US, assembly of cells for industrial batteries is typically through a welding process. The fault with this process is that when batteries are subject to continued vibration the welds can fail and rewelding is time consuming and more expensive. In Europe flexible bolted connectors typically are used and when these fail their replacement is technically more straightforward.

The first fruit of Sunlight’s investment was the launch of its Li.ON Force product line of its so-called ‘smart lithium batteries’ for electrical industrial vehicles in April 2019.

MANAGEMENT RESHUFFLES One aspect of Sunlight that is attracting speculation is the question of management succession. Within a couple of weeks of the announcement of the new US plant, Greek multinational group Olympia — the owner of Sunlight — made sweeping changes to the management of its battery subsidiary. Vasilis Billis, chief executive of Sunlight for six and half years, stepped down and was replaced by Bourlas, Olympia Group CEO and already a member of the Sunlight board. Billis remains on the board of Olympia subsidiary company Play, a mobile phone firm. Bourlas will remain in charge of Sunlight until a successor is found. “We have an international executive search for a suitable replacement going on as we speak.” The likely appointee will almost certainly have a lead and lithium background. Other changes included the appointment of Foad Derisavi to the management team to take on the production and development of lithium products and advanced technologies. His brief is to help Sunlight to expand lithium batteries for industrial use into international markets.

Also taking on more of a role in the lithium battery sphere is the existing head of the recycling division, Spiros Kopolas, who assumes the duties of business development for lithium battery applications, “aiming to further expand the prospects of Sunlight via partnerships on a global scale,” the company says. Vassilis Gavroglou has also joined the management team as director of human resources. Reassigning the management positions is only part of the company’s moves to reposition itself for the future. Another initiative is looking at the digitalization of its business operations. The company says this especially includes “the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies in productive operations and supply chain. These will be the key factors for business continuity and success in the very near future.” “At the same time the company proceeds with its structural changes concerning its organization, as well as the organization of its production with the objective to focus on its strategic priority relating to the ever-growing technologies of lithium batteries, targeting a leading position on the global scale,” said the firm at the time.

The decision on when and how to open up a full battery operation in North Carolina was a huge step for Sunlight but it was also a logical one.

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Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 43

CONFERENCE IN PRINT: HAMMOND GROUP Hammond Group researchers have analysed the way that PbO2 conversion during formation can be overcome for cured positive plates with 4BS crystals. The research was led by Dr Marvin Ho with contributions from Thomas Wojcinski, Maureen Sherrick, Dave Petersen and Gordon Beckley.

Study of TTBLS seed crystals with treatments to improve formation efficiency Modern applications demand that a battery delivers robust performance with increased cycle life. Typically, the life of the lead-acid battery is limited by the positive plate due to such factors as corrosion, active material shedding etc. Positive active material (PbO2) with stronger structure is desired to extend the cycle life of lead acid batteries. The structure of the PAM is determined by the phase composition, morphology of crystals and density of paste. Past research works have shown that positive paste containing tetrabasic lead sulfate crystals (4PbO.PbSO4, TTBLS or 4BS) has a stronger

OVERVIEW Positive plates manufactured with Tetrabasic Lead Sulfate (TTBLS or 4BS) seed crystals have been studied and proven to improve the cycle life of the lead acid battery. But the more difficult PbO2 conversion during formation is the key drawback of cured positive plates with 4BS crystals. The R&D team at Hammond Group has developed a process to apply treatments on 4BS seed crystals to increase PbO2 conversion during formation and still maintain or extend the cycle life of the battery. This paper presents the data collected from the analysis of cured and formed plates in both controlled laboratory-scale experiments and in full productionscale battery trial.

44 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

positive active material structure and longer life compared to paste with classical technology including tribasic lead sulfate crystals (3PbO. PbSO4, TBLS or 3BS). 4BS crystals in the positive active material ensure longer life performance of the battery, but they also reduce the conversion rate of PbO2 during formation which leads to lower initial capacity of the battery. To compensate for the lower initial capacity caused by inefficiency of formation, longer formation is a typical method used by lead acid battery manufacturers. But this method will reduce the production rate and add extra cost to the manufacturing process. Several approaches have been proposed to improve the PbO2 conversion during formation. One of these approaches is to add an additive, such as red lead, to increase the conversion to PbO2, however red lead is not readily available in all parts of the world. Hammond’s R&D team has developed a process of modifying their industry-proven 4BS seed crystal additive (SureCure®) to maintain the positive active material durability and consistency required for long service life in multiple applications such as: stop/start, renewable energy, golf car, e-rickshaw, etc. and to increase the formation efficiency of newly formed batteries.

Experiment and results Hammond’s 4BS crystal seed (Standard SureCure®) is made with a chemical process followed by a milling step to produce the specified

particle size (~ 1 μm). This material is used as the base material in this study. Once the standard SureCure® material has been produced to within the proper particle size specification, a final finishing treatment is applied. The purpose of treatment is to control the crystal growth of 4BS seeds (such as SureCure® crystals) during the curing process, while still providing seed sites to assist in the uniform controlled growth of 4BS crystals within the positive active material. There are two treatments (120 and 140) applied to the base SureCure® crystal and studied in this paper. These treated crystals are called Treated SureCure® 120 and Treated SureCure® 140 later in this paper. Studies of crystal growth with different curing profiles were carried out in the laboratory. The curing profiles studied in this paper are 55˚C with high humidity (>95% RH) for 48 hours and 75˚C with high humidity (>95% RH) for 24 hours. Both profiles also include a 24-hour drying step after the high humidity step. Samples were taken from the curing chamber over the course of the curing process and analyzed to characterize physical properties, phase composition and morphology of the positive active materials. Standard SureCure®, Treated SureCure® 120 and 140 were studied following this test plan, and the results are presented in this paper. Battery trials were carried out as part of a production trial at a major battery manufacturing site. The

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: HAMMOND GROUP 6V deep cycle battery (~230Ah at 20HR rate). All test and control batteries were formed at the same time to eliminate the variations from the process. Cured plates were collected after the curing process and formed plates were collected from autopsying batteries after formation. These plates were analyzed in the lab employing techniques which focused on the chemical composition, phase composition, BET surface area and morphology of the active material mass. Electrical testing of the assembled batteries followed the dynamic load profile cycle life procedure as recommended by the BCI Deep Cycle and EV Battery Technical Committee in recent publications. The detailed testing procedure is shown below:

Dynamic Cycle Life Procedure – 6V GC2 Size

Treated SureCure® was added to a standard mixer (2,400 lbs) with leady oxide, water, sulfuric acid and fiber to make the positive paste. Test plates were made with the paste described above. The addition rate of Treated SureCure® is 1% versus leady oxide. The control plates were produced with 4BS crystal seeds from other sources besides Hammond and the same loading (1%). Both control and test plates were placed on racks and cured side by side in the same curing room to reduce variations during curing process. The negative plates were collected from normal production and used in both control and test batteries. Then, both the control and test positive plates were assembled with negative plates into control and test batteries. The battery size is a typical

Figure 1

Cured material characteristics from laboratory investigations Positive plates containing Treated SureCure® will exhibit similar characteristics to plates containing Standard SureCure®. This includes a typically brighter orange hue and harder, more durable active material surface.

Figure 1: A comparison of Cured Positive plates sampled during the curing process for both Standard (Standard Hammond SureCure®) and Treated SureCure®120.

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BENEFITS The treatments and novel 4BS seed crystal materials developed by Hammond Group provide several benefits to battery performance: • Increased PbO2 conversion (or higher efficiency) with the same formation profile • Produce cured material with similar or better PAM cohesion strength (drop test) • Create higher BET surface area which leads to higher initial performance of the battery (initial capacity) • Deliver longer cycle life with lower recharge factor (108%) • Offer an optimized solution when combined with advanced expander for PSoC applications • Certain treatments may slow the crystal growth and conversion of the active mass to 4BS at low temperature (≤55˚C) curing profiles. Higher curing temperatures will resolve this issue. By combining Treated SureCure® and advanced expander together into the battery’s design, an optimized solution can be achieved for partial state of cycling (PSoC) applications.

Changes of phase composition during curing Figures 2 and 3 on the following page show the X-ray diffraction analysis of active material from cured plates with the addition of Standard Hammond SureCure®, Treated SureCure® 120 and Treated SureCure® 140. Figure 2 shows the effect of various treatments on the conversion of tetrabasic lead sulfate (4BS) content in positive active material during the curing process at 55˚C and 95% RH over the course of 48 hours plus drying. It is shown that Treated SureCure® 120 experiences delayed 4BS conversion. Treated SureCure® 140 shows the same 4BS crystal conversion rate as standard SureCure®. Conversely, Figure 3 illustrates the crystal growth of Standard SureCure®, Treated SureCure® 120 and Treated SureCure® 140 during curing at 75˚C with the same RH conditions and a 24-hour wet phase

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 45

Figure 5

Figure 2

Figure 3: Phase changes of 4BS crystal growth during the curing process at 75˚C for both Standard SureCure® and Treated SureCure® Additives

Figure 4

Figure 2: Phase changes of 4BS crystal growth during the curing process at 55˚C for both Standard SureCure® and Treated SureCure® Additives

Figure 3

CONFERENCE IN PRINT: HAMMOND GROUP

Figure 4: Standard SureCure® @75˚C

Figure 5: Treated SureCure® 120 @75˚C

plus drying. All three additives have similar crystal conversion rates when cured at 75˚C. These results demonstrate that the high temperature accelerates the crystal conversion (or crystal growth) and suppresses the delay experienced by Treated SureCure® 120. No steam is required which means most curing rooms can be set to properly cure positive plates using Treated SureCure®. Figures 4-6 show the SEM pictures of positive active material from cured plates as produced with addition of Standard SureCure® (Figure 4), Treated SureCure® 120 (Figure 5) and Treated SureCure® 140 (figure 6). Both treatments (120 and 140) did change the way 4BS crystals grow and show different crystal appearance when compared to that seen in the Standard SureCure® additive. Cured and formed active material characteristics from battery production trials Cured plates from the battery production trial were collected after the curing process and analyzed in the Laboratory. Table 1 shows the characterization results of both control and Treated SureCure® 120 cured positive plates from this production trial. The control plate here is the plate with 4BS seed crystals from another source used by the manufacturer. The control material has a higher 4BS reading from XRD, lower BET surface area and slightly higher weight loss in drop testing. Although the control material has a higher XRD reading, it does not ensure stronger cohesion inside the positive active material. These results give evidence to support that Treated SureCure® 120 did indeed change the way that the 4BS crystals formed during curing as seen initially in the laboratory trial. The treatment leads

Figure 6

Table 1. Analysis of cured plates from battery production trial

Figure 6: Treated SureCure® 140 @75˚C

46 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Test

Plate with Typical 4BS crystal seeds

Plate with Treated SureCure® 120

Weight Loss (%) from Drop Test

4.23

3.89

BET – SA (m2/g)

0.74

0.84

Relative Weight (%) of 4BS - XRD

78.8

65.5

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: HAMMOND GROUP

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Plate with Typical 4BS crystal seeds

Plate with Treated SureCure® 120

BET – SA (m2/g)

2.45

6.12

Weight (%) of Lead Sulfate

18.1

4.20

Weight (%) of PbO2

81.1

94.6

Initial Capacity (Ah) @ 75A DCH before Cycle Test

99.4

117.5

Figure 8

Test

Figure 7

Cycle life test Treated SureCure® was developed to increase cycle life performance through improved charging efficiency of the positive plate in conditions when high passive lead sulfate content is present. Both control and test batteries were placed into a constant temperature water bath and tested under the dynamic load profile cycle life procedure recommended by the BCI Deep Cycle and EV Battery Technical Committee. Figure 9 shows the results of this cycling regime on both the control and test (with Treated SureCure® 120) batteries from the production trial. Both sets of batteries received 108% overcharge during cycling and received a full recharge before being capacity checked at a 75A discharge rate. As shown by the testing data, the test batteries delivered much longer cycle life compared to control batteries. Since both batteries used the same negative plates from production, the extended cycle life is attributed to the change in the positive additive materials, specifically Treated SureCure® 120 in this case. Also, this result provides further evidence that Hammond’s treatment to the 4BS crystal seeds will provide additional benefit to overall performance at lower overcharge (108%) conditions.

Table 2. Analysis of formed plates from battery production trial

Figure 7: Positive Formed Material with Treated SureCure®120

Figure 8: Positive Material with other 4BS Seed Crystals

Figure 9

to higher surface area and stronger PAM even though the relative 4BS reading from the XRD measurement is lower. Table 2 shows the results of formed plate characterization and initial battery testing results from test batteries constructed during the production trials. Positive plates with Treated SureCure® 120 demonstrate higher BET surface area, and PbO2 conversion is shown to be more efficient when compared to the control plates. This explains the higher initial performance (capacity) of the battery with plates containing Treated SureCure® 120 as shown in the table. These same samples of positive active material were then imaged using Hammond’s on-site scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipment. From Figures 7 and 8, a clear difference in the micro-crystal structure and ordering of the PAM particles between the samples is observed.

Figure 9: Cycling performance of control and treated SureCure®120 test batteries

Dr. Marvin Ho is Hammond’s CTO and vice president of R&D responsible for the advancement of lead-acid battery electrochemistry through the development of innovative performance additives and lead oxides. He has over 25 years of experience in energy storage technologies such as fuel cells, nickel based and lead-acid battery systems, he has worked with leading research institutes including IEEES at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Trinity College in Ireland.

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 47

UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID

Finance becomes key for battery storage to power the homes of the future Is a post-subsidy UK solar market about to unleash huge opportunities for battery storage? Equally importantly, argue industry players, what potential markets will now come from this? Sara Verbruggen reports.

“Banks couldn’t lend money quick enough once they ‘got’ solar, and that will happen with storage at some point …”

48 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

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UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID Life after subsidies. At one point it was the promised land for the renewables industry. A decade ago, the idea that solar panels could pay for themselves without government incentives was just a dream. But that dream has happened. The feed-in tariff, paid by the government to individual households, ended in March last year. The replacement, the Smart Export Guarantee, introduced this January now requires all the large energy suppliers to pay for the electricity that is generated. In effect it requires all the major utilities to figure out a way to price — and, more importantly deal with — incorporating renewable energy into the grid. The answer, known for at least a decade but until now reckoned uneconomical, is energy storage — and nowadays that means battery storage in sizes hardly imaginable even a few years ago. According to trade body RenewableUK, the UK’s battery storage pipeline reached 10.6GW at the end of 2019. That’s almost double the 2018 figure. With renewables entering the mix in ever increasing size, variable wind and solar generation continuing to be built and baseload generation falling, huge amounts of energy storage will be needed. In its future modelling, the National Grid Electricity System Operator predicts energy storage capacity could reach 40GW-50GW by 2050, to support the UK achieving its carbon net zero target. There’s also the awareness that battery storage is needed in other more immediate ways. The huge power outage and related chaos in August 2019, causing huge swathes of southern England to go without electricity due to the the loss of 1691MW of capacity from the grid from a gas power station and an offshore wind farm, has provoked a rethink of the need for battery storage.

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The National Grid ESO plans to procure more capacity from fast responding assets such as batteries to mitigate shortfalls in supply and stabilize the grid’s frequency. Batteries can respond to outages in sub-seconds as against other forms of generation, which take anywhere from several seconds to a few minutes.

Moving away from subsidies

A rethink of the way that renewable power can feed into the grid is on the cards. One such pioneer, Gridserve, wants to build renewable power stations that integrate as seamlessly into the grid as conventional power generation. “In the subsidy era, all solar developers talked about was internal rates of return and spreadsheets. There was hardly any mention of energy or power,” says Toddington Harper, CEO of Gridserve. Harper, whose late father Brian Harper — a solar and storage pioneer who set up SEC Industrial Battery — says the hybrid solar projects Gridserve is building are akin to critical infrastructure assets. Using photovoltaic panels made from bifacial cells — where cells either side of the panel generate electricity —to achieve highest output, Gridserve’s projects also deploy trackers, spreading and evening out the productivity of solar generation over more hours in the day. The aim is to create a kind of super-optimized solar plant able to increase generation by at least 20%. “The battery is the cherry on the cake,” says Harper. Gridserve has just completed its first hybrid solar-storage plant in York, based on an alternate current coupled design, although DC coupled solutions are in the works at the company. The facility comprises a 34.7MW solar farm, the largest to be completed since 2016, and a 27MW/30MWh lithium ion battery storage system. “The solar-storage facility is designed so that from the grid’s perspective it is one power plant. The solar can send power to the grid, or to the battery if

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 49

UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID there is not enough demand. At night the battery can recharge with power from the grid when prices are lower. The plant can also provide reactive power,” Harper says. It is, the company claims, the first true hybrid solar-plus-storage power plant to be built in the UK. Such projects are the exception, not the rule, even in markets like the US and Australia, where more of them are being built. Gridserve’s latest turnkey project was for Warrington Borough Council, although it will operate the facility on behalf of the council. Revenues come through selling electricity on the open market, supplemented further through the provision of grid services. The business case Gridserve has come up with doesn’t rely on complex revenue stacking, where the asset is

bidding into multiple markets, according to Harper. “When frequency response and the capacity market is available, we’ll take it, but we’re not building a business case around these. We’ve seen the capacity market become a fight to the bottom, propping up fossil fuel generation. Frequency response is tricky too. All you are doing is creating headroom for the grid.” In the past 12 months, Gridserve has built and connected 60MW of solar and storage capacity. “Our pipeline for this year is significantly greater,” Harper says.

From solar, to storage

Anesco is one of a handful of UK developers and operators that has evolved from its roots in solar to operate one of the biggest battery port-

folios in the UK. In the UK the company to date has installed 147MW of battery storage, owning 86MW of this, in addition to owning 10MW of solar. Anesco also provides third party asset management and operations and maintenance services for batteries it has built and sold on. The company’s 16MW Clayhill plant, heralded as the UK’s first subsidy-free solar farm, consists of 10MW of solar and five 1.2MW battery systems on the same site. According to Anesco’s executive chairman Steve Shine, the company is seeing more interest for these co-located projects than it is for standalone storage. While these assets are not integrated in a way that constitutes a hybrid plant, co-locating solar and storage can reduce overall development costs. According to Shine, “Solar and stor-

ROUTES TO MARKET Gore Street Energy Storage Fund is working with a number of aggregators, such as Statkraft and EDF, to find opportunities to optimize batteries. Gore Street Capital chief executive Alex O’Cinneide says: “A while back there was interest in co-locating assets, such as solar and batteries or batteries and gas peaking plants. What you are also seeing now is aggregators using virtual power plant software to provide the solutions to the grid’s issues, while also providing routes to market for battery asset owners.” He says the value chain has grown but has also become more complex. “The first battery we acquired was 6MW and when we underwrote that investment it had a 3.5 year contract for firm frequency response, a 15year capacity market contract and a multi-year triads contract. “Scroll forward from 2016 to 2020 and fast frequency response revenues have declined from £22/ MWh to £9/MWh and contract durations are now month-to-month, triad avoidance [effectively peak demand charges] is phasing out and capacity market revenues are diminishing. “Frequency services are still a good source of revenue, but when you put loads of storage into the market, the price goes down. In the balancing mechanism revenue opportunities are fewer but the pricing is maintained.”

50 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

According to O’Cinneide, opportunities for arbitrage and providing blackstart capability are also being explored by Gore Street as newer opportunities. “What’s interesting from our perspective is to see whether working with the providers of routes to market, which have a larger asset base at their disposal, translates into more revenue opportunities. Are they securing more of the contracts in these markets?”

“The UK has been the most important market in Europe for energy storage. It’s evolving fast.” — Alex O’Cinneide, Gore Street Capital

Gore Street is taking a position in both the energy storage market in the UK and the energy storage market that’s just getting going in the grid of Northern Ireland and Ireland, facilitated by the ‘Delivering a Secure Sustainable Electricity System’ programme known as DS3. (Ireland aims to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.) “The UK has been the most important market in Europe for energy storage. It’s really evolving fast. The National Grid has managed to lower prices for frequency contracts,” says O’Cinneide. “It’s a more liquid market than a few years ago. Contracts are shorter but there are more of them and the availability of different markets and revenue streams is characterized by new ones emerging.” “The DS3 opportunity, while smaller, is important to us. Contracts have a fixed government-backed tariff for six years and their value is four times the value of those in the UK. Overall our portfolio of energy storage systems span revenues coming from long-term, medium and shorter term contracts. In Great Britain, returns are about 10%, which is good for an infrastructure asset in an OECD country.” Of its 189MW battery portfolio, Gore Street owns two 50MW projects in Northern Ireland and two 30MW projects in the Republic of Ireland, which will all derive revenues from DS3.

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UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID

“Solar and storage provides a good natural hedge for investors, because you can hedge between the low productivity of the solar plant and vice versa.” — Steve Shine, Anesco

Last year Anesco signed a deal with EDF Energy, in partnership with technology provider Upside Energy, to optimize the 16MW Clayhill solar and battery assets, with EDF Energy offering Anesco a guaranteed floor price for revenues from the batteries.

A LIVELY PIPELINE Statistics by the UK Renewable Energy Planning Database show that the total capacity of solar, onshore wind and offshore wind as well as energy storage projects across England, Scotland and Wales, which are yet to be built, stands at just under 25GW. Delving further into this pipeline, renewables analysis firm Cornwall Insight found that just over 15GW of this capacity are classed as ‘awaiting construction’. Subsidy phase-out and political uncertainty are factors that are dampening investors’ confidence to press on with building projects,

52 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

according to Cornwall, which also foresees 2020 as the year when alternative subsidy-free business models and routes to market will start to emerge. As Anesco’s executive chairman Steve Shine points out, co-located solar-storage projects are seeing more demand than before. The Bumpers project sold to Gresham House is one of several examples where solar sites are being developed with the potential to add storage. European developer Voltalia is developing a 40MW solar farm in Dorset, which includes the potential for adding batteries.

age provides a good natural hedge for investors, because you can hedge between the low productivity of the solar plant and vice versa.” In January 2020 Anesco sold a 12MW solar project in the Chilterns called the Bumpers to Gresham House, which invests in renewables, batteries and other sustainable assets, through its funds. The Bumpers solar farm, which was due online in March, is ready to take a battery of up to 4MW at a later date, as it is near a substation. The added battery could boost the site’s revenues by capturing energy during low demand periods and selling it when demand and wholesale prices are higher. Steve Shine says Anesco’s revenues have continued to climb this past year, but creating profits in energy storage is still hard work. Last year the company signed a deal with EDF Energy, in partnership with technology provider Upside Energy, to optimize the 16MW Clayhill solar and battery assets, with EDF Energy offering Anesco a guaranteed floor price for revenues from the batteries. “Some investors only see the engineering, procurement and construction and the capital expenditure costs and have yet to grasp the real opportunities around the running cost of the asset versus capex — even though we are very competitive on EPC,” says Shine. Shine says Anesco is on track to start building a larger solar-storage project some time in 2020. “Our focus has turned to getting projects in our pipeline shovel-ready and we’re looking to sell them. With investors it is a big hand-holding exercise. In the early years of solar it took a while for people to understand it. Solar is quite easy now. People understand the revenue opportunities. “With batteries it is more complicated in terms of what you do with it, the impact on battery degradation depending on how they are charged and discharged, as well as market restrictions and the like.” Shine says some investment banks, such as Investec and Lombard, understand that if asset owners can trade their batteries in short-term day-ahead or week-ahead markets, returns are higher compared with power purchase agreements. PPAs provide security in terms of a longterm contract, though the lower returns reflect the risk shouldered by the offtaker. “Banks couldn’t lend money quick enough once they ‘got’ solar, and that

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UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID will happen with storage at some point,” says Shine. Some of the owners of the first batteries installed, which made good money in the fast frequency response market, are seeing those contracts come to an end. According to Shine, they are having to get their heads around earning revenues from various streams — such as frequency services, balancing mechanisms and arbitrage. “They’ll catch up, but they don’t understand it well enough yet. The internal rate of return from our assets is better than anyone else’s at the moment. When they do, we’ll have moved on to a new area.”

Hunting out the opportunities

To make the most of the revenue opportunities available, energy storage system owners and operators can partner aggregators. These are energy market players that use their own specialized software to hunt out oppor-

“We are transitioning to shorter term contracts, month by month, weekly and, ultimately, day ahead. As a start-up before we wouldn’t have been able to guarantee revenues but with a company like Engie as a major shareholder, which has a deep balance sheet, we can offer a guaranteed floor price” —Simon Williamson, Kiwi Power 54 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

tunities to bid for capacity from the aggregated capacity of the batteries and other assets they have available. Anesco was one of the first storage asset owners to partner an aggregator, Limejump, in April 2017. Last year it partnered EDF Energy for Clayhill. “We work with Flexitricity as well. We can see what the aggregators are doing and what others are doing because of the transparency of the markets,” Shine says. In addition to Clayhill, EDF is optimizing another two storage sites for Anesco. “We don’t just let aggregators get on with it. We review all aspects. How the battery is charged and discharged affects degradation. We are an intelligent buyer of their services,” Shine says. As well as trading power in the wholesale market, grid batteries can plump up their revenues by correcting imbalances in the system. The trick is to optimize those revenue opportunities without wearing out the battery within its operational lifetime. Storage asset owners and investors want to know how aggregators can help them optimize their assets and remove some of the risks, says Kiwi Power’s commercial manager Simon Williamson. “Frequency response contracts used to be for two years. Now you’re telling investors what the battery’s revenue generation is going to look like a month beforehand. Not all investors are comfortable with such short-term contracts,” he says. There are positive signs that the National Grid will provide more volumes of fast frequency-type services. Before October 2019 average prices were £6/ MWh ($8/MWh). Since October one asset secured £60/MWh, a 10-fold increase. “We are able to bid in prices, which are not low, but go higher like £18 a MWh or £20 a MWh,” according to Williamson. “Following the August 9 black out last year, one upshot is the National Grid will seek to procure more fast response, as a relatively low-cost way to secure more capacity to avoid blackouts,” he says. The jury is out on the balancing mechanism. During a storage conference by RenewableUK, National Grid told delegates it was working on changes that would help battery storage in securing more contracts. “While the balancing mechanism does accept batteries there is a tendency to

We’ve seen the capacity market become a fight to the bottom, propping up fossil fuel generation. Frequency response is tricky too. All you are doing is creating headroom for the grid.” — Toddington Harper, Gridserve procure from larger providers of capacity,” says Williamson. “It is a market that holds promise. It is transparent so you can see what is happening and who is winning contracts. However, at the moment we are choosing not to — the risk of not being dispatched is too high compared with the reward if you are.” Foresight Group senior operations manager Jack Steven says they are moving away from the Balancing Mechanism — one of the tools used by the National Grid to balance electricity supply and demand in real time — in favour of the improved liquidity of the wholesale market. Responding to investors’ concerns about their assets’ ability to earn, some aggregators are offering guaranteed revenues for grid batteries, including Kiwi Power. “We are transitioning to shorter term contracts, month by month, weekly and, ultimately, day ahead,” says Williamson. “As a start-up before we wouldn’t have been able to guarantee revenues but with a company like Engie as a major shareholder, which has a deep balance sheet, we can offer a guaranteed floor price.” Other strategies Kiwi can offer

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UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID clients include option pricing, which enables some capacity to generate bankable revenues, guaranteed for an assigned capacity. One opportunity for the future Williamson is researching at Kiwi is a service that involves providing smaller energy suppliers with capacity if they need it. “If they need an additional 30MW in a winter peak, they pay us in advance to have that if they need it, like an insurance. Traditionally they would have to buy this from the larger generators, an expensive way to purchase that capacity. Battery owners would receive an income for being able to provide capacity. It’s conceptual at this stage.”

Preparing for the future

British solar developer Hive Energy is in the late stages of pre-construction development of a 40MW solar plant.

The plant, in Romsey, Hampshire, is a potential blueprint for how solar plants can be profitable, post-subsidy. Planning permission was granted in 2017, and more recently the company has been negotiating and finalizing its financing and income. There are also plans for an up to 5MW lithium ion battery co-located nearby. The battery will also provide Hive with valuable learning in relation to monetizing energy storage. In both cases, Hive Energy’s operations director Hugh Brennan says the solar installation and the battery need a secure, long-term income. The company is negotiating with an intermediary for a sleeved power purchase agreement with a customer in the retail sector, which would be the offtaker for between 60%-70% of the solar farm’s output. In a sleeved PPA, an intermediary utility company handles the transfer

“From our investigations of this market, the revenue streams for in-front-of-meter batteries in the UK change almost on an annual basis. There are too many information gaps and variables.” — Hugh Brennan, Hive Energy

UK BATTERY GROWTH POTENTIAL 10.6GW — total cumulative capacity of battery storage planning applications as of December 2019.

Up from 6.9GW in 2018 Increasing from just 2MW of applications in 2012

Source: Renewable UK.

56 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

of money and energy to and from a renewable energy project on behalf of the buyer. The intermediary utility takes the energy directly from the project and “sleeves” it to the buyer at its point of intake, for a fee. If the purchased renewable energy isn’t enough to meet the buyer’s energy needs, the utility is also responsible for supplying the additional power required. Separately Hive Energy has been in talks with trading houses and aggregators, such as Kiwi Power, which are able to offer a guaranteed floor price for battery revenue. “From our investigations of this market, the revenue streams for in-frontof-meter batteries in the UK change almost on an annual basis. There are too many information gaps and variables. “You are left trying to future guess what the market will be. We want to be able to have a multi-year base price. “Otherwise you are paying £400,000 ($516,000) per MW for something where the risk of it becoming a stranded asset is quite high,” says Brennan. “In the case of the corporate solar PPA and having a guaranteed floor price for the battery, both are ways of hedging. In such cases the price is not great but it is fixed for the long term. You don’t want to gamble all 100% of your investment, but nor do you want to lock in all of it. “We see one of the risks with batteries is that you are more vulnerable to someone next door doing the same thing, as they are comparatively straightforward to get permission for and develop versus solar.” Brennan sees a clear need in the market for aggregators. They are, he says, helping to get battery projects off the ground as they find opportunities in a market that is undergoing change and can guarantee minimum revenue. Hive Energy is also developing — at least by UK standards — a ‘mega’ solar farm in Kent that will be 350MW in capacity. Slated to begin operation in late 2021 or early 2022, there is also the potential to co-locate a 50MW battery at a later date. “We’ve been interested in storage for several years and it feels like batteries and solar go hand-in-hand. But then you get down to the finer details, for example, doing a hybrid solarplus-battery project in the UK where the solar is charging the battery doesn’t make sense as there isn’t a case for time-shifting yet.”

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UK RENEWABLES AND THE GRID

Shaping the frontier of the new energy landscape Aggregators have grown out of energy technology start-ups, specializing in finding revenue opportunities for grid batteries and other assets, optimizing them as a service, while the energy market continues to shift away from long-term contracts to shorter monthly, weekly and daily markets. Gresham House Energy Storage fund, part of Gresham House Asset Management, is trying out different partners that offer these types of services. It has contracted Habitat Energy to optimize 74MW of battery capacity out of its 174MW portfolio. The 74MW Habitat will seek to monetize consists of three battery sites, the largest being the 49MW Red Scar installation, which was grid connected in December 2019. Aggregators typically buy and sell power in the day ahead, intraday and balancing markets and supplement income from these with other revenue streams, including embedded benefits and ancillary services contracts with National Grid ESO, such as fast frequency response. But it’s not simply letting aggregators parse the battery’s capacity into every available opportunity that comes along. Optimizing revenues to maximize returns comes at the cost of battery degradation. Gore Street Capital chief executive Alex O’Cinneide says: “You have a battery and you know that in three years’ time you want it to have a certain value. Within that envelope you want the battery’s revenue to be optimized through frequency response, balancing mechanism, arbitrage and other streams, for example, and you draw up a commercial agreement with the provider of those routes to market.”

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“Our approach is asset management, not simply operations and maintenance. “Batteries are simple assets, used in complex ways. We’ve invested in monitoring above and beyond what the battery management system does” — Steve Shine, Anesco Kiwi Power has been optimizing Gresham House’s 15MW Lockleaze battery near Bristol, part of Kiwi’s 80MW portfolio of energy storage assets. Alongside participating in the balancing mechanism, Kiwi Power will optimize the asset against other revenue streams, including ancillary services, automatically dispatching the asset in real-time, while evaluating the degradation cost of each market action. Kiwi Power’s Simon Williamson says: “Gresham House is an example of a new breed of investor in this space. They have invested in this sector, they have their own people. They are very sharp. You can bring the most pointed analysis and they understand it. They have a strategy and understand how to optimize.” As the revenue opportunities and streams continue to change it is having an impact on batteries. Previously when revenues mainly came from frequency response-type services such as enhanced frequency response and fast frequency response, batteries would hover around 50% state of charge, making small dispatches. Trading requires the batteries to have deeper depths of discharge. “The changing market model will make it more complex for batteries. If you are trading, how deep you dis-

charge the battery is really important. We perform our own analysis of the battery’s state of health, looking at depth and rate of discharge that helps us better understand degradation, as part of an asset management function within Kiwi Power,” Williamson says. Anesco’s executive chairman Shine says despite the academic interest and studies related to battery and cell degradation, nothing beats real-life data. “When you have cells within cassettes, with racks, within cabins, as part of a system, they behave, react and deteriorate differently in ways that cannot necessarily be predicted. “One aggregator says it will use batteries 2.8 times a day. But the wear and tear isn’t a constant line of degradation. If you push them too hard you start to get a hockey stick curve of degradation.” He says Anesco’s approach is asset management, not simply operations and maintenance. “Batteries are simple assets, used in complex ways. We’ve invested in monitoring above and beyond what the battery management system does. We have our own technicians to do maintenance work. In the case of BYD, one of our Chinese battery suppliers, we do their warranty work too. Our batteries are running at 99.4% availability, which is high.”

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INTERVIEW: BOB GUYTON, ENCELL One of the earliest battery chemistries — the pairing of nickel and iron — is making a resurgence as the new energy storage medium for the future. Wyn Jenkins reports.

Nickel iron batteries find another lease of life The lawyers always win in the end. Or at least those with the clients with the deepest pockets. Just over 120 years ago, a fierce legal battle was raging across the Atlantic over the intellectual property for the the newly invented nickel-iron battery. In one corner was Swedish inventor Waldemar Jungner, a solitary figure who created the nickel cadmium battery and then patented a cheaper form of it in 1899, using iron instead of cadmium. Meanwhile in the US, Thomas Edison, arguably America’s greatest inventor, filed a patent in 1901 and several more in the years that followed. His lawyers argued that his patent made better sense than Jungner’s. And with the weight of his corporation’s legal team and some of the deepest pockets around, he managed to push Jungner’s claim to one side. For the next 70 years nickel-iron batteries were made — and profitably so — by the Edison Storage Battery Company. The batteries had a variety of uses, from stationary power to forklift trucks to railway signalling. The firm was sold to Exide in 1972 and the line was discontinued in 1975. But the chemistry has not disappeared from sight. Various international firms — probably the most notable being Saft, now a subsidiary of oil firm Total — manufacture NiFe batteries. Chinese firms continue to make them too. Nevertheless despite their long history this is a battery chemistry broadly side-lined from general use. But now the thrust is on to push it to being a mainstream product again. And if the founders of Encell Technology, a specialist energy storage firm set up in 2009 to manufacture NiFe batteries with a proprietary technology, have their way, this could be sooner rather than later. The founder, chairman and chief business officer of Encell, Robert Guyton, has a relatively unusual pedigree

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for the founder of a battery start-up. Rather than a background in battery chemistry or any aspect of the battery industry for that matter, he is a serial entrepreneur who has worked in several venture capital funds and launched and sold several successful ventures. These include Inktomi Corporation, a provider of software for internet service providers, which went public in 1998 and was later acquired by Yahoo. He also helped develop two other successful companies, Convergent Resources and Harbor Payments, and served as chief executive of venture capital fund Monarch Capital. So, when an entrepreneur with such varied experience eyes an opportunity

“After examining all the battery chemistries, we became increasingly interested in the pairing of nickel and iron and the unique properties and performance this pairing delivered”

in batteries, it is with an element of calculation — an understanding of a need or problem, and a technology that can solve that problem. In this case, some 10 years ago, Guyton noted that there was a myriad of renewable energies being developed. But for these to truly fulfil their potential, affordable energy storage would be required. “That was the key driver for forming the company,” he says. “Around the planet, we continue to add new sources of renewable energy but if we are to maintain the quality of power that we have come to expect, some sort of affordable storage was the only solution — and closer to where people are using it; to the clusters of electricity. “To manage the unpredictability of mother nature, to create stable voltage and frequency transmission, to control those variables, we would need a lot of energy storage.” He says while that much was clear, the next question was what kind of technology and chemistry was best suited to solving that problem. He said the three priorities for this, as he saw them, was something that was long-lasting, affordable, and safe. “While being aware that users of technology are typically attracted to smaller and lighter solutions we concluded that for stationary energy storage solutions it was not as important as safety and total cost of ownership. “After examining all the battery chemistries, we became increasingly interested in the pairing of nickel and iron and the unique properties and performance this pairing delivered,” he says. “We felt it was very well matched to the broad needs of the energy storage and distribution world.” The elephant in the room in this statement is lithium-ion, the battery chemistry that is increasingly dominating many aspects of the industry including large-scale energy storage.

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INTERVIEW: BOB GUYTON, ENCELL Guyton admits that the widespread adoption of lithium-ion is one of the biggest challenges Encell faces as a company. “There are some fundamental problems with lithium — the biggest is that, for the most part, it is not safe,” he says. “Lithium’s popularity grew due to its advantageous energy density, which is very well suited to applications requiring a smaller lighter battery such as consumer electronics and electric cars. “The critical battery requirements for these types of applications have very little in common with those needed for stationary energy storage applications. However, so much money has been invested in it and so many companies have a vested interest in it, it is difficult to get people to open their minds to a different solution. “But we are solving a very different problem and nickel-iron batteries have solid advantages for large-scale energy storage.” Encell’s nickel iron batteries are based on its proprietary Fused Iron technology. The starting point for the technology is the traditional nickel iron batteries, which have always been known for their long cycle life, abuse tolerance and safety. In this part of the business, Guyton’s entrepreneurial flair and experience in venture capital is complemented by the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer Randy Ogg, who has a robust background in managing battery design, manufacturing and quality control. Ogg has been responsible for driving the company’s R&D forward since it was founded in 2009. Over the past decade, Ogg has redesigned the NiFe battery and improved the chemistry’s performance. The battery now has an even longer cycle life, much better efficiency, higher rate capability, and significantly lower production costs. These advances have resulted in 113 US and foreign patents pending, and 25 US and 10 foreign patents issued. The company claims its NiFe batteries’ long cycle life, low upfront costs and the abundant availability of raw materials results in the lowest cost of storage available today. It manufactures both the positive (anode) and negative (cathode) electrodes at its headquarters in Alachua, Florida, just outside the city of Gainesville. Florida has traditionally been the global centre of the nickel battery industry and Encell has many experts

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Encell claims its battery system reduces initial capital investment and total cost of ownership so substantially that alternative or renewable energy projects can now be competitive with traditional forms of power generation ENCELL: BATTERY SPECIFICATION • 15,000 cycles at 80% DoD cycles at 20°C.

• No capacity fade for first 75% of cycle life.

• LCOE less than $0.05 per kWh/ cycle because of the long-life cycle of Encell’s NiFe battery coupled with low O&M costs.

• Standard four-year warranty. We provide up to 10-year warranty for certain markets, as in the case of the German market.

• Battery is suitable for both power and energy applications.

• Encell’s NiFe battery is environmentally safe and much safer than are other battery technologies because it: - Contains no toxic metals like lead-acid or cadmium batteries.

• The optimum charge current and discharge current is C/5 for a standard NiFe cell. • The battery is capable of a fast charge and fast discharge rates of up to 6°C and 10°C with special connectors and tabs. • Does not require a BMS. The NiFe cells are self-balancing. • Safe. No thermal runaway. • Does not require climate conditioning / AC. • Operating temperature range from –30°C up to 80°C. It can operate at temperatures as low as -40°C with special additives.

- Contains no flammable electrolyte like lithium-ion batteries. - Produces no toxic metal fumes that might result from accidental burning of cells such as fluorine gas which are produced in lithium-ion, leadacid or cadmium batteries. - Produces no toxic metal contamination is case of cell destruction and leaching. Source: Encell Technologies

NIFE BATTERIES — THE BASICS Advantages • Very robust.

Shortcomings • Low cell voltage.

• Withstands overcharge and overdischarge.

• Very heavy and bulky.

• Accepts high depth of discharge — deep cycling. • Can remain discharged for long periods without damage, whereas a lead-acid battery needs to be stored in a charged state. • The ability of this system to survive frequent cycling is due to the low solubility of the reactants in the electrolyte KOH. • Lifetime of 30 years possible. Source: Electropaedia

• The low reactivity of the active components limits the high rate performance of the cells. The cells take a charge slowly, and give it up slowly. • Low coulombic efficiency, typically less than 65%. • Steep voltage drop off with state of charge. • Low energy density. • High self-discharge rate. • More pronounced hydrogen gassing than nickel-cadmium batteries.

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INTERVIEW: BOB GUYTON, ENCELL in the different nickel chemistries including NiCad, NiMH, NiFe, and others. Chris Bieck, vice president of international business development for the firm, says its battery is the most durable and longest cycling battery around. It provides more than 15,000 full 80% DoD cycles; it is also safe, not containing any flammable material or explosive electrolyte, unlike lithium-ion; it is manufactured using plentiful and inexpensive environmentally friendly materials; it is also simple and safe to recycle — again unlike lithium-ion. Bieck also outlines some of its other highlights, which include its wide temperature operating range of -30°C to 80°C, the fact that no battery management system is required, it is resistant to electrical abuse such as extreme overcharge, discharges, short-circuiting, and it has no capacity fade for the first 75% of cycle life. All these points set it apart from both lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries, Bieck says. Its target markets include residential, commercial and EES power applications. Bieck says Encell primarily focuses on these target market segments due to the higher margins and shorter sales cycles. In contrast, large scale ESS projects for Independent Power Providers and utility companies have very long and complex sales cycles. These types of projects also tend to have lower margins and often come with long-term liability exposures. Probably the most important measure for Encell is that it claims to provide the lowest cost of storage available on the market today.

Bieck claims it is now up to 95% less expensive than comparable lead-acid based batteries and 200% cheaper than lithium ones. He says the technology addresses the energy inefficiencies inherent in today’s available power storage systems, resulting in the most cost effective (cost/kWh) storage available. “The Encell battery system reduces initial capital investment and total cost of ownership so substantially that alternative or renewable energy projects can now be competitive with traditional forms of power generation,” he says. The company is already making these batteries at its headquarters, but its capacity is limited. The next stage in its journey should be made possible by its next funding round. It is seeking growth capital from investors to increase the capacity of its manufacturing early this year while also finding partners around the world able to assemble its products. Finally, it will invest in more marketing and sales to sell the product. Guyton says the key to the company’s success will be educating the market and getting them to accept there is a better and more robust alternative to lithium-ion. He says traction is growing in some key markets including Germany and parts of the US, where concerns are mounting over the safety of lithium within residential developments while the long cycle life of nickel iron is growing. “We are starting to see a lot more interest from both the home and behind the meter markets. We see huge potential in pairing our batteries with solar while commercial and industrial

Randy Ogg, CTO, has redesigned the NiFe battery and improved the chemistry’s performance. The battery has an even longer cycle life, he says, much better efficiency, higher rate capability, and significantly lower production costs

clients can use this as part of a system to help reduce their electricity costs and carbon footprint. Meanwhile, this also offered a very compelling business case for utility companies. “We think that in a few years, we will be seen as a significant player in the growing grid and storage market and a viable, strong alternative to lithium ion for stationary applications. “What is more, we are only on the first generation of this technology. We clearly see a pathway to improving our capacity and getting much closer to lithium in terms of energy density in watt hours — our battery will only get better in the future.”

Temperature in Cycle Life for 80% Degrees Centigrade Depth of Discharge

1600

2400

3300

4400

6000

8100

11000

15000

20,000

27000

36000

50000

Encell Technology, Inc. NiFe Battery Cycle Life vs. Temperature at 80% DoD Graph

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY

The trailblazers As the world economy lurches forward into a less certain future caused by the corunavirus pandemic, perhaps this is the time to reflect on the great figures that shaped the lead battery business in the past. Some of these great industry figures achieved great wealth and respect, others appear to have been shadows in the long line of history, known only by the cognoscenti in the lead battery business but virtually unknown to the rest of the world.

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It is worth noting that many of these protagonists lived through some of the most difficult of times. Planté for instance may have created the modern lead battery in happier times but much of his future lay in the shadow of the FrancoPrussian war and the year long siege of Paris. Otto Jache and Ernst Voss grew up in the rise of fascism and the crushing defeat of Germany in 1945. Detcho Pavlov grew up in a country that was dominated by an unofficial rule by the Soviet Union — part of his success as a great academic was

turning the system to the lead battery’s best ends. Indeed the innovations of John Devitt and Jeanne Burbank took place in the context of the Cold War between Russia and America that persisted through to the 1970s. In these also difficult times, with a very real threat coming from lithium batteries, the industry is being pressured to come out with something new. There are many signs that great change is on the way. We hope these pages go some way to show that ours is an industry that can the lead the way. In dark times and better ones.

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — GASTON PLANTÉ Gaston Planté, inventor of the rechargeable lead acid battery and creator of a vast worldwide industry, is largely unknown outside of the business. His achievements were spectacular but he died before seeing his creation become the lifeblood of modern transportation.

Father of the battery industry France, 1855. The world of palaeontology is talking about an extraordinary find made of the fossil of a great flightless bird in a clay pit at Meudon, near Paris, France. Its finder is a 21-year-old assistant physics lecturer at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers by the name of Gaston Planté. He is described as “a studious man of zeal”. Impressed, the revered French Academy of Sciences decides to name the fossil after the young man Gastornis parisiensis — or “Gaston’s bird.” But for Raymond-Louis-Gaston Planté his fame was just about to begin. Within five years he had astonished the world and changed the course of human history by the discovery of the first rechargeable battery. His family came from Orthez in the Pyrenées Atlantiques. One of three gifted brothers, they all benefited from the wealth and love of learning emanating from their scholarly father, Pierre Planté. Keen to make his sons succeed, in 1841 he moved the family up to Paris. His brothers too found fame. Francis, a child prodigy pianist later known as the “God of the piano”, was still performing aged 91, and Léopold became one of the country’s most eminent barristers. Gaston’s academic excellence shone from an early age. He obtained his doctorate of philosophy in 1850, aged only 16, and his doctorate of sciences in 1853, aged 19. He continued his brilliant academic career at the Sorbonne University, to the point where Morin, then directorgeneral of the Conservatoire National des Arts and Metiers, named him laboratory assistant in physics under Edmond Becquerel — the man who some 12 years before, in 1839, had discovered the photovoltaic effect, the physics behind the solar cell. At the Conservatoire, the young man studied electricity and voltaic polarisation, a learned paper about which he delivered to the Academy of Sciences in 1859, the first of a succession.

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Planté: never took financial advantage from his discoveries and gave enormous riches to the poor

Success

His breakthrough came the following year when Planté announced that he had produced “a secondary battery of great power” — one which could be recharged. It was the first in the world. His 1859 model consisted of a spiral roll of two sheets of pure lead separated by a linen cloth, immersed in a glass jar of sulphuric acid solution. The one he presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1860 was a nine-cell leadacid battery. Such an invention obtained for the 26-year-old, the post of professor of physics at the Polytechnic Association for the Development of Popular Instruction. Planté pushed on with his researches concerning electrolytic deposits in the laboratories of the Maison Christofle to which he belonged for some years, first in his capacity as electro-chemist, then as administrator. Further marks of respect for this young physicist came with his being appointed deputy for the inspector general in the French section at the London Universal Exhibition of 1862, Jury Member at the International Exhibition in Bayonne in 1864, and Member of the Admission Committee

and of the Reunion of Offices of the 10th Group at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867 Into the 1870s, Planté was placing his rechargeable lead-acid battery inside protective boxes and was supervising its adaptation for a whole field of applications — the widest and most unexpected. It was used in medicine to power galvanocaustic, laryngoscopic and other devices aimed at therapeutic treatment. Gustave Trouvé worked with him in developing his polyscope where, instead of a light bulb, there was a fine piece of platinum transformed from red to white and placed inside a little reflector. Planté’s battery powered miners’ electric lamps and the electric brakes of steam trains. It was used for the production of signals at sea or on the coasts. It powered electric motors, electric candlesticks, electric bells, arc lighting, luminous signals and much more. This in itself would again have been enough to make the name of Gaston Planté enter into the history books. As a geologist he continued to search, finding some remarkable plant fossils in the Paris basin, which he gave freely to the Natural History Museum.

Industrial electricity

In 1873 Planté adapted Gramme’s machine for re-charging his batteries. The two inventors had met at the Breguet Company who wanted to electrify their machinery. In 1873, at the Vienna Exposition, Planté exhibited a steam engine linked to a pump over 2km away by the intermediary of two electrical machines, one acting at the start as generator, one at the other end as receiver. This was the beginning of industrial electricity… He also began to investigate the differences between static electricity and dynamic electricity (ie that from batteries). In October 1877 he presented to the Academy of Sciences his “rheostat machine” enabling the “transforming a given quantity of electrical energy

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — GASTON PLANTÉ

Planté’s demonstration of the rheostat machine to Don Pedro II resulted in the Order of the Rose of Brazil

ready to supply the current in a quantity of corresponding electrical effects in static form.” Planté’s Rheostat Machine used a bank of mica capacitors, a clever rotating commutator and a series of contacts to charge alternately a bank of capacitors in parallel (from a high voltage battery source), and then connect the capacitors in series. This arrangement multiplied the battery voltage by the number of capacitor stages to obtain very high voltages. By rapidly rotating the shaft, a series of high voltage sparks many centimetres long could be generated rapidly. At the time the effects he created, using multiples of his accumulators coupled to his rheostatic machine, were nothing short of impressive, supplying in the first instants of their discharge an electromotive force from 2,000 to 4,000 volts! As if this were not enough, the large model of the machine had 80 condensers supplied by a battery of 1,600 volts, from which the tension obtained was close to 100,000 volts! Planté’s apartment, N°56 rue Tournelles, close to the Place des Vosges, was not merely a laboratory, but a place of constant visitors. One such visitor was Don Pedro II d’Alcantara, emperor of Brazil. Already his reign had seen the beginnings of industrialization, the first paved roads, the first steam-engine railway and a submarine telegraphy cable. Indeed, Don Pedro was the first Brazilian to enjoy the use of the newfangled telephone, as supplied by Alexander Graham Bell. Planté’s demonstration of the rheostat machine to Don Pedro resulted in his receiving the Order of the Rose of Brazil and financial patronage. In return he dedicated his book “Researches into Electricity.” presented to the Academy of Sciences in February 1879, to the emperor as a “feeble witness of my profound thanks ... you were the first to encourage my work”. With the industrial applications of

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his battery and his rheostat machine, Gaston Planté could have made a fortune, but for him it was only a source of work. He never took financial advantage from his discoveries and only took from his income what he needed. He gave away the whole of his Lacaze Prize of 10,000 francs, which he had been awarded by the Academy of Sciences. His generosity stretched as far as selling his great Ampère medal, in gold, which he considered as unproductive capital, so as to give the sum to the poor. In 1880, Planté’s father, with whom he had been living, died. In the nine years which followed, the inventorturned-scientist now directed his brilliant questioning mind towards nature and investigated globular lightning (see picture on first page), hailstorms, waterspouts, cyclones, polar auroras — hitherto mysteries that had eluded scientists. He worked hard to reproduce nature’s effects in miniature using high tension electricity. The results were awesome! Tesla-like before Tesla. Witnesses saw the globe of fire of lightning moving around in a bowl, the varied fires of the polar auroras, water drops, the generation of hail pulverised by electrical discharges, and the forma-

Planté was able to create an electric discharge as high as 100,000 volts

tion of waterspouts and cyclones. Relying on astronomical observations, and still with his rheostat machine, he studied solar spots, the nature of spiral nebulae, even the electrical constitution of the sun itself. He advanced theories about them often very close to those that physicists elaborated later, armed with all today’s knowledge.

Quaero, Pater, non affirmo

Publishing his findings in a second book, “Electrical Phenomena of the Atmosphere”, he summed up his approach in a quotation from Saint Augustine “Quaero, Pater, non affirmo” (=“I question, I do not affirm”). Planté was awarded France’s highest honour, Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in April 1881, being made an Officer four years’ later But inventions, without knowing the side effects, can take their toll on their inventor. Planté was working on terrestrial magnetism when in April 1889 a weakening of his sight, caused by the brilliant discharges of his batteries of accumulators, made him fear blindness. He began to learn Braille. On May 21 while in his garden at Bellevue sous Meudon he died suddenly. He was only 55 years old. Planté had bequeathed his property at Bellevue to the Humanitarian Society of the Friends of Science, to be converted into a retirement home for impoverished scientists, and to set up a biennial monetary prize with the Academy of Sciences to be awarded to the author of a discovery in electricity. In 1989, on the centenary of his death, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences established the Gaston Planté Medal, which is awarded every few years to scientists who have made significant contributions to the development of lead-acid battery technology. The first recipient was Ernst Voss from Varta Batterie, Germany.

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 65

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — GEORGES LECLANCHÉ Georges Leclanché, the 19th century scientist and inventor is largely forgotten outside of France. But a billion flashlights across the world wouldn’t be shining without his invention.

An early pioneer of a new and exciting battery chemistry So much in so little time. Georges Leclanché, creator of the dry cell battery, was only 43 when he died. Yet his legacy — found in the multi-billions of flashlight-style batteries scattered in homes across the world — has been global in impact. Leclanché lived through a turbulent and desperate time for his native France — years of revolutions, anarchy, war and occupation. Twice during his life his family were political refugees forced to flee from their homes. Leclanché was born in 1839 at Parmain to the north of Paris. His father, Léopold Leclanché, a prominent lawyer and a collaborator of the political revolutionary Ledru Rollin was forced to flee the country in June 1849. A peaceful protest against the first president of the republic, the newly elected Louis-Napoléon, turned nasty. His enemies called it armed insurrection. Three years later Louis-Napoléon staged a coup d’état, re-added Bonaparte to his name and became king of France and better known as Napoléon III. So, at the age of nine, Georges Leclanché left his native France for the then calmer shores of England. His first interest in electricity and batteries were thus stimulated by the enormous impact Michael Faraday, the inventor of the electric dynamo and much more, had on the wave of interest in science that swept across Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. It was only in 1856 that it was considered safe enough for the 17-yearold Leclanché to return to France; he studied metallurgy at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, graduating four years later as a qualified engineer. His first job was a crucial one for the eventual development of his battery. Working for the train company, Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l’Est, his job was to develop the rudimentary electrical systems used for signalling the length of the 500km line to Strasbourg. The problem for signalling in

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Leclanché died in September 1882. He was just 43 little knowing he had revolutionized the world. the formative days of the railways was more than just the ability to communicate in the early days of Morse code — it was creating the infrastructure needed to transmit signals. So it was here that Leclanché started his research into batteries. Battery technology had come some way from Luigi Galvani’s discovery around 1783, the so-called ‘frog leg experiment’— from Galvani’s belief in a form of animal electricity, to the search for a ‘galvanic cell’ based on chemical reactions. Leclanché’s first experiments looked at exploiting the oxidation properties of copper carbonate.

Yet more trouble

Leclanché’s research was interrupted by yet more political trouble in France. In 1863 a crisis emerged when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s Second Empire came under threat from legislative elections that threatened to

limit his powers. Troops went on the streets. For the second time in his life he went into exile. This time to Brussels, where he lived close to Victor Hugo, the French playwright and family. The exile was to last a further seven years until the end of the Second Empire. Working in his shed, he continued to experiment and improve on his designs, moving from a battery using copper carbonate (which he patented in 1866), to one using manganese, which went on to be shown in 1867 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where it was awarded a bronze medal. Until Leclanché, most batteries had been based on Alessandro Volta’s 1800 design. The most popular in Leclanché’s time was Planté’s lead acid battery. In 1860 this had been demonstrated using long foil strips, which were wound spirally with intermediate layers of cloth, then immersed in a solution of 10% sulphuric acid. This was capable of high power, but also heavy, and the chemicals dangerous. Leclanché’s cell, called a “dry cell”, replaced Planté’s lead with zinc and a carbon-manganese dioxide mixture. He also replaced the sulphuric acid with much less toxic ammonium chloride. This meant the cell was lighter; its safety and lightness was considered perfect for use in signalling, requiring occasional short-burst use and little maintenance. Leclanché’s first battery wasn’t the sealed flashlight-style unit we think of today. Instead, open-topped glass jars, about 20cm high, were used to contain the various chemicals. The first batteries kept the elements separate using a porous pot, allowing the liquid electrolyte to pass through it. In 1871, the manganese dioxide/carbon mixture was moulded into two blocks, held in place around the 4mm5mm carbon plate by rubber bands. In a later development, the porous pot was replaced by a canvas container, and the zinc rod changed to a cylinder

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — GEORGES LECLANCHÉ

THE LECLANCHÉ BATTERY SUCCESS STORY It certainly had drawbacks — it wasn’t rechargeable, it had a lower energy density than other battery designs, it didn’t perform well in temperatures below freezing point, and it could have a tendency to leakage. But it was cheap. It became the first practical commercial battery product. The Leclanché battery became hugely popular for a wide range of domestic uses, due to the low cost of manufacture, and especially the relative safety of the materials, making it. Boosted by the original large-scale production, its profile grew, and it evolved into a wide range of sizes of strengths, from the original 1.5V through to 9V. Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred use of the battery for demonstrations of early telephones also helped. Another early modification which improved safety and handling was an innovation

by Carl Gassner, who swapped a paste for the liquid that had enabled the transfer of charge, not just in Leclanché’s, but batteries in general. During the 20th century, it proved to be perfect for the growing domestic consumer market. The 1960 Eveready battery handbook devoted a few pages to research on the Leclanché based cells, stating that a higher percentage of carbon gave higher currents, but with a lower capacity. Research like this helped improve the performance by 700% between 1920 and 1990, so it was still finding use in a modified version inside the disposable Polaroid PolaPulse camera. Though they have lost market share in recent years to newer types of longer-lasting alkaline batteries, his battery cells are still among the most popular consumer batteries we have today.

to increase the surface area and lower the internal resistance. In 1867, only a year after patenting his invention, he was already so confident of its success that he quit his job to promote the battery.

factory was employing five workers, run from the ground floor of a small white-shuttered building in Brussels on rue d’Aerschot. That year political events at home allowed him to return to Paris with the restoration of what became known as the third republic and the end to the Franco-Prussian war that May. And in one of the ironic twists of history, this time it was Napoléon III’s turn for exile. Captured the September before in the ineptly handled Battle of Sedan against the Prussians, he was deposed in absentia. He died in England three years later. Leclanché opened a studio at 9, rue de Laval in Paris and settled down. At this point love entered his life and in 1873 he married Gabrielle Clémen-

The first battery workshop

He was helped both by his father’s legal advice, and assistance from a Belgian friend, Charles Mourlon. Mourlon who helped him industrialise the product, put him in contact with the Belgian telegraph service, and after testing, they adopted the Leclanché battery for their network; the Dutch railways did the same, and a workshop was set up in Brussels to produce the batteries for them. In 1871 the Mourlon-Leclanché

tine-Lannes. Two children followed swiftly — Max-Georges in 1874 and Marianne en 1876. The year of Marianne’s birth was an important one in the breakthrough of the development of his battery. He succeeded in gelifying the electrolyte through the addition of starch. This immediately made the battery easy to transport.

Partnership

Leclanché formed a partnership with Ernest Barbier and a new LeclanchéBarbier battery was announced. Fate was on his side this time. It was perfectly timed to coincide with the arrival of the telephone — commercialization of which started in France the following year — as well as the steady boom in rail. Leclanche-Barbier were the only makers of batteries in France. Around this time his health started to fail. The end came after a long illness and he died in September 1882. He was just 43. But the story doesn’t quite end there. His son Max followed in his footsteps, studying chemistry and gaining a doctorate in 1895. He continued researching and improving the battery, replacing what had been a porous ceramic pot with a hessian bag to hold the powdered coal and manganese dioxide mixture. Meanwhile his brother, Mauritius, took over directing the business, until his death in 1923. The company has changed hands and names many times since. Leclanché lies buried in the PèreLachaise cemetery in Paris. Perversely, even in death he was unable to escape the turbulent history of his times. Not far from his grave lies the remains of his father’s revolutionary friend Ledru Rollin which again is just yards away from the famous Mur des Fédérés where 147 revolutionary communards were shot just days before Leclanché’s return from exile in Belgium.

In 1871, the manganese dioxide/carbon mixture was moulded into two blocks, held around the carbon plate by rubber bands. Later the porous pot was replaced by a canvas container, and the zinc rod changed to a cylinder to increase the surface area and lower the internal resistance www.batteriesinternational.com

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — ERNST VOSS Ernst Voss’s reputation stems from a lifetime of practical research in improving the lead acid battery and in particular the discovery of α-PbO2 which was to lead to a greater understanding of the internal mechanisms operating within the battery.

A lifetime in lead research Ernst Voss was born on August 29, 1923, in Nortorf in the state of Holstein in Germany. Like many of his generation his life was disrupted by the Second World War — he was drafted into the army in 1942 and taken prisoner in 1944, and detained in the US until the Armistice. Unable to study chemistry at Hamburg University — all the places were occupied in 1946 — he obtained a free chemistry university place with studies in classical philology at Hamburg University. But he started studying chemistry full time in 1948 and finished in 1953 with the DiplomChemiker degree. In 1955 he was awarded a doctorate from the same university. His doctoral thesis, devoted to structures of hexafluorometallalates, was inspired by the lectures of professor Hans Heinrich Bode. It was Bode who supported Voss in his electrochemical ambitions by finding him a post as co-researcher in the central research laboratory of Accumulatoren-fabrik at Kelkheim near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. That same year was also momentous as he married Ruth Steiner. Their daughter Erdmuthe was born in 1958, their son Wolfgang in 1963. For nine years, Voss researched lead acid batteries in depth. In 1964, he became manager of the department for product research and development and widened his activities to include studies on nickel cadmium cells. In 1973, he was appointed manager of the technology department for primary and new systems and his researches were starting to bring him more international reputation. This position allowed him to become acquainted with many different types of primary systems including zinc carbon, alkaline manganese, zinc silver oxide, and lithium organic cells. Despite this extra work Voss still pursued his research and studies on both lead acid and nickel cadmium cells. In 1978, Voss was made department director and received authorization to represent VARTA Batterie

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in legal matters. During 1976–77, he joined a research program in lithium iron sulfide molten salt batteries at the Argonne National Laboratory in the US. He then established and inaugurated a similar program at VARTA’s R&D lab. This work was continued for many years under his supervision. Voss was appointed director of the research and development centre of VARTA Batterie in Kelkheim in 1981, which involved information, planning, patents, government contracts and contacts with universities. Mainly Voss worked at understanding the behaviour of lead acid batteries. He was the inventor, or a co-inventor, of 47 patents. These included: Brightening and stabilizing the color of metal salts of naphthene and ethylhexanic acids and their solutions (1957–1960); lead storage battery with solidified electrolyte and process of making same (1963–64); galvanic cell with solid fluoride ionconductive electrolyte (1975–1976);

and polyacetylene cell with ceramic solid electrolyte (1983–1985). His work was reported in 54 papers published in various prestigious scientific journals. In one early paper he reported with Hans Bode his discovery of α-PbO2 in Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie, Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft für physikalische Chemie 60 (1956): 1053. α-PbO2 is distinguished from the α-PbO2 modification by its capacity and lifetime. Practically he dealt with phosphoric acid additives for lead acid batteries. Together with August Winsel he developed the “Kugelhaufen Modell” (aggregate-of-spheres model) of the PbO2-PbSO4 electrode, explaining the capacity dependence on currents and additives on a theoretical basic. In 1985 he was elected to work as an expert on batteries and fuel cells for the Commission of the European Communities, Directorate XII, in Brussels. In 1987 Voss collaborated with Hiroshi Shimotake as general editor of Progress in Batteries and Solar Cells. He also worked on the editorial board of the Journal of Power Sources. Voss retired from VARTA Batterie in September, 1988, after 33 years with the company. He continued to work for VARTA as consultant until 1993 and was, among others, responsible for scientific grants of the Herbert-QuandtStiftung der VARTA. During this time he was still active in attending international battery conferences. During the LABAT meeting in 1989, Voss was selected to become the first recipient of the prestigious Gaston Planté Medal, awarded by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

In an early paper written with Hans Bode about his discovery of α-PbO2 in Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie, Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft für physikalische Chemie, α-PbO2 is distinguished from the α-PbO2 modification by its capacity and lifetime. www.batteriesinternational.com

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — OTTO JACHE For the industrialized world the history of most of the 20th century is characterized by war and suffering. It was against this backdrop that Berlin-born Otto Jache, was to create the first gel based system — the AGM battery.

The great leap forward — maintenance free batteries Theodor Sonnenschein didn’t realise it at the time. But when in 1910 he set up his factory Akkumulatoren Fabrik — its speciality, starter batteries — he was providing the breeding ground for a generation of gel-based batteries that were to transform the energy storage industry a couple of generations later. Sonnenschein’s unknown protégé was to be Otto Jache who was born in the south-east Berlin suburb of Treptow in 1915. He never knew his father who had died early on in the first world war. He was brought up by his mother Gertrud. Thanks to good teaching and a particular enthusiastic science teacher, chemistry became his first love. After school, he went straight to work as a chemical engineering technician, first working for engineering firm C Lorenz, AG. and then at the Edeleanu petroleum refinery in Berlin. Oddly enough, his early reputation was that of a prankster — his friends later recalled Jache’s love of improvising fireworks such as the night he spectacularly threw some NI3, nitrogen tri-iodide, into Berlin’s Landwehrkanal then stood back to watched the multi-coloured Bengal Fire display. Another favourite was an innocuous looking lotion he developed which, when stepped on, went off like a gun.

The clouds descend

But the clouds of war were already descending over Europe and Jache like millions of others became a soldier, fighting for Germany in France and later in Finland. As the war started to unravel and the Germans started to retreat he was forced to make a dash from Finland, when it signed the armistice in September 1944, to his homeland. The alternative was to be taken prisoner by the Soviets and almost certain death. In a marathon journey more suited to a movie he escaped via Nor-

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brother-in-law of founder the late Theodor Sonnenschein managed to save some material. After a considerable search, he came across the possibility of setting up a new factory at Büdingen in Hessen and moving his staff there, including “Chemoteckniker” Otto Jache.

The Sonnenschein years

way, accompanied by a Norwegian, Reidum Ingrid Karlsen who had collaborated with the Germans and was also fleeing for her life. Reidum was later to become his wife. Immediate post-war Germany faced the seemingly impossible task of regaining its place in the industrial world. And in the eastern sector it was made more difficult by the occupying powers. One could no longer select places to work and live in. With the Soviets occupying the Berlin-Marienfelde suburb where the Sonnenschein factory had been based, they decided to confiscate some of the equipment as reparation payment. But not all of it. Clemens Jonen,

Büdingen had been a garrison town for the Third Reich, with the local Thiergarten area used as a training field. In 1946 the occupying US Armored Divisions continued to use the training area. But it was in what was later to become Western Germany and Sonnenschein acquired a number of buildings to reset up the factory (which the firm was to occupy until 2008). Jache’s first job at Büdingen was to cast lead grids for pasting together into positive and negative plates. For small batteries, these could be as much as 12 plates. To transport quantities of these around, with his fellow workers, Jache designed and built electric trolleys to replace the horse-drawn ones. In terms of living quarters, everyone at Sonneschein had to make do with what was available. Some staff took up residence in the former hunting lodge of the Ysenburg princes. For the next 30 years, Otto Jache’s home was to be a converted former ammunition depot, just 200 metres from the factory. It was here that his three children grew up. This proximity to his laboratory would mean that Otto could — and did — work into

Oddly enough, his early reputation was that of a prankster — his friends later recalled Jache’s love of improvising fireworks such as the night he spectacularly threw some NI3, nitrogen tri-iodide, into Berlin’s Landwehrkanal then stood back to watched the multi-coloured Bengal Fire display. www.batteriesinternational.com

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — OTTO JACHE the night as he did not have far to get home. Social contacts were rare and, although invited, he did not join the skittles club formed by his colleagues. Instead he became an enthusiastic gardener. Perhaps this quiet life was part of the reason for his marriage ending with Reidum who left to move to the US. After the death of Clemens Jonen in 1957, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, the husband of Sonnenschein’s daughter Marie-Luise, joined the company. There were about 250 employees and he was looking for an outlet to expand. Until then the company had been making wet lead acid batteries for radios, and also for photo-flash devices with charge-indicators using balls of different specific weights. Such batteries were tilt-proof but only operated when upright.

Dryfit batteries

Encouraged by Schwarz-Schilling — although the idea had long been an avenue he wished to explore — Otto Jache formed a team to research dry fit batteries which could be used in transistor radios, photoflash and the like. His team found that lead-calcium (PbCa) gave a cleaner step from charging to H2-emission and avoided the formation of poisonous SbH3. Silica immobilized the electrolyte. Oxidation of the negative plates by air was hampered by a valve, integrated in the cover. The first dryfit gel batteries were two cell 1Ah, Type 2Ax2, delivered in October 1958, although Jache’s patent was filed the year before. As they came to be accepted, these dry-

Dryfit technology consists of closed-system batteries in which the electrolyte is fixed in a gel. This means that no maintenance is required throughout the entire service life of the battery. Above a modern Exide maintenance free battery

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fits were used in telecommunications for gliders and even “environmentally important applications like toilets for cats and golf carts”. Jache’s invention, the valve regulated lead acid battery — the first truly maintenance free battery — had been born. Within a decade it was to become the international standard for batteries. In 1965 the first dryfit licence contract was established with Globe Union. Dryfit technology consists of closedsystem batteries in which the electrolyte is fixed in a gel. This means that no maintenance is required throughout the entire service life of the battery. The special advantage of the Sonnenschein dryfit battery lies in the batteries’ suitability for extreme operating conditions and the highest demands on reliability. But the development of the VRLA battery had still some way to go. One of Jache’s close colleagues, Günter Piske, has recalled “When I finally joined Sonnenschein in February 1959, I found many of these batteries inadequate. So we had to tackle a sequence of technical problems such as the filling method, charging, and a reliable regulating valve.” In 1968, Jache married again and his new wife Sigrid bore him two sons. In 1978 larger gel-filled cells for industrial batteries from 24 up to 120 volts were developed. These were to remain in production until 1984. Jache was to remain an innovator and battery pioneer for the rest of his life.

More patents

Later in the 1970s, he filed another patent application making his battery more sturdy, the patent read: “The present invention relates to the leakproof bonding of components of an electrical storage battery, and particularly to the leakproof bonding of storage battery components made of thermoplastic material either to other components made of substantially the same material of to current-carrying components made of metal such as lead.” Four years later, he was applying for a patent for “a precursor for an electrical storage lead battery which can be converted into an operative storage battery by the mere addition of a sulphuric acid electrolyte.” In 1989, aged 74, he filed for a “Method for the production of a lead accumulator with a thixotrophic gel as an electrolyte that consists essen-

Unlike other battery pioneers such as his contemporary Sam Ruben he never received any awards for his contribution to the world’s technology and, until this article, he has remained an unsung hero. tially of sulphuric acid and a gel former, comprising the steps of impregnating the pores of active material in the electrodes and the pores of the separators.” For many years he was a consultant for lead-acid separator firm Grace GmbH in Hamburg. Otto Jache died on January 10, 1993, aged 78. Unlike other battery pioneers such as his contemporary Sam Ruben he never received any awards for his contribution to the world’s technology and, until this article, he has remained an unsung hero. Even 50 years on, gel technology is still vital for valve-regulated lead acid batteries. Without the gel technology that was developed by Otto Jache the company Sonnenschein would have stayed a medium-sized battery producer like many others. Because of its gel technology and the export and worldwide service of its gel batteries since the 1960s Sonnenschein became well known as a technology and quality leader throughout the world. In 1991, this good reputation was transferred to CEAC which in 1995 was bought by Exide Technologies in the US.

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — DETCHKO PAVLOV Until his death three years ago, for half a century Detchko Pavlov, based in the Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria, was at the cutting edge of finding new ways to enhance the performance of lead acid batteries.

The expert’s expert “Detchko? He’s forgotten more about lead than I’ve ever known!“ The tribute coming from John Devitt, inventor of the VRLA battery and no intellectual slouch himself, is an indication of how much Detchko Pavlov was admired and respected during his life. He was one of Bulgaria’s most distinguished scientists and also one of the few true giants of the international battery industry Pavlov was born on September 9, 1930 in Shipka. The young Pavlov knew from an early age the direction he wanted to go in. His epiphany, if not too grand a word to use, came with the arrival of a young chemistry teacher in 1946 who opened up a world where practical experiments led to a real understanding of the scientific world. Pavlov — who his sister affectionately described as “a very determined young man” made up his mind to study industrial chemistry. In 1948, he obtained a place to read chemical engineering at the State University in Sofia. In 1953, after graduating with degree in electrochemistry from the Higher Institute of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy in Sofia, he was invited to join the department. It was headed by professor Stefan Hristov, a pioneer in the application of quantum mechanics to electrochemistry. In the same department working alongside him as an assistant professor was a shy, doe-eyed, girl, who had just completed her higher education at the D Mendeleev Chemical Technical Institute in Moscow and already had a reputation for academic brilliance and a fearsome intellect. Her name was Svetla Raitcheva. Their scientific collaboration grew into a friendship and ultimately, marriage. Svetla went on to earn her PhD in quantum chemistry and became first an associate professor and then a full professor. (She eventually chaired the Department of Physical Chemistry and also became head of the institute.) At the 1960 National Congress of Chemists, Pavlov had reported the results of his research into polarogra-

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Pavlov and his wife Svetla Rycheva

phy. Impressed, academician Kaishev, director of the department of electrochemistry at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, invited Pavlov to join the department. It was an auspicious time to specialize. Bulgaria had begun to concentrate its manufacturing efforts in the production of electric forklift trucks Pavlov was assigned the task of researching into improving lead acid batteries. For the next half a century, working on the fourth floor of Building 10

on the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences campus, Pavlov and his team of some 25 co-workers — the best graduates from the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy and the Faculties of Chemistry and Physics of the Sofia State University — have broken new ground in understanding the processes at work in a battery. In 1961, Pavlov obtained a one year posting at the Institut du Radium, Marie and Pierre Curie Laboratory in Paris, France working for the laboratory director, professor Haisinski who had once worked with Marie Curie. Haisinski directed Pavlov towards research on the chemistry of complex anode processes and in particular moving research into practical applications. During that year in France he bought a second-hand Ford Anglia. Joined by his wife, they toured Europe on their way back to Bulgaria. Although he had always liked classical music around this time he developed his comprehensive knowledge of 1960s and 1970s pop music.

LABD formation

In 1967, Pavlov and his colleague professor Evgeni Budevski established the Central Laboratory of Electrochemical Power Sources (CLEPS), in which he became the head of the Lead Acid Battery Department (LABD). Following the discovery of rich deposits of lead ores in southern Bulgaria, in the mid-1960s, the country became the major supplier of forklift trucks and batteries to the USSR and other eastern bloc countries. Alongside their scientific research, the LABD scientists actively supported the Bulgarian battery industry with new technologies, transfer of knowledge and genuine theoretical modelling.

Admirers say the genius of Pavlov has been in the way he can pinpoint where a problem might be occurring in, say, a piece of battery production or use and then strips the processes down to fundamental methods. www.batteriesinternational.com

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — DETCHKO PAVLOV For example, Pavlov and colleague Vasil Iliev proved that when polymer additives are added to the battery, its power at low temperatures increases. Their scientific contribution paid off. The starter batteries produced in the Bulgarian “Start” factory in Dobritch continued to work well in freezing and sub-zero temperatures. With Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Tyumen unable to provide anything comparable, Bulgarian batteries were bought in large quantities, starting at 300,000 units and rising. In return, Bulgaria received 12,000-15,000 automobiles per year from the Zhiguli-Lada factory in the Soviet city of Toliati. The range of studies conducted by Pavlov and his team has been extensive. These include: the kinetics of electrochemical processes; electrochemistry of lead electrodes; semiconductor properties and structure of lead oxides, lead sulphate and basic lead sulphates; processes related to the all stages of the technology of battery manufacture including paste mixing, curing, drying, pickling, formation; structures of lead and lead oxide active masses; processes taking place inside the battery during its storage, operation and rest; electrochemistry of antimony and tin electrodes; processes of oxygen evolution and its recombination back to water, thermal phenomena in VRLAB and the mechanism of the processes causing thermal run away in VRLAB, degradation processes and the ways to suppress or avoid them. Of special note was the way Pavlov and his team investigated the way in which expanders affected the performance of negative lead acid battery plates and how they could be improved. This led to the creation of a new generation of highly efficient organic ligno-sulphonate expanders. The team revealed also the mechanism of the processes taking place in the AGM separator and developed a modified, better AGM with programmable properties. In consequence, Pavlov and his team have been granted 33 patents, in Bulgaria and abroad. He also developed a lecture course “Processes that occur during battery manufacture” and “Essentials of Lead Acid Batteries” which he has presented in 17 countries worldwide. And with his researches came international acknowledgement as Pavlov’s team’s work was recognised for its worth. One of the more charming charac-

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teristics of Pavlov — who has a reputation for being a modest, easy-going person — is the way that he has never distinguished his work from that of his team. Indeed when his wife was alive the two often referred to the team as their second family. Pavlov was awarded a Doctor of Science degree in 1984 — a belated qualification he had not had time before to attain. Fully occupied at CLEPS, he simply had not found the time to make a conventional approach. So when he submitted his thesis, the Scientific Council of Physical Chemistry — the toughest in Bulgaria — agreed that this was not merely a PhD work, but something much bigger. They awarded him a DSc. From 1988, he was the driving force behind the success of the LABAT series of conferences which have since been held every three years. As testimony to their importance, the proceedings of these meetings have been published as special issues of the Journal of Power Sources. He has also served for many years as a distinguished member of the International Advisory Board of the journal. He also initiated the decision of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences to award battery scientists and experts with the Gaston Planté medal for outstanding contributions. Up to now 11 battery men from seven countries have received this award. In the early 1990s with the Republic of Bulgaria undergoing rapid democratic changes — and the economy being hit by rising inflation and falling standards of living — Pavlov realized there was a risk that the department he had been building up for over 25 years could fall apart. He introduced what he called “the American approach to science” — essentially using commercial partners to boost his research efforts. Before long he had persuaded international concerns such as Varta Research in Germany, ALABC in the USA, and Oerlikon in Switzerland to offer his department remunerative several-year contracts to develop production technologies. In 1997 he was elected a full member, or academician of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. This is the highest scientific rank in eastern Europe. It is only when one academician dies that a new one can be elected. That year he also became adviser and cooperative member of the ITE Battery Research Institute, Nagoya, Japan. Pavlov and his team — research sci-

With colleague researchers Yordan Kostadinov, Geno Papazov, Vasil Iliev discussing a novel new leadacid battery prototype

entists Geno Papazov, Stefan Ruevski, Temelaki Rogachev, Boris Monahov, Galia Petkova, Mitko Dimitrov, Plamen Nikolov, Maria Matrakova and others has written extensively — some 195 papers have been published in international scientific journals. Todate, these have been cited more than 2,700 times in scientific literature worldwide. Often just one of these papers has gone through as many as 16 drafts before he is satisfied. Among his more recent monographs is Essentials of LeadAcid Batteries published in 2006.

International acclaim

The value of Pavlov’s contribution has been acknowledged through a series of awards and honours: 1976, The Cyril and Methodius Medal; 1980, an award from the federal government of Australia; 1984, The Research Award of the Electrochemical Society; 1986, The National Dimitrov Award for Science; 1994, The Gaston Planté Medal; 1995, The International Cultural Diploma of Honor; 2006, The Marin Drinov Medal with Ribbon – the highest award of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Most recently — this September — he was awarded the ILA Lifetime Award at the association’s biennial meeting in Istanbul last September (top picture). Admirers say the genius of Pavlov has been in the way he can pinpoint where a problem might be occurring in, say, a piece of battery production or use and then strips the processes down to fundamental methods. Once the process has been elaborated he is also famous for the clarity of his writing so that not just academics but any production engineer can use it to their practical or theoretical ends. Detchko Pavlov died on August 25 , 2017. Tributes to him are found on: labatscience.com/acad-detchko-pavlov-passed-away-page88.html

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — JOHN DEVITT Sealed lead acid batteries had been the goal of the battery industry since the time of Gaston Planté. But it was only in the 1960s that real advances were made. John Devitt was a key figure and early pioneer in the development of the first VRLA battery.

Patent no 3862 861: the key that opened up VRLA On April 13, 1965, John Devitt, a 40-year-old electrical engineer, sent a memo to George Jenkins, head of research of the Gates Rubber Company, in Denver, Colorado. The nine page memo entitled “Lead-Acid Sealed Cells” was to revolutionize the battery industry. Briefly, Devitt’s proposal recommended the development of a cell which would perform in a manner similar to that of the sealed nickel-cadmium batteries then being sold. The proposed cell would provide a high-rate discharge capability and thus would employ a spirally-wound electrode configuration. Importantly, it would also use less-expensive materials. John Lawrence Devitt was born in 1925, in Denver, Colorado. His father, also from Denver, was a prominent orthodontist, who had financed his course at dental school by working as a streetcar conductor. His mother, secretary to the Denver Public Schools Superintendent, could play anything on the piano by ear. The combination of technical expertise and artistic expression were to characterize his later endeavours. Devitt decided to become an electrical engineer in his third grade. By then he was making his own electromagnets, inspired by his mother’s highschool physics book. Living near the Rocky Mountains, Devitt also became a keen mountaineer, cross-country skier and hiker. He joined the Colorado Mountain Club in 1946 — and has been an enthusiastic mountain climber all his life.

Bright sparks all

“By the late 1940s, I was in graduate school at the University of Colorado Boulder, studying advanced electrical engineering,” says Devitt. “As I was also a musician, I was leading the university jazz band — where, by the way, the best players were engineer-

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Devitt’s patent. The secret of oxygen recombination was the microfibre glassmat

ing students! I was to send the written Dixieland chart music when we were finished with them to a fellow named Harry Sparkes Jr in New Jersey (Harry was a friend of the man who had written these charts.)” And here co-incidence, call it fate, intervened. “Soon after this, I met up with him and his father, Harry Sparkes Sr, in New York.” Sparkes Sr, also happened to be vice-president of the AMF Corporation, and agreed to read young Devitt’s degree-winning Masters thesis: an ingenious timing system for the Pikes Peak annual auto races. “In 1950, when the time came for Sparkes to pick a chief engineer for his forthcoming battery factory in Colorado Springs, he tagged me,” says Devitt. “The objective was to manufacture silver-oxide/zinc batteries for air-to-air Navy missiles. At that time no one had come up with a reliable solution. So it was up to us. “I was always the homework type, so

I found articles in the Electrochemical Society publications by the Army Signal Corps guys, who had done it. By then my direct boss was Sam Auchincloss, another AMF vice-president. (He had been general MacArthur’s assistant signal officer in the Pacific during WW2 and knew the folks at the US Army Signal Corps Laboratories in Ft. Monmouth who had done the successful work.) Sam and I went there, picked up the good recipes, and the rest was history.” Between 1943 and 1955, Devitt had been on the US Naval Reserve. He would only ever hold the rank of lieutenant because the Navy preferred that he concentrate on battery development. In 1955, not wishing to follow the AMF factory re-location to North Carolina, Devitt remained in Denver where he helped set up what later became Power Systems Division of Whittaker Corporation. The Whittaker batteries, dry during storage, could be quickly filled with electrolyte by a selfcontained mechanism which activated a fully charged battery. The factory was the main source of batteries for the Minuteman, Polaris and Poseidon ICBM missiles.

Time to move on

Devitt created and managed engineering and manufacture of these. “But before long,” says Devitt, “I became bored with the bureaucratic nonsense connected with defence procurement and decided to go into civilian work.” In the early 1960s, he was chief engineer of the Metron Instrument Company, developing electronic measuring devices and optical equipment. Meanwhile other forces were about to shape his destiny and here fate came in the form of a firm called Gates, then the largest manufacturer of rubber belts and hoses in the world. In the 1960s, it was privately owned by the Gates family; Charlie Gates was CEO, and ran

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — JOHN DEVITT the company his way. That included an unusual willingness to experiment with new types of products and even completely diverse enterprises. The local Denver grapevine one day yielded the news that Gates was interested in going into the battery business. Devitt leapt at the opportunity. He joined them in January 1965. Three months later, he submitted the historic memo. One object of his pre-Gates civilian battery investigations had been sealed nickel-cadmium cells, which he had heard described at the autumn 1960 meeting of the Electrochemical Society. Another object of his earlier, preliminary work was to find, if available, more-or-less maintenance free leadacid batteries. The only ones then worth studying were made by Sonnenschein in Germany and, at that time, imported by Globe Union. These were called “gel cells” because of the siliceous addition to the acid which turned it into a stiff jelly and kept it from running out of the battery when it was in a spillable position. “In 1965 the sealed, spirally-wound nickel cadmium cells operated successfully because they employed oxygen recombination at the negative electrode during the inevitable overcharging which occurs,” he says. “This feature had been recognized by many leadacid researchers as a desirable way to improve battery usefulness, but none of them had been able to accomplish it to a useful degree. “Our main obstacle was the conflict between providing enough reactive acid in the cell while allowing oxygen gas, generated at the positive electrode, to pass directly through a gas space to recombine at the negative surface. Put simply, the separator between the electrodes could not be wet and dry at the same time! “At first, we had no idea what combination of new ideas would solve this riddle.” So in 1967, Devitt and his 12-strong team, in particular Donald McClelland, began work on the research and development of small cylindrical lead/ acid cells containing spirally wound electrodes. The first “Gates D-Cell” was shown to the board on November 10 that year. Four years later, in mid-1971, the resulting products were offered for sale by Gates Energy Products: one cell equivalent in size to the conventional manganese dioxide D-cell, and another, the X-cell, having twice the capacity.

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An early form of AGM

These cells were the first to use a separator material consisting of microfiber glass paper, now generally termed “absorbent glass mat” (AGM). This material, the last of scores of tries using diverse separator materials, has the remarkable ability to absorb enough acid to carry out its stoichiometric role in the classic lead-acid reaction equation, yet remain slightly unsaturated to the extent permitting direct passage of oxygen to the damp negative plate surface. (The alkaline electrolyte in a nickel cadmium cell has no quantitative role in reactions within that cell.) Oxygen recombination in a lead-acid cell can go on indefinitely, limited only be heat dissipation and lead corrosion.

The eureka moment

“For us, this was the Eureka moment!” he says. A number of technical developments were later incorporated including substantial compression of the plate-separator assembly. This greatly lengthened the service life of these first valve-regulated cells. Although the pressure-relief, check valve used in these cells is crucially important, the valve does not regulate the cell. This designation for these batteries, now well embedded in practice, is unfortunate. The valve prevents oxygen (air) entering the cell, and also provides some pressure rise, enhancing reaction kinetics. In the following years, many sizes of rectangular batteries using these principles have been manufactured throughout the world. Based on his development over a 100 battery plants throughout the world produce VRLA batteries for UPS, traction, automobile, telecommunication, and HEV applications Devitt recalls “George Saul and I were at the annual Army Signal Corps meeting in Atlantic City in about 1971 and we had several of the then saleable D-cells (they were flying out of the pilot plant). George was a sensational salesman I had picked up from GE. We took a D-cell — the one with two Amp tabs protruding from the top, exactly as still sold now, and showed it to the guys in the Eveready hospitality suite. “Then we did what has become the famous paper clip trick: Straighten out an ordinary paper clip and then (with covered fingers) set it on top of the two terminals. It quickly glows bright-red hot and melts. We knew that the short-

circuit current of the cell was over 200 amperes! This was at least an order of magnitude greater than Eveready could do.” In 1972 Devitt left Gates to go freelance and has operated a consulting engineering business which emphasizes laboratory development of new products as well as general consulting work in America, Europe and Asia. Some completed projects include: the first maintenance-free batteries for the General Battery Corporation; leadchloride plates including initial production machines; making lead acid cells and batteries equivalent about 100 automotive batteries (all R&D); lowcost fluoborate battery for automatic fire alarms; an automatic surgical soap dispenser; a battery-testing laboratory; and international assignments including assisting managers in South Korea and Taiwan and much more. Devitt is also author of four scientific publications and eight patents. The most important is the Devitt-McClelland patent (US 3862 861) of January 1975, which controlled VRLA intellectual property until its expiration in 1992 In 1986 he received the Research Award of the Electrochemical Society for the VRLA battery with closed oxygen cycle. In 1999 he received the Gaston Planté Medal from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, for the same achievement. In September 2007, Devitt was awarded the International Lead Award in Shanghai. This was most certainly based on the realization that his work at Gates had produced the largest single boost to total lead sales of any invention in the 20th century. This may seem an enormous claim but when one looks for competition to it, one fails. Devitt: Battery pioneer, mountain climber and ... jazz musician

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Automatic Assembly Line for Traction Battery Cells Installed behind the HADI Cast-On Strap Machine Type COS 40

HADI Offermann Maschinenbau GmbH Gevelsberg, Germany www.hadi.com

First Step:

Polarity-Test +/- with High Resolution Camera High Voltage Test Sorting out of faulty Battery Cells

Second Step:

Heat Sealing of the Lids Cool down area 2,5m Option: Automatic Lid Feeder

Third Step:

Weld Seam Milling, Suction of the Milling Chips Pressure Test Marking Device with free programmable Needle Printer Sorting out of Battery Cells

Fourth Step:

Palletizing Facility for Battery Cells with Robot

Production:

Performance with Cast-On Strap Machine up to 2.5 Battery Cells/min

HADI Maschinenbau Ges.m.b.H Amstetten, Austria www.hadi.at

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — KEN PETERS The development and commercialization of the valve regulated lead acid battery has been one of Ken Peters’ great contributions to the industry.

VRLA: the next step Until his death two years ago Ken Peters had been at the very heart of the development of the VRLA battery, effectively passing the baton on from John Devitt in terms of its commercialization. But Ken Peters’ story starts in 1953 when he joined Chloride Electrical Storage Company at its Clifton Junction plant in Manchester. In those days the global battery industry was dominated by three companies. The Electric Storage Battery Company (ESB) with more than 70% of the North American market, Accumulatoren-Fabrik AG (AFA) — now known as Varta — with factories throughout Europe, and Chloride, with plants in the UK and in all of its old Imperial empire countries. These companies were almost selfsufficient in materials and components. The Clifton Junction factory employed more than 3,000 workers to produce two million car batteries a year, tubular motive power cells, Planté and flat plate stationary cells, submarine, aircraft and signals defence batteries with smelters, alloy, oxide and separator production lines and on the same site, expanders and additive preparation facilities. As a trainee, Peters worked in all the manufacturing areas. There was little automatic equipment and he was involved in installing and operating the plant’s first automatic Winkel pasting machines. He joined the research department, which later moved to a new technical centre away from the demands of the manufacturing plant and was equipped with the most advanced analytical and test facilities. The technical director was Montefiore Barak, a Rhodes scholar from New Zealand. His impact on Peters’ attitudes to the industry was huge — Barak was outward looking and instrumental in starting the International Power Source Symposium (IPSS); Peters was there at the inaugural meeting in October 1958. “It was unique within the industry at that time,” he recalls. “Companies did not share even limited technical and test data, and it was the principal

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“I think the major impact of my time in batteries was in converting and applying the Gates invention to the commercial battery field.” industry conference for many years. “Until about 1960 all the major battery companies were more or less self contained in terms of their technology, so they did their own development of virtually everything and up to then, any innovations, either design or additives, separators, alloys, containers and the like were developed in-house and closely guarded. R&D consisted of electrical engineers, material scientists as well as electrochemists and designers. “But after 1960, separate and independent companies were set up to supply materials and knowhow. Nowadays if a battery maker requires a special expander, separator or whatever, they contact the suppliers.” Peters was immediately involved in a range of programmes including the manufacture of electrodeposited plates for torpedo batteries for the UK Admiralty and the development of impregnated cellulose separators. “One early and successful job we did,” says Peters, “was to assess and qualify leady oxides produced in a new Chloride designed oxide mill fitted with in-built classifiers and temperature controls, the forerunner of many later installed at numerous factories. I learned a lot about the rhe-

ology of battery pastes during that work.”

Maintenance free

“Maintenance free car batteries were topical and we studied gassing rates and impurity influences and developed and patented low antimonial alloys producing ductile thin grids which could be cast on automatic machines. This was before the widespread use of calcium alloys, a technology adopted initially from ESB which had developed these alloys for telecom batteries.” Chloride sponsored basic research at several UK universities and as industrial supervisor, Peters visited and contributed to numerous publications in academic journals. In 1960, Chloride, ESB and AFA (Varta) signed a technical exchange agreement. All three companies employed experienced and well-known electrochemists and researchers. Paul Ruetschi, Alvin Salkind and David Boden worked for ESB while alongside Hans Bode, a professor and also research director at AFA, was Ernst Voss, Dietrich Berndt and Eberhard Meissner. “We had regular meetings at the three research centres. But in 1968

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — KEN PETERS this arrangement was deemed to be unlawful and cooperation stopped,” says Peters. Positive electrodes were the principal interest of researchers in the 1960s with studies on the polymorphs of lead dioxide, on how to increase cycle life and corrosion resistance, how to improve the efficiency of the active material and of course to develop and make low maintenance or maintenance free batteries. In the latter case the objective was not so much to limit water additions but to market a ‘fit and forget’ battery which was highly desirable to both car makers and the private customer.

Adapting Ni/Cd to lead

In 1964 Peters started work on a programme which subsequently had a major influence on battery design. At that time, sealed rechargeable Ni/Cd cells that were leak proof and lost no water in service due to recombination of oxygen at the negative plate inhibiting hydrogen evolution, were popular for portable equipment. Earlier gas recombination devices used expensive and inefficient catalytic systems. “The same recombination approach seemed possible with lead and we started work to study its feasibility,” says Peters. “At that time I was also particularly interested in charge acceptance, not just of the cell or battery as a whole, but the individual charge acceptance of the plates. I measured this by monitoring the cathodic hydrogen and anodic oxygen evolution at different rates and temperatures and at different states of charge. Of specific interest was the high charge factor of the negative plate with 100% charging efficiency, that is no hydrogen evolution, until the plates were almost fully charged over a wide range of charging rates and temperatures. “High charging rates with good recombination efficiencies were possible with separator saturation being the main controlling parameter. Subsequently we made several hundred D sized cells with wound lead electrodes and Porvic separators, the most porous separator available at that time. There were cost benefits over alkaline cells but the output was relatively poor and with no great enthusiasm for this work within the company, it was shelved.” Although the project was no longer live, at this point fate intervened with a series of meetings that were to help change the face of the battery industry forever.

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“I later presented a performance comparison of three types of D cell (primary Leclanché, alkaline and lead acid) at the IPSS conference in 1971,” says Peters. “At the same meeting I was approached by Don McClelland of Gates Rubber Company. I didn’t know Don nor the company, whose principal business was tyres and hoses. Gates apparently had similar ideas some years earlier and had formed a venture group specifically to develop batteries for cordless equipment, nickel/zinc and lead acid being the obvious candidates. “McClelland sent me 50 wound, D size lead acid cells which we tested and I reported to my management that they were rather special.” The reason for this was that the highly porous resilient and compressible glass separators maintained close contact with the plate surfaces and resulted in cells which had high power capability, cycled well and, says Gates, could be charged, seemingly, forever without water loss. “I suggested a similar design approach could be used in Chloride’s main industrial and automotive batteries with very beneficial effects. Subsequently I was invited to visit Gates at their Denver head office for discussions with their management board.”

Devitt’s team

Under John Devitt, Gates had put together an experienced team: both Devitt and McClelland had worked on nickel/zinc and silver/zinc cells; Will Bundy, who had spent many years with the National Lead Company; and a young electrochemist named Kathryn Bullock, later to become president of The Electrochemical Society. “I was invited to the Gates board meeting to validate, and possibly explain, the claims of their scientists,” says Peters. “Their interest in batteries was based on advice given to them by ADL, that small rechargeable wound cells for cordless equipment could conveniently be marketed on garage forecourts alongside their tyres and hoses. Subsequently a joint working group was set up to review the situation.” Over the following months the group had several further meetings. The Gates team was keen to stick to their wound cell design but their manufacturing process was slow and expensive with very high scrap levels. High purity, and expensive, lead, litharge and red lead were used with high density pastes and formation over several days. The separators were

high quality glass filter papers bought from the UK and although they were exploring cheaper US supplies, nothing had been qualified. “It was difficult to see how Gates’ approach could be used to manufacture the larger batteries needed for industrial and automotive applications in the numbers required and at acceptable cost,” says Peters. “We agreed to follow different approaches. Gates would pursue its wound cell approach for the cordless appliance market while Chloride would consider how its existing manufacturing plant, such as the casting and pasting machines, could be used to make products with the same beneficial features as the Gates cell.”

Range of batteries

Peters went on to develop a range of telecom and UPS standby batteries using more or less conventional methods. Plates wrapped in compressed glass microfibre separator were inserted in strong plastic containers fitted with one-way valves. New processes and equipment for acid filling and formation were developed and a source of good quality glass microfibre paper was found. “Our new valve regulated cells had appreciably higher volumetric energy density than the existing batteries,” says Peters. “Power outputs were better and with no water losses or gases evolved they could be located on power racks in offices or where most convenient to the end user. Our first prototype designs were supplied to British Telecom for trials in the late 1970s and production began at the Clifton Junction factory in 1983.” The success of the new batteries was astonishing. By 1989 BT had installed 500,000 2v/100Ah valve regulated cells in power racks in its system X digital telephone exchanges, and was installing them at a rate of 120,000 per year. Within a few years distributed power supplies with similar valve regulated designs were adopted by telecom companies everywhere. “Parallel with the standby battery programme we were developing valve regulated car batteries with similar beneficial features; leak and spill proof, improved cycling and a much higher cranking performance than equivalent flooded batteries,” says Peters. “I think the major impact of my time in batteries was in converting and applying the Gates invention to the commercial battery field.”

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 81

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INNOVATION. PERFORMANCE. RELIABILITY.

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — KATHRYN BULLOCK The conception, invention and development of the VRLA battery has been an almost exclusively male preserve but one woman — Kathryn Bullock — made a remarkable contribution to its evolution — and also to the theoretical and practical landscape of the modern energy storage industry.

Faith, reason and a life in battery development Kathryn Bullock was born in Oklahoma in September 1945. An early interest in chemistry developed into a degree at Colorado University and in 1967 (freshly married to Kenneth who later becam a minister), Kathryn applied to Gates Rubber Company where she was interviewed by John Devitt, the driving force behind the VRLA battery, who was organizing a battery development group. She left to move to Chicago to get her doctorate before returning to Devitt whose team had by then developed the VRLA battery. The push was on to test and refine the design and develop the manufacturing processes. The first application of the Gates VRLA AGM battery was in power tools. Lead-acid batteries with silica gel added to the

acid could be used in some portable applications, but the gel limited the power. Portable power tool companies were interested in the VRLA cells because of lower materials costs and higher voltages and power. Although lead is heavier than nickel and cadmium, they could use three lead-acid cells to replace the voltage of a battery of four nickel-cadmium cells. When lead-acid batteries are discharged, the state of charge decreases as the acid concentration decreases. Many stationary lead-acid battery applications, such as standby backup power, required regular monitoring of the acid specific gravity with a hydrometer to determine the energy left in the battery. A sealed cell was not acceptable for these critical applications. With her background in computer modelling and physical chemistry, Bullock was able to develop a model and numerical tables that would allow customers to convert the open circuit voltage of a VRLA battery to the acid concentration and battery state of charge. She was also able to use thermodynamic data from the literature to correct the state of charge for the internal battery temperature. She later recalled: “To maintain my skills and increase my knowledge of lead-acid batteries, I began reading articles in the Journal of Electrochemical Society on corrosion reactions at the lead-acid positive grid by Paul Ruetschi, Jeanne Burbank, Detchko Pavlov, and others. With electrochemists from local universities, I also founded a local chapter of the Electrochemical Society.” In an evening graduate course on corrosion at the Colorado School of Mines, Kathryn learned about potential-pH (Pourbaix) diagrams. Since

Spring 1947: Kathryn left with mother Elaine and younger sister (by minutes) Judith

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positive grid corrosion reactions are dependent on both sulfate (S) and hydrogen (H) ion concentrations at the corrosion interface, she developed a three-dimensional potential/pH/pS diagram that could be used to better understand and reduce the corrosion of the positive lead grids. In 1977, she accepted a job at GlobeUnion, a large battery company in Milwaukee that became part of Johnson Controls. She worked there for nearly 15 years, first as a research scientist and then, beginning in 1980, as manager of the battery research group. “We worked on many different kinds of lead-acid batteries, including flooded, gelled and acid-starved designs for all types of automotive, stationary, and portable applications,” she said.

Voltammetric data

At Gates, Bullock had worked on a project to determine how much phosphoric acid should be added to the VRLA battery electrolyte and had presented a paper on her results at an Electrochemical Society meeting. Phosphoric acid was added to lead-acid gel batteries to increase their cycle life. She used cyclic voltammograms to study the effects of phosphoric acid on lead battery reactions. Based on her cyclic voltammetric data, the amount of phosphoric acid added to the Gates cells was reduced to a very low level. At Johnson Controls, she continued to study phosphoric acid effects on the positive electrode in lead-acid batteries and published additional work on the subject. In 1980 the Electrochemical Society Battery Division presented Kathryn Bullock with its research award for this work. Bullock’s research group was partially funded by the US’ Department of Energy to work on electric vehicle and load levelling batteries. The battery research group also supported devel-

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — KATHRYN BULLOCK opment work on nickel-metal hydride and zinc-bromine batteries. She began to file patents at Johnson Controls on her ideas of ways to improve lead-acid battery performance and on ways to decrease battery production times. One of her first projects was to find an alternative way to make a drycharged battery. Johnson Controls had a method of charging an acidfilled battery and then dumping out the excess acid and centrifuging the battery to eliminate as much moisture as possible. Unfortunately the shelf life of this battery was not as good as for dry-charged batteries due to the residual acid left in the battery. The Johnson Controls battery division had a solid engineering department, along with a technical library, a materials research group and an analytical group that provided very good support for battery research and development. Many of their projects were cosponsored by the US’ Department of Energy. The two built a new R&D laboratory and worked on leadacid, zinc-bromine, and nickel-metal hydride battery development projects for applications such as load levelling and electric vehicles. Bullock and her colleague Bill Tiedemann assembled a top notch R&D team and soon built a new world-class R&D laboratory (that has now morphed into JCI’s Battery Technology Center). “Back then we were working on many of the right subjects such as grid corrosion, battery thermal management, EV batteries, grid design, plate curing and even load-levelling,” she recalled. “I’ll never forget our work designing the new lab and purchasing some of the first computer controlled battery cyclers from Bitrode (and it was all done without email)! In 1991, AT&T Bell Labs asked Bullock to lead the move of their battery group from Texas to New Jersey “At AT&T I had an opportunity to get more experience in systems engineering and worked closely with systems engineers and battery companies to develop new battery designs. AT&T also agreed to let me accept a nomination to run for vice-president and then president of the Electrochemical Society. They worked in Dallas for five years, until Bell Labs became part of Lucent Technologies. At that time Medtronic, Inc invited Bullock to lead a group developing an aluminium electrolytic capacitor design and factory and designing new lithium primary batteries for implant-

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Ernst Voss from VARTA Battery in Germany presenting the alpha/beta honorary membership scroll to Kathryn Bullock

able medical equipment. In 1996, she was awarded the Gaston Planté medal — perhaps the most prestigious award in the lead acid battery business. At the end of 1999, she accepted a position as executive vice president of technology at C&D Technologies in Philadelphia. In 2003, she founded a consulting business called Coolohm, Inc where she has been at the cutting edge of various new projects since.

Power of new designs

For example, in some new lead-acid battery designs, higher levels of carbon are being added to the negative plate materials. In other designs, half of the negative plate is carbon and the other half is lead. This concept was developed in Australia and is being produced at Furukawa in Japan and at East Penn Manufacturing Company in Pennsylvania. The lead/carbon negative plates and lead dioxide positive plates form a combination of a capacitor for power at high currents and a battery for energy at lower currents in the same module. These batteries are working well in some hybrid electric vehicles. She says it is nowadays as important to understand the chemical mechanisms of carbon in the new battery designs and applications as it has been to understand the chemical effects of oxygen and hydrogen reactions, higher acid concentrations, other new additives, new separator components, and novel cell designs on the VRLA battery. “The Advanced Lead-Acid Battery

Consortium has supported much of my recent work in defining the effects of carbon materials on the mechanisms and failure modes in this new system,” she says. She is the author and co-author of more than 60 scientific papers, chapters and books and has 11 US patents in battery, fuel cell and capacitor technology. A committed Christian, her life has been based on the belief that science and faith are not incompatible and our duty is to push back the borders of our understanding as far as we can — and impart that wisdom and knowledge to others.

Kathryn working in the Johnson Controls research laboratory studying cyclic voltammograms of lead in battery acid containing phosphoric acid.

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 85

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — JOHN PIERSON Improvements in the mechanization of battery making have led to huge strides in productivity. And one individual, John Pierson, has spent most of his career involved in these advances.

Challenging the logic of the manufacturing line Innovation means different things to different people. Often it’s less about the creation of something entirely new rather it’s seizing an existing idea and making it work in new or unexpected ways. Such has been the legacy of John Ronald Pierson who has arguably been involved — in various guises and forms — behind the development of manufacturing techniques that have transformed the lead acid battery industry in the last decades of the last century. Pierson, born in Racine in the US state of Wisconsin in 1936, was the youngest of three children. Pierson started as a battery process engineer at Globe-Union on March 1, 1960. Globe-Union, a company founded in 1920 through the merger of two battery manufacturers Globe Battery of Milwaukee and Union Battery of Chicago was headquartered at 900 E Keefe Ave in an industrial area of Milwaukee. The products manufactured extended beyond batteries and included roller skates, golf clubs, spark plugs, ignition parts, radio components (capacitors, resistors) as well as automotive batteries. Globe-Union’s major customer by far was Sears, Roebuck and Co. He had a speedy introduction to the world of energy storage. Pierson showed up for his first day of work equipped as a typical engineer with a briefcase, pocket protector and a slide rule, only to be handed a copy of the 1955 classic Storage Batteries by George Wood Vinal and instructed to dress down the following day. “I was told it was going to be messy,” he says. “We were to do experimental paste mixing to establish mixing curves for a new oxide source. And yes, it was messy! “When I started, automotive batteries were strictly housed in hard rubber and primarily 6-volt, which was the electrical system of the day. Batteries had relied on individual rubber covers and terminals on each cell, and they

88 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

differentiated product to its best customer — Sears, Roebuck. At the time, Sears was opening free-standing auto centres and needed a marque product to heavily advertise. In 1967 the DieHard was born. It is rare indeed in a strictly commodity business such as automotive batteries that a truly differentiated product is developed. However, the Sears Diehard looked and performed different than any of its competitors. Hawaii in the 1970s, John and Celine

had asphalt tops. At that time, there were only about 10 to 12 group sizes offered.”

COS machines and beyond

Pierson became part of a small, talented engineering team that was already working behind closed doors on what would become a major breakthrough in battery assembly technology — the first cast on strap (COS) machine. A second major development in battery assembly technology, thrupartition welding (HV) followed. HV stood for the high voltage of the product due to its low electrical resistance. This technology was also rolled out to the branch plants. A third major development by the engineering team was made possible by the arrival of copolymers of propylene and ethylene. This material development plus German injection molding equipment and complex molds made possible the first successful thin walled polypropylene battery container and cover. The resulting product was translucent allowing for the viewing of electrolyte levels, it was heat-sealable but most importantly the strong thin walls allowed product designers to increase the number and size of electrodes in a given cube enhancing product performance. The combination of these three technical developments — COS, HV, and PP — allowed Globe Union to offer a

Lead oxide

Until 1962 all Globe Union factories were supplied with lead oxide in 600lb (270kg) drums supplied by companies such as National Lead, Eagle Picher, Bunker Hill and Western Lead. A decision was made to begin vertical integration including oxide manufacturing on site. A newly commissioned plant in Illinois was selected as the guinea pig and two process engineers — John Pierson and Bob Wiethaup were given the task of getting the facility going. “After many months of equipment installation, start-up, operator training and learning our new Barton oxide system was up and running,” says Pierson. “During the learning period we made frequent calls to consultant Tom Blair for advice and counselling. Barton oxide systems were subsequently installed in three additional plants.” Globe Union was successful in protecting its inventions through US and foreign patents and in 1967 was successful in a patent infringement suit of its thin-walled polypropylene container patents against Joseph Lucas in Birmingham, England. As a result of the litigation, Lucas was required to provide full technology in three areas to Globe Union — plate-curing chemistry, fast-setting epoxy resin and ball mill oxide manufacturing. The first two were straightforward and paralleled work already underway at Globe Union. The third however, ball mill oxide, provided

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — JOHN PIERSON an opportunity to directly compare a world class ball mill system and the oxide it produced to that of Globe’s Barton Systems. As a result of being active in the introduction of oxide manufacturing to Globe Union, Pierson became interested in the chemical and crystallographic characteristics of oxides and the reactions encountered in process of battery plates. “In addition to his chemical process training and natural curiosity I applied microscopy and X-ray diffraction technology to the reaction studies. I noted that plate curing was a particularly uncontrolled process yielding a variety of chemical compounds and crystalline structures. So I built the first controlled curing chamber using wooden 2x4s and plastic sheeting and supplied it with heated humidified air. “Then I revised the plate stacking procedures leaving spaces between plate stacks. The results were plates of consistent chemistry and crystallography optimized for life and initial performance.” Similar studies of chemical crystallographic changes encountered in battery electrode process have led to optimization of the oxide making, paste mixing, curing and formation process. This included a high rate one shot formation system using cooling water for temperature control.

Owosso and beyond

Pierson with product engineering manager, Chuck Wright, were commissioned in the early 1970s to explore the potential of a facility acquired by Globe Union from Ford Motor Company in Owosso, Michigan. The Owosso plant acquisition propelled Globe Union into the original equipment battery business and allowed the firm access to Ford’s sub-

stantial research reports on calcium alloy maintenance free batteries. In the 1970s Globe Union bought a vacant facility near its corporate headquarters on Teutonia Avenue in Milwaukee and equipped it as an engineering pilot facility. This facility with its single casting, pasting, assembly and formation lines along with a mechanical engineering and process engineering lab was the site for major process and product development programmes for several decades.

Maintenance free

The engineering facility under the banner “Home of the Unfair Competitive Advantage” was the original manufacturing site for Ford maintenance free batteries as well as the new high powered Group 65 and 33 batteries for Ford’s diesel powered automobiles. All new concepts were piloted at the facility including new grid designs and alloys, plastic/lead combination girds, paste additives and continuous (expanded metal) negative and positive (wrought punched) grids. The near-by facility allowed its engineers to conduct complex projects without the expense of travel or the interruption of productions lines at branch plants. “In conducting experiments aimed at enhancing initial performance and life of batteries it became apparent to us that many potential improvements were masked by the lack of control of paste weights and density of belt pasted plates,” says Pierson. A pasting machine capable of producing consistent plates with the grid centred in the paste became Pierson’s priority. Winkel belt pasters were the standard of the industry and a search of machine vendors came up blank. One device, the Lund fixed orifice paster was in use but was exclusively

available in the US to the Gould National Battery Co. A Lund paster was located in Australia bought and installed in the Keefe Ave plant.

The fixed orifice paster

“I was charged with commissioning the machine and evaluating the quality of plates it produced,” says Pierson. “The grids supplied to the vertical orifice plate paster were milled to reasonably consistent thickness and sample quantities of plates were produced. The machine was slow and very selective relative to grid uniformity but the resulting plates performed uniformly and well. “We decided to charge the mechanical engineering team with designing a high speed horizontal flow fixed orifice paster (FOP). Progress was slow due to variations in cast grid thickness and the initial attempt to roll it out to the plants was unsuccessful due to low productivity.” The devices were recalled and after significant re-design of the orifice plates and a focus on enhanced grid quality the FOP, renamed the JCI paster — in 1978 Globe-Union was acquired by Johnson Controls — was successfully re-launched. The uniformity and quality of the resulting plates was exceptional. In the meantime JCI product engineers under the direction of Vince Halsall, Chuck Wright and Pierson developed a continuous stream of enhanced product features to offer an ever growing customer base. Developments included: safety vent systems, side and dual termination, computer modelled grids with central lugs and tapered radial wires, and climatized batteries. The overriding objective was to enhance product performance, extend life and lower cost and weight of the product.

From left clockwise: Pierson Lucas Type Hardinge Conical Ball Mill. Pierson Early Fixed Orifice Paster. Pierson Globe Barton Pot Oxide Reactor. Cast on strap machine. Pierson HV Welder

90 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — JEANNE BURBANK Figures such as, Esther Takeuchi, Cristina Lampe-Önnerud. Kathryn Bullock and Anne-Marie Sastry prove that the international world of batteries nowadays is not exclusively a male domain. But decades before, when it was virtually a man’s world, one woman gained huge respect from her fellow electrochemists: Jeanne Burbank.

Pushing the boundaries of lead to their limits Born, Jeanne Beadle, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in May 1915, she was the eldest of three children, to John Bookwalter Beadle, a civil engineer and his wife Isabelle. Her father worked as a civil engineer for the US Reclamation Service and helped explore and map many parts of the still uncharted country. She spent most of her childhood in Washington, DC and was home-schooled by her father until high school. It was perhaps a natural progression that after high school she should study chemistry which she did at American University in Washington. It was there that fate and music came together. Enter Robert Burbank, a charismatic intellectual — also a chemistry major — with a passion for playing the piano. Jeanne, a music lover and cello player, fell in love. They graduated in 1936, both cum laude. Within weeks of finishing their degrees — on July 1, 1936 — the two married. She was just 21.

They moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they both worked at the family-connected Peacock Laboratories (bought out by Libby-OwensFord Glass in 1940) as chemists while earning MSc degrees in colloidal chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. In the summer of 1942 she had her only child, Carey Lea. But the joy in her daughter’s birth was tempered by the first signs of Robert’s illness. He was sent home for a month of bed rest; there was something wrong with his blood. Robert’s battle with Hodgkin’s Disease was to prove unsuccessful. He died from cancer of the lymph gland on September 21, 1946. Bravely, she put her life back together. She moved back to Washington DC where, hired by Joseph Clark White, she began to work as a research chemist for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). White’s main work, sponsored by the Bureau of Ships was to improve the habitability of submarines during

their sorties under the ocean, which of course included their battery emissions. In 1949, she co-authored a report on Phosphate Coatings on Steel, then in 1952 came ground-breaking work — “Positive-grid corrosion in the leadacid cell: corrosion rates of tin alloys and the effect of acid concentration on corrosion” and “Subgrain structure in lead and lead-antimony alloys” Her first patent — US2821565 filed in October 1955 and issued in January 1958 — was co-researched with Al Simon (who became a long-time collaborator with her) and John Lander. In this the three proposed an improved and more resistant thin grid and plate for a lead-acid battery using an alloy of tin, antimony and lead. During the 1960s, Burbank with her colleague Charles Wales, worked on a lead-calcium battery for portable cells. They also developed the electrolytic cell for X-ray diffraction studies of electrodes, such as lead and silver-zinc, to provide analysis for the

Above and middle: Jeanne Burbank in earlier years. Right: 1942: The Burbank family, Jeanne and Robert with baby Carey

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — JEANNE BURBANK battery companies such as Gates and Johnson Controls. Among her other accomplishments, Burbank was a leader in the difficult analysis of the entirely different roles played by the two polymorphs of lead dioxide in the battery operation. One markedly increased the physical stability of PbO2, while the other was the principal source of reactive energy. Significant groups in the US and Germany were struggling with this question, which influenced both battery design and the processing of materials in manufacture. Her work is still discussed today. The cooperative work resulted in a better understanding of the crystallographic structure of active materials. Her colleague, Al Simon did parallel studies with the very latest technology from an scanning electron microscope. Her influence was widely acknowledged across the industry — she regularly presented her reports to meetings of the Electrochemical Society across the US and even north of the border in Montreal and Ottawa. In 1962 she travelled to the UK for the Third International Symposium on Batteries, held in Bournemouth where she presented a paper about the positive plate characteristics in the floating lead calcium cell. In 1967 Burbank and Charles Wales received the NRL Battery Division Research Award for their pioneering work. In 1969, she received the sixth annual William Blum Award from the National Capital Section of the Electrochemical Society where the award tribute said: “your methods of applying X-ray and electron microscopy to the materials and components of lead-acid and silver-zinc batteries have made a substantial contribution to the understanding of battery grid corrosion and active materials reactions.” The following year, she received the first Frank Booth Award for outstanding technical merit at the International Power Sources Symposium held at Brighton in the UK. Much of Burbank’s work concerned submarine batteries, and she was able to study the microstructure of lead acid submarine batteries under working conditions on the USS Nautilus (SSN571), the first nuclear submarine. “She visited the Nautilus while it was docked and was able to see what the conditions were for ‘her’ batteries,” her daughter later recalled. “She replicated the battery conditions and set-up at the NRL. She was so pleased when NRL provided her with own

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building with additional space to set up the configuration of batteries. “I remember her being very proud when NRL got their first nuclear reactor. She took me to see it as soon as visitors were allowed in. “My mother had one regret about her professional accomplishments: that she never had the time to pursue a PhD in chemistry or other subjects. She had been faced early in life with providing for a sick husband, a daughter, and later in life, for her sister at times of crises, and for her parents after their retirement. But she lived both her work and her life to the full.” John Devitt, one of the key figures in the development of the valve regulated lead acid battery, later recalled: “Jeanne was able, in spite of many obstacles, not the least being the fact the professional women in her field were almost unheard of, to accomplish much in research in electrochemistry. She was a lady in all the best ways — a beautiful personality.” However, Burbank said she always thought of herself as being was one of the Battery Boys and felt that her gender had nothing to do with her accomplishments. She was an original believer in equal rights for women. “I remember her complaining that many of her co-workers, mostly male, but also some of the women secretaries, didn’t understand her point of

view,” her daughter recalls. “Equal rights for women was in its infancy, and women had only gotten the right to vote in 1920. The right to vote was often talked about in our household and was especially celebrated by her mother.” She published over 35 articles in professional journals, and received numerous awards for her work and publications. Several of these were published in four co-authored papers in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society and Electrochemical Acta. One of these, edited by the legendary Charles Tobias, was Advances in Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Engineering. Her final reports concern the crystallization of lead oxides on anodes of lead-antimony alloy. In 1971 she retired to Tucson, Arizona. There she was able to devote time to that strange mixture of science and art that seems to characterize many in the battery industry. In 1986 Jeanne and her sister, Joan moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. Soon after her sister’s death in 1997, Jeanne moved to the Life Care Center of Paradise Valley of Phoenix. She was studying Oglala Lakota — one of the languages of the Great Sioux Nation — when she started failing. She died on March 2, 2002, aged 86.

1966: Jeanne stands beside giant Saguaro cactus on land she bought before retiring to Tucson, Arizona. She is pictured with her daughter, Carey Lea, and a family friend.

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Higher Porosity Lower Electrical Resistance Higher Puncture Resistance Durable Oxidation Resistance New Generation of PE Separator -Ultra Porosity

SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — LAN LAM, JUN FURUKUWA Revolutionary. Perhaps that’s the only word for what was eventually to become the UltraBattery. The next leap forward in lead acid technology would not exist if it weren’t for the combined efforts of two particular men — Jun Furukawa and Lan Lam.

The UltraBattery Two

— from concept to reality It should probably called the beer mat that made history. But go back almost two decades and two CSIRO researchers, scribbling on a beer mat, are talking excitedly about a possible new battery. “What if,” says one, “we add a supercap to the battery mix?”

“And use that to counter difficulties with operating in partial state of charge conditions?” says the other. “The cycling potential would be awesome.” It’s 2003, and sitting just outside the ELBC conference held in Nice that year are David Rand, head of the

CSIRO battery research division, and Lan Lam, his chief research scientist. Both are Australian. Fittingly the beer mat was for Fosters, the national beer. The discussion was to have huge consequences for the battery industry and led to the creation of the UltraBattery — perhaps the nearest equivalent to a battery having the capabilities of a lithium ion one but at a fraction of the cost. Two years later the first patent for the UltraBattery emerged, with David Rand and Lan Lam as co-creators. But the stage was not yet set. Turning the idea into a practical product was not a reality. To do this would require the ideas and hard work of another. It would take another two years and involve the contribution of another brilliant CSIRO battery scientist — Jun Furukuwa.

Origins

“CSIRO’s Lan Lam and I started our collaborative development and completed a prototype UltraBattery FTZ12-UB with the size of a lead acid battery for motorcycles in mid-2006, just a little more than one and a half years into the collaboration.” — Jun Furukawa 94 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Lan Lam was born in Vietnam in 1953 amid turbulent times during the Second Indochina War. After graduating from high school, he went to Japan in 1972 as an overseas student. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering (1977) and Master of Engineering (1979) degrees at Yokohama National University, and his Doctor of Engineering degree (1982) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. He subsequently worked at Toshin Industrial, an electroplating company for switches and connectors, as a chief of Research and Development Laboratory, until August 1987. He was responsible for the research and development of plating machines, plating solutions, gold recovery, pollution treatment, quality control and staff training. The big breakthrough in his career and, eventually for the whole lead battery industry, was when Lan Lam joined CSIRO in 1988.

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SHAPERS OF AN INDUSTRY — LAN LAM, JUN FURUKUWA In 1988, Lam joined Rand at the CSIRO’s Battery Research Group division as research leader for a succession of projects. The list is impressive: technology for improved battery manufacture (GNB Australia); tin-dioxide coated glass flakes/spheres for enhanced battery performance (Monsanto Chemical, and Owens Corning Fiberglas Corporation); minor elements in lead for batteries (Pasminco); orifice pasting of battery plates (Wirtz Manufacturing); fast-charging techniques for electric-vehicle batteries (ALABC); elucidation of early failure of original equipment automotive batteries (Holden); determination of maximum acceptable levels for impurities in lead used in the production of valve-regulated lead-acid batteries on stand-by duty (ALABC); and a novel technique (Novel Pulse device) to ensure battery reliability in 42V powernets for new generation automobiles (ALABC). In 2002, when David Rand was redeployed by CSIRO to help advance Australian efforts in the development of hydrogen, Lam became the senior principal research scientist in the Energy Storage Theme of CSIRO Energy Technology. By 2003, instigated by David Rand, Lam and colleagues began to develop a highly efficient hybrid battery combining a supercapacitor and a traditional lead-acid battery. And the rest was history.

Furukuwa

Meanwhile, Jun Furukuwa was coming at the industry from a different direction. Jun Furukawa is the cathode to Lam’s anode when it comes to the invention of the UltraBattery. In the spring of 1980 he joined Furukuwa Battery (no relation) and his first task was the research and development of lead acid batteries for electric buses at the Kyoto Municipal Transportation Bureau. The next year, he researched a method of manufacturing a Pb-CaSn alloy strip for lead acid batteries through continuous cast rolling, its aging characteristics, and its application to batteries. Furukawa was later assigned to the Space Technology Department, where he was involved in the fabrication of a flight model in the development of the space Ni-Cd battery (commissioned by the National Space Development Agency of Japan) and in its qualification tests at NASDA’s Tsukuba Space Center. The developed batteries were loaded

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“We created a new technology that is 70% cheaper than the current batteries used in hybrid electric cars, and can also be made in existing manufacturing facilities. It was always my dream to create a better battery — I knew the success of hybrid electric vehicles was dependent on it.” — Lan Lam on satellites such as the MOS-1 and the ETS-5. Just over a year later, Jun Furukawa worked on the R&D of a ceramic seal terminal by the Active Metal method (Ti-Ni alloy) for space alkaline batteries such as Ni-Cd and Ni-H2. Furukawa led a Ni-MH Battery Development Group. Having innovated a metal-Ni hydrogen storage battery, with its negative electrode being a modification of spherical nickel hydroxide, a positive electrode and a separator, the Japanese team developed sealed Ni-MH batteries, integrating these components and processes for manufacturing electrodes and batteries. Much of his early research work was involved in designing better battery support for Japan’s space programme and Li-ion batteries, made smaller and lighter than Ni-MH, had led to a drop in prices. This was to prove an outstanding technology but had limited commercial success in part due to the arrival of Li-ion batteries. The next few years until 2006 saw the Japanese battery innovator turn his mind to the challenge of the day: VRLA. He was assigned to the Technology Development Department and appointed leader of the MV Team and Iwaki Development Centre’s Second Group. The challenge was the improvement of 36V valve-regulated lead-acid batteries for next-generation 42V-system automobiles, which meant examining positive and negative electrodes, battery structure, evaluation test methods, and heat dissipation mechanisms. Since 2004, in collaboration with CSIRO, Furukawa has been part of the team questing for that Holy Grail: the UltraBattery. “CSIRO’s Lan Lam and I started our collaborative development and completed a prototype UltraBattery FTZ12-UB with the size of a lead acid battery for motorcycles in mid-2006, just a little more than one and a half years into the collaboration,” he says. “We then participated in the ALABC’s

in-vehicle test project on a Honda HEV, known as Insight. “The in-vehicle test started at the end of 2006 and went on smoothly to achieve our original target of 50,000 miles in just half a year. “We continued the test with a doubled target of 100,000 miles and also achieved this target in January 2008.” This was a first in the history of lead acid storage batteries. In March 2009, Furukawa and Lan Lam won the 2009 Technical Development Award of the Electrochemical Society of Japan for the Development of the Ultra Battery. In 2008, the UltraBattery was licensed to East Penn Manufacturing, one of the top lead acid battery companies in the US. The technology has also been licensed to Furukawa Battery Co in Japan and is also under licensing negotiation with companies in Europe, China, India, South Africa and Australia.

THE ULTRABATTERY The UltraBattery is a hybrid, long-life lead-acid energy storage device. It combines the fast charging rates of an ultracapacitor technology with the energy storage potential of a lead-acid battery technology in a hybrid device with a single common electrolyte. Combining these two technologies in one cell means that UltraBattery works efficiently in a Partial State of Charge (PSoC). Compared with conventional VRLA batteries, UltraBattery provides more energy and costs less over its lifetime when used in variable power applications. The technology is more efficient, and is also safe and recyclable. The battery is generally reckoned to offer around 80% of the ability of lithium ion batteries in PSoC for grid functions while costing less than a third of the price.

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ALTERNATIVE ENERGY STORAGE: CAES/LAES Compressed or liquefied air can be used as a medium for large-scale energy storage. Historically the technology found little favour — until now, writes Hillary Christie.

Compressed air energy storage: a new twist on an old technology In November, Canadian firms Hydrostor and energy storage firm NRStor announced the completion of their first commercial CAES (Compressed Air Energy Storage) facility. The Goderich plant, in Ontario, provides 1.75MW of peak power output and more than 10MWh of storage capacity in what is being hailed as the first utility-scale commercial application of A-CAES technology. “This facility serves as an important proof point for A-CAES on the global stage, enabling the build-out of Hydrostor’s full-scale project pipeline in Canada, the USA, Chile, Australia and other markets,” said Hydrostor CEO Curtis VanWalleghem. The technology works by using electricity from the grid to run an air compressor, producing heated compressed air. The heat is extracted from the air stream and stored for later use on discharge. The cooled compressed air is then sent underground and stored in a cavern. When the grid needs energy, the air is brought back to the surface, recollects the stored heat and is expanded through an air turbine to generate power on demand.

The project was supported by Export Development Canada, a government-owned export credit agency, and received funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a foundation created by the government to fund new clean technologies. Hydrostor, which was founded in 2010, says it has three projects in operation or under construction in Canada and Australia, and utility-scale projects ranging in capacity from 20MW500MW across the US, Canada, Chile and Australia.

First CAES

Australia’s government gave the goahead last July for the country’s first compressed air energy storage facility, to be provided by Hydrostor’s Australian subsidiary. The 5MW Angas A-CAES project, costing A$30 million ($20.7 million), to be sited at the Angas Zinc Mine near Adelaide, will provide synchronous inertia, load shifting and frequency regulation to support grid security and reliability for Australia’s National Electricity Market. The project will repurpose existing underground mining infrastructure

to install the sub-surface compressed air system, thus converting an unused brownfield site to a clean energy project. A total of A$9 million ($6.2 million) in grant funding has been awarded to Hydrostor for the project, A$6 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and A$3 million from the government of South Australia through its Renewable Technology Fund. “Compressed air storage has the potential to provide similar benefits to pumped hydro energy storage, however it has the added benefits of being flexible with location and topography, such as utilizing a cavern already created at a disused mine site,” said Australian Renewable Energy Agency CEO Darren Miller. Compressed air will be stored in the underground cavern, which is kept at a constant pressure using a hydrostatic head from a water column. During charging, compressed air displaces water out of the cavern up a water column to a surface reservoir, and during discharge water flows back into the cavern forcing air to the surface under pressure, where it is re-heated using the stored heat and then expanded through a turbine to generate electricity on demand.

Sumitomo moves in

The 400MWh US system by Highview follows a 250MWh system in the UK.

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One of the most interesting corporate finance moves in the sector has come from Japanese technology giant Sumitomo Heavy Industries which has gone into partnership with cryogenic energy storage provider Highview Power with an investment of $46 million to grow the technology globally, the firms announced on February 25. The investment will be used to expand the CRYOBattery developed by Highview Power, The deal with Sumitomo — which says it intends to use its subsidiary Sumitomo SHI FW (SFW)

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ALTERNATIVE ENERGY STORAGE: CAES/LAES as a ‘technology center and hub for the CRYOBattery business’ — signifies a move into the clean technology market for Sumitomo, which says it intends to expand the technology’s footprint in Europe, Asia and the Americas. “One of the biggest barriers to a carbon-free future has been the ability of renewables to perform as reliably and as cost-effectively as traditional fossil fuel sources,” said SFW CEO Tomas Harju-Jeanty, who has joined the Highview Power board.

Commercial projects

Hydrostor may be making the first commercial CAES but other firms are also active in the business — moving away from demonstration projects to commercial ventures. The latest such venture using liquefied air was announced in December with a partnership from Highview Power and Encore Renewable Energy with plans to develop the United States’ first long duration, liquid air energy storage system. This facility will be a minimum of 50MW, provide more than eight hours of storage (400MWh) and will be in northern Vermont.

“The project is the first of many utility-scale, liquid air energy storage projects that we plan to develop across the US to help scale up renewable energy deployment,” said a Highview official. “The Vermont facility will contribute to resolving the longstanding energy transmission challenges surrounding the state’s Sheffield-Highgate Export Interface (SHEI) and enable the efficient transport of excess power from renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, to help integrate them on the power grid. “This includes the ability to store energy for weeks at the lowest levellized cost of long duration storage in the industry, providing what is called ‘grid-synchronous inertia,’ which balances electrical demand and supply. Other services the facility can deliver include market arbitrage, frequency management, reserve, and grid constraint management services.” Highview Power has also been busy in the UK and the firm announced in October that it plans to construct the UK’s first commercial liquid air energy storage facility. The 50MW/250 MWh project will be located at a de-

“This facility serves as an important proof point for A-CAES on the global stage, enabling the buildout of Hydrostor’s full-scale project pipeline in Canada, the USA, Chile, Australia and other markets” — Curtis Vanwelleghem, CEO of Hydrostor

NEW WAYS FOR PUMPED HYDRO The principle of pumped hydro — use energy to pump water up a slope and catch some of that energy through turbines on its way down — can be applied in a variety of other ways. What happens say when you put energy into pushing a train with heavy weights up a slope and capture electricity when it’s released? Or hoist a huge weight up a pit shaft and use pulleys to catch the energy on its release. Or pump air into a cavern and use the escaping air to drive turbines and generate power? All of these techniques — and a few others listed here —are now either being designed or are already commercially available. One interesting start-up is Gravity Power which, based in California, has devised a system that relies on two water-filled shafts, one wider than the other, which are connected at both ends. Water is pumped down through the smaller shaft to raise a piston in the larger shaft. When demand peaks, the piston is allowed to sink back down the main shaft, forcing water through a generator to create electricity.

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The system’s relatively compact nature means it can be installed close to areas of high demand, and extra modules can be added when more capacity is needed, Another bright spark on the horizon, working on a similar principle, comes from a UK start-up called Gravitricity with a simple variation of pumped hydro. Instead of water being pumped up a hill, a large weight of up to 3,000 tonnes is raised/dropped from the bottom of a disused mine shaft. Gravitricity plans to equip these long-abandoned mine shafts with enormous weights and winches. Surplus power will be drawn from the grid to raise the underground weights closer to ground level. When the time comes to inject energy back into the grid, the weights can be released for a burst of power generation. The firm says the output duration can be between 15 minutes and eight hours. Although this is similar to pumped hydro it has one extra benefit — an almost instant (one second) response to fluctuations as well as a potential degradation-free operational lifespan

of 50 years. Innovate UK, the British government funded agency, awarded the start-up a £650,000 ($1 million) grant in 2018. A full scale demonstrator is being developed and the firm hopes to install a full-scale prototype by 2020. Managing director Charlie Blair says the difference with pumped hydro is that, “we don’t need a mountain with a loch or lake at the top, and we can react much faster to the need for power.” He says the biggest single cost is the hole, and that is why the start-up is developing its technology using existing mine shafts, in the UK and also in South Africa. He reckons that as the technology advances, the cost of drilling will reduce significantly and will allow them to sink purpose-built shafts wherever they are required. The firm plans to build models from 1MW to 20MW. Gravitricity managing director Charlie Blair: “the difference between pumped hydro is that we don’t need a mountain with a loch or lake at the top, and we can react much faster”

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ALTERNATIVE ENERGY STORAGE: CAES/LAES commissioned thermal power station in the north of England. Highview Power has already built and connected two LAES plants to the UK grid, one of which is the world’s largest storage plant of its kind and provides 15MWh of support to the grid during winter demand peaks. The company uses a liquid air energy storage system dubbed CRYOBattery. The firm says this offers a levelized cost of storage of $140/MWh for a 10-hour, 200MW/2 GWh system. Accompanying this is Highview’s BLU core controller system, which allows the battery to be configured to particular applications, and provides operation and performance monitoring feedback.

Addressing demand

Javier Cavada, CEO of Highview Power, says: “Highview Power’s mission today and in the future is to address the growing demand for energy storage, the ways in which consumption is changing, and the issue of increasing intermittency. CRYOBattery offers an affordable, scalable solution that can store energy for many hours — even days.” Unlike competing long-duration technologies, the CRYOBattery can be sited just about anywhere and has a small footprint, even at multiple gigawattlevels. “CRYOBattery can be easily scaled to multiple gigawatts by simply adding more tanks. The technology operates without size limitations or geographic constraints,” says Cavada. The facility could offer additional services such as market arbitrage, frequency management, reserve, and grid constraint management. Highview is seeking additional sites across Europe and the US to develop similar large-scale projects, all to have a capacity of 50MW/250MWh. LAES does not come without its challenges. One such problem is its poor round-trip efficiency. Both liquefying the air and expanding it require electricity; the processes also produce waste energy in the form of hot and cold air. In the case of Highview Power, efficiency is maintained at around 70%, says the firm, by using the waste heat and cold. Thermal stores can be used to capture the heat produced during liquefaction and the cooling produced during electricity generation, and some companies have achieved this by integrating LAES with industrial refrigeration. The European Union-funded Cryohub project aims to do just that by capturing excess cold and heat in a ther-

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mal store. The team, which includes partners from five countries, mapped refrigerated warehouses across Europe looking for a feasible and economical site for their first pilot project, due to be built in 2020. By integrating renewable energy generation and LAES with existing coldstorage systems, the project claims to have doubled its round-trip efficiency to 50%. CAES technology is not new though with the pressing need for greater energy storage, its importance has risen to the surface. The 310MW Huntorf facility in Germany, for example, was built in 1978, and is one of only two utilityscale CAES plants in operation. The second is a 110MW plant in McIntosh Alabama, which was built as long ago as 1991. This uses nuclear plant-generated night-time power for compression and produces peak power during the day. Huntorf makes use of two underground salt caverns, which are filled up over several hours and tapped when electricity is needed. The compressed air is released and is heated by burning natural gas to get the air to expand to drive a huge turbine that generates electricity for two hours, before the process can start over again.

Underground caverns

UK start-up firm Storelectric is looking at exploiting disused underground salt caverns to store the air, of which there are many in Britain. “For CAES to be really economic, developers in the field have focused on increasing the efficiency of CAES by holding on to and reusing the stored thermal energy to heat the air for expansion, rather than waste this energy and burn fuel, which adds to the cost of the recovered electrical energy and makes the sustainable benefits of such a storage technique questionable,” says the firm. One problem that faces alternative energy storage forms (but not that of CAES and LAES) at the grid level is that of scalability. LAES can store enough electricity to power thousands of homes for decades. At this scale, regular electrochemical batteries become too large and expensive. (Despite this, the majority of investment is still going to lithium-ion.) At a recent conference in Birmingham covering the battery and energy storage industries, panellists discussed the lack of investment in renewable energy and called on regulatory and market stability to address the issue. Also suggested was a need for sector coupling and

LAES: HOW IT WORKS Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) — also known as Cryogenic Energy Storage — can offer long-duration, gigawatt scale storage. This is where air or nitrogen is liquified and stored in low-pressure, vacuuminsulated tanks before being returned to a gaseous state. This gas is then used to power a turbine and generate electricity. The system of LAES—likened to a pressure cooker in reverse — involves three core processes. First, a liquefier uses electrical energy to draw air from the environment before cleaning and cooling it to sub-zero temperatures until it liquefies. The volume is reduced until 700 litres of ambient air becomes 1 litre of liquid air. The liquid air is stored at low pressure in tanks similar to those used in the industrial-gas sector. The tanks, already globally deployed for bulk storage of liquid nitrogen, oxygen and LNG, store the potential energy until electricity is needed. When power is required, liquid air is drawn from the tanks and pumped to high pressure. Through a heat exchanger the compressed air is evaporated, superheated and brought back to a gaseous state. The resulting high-pressure gas can then be used to drive an electricitygenerating turbine. cross-sector collaboration. Julian Jansen, research manager at IHS Markit, says that nowadays the need is to focus on the value that energy storage provides to the market, rather than focusing on the cost of implementation. Other companies are exploring energy storage solutions using technologies similar to LAES. For example, Keuka Energy, a Florida company exploring wind-powered renewable energy solutions, has developed a technology that eliminates the need for a gear box in conventional wind turbines, potentially lowering the long-term cost of running the machines. Keuka stores its excess energy as liquid air, to address the issue of intermittency. LAES can also work well when tied with other industries; efficiency can be improved in the superheating phase by using industrial waste heat/cold from thermal generation plants, steel mills and LNG terminals.

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Master of Masters Mr.Zeki Sarıçam, a leader in the machinery production for the battery sector with his know-how and broad experience, started manufacturing molds in 1968. Having founded Sarıçam Kalıpçılık in 1975 to provide grid molds for battery manufacturers, Mr.Zeki Sarıçam developed some projects, which resulted in the manufacture of the first Grid Casting Machine in 1980, followed by the first Casting Machine in 1983. Thanks to the quality standards and the wide range of machinery he manufactured, Sarıçam earned an outstanding reputation abroad. is first export was to TUDOR in Spain – 1990 Mr.Zeki Sarıçam - Molding Production - 1976

As a leading industry doyen, Mr.Zeki Saricam is respected and admired by his peers. Leading the industry with his experience and knowledge, Mr.Zeki Sarıçam, driven by his passion for work and determination, established ZESAR TECHNOLOGY FOR BATTERIES in 2002 to increase the capacity and market higher quality products. ZESAR started using its own patented designs in machinery and in 2008, the company drew the attention of battery manufacturers from all over the world. In 2009, the company started the Robotic Transfer System (RTS) to automate the whole assembly process, considering the requests from global battery manufacturers. Having delivered its first turnkey project in 2014, ZESAR is now one of the leading companies of the industry thanks to its innovative applications and the customer satisfaction it offers.

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Mr.Zeki Sarıçam - Chairman of the Management Board - 2020

ZESAR invested in a new factory in Manisa, Turkey in 2015. Today, the company has 2 production facilities in Manisa, along with its head office in Istanbul. The experience of 52 years ensures that ZESAR, with the ERP infrastructure it has, keeps offering services as a global company that exports 80% of its products.

zesartech

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCED WELDING TECHNIQUES The industrial blue laser is in its infancy but holds a promising future for the technology as it develops. Its high speed and defect-free quality makes it suitable for the battery business, says Jean-Michel Pelaprat, chief excutive of technology firm NUBURU.

Blue lasers as new welding tool

Copper absorbtion

As seen in Figure 1, copper absorbs blue light more than 13 times better than it absorbs infrared, so blue laser welding is obviously far more efficient. Even more important than the improved efficiency is the fact that melted copper absorbs blue light essentially as well as solid copper. That means the energy required to start the melt is the same as the energy needed to maintain it.

Blue lasers have demonstrated the ability to produce consistent, high-quality welds of foil stacks, foils-totab, tabs-to-case, busbars, and cases, demonstrating speed and efficiency in copper, aluminium, and steel, along with other materials

That creates a wide process window — a large range of power, exposure time, and spot size that will effectively weld copper with no spatter and no perforations. Blue lasers hold those same qualitative advantages over green, although to a lesser degree, as copper absorbs blue light 20% better than green. Defect-free welding alone is not a sufficient justification for adopting blue laser welding; but there is ample justification when the defectfree performance is accomplished at very high speed.

Figure 2

Those properties are making the blue laser attractive at every stage of battery fabrication. Blue lasers have demonstrated the ability to produce consistent, high-quality welds of foil stacks, foils-to-tab, tabs-tocase, busbars, and cases. They’ve demonstrated the same range of materials, demonstrating speed and efficiency in copper, aluminium, and steel, along with other materials. The effectiveness of the blue laser stems directly from fundamental physics. Copper, for example, absorbs only 5% of incident infrared energy, but it absorbs more than 65% of blue light energy. The optimum energy density to melt copper is right around 2.3 MW/cm2. An infrared laser would have to deliver 20 times that energy density to initiate a weld in copper. The

Figure 1

Lasers are robust and flexible manufacturing tools that integrate easily into a variety of production environments. Laser materials processing is often faster and higher quality than conventional methods. But for all their benefits, lasers have not historically seen significant use in battery fabrication. That’s because traditional infrared lasers don’t work well with copper and other reflective metals. That picture has been changing since 2017, when the first high-power blue laser was brought to the market. Blue lasers — emitting their radiation in the neighbourhood of 450 nanometers (nm) — have demonstrated the capability to weld copper faster and with higher quality than any alternative joining method.

tremendous inefficiency is not the real problem. The problem is that once copper melts it absorbs much more infrared energy. All that excess infrared laser energy creates miniature explosions, ejecting material from the weld and leaving cavities in the resultant joint. Those defects, called spatter and perforations, degrade the electrical and mechanical strength of the joint.

100 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCED WELDING TECHNIQUES copper welds. That can be thought of from the application side as well: for a given power, exposure, and spot size, a

Figure 3a

The wide process window for blue laser welding means there is a range of power, exposure time, and spot size that will create high-quality

Figure 3b

The key to achieving high speed is to stay beneath the spatter threshold of the material, but maintain the highest possible energy density up to that threshold. Energy density is a function of laser power, which has a given maximum for a specific laser, and also a function of exposure time, which is a tunable process parameter. But it is also a function of another laser specification: the beam parameter product, or BPP. BPP is essentially a measure of laser beam “spread.” A smaller BPP means the laser can be focussed onto a smaller spot, which leads to a higher energy density. For example, consider two nearly identical 500W 450nm lasers. Laser A has a BPP of 60mm-mrad, while Laser B has a BPP of 30 mm-mrad. Laser B can be focussed to a 200µm spot, while Laser A cannot produce a spot smaller than 400µm. The smaller spot size due to Laser B’s smaller BPP leads directly to performance advantages: As schematically illustrated in Figure 2, Laser B penetrates into copper more than one-and-a-half times as deeply, or welds the same thickness three to four times faster.

Design parameters

It’s important to recognize that the BPP is a design parameter of the laser system, and can’t be “fixed” later down the line. The best that can be done is to maintain the BPP through the optical train.

Another key point is that there is an optimum energy density for copper welding, around 2.3MW/cm2. A BPP that leads to a higher energy density doesn’t do any good: it just leads to a poor quality joint. There is one exception. If a laser is integrated into a scanning system, the specialized lenses that maintain beam quality also inevitably spread out the beam. For example, a scanning system that covers a 100mm x 100mm field with a working distance of 300mm will reduce the energy density. To reach the optimum energy density for welding copper, the blue laser would need to have an output power of 1.5kW and a BPP of 12mmmilliradians (or smaller). The physical advantages and design features of the blue laser lead directly to unprecedented capabilities for battery fabrication.

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WHAT TO EVALUATE Several blue laser models are available on the market. To integrate a blue laser in the battery fabrication process, first evaluate the needs. For example, if your process extends only to joining 10 copper foils for a small prismatic cell, then one of the lower power options might do the job. If your needs include joining foils and tabs in pouch cells, a mid-range blue laser could be the answer. And if you run the gamut from welding 8µm copper foils to joining mm-range steel thicknesses in the casing, you’ll need a high-power, high-brightness version. Don’t be hypnotized by the laser power itself. The energy density

is linear with laser power, but it goes as the inverse square of the spot size. That means brightness — as indicated with a small BPP — is perhaps even more important than power. Brightness becomes even more crucial if integration with scanning systems is on your planning horizon. The industrial blue laser is in its infancy, and industry roadmaps outline a continuing increase in power and resultant energy density. The increase will bring more operations within the capabilities. With the demonstrated high speed and defect-free quality, it makes sense to consider bringing the blue laser into your manufacturing flow.

The key to achieving high speed is to stay beneath the spatter threshold of the material, but maintain the highest possible energy density up to that threshold. Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 101

CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCED WELDING TECHNIQUES wide range of joint geometries can be addressed. For example, as shown in Figure 3a, it’s possible to join a stack of 8µm thick copper foils with a 254µm thick tab with no voids, no spatter, no defects. Contrast that with the performance of ultrasonic welding, seen in Figure 3b. The advantage extends beyond copper. Aluminium, for example, absorbs blue light three times better than it absorbs IR. And blue lasers also address the challenge of welding dissimilar metals. Again, the wide process window makes

it possible to join, for example, aluminium and copper or stainless steel and copper. Welding copper tabs to the steel casing of a cylindrical cell becomes a high-yield, straightforward process. As seen in Figure 4, the blue laser is an effective solution for nearly every joining operation in the battery fabrication process. Here is where the unique qualities of laser processing add even greater flexibility to the manufacturing process. The laser power and exposure time can be adjusted within the laser itself, and the spot

size can be manipulated remotely through automated adjustments in the optical train. There’s no physical contact between the laser and the workpiece; energy is transferred through the light beam itself. That means no downtime between operations, no tool changeover, and — obviously — no tool wear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The blue laser is an effective solution for nearly every joining operation in the battery fabrication process.

102 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Figure 4d

Figure 4c

Figure 4b

Figure 4a

Jean-Michel Pelaprat, has over 30 years as an entrepreneur. CM&SO and co-founder of Nuburu, a hightech company using blue laser technology. He was previously, CEO for Novalux and Vytran and vice president and general manager of Coherent.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Disruption to the events programme As the spring conference season approached for the battery and energy storage industry, hosts and organizers were struggling to decide whether to go ahead with events that have been in the diary for months, if not years. As this issue was released, and with the situation changing on an hourly basis, a variety of energy conferences and meetings had been postponed. While we have taken every effort to ensure these details are correct, please contact the conference organisers with any queries, or check websites below and throughout the listings.

Overview of rescheduled events

3rd Medical Battery Conference, originally scheduled for May 4-5 has been cancelled until 2021. http://www.medicalbatteryconference.com

Energy Storage Europe, which would have been on, March 10-12, in Düsseldorf, Germany, Rescheduled for March 16 - 18, 2021. www.eseexpo.com

CTI Symposia USA, due to be held from May 11-14 has been postponed until further notice. https://drivetrain-symposium.world/us/

BuildingEnergy Boston on March 23-24 has been cancelled with the intention of rescheduling in the summer. https://nesea.org/conference/buildingenergy-boston

Australian Energy Storage Conference and Exhibition has been postponed. New date is to be confirmed; https://australianenergystorage.com.au

The International Advanced Battery Power Conference, listed for March 23 – 25 has been rescheduled for April 28-29, 2021. battery-power.eu/en

China International Battery Fair (CIBF) has been postponed from May 25-27, 2020 to somewhere between March and May 2021. TBC. http://en.cibf.org.cn/News/Details/627

Power Utility Conference due to take place on March 24-25 has been postponed. A new date will be announced shortly. https://marketforcelive.com/future-of-utilities/events/ utilities-summit/

The International Flow Battery Forum will change to become an interactive showcase on June 30 but the conference itself is now postponed to the third week of January 2021 and will be held, as before in Düsseldorf, Germany. https://flowbatteryforum.com

The Battery Tech Expo, scheduled for March 26th has been postponed until October 8. www.batterytechexpo.co.uk

The ILA’s DCA & Heat meeting has been postponed until October 7-8. https://batteryinnovation.org/dca-and-heatworkshop-2020/

The International Battery Seminar, scheduled for March 30-April 2, has been rescheduled to July 27-30. www.internationalbatteryseminar.com The 6th Residential Energy Storage Forum in Munich, Germany rescheduled from March 31-April 2 to November 16-20, and will now be held back to back with the 13th Energy Storage World Forum (large-scale applications). https://energystorageforum.com The Energy Storage Association show, listed for April 8-10 in Arizona, US and rescheduled for August 26-28; https://energystorage.org/events/esa-annual-conference/ CMT’s 2nd e-Mobility Asia has been rescheduled from April 23–24 to July 1-2. https://www.cmtevents.com/aboutevent.aspx?ev=200412 Battery Show Europe 2020 set for April 28-30; and reset for October 15-17; https://www.thebatteryshow.eu/en/Home.html BCI at the end of April near Las Vegas has been cancelled. Next BCI: April 25-27, 2021 in Naples, Florida https://batterycouncil.org/page/2020Home

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The related CBI technical workshop will be postponed until October 8-9. The schedule for meetings will remain the same and the location for both is still the Royal Scots Club, Edinburgh, Scotland. https://batteryinnovation.org/dca-and-heatworkshop-2020/ IHS Markit, the conference organizer and market analyst, cancelled its CERAWeek, which should have begun on March 9 in Houston, Texas, and is one of the largest energy industry gatherings in the world. https://ceraweek.com/index.html Large-Scale Solar Europe has been postponed until June 30 – July 1. https://lss.solarenergyevents.com PV India Tech has been postponed until further notice. https://indiatech.solarenergyevents.com ELBC, in Milan in September — is still going ahead though the organizers, the International Lead Association, say they will continue to monitor the situation. https://17elbc.ila-lead.org

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 103

FORTHCOMING EVENTS CTI Symposia USA May 11 – 14 Novi, MI. USA Postponed until further notice

ees Europe June 17 – 19 Munich, Germany

Contact CTI – Car Training Institute Tel: +49 211 88743 3333 Email: info@car-training-institute.com www.car-training-institute.com

June 24 – 26 Chicago, Illinois. USA

May 25-27 China

Contact China Industrial Association of Power Sources Liu Xiaoxia Tel: +86 2223 959 049 Email: liuxiaoxia@ciaps.org.cn http://en.cibf.org.cn

LABAT — International Conference on Lead-Acid Batteries June 6 – 12 Bulgaria Rescheduled for June 8-11, 2021 Since 1989, the Lead-Acid Batteries Department of Institute of Electrochemistry and Energy Systems at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has been organizing a series of triennial conferences on lead-acid batteries, named LABAT. The LABAT Conference is a globally recognized scientific forum gathering leading battery experts, technologists and academic researchers from all over the world. Contact Mariana Gerganska Email: gerganska@labatscience.com www.labatscience.com/conference/index

49th Power Sources Conference June 15 – 18 Jacksonville, FL. USA The Power Sources Conference is the oldest continually held biennial conference devoted to research and development of power source, energy conversion, power distribution and management technologies for military use. The conference goal is to bring Government, industry and academic researchers and developers together to discuss advances in power and energy technologies to support the growing power demands of military platforms and electronic systems. Attendees are comprised of representatives from organizations within DoD and other Government Agencies who are responsible for the design, research,

104 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Contact UKIP Media & Events Clinton Cushion Tel: +44 1306 743744 www.globalautomotivecomponentsandsuppliersexpo.com/en/

ITEC 2020

China International Battery Fair — CIBF 2020

Postponed TBC

Americas and Europe, so this is a truly global supplier-sourcing opportunity in one compact location.

Cancelled Discover future-ready solutions for renewable energy storage and advanced battery technology at ees Europe! Europe’s largest, most international and most visited exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions as well as battery systems. The exhibition will be accompanied by a two-day energy storage conference where leading experts delve into current questions of this industry.

Contact Rebecca Krishnamurthy rebecca.k@rna-associates.com www.itec-conf.com

E-Mobility & Circular Economy EMCE 2020 June 29 – July 1 Tokyo, Japan

development, engineering and transition of power and energy components and systems, along with industry and academic partners supporting collaborative research and manufacturing of such products.

At EMCE 2020, the industry will present its latest services, technologies and future designs in the field of E-Mobility, Power Distribution and Energy Storage. Meet all the industry’s stakeholders in a spacious Exhibition parallel to the Conference and experience Demo Rides with participants and media on Tokyo’s roads. Display your products and services. Show the hottest innovations in E-Mobility: cars, trucks, bikes, drones, toys, planes, helicopters, power storage and distribution. If you seek for great opportunities to promote your products and services, the E-Mobility & Circular Economy is the ideal event for you!

Contact Samantha Tola Tel: +1 212 460 8090 ext. 203 stola@pcm411.com www.powersourcesconference.com

Contact ICM AG Susann Schmid Tel: +41 62 785 10 00 www.icm.ch/emce-2020

Global Automotive Components And Suppliers Expo

European Fuel Cell Forum

Contact Solar Promotion www.ees-europe.com/en/home

June 16 – 18 Stuttgart, Germany Postponed TBC Tier 1, 2 and 3 automotive component manufacturers from around the world will be at the expo to display their very latest technologies and products. Plus numerous other exhibitors will be on hand to discuss how they can participate in cost reduction within supply chains, and how they can offer new, alternative, cost-effective manufacturing and supply solutions. Furthermore, international associations, pavilions and specialist components manufacturers will be participating from the Middle East, Asia, the

June 30 – July 3 Lucerne, Switzerland The EUROPEAN FUEL CELL FORUM was founded in 1994 for the promotion of the innovative technology using technical and scientific conferences, relevant literature, and unbiased information from the media. From early on many highly successful conferences have been organised. The forum continues to be one of the most prominent meeting platforms for the exchange of scientific and technical information, as well as for the networking towards future solutions. The organisation is located in Lucerne and can be contacted at: Contact www.efcf.com

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11th International Conference on Lead-Acid Batteries 9-12 June 2020, Golden Sands, Bulgaria

LABAT’2020

LABAT is a globally recognized scientific forum gathering leading battery experts, technologists and academic researchers from all over the world. LABAT’2020 will be held in the magnificent Golden Sands resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

r o f d e 1 l 2 u 0 d e 2 h e c n s u e J R 11 8

THE PROGRAM INCLUDES

Technical sessions focused on the latest research achievements and developments in the field of lead-acid battery technology and operation ● Exhibition fair as perfect opportunity for promotion of new products and services ● Gaston Plante Medal presentation ceremony ● Social events for an effective professional networking ●

LABAT’2020 MAIN TOPICS ● ● ● ● ● ●

Fundamentals of Lead-Acid Battery Electrochemistry Advances in Lead Battery Technology, Manufacture and Recycling Innovations and New Materials for Lead-Acid Batteries Advanced Lead Batteries for Automotive and Energy Storage Applications Battery Management Systems, State-of-Charge, State-of-Health Modelling and Simulation of Lead-Acid Battery Systems

ORGANIZED BY

CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT

Lead-Acid Batteries Department, Institute of Electrochemistry & Energy Systems, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences www.labatscience.com

Mrs. Mariana Gerganska Secretary of LABAT’2020 gerganska@labatscience.com Tel/Fax: +359 2 8731552

IMPORTANT DATES Short Abstract submission / Reduced exhibition fee - 10% Early bird registration / Extended Abstract submission Reduced exhibition fee - 5%

30.10.2019 15.03.2020 15.03.2020

FORTHCOMING EVENTS International Flow Battery Forum

37th International Battery Seminar and Exhibit

June 30 – July 2 Düsseldorf, Germany

July 27-30, 2020 Orlando, Florida. USA

Rescheduled to third week of Jan 2021 The meeting is aimed at all those interested in the deployment, commercialisation, demonstration, manufacturing, financing, component and material supply, and the sector of academic and industrial research of flow batteries. The IFBF has a unique combination of keynote addresses, oral and poster presentations, seminars, and panel discussions to inform and educate delegates of the benefits of flow battery systems and for all to learn and share in the development of this exciting technology. The programme will cover recent progress, scientific, engineering and manufacturing issues, study of financial, marketing and commercial issues. Contact Swanbarton Tel: +44 1666 840 948 Email: info@flowbateryforum.com www.flowbatteryforum.com

CMT’s E-mobility Conference Asia July 1-2 Bangkok, Thailand Rescheduled from April 23-24 As demand for electric vehicles are expected to increase in Singapore, the country’s electricity and gas company SP Group plans a network of 1,000 electric vehicle chargers in Singapore by 2020. The EV chargers are expected to be 250 high-powered direct currentzxn with a power ratings up to 350kW. The chargers will be able to support EV models with large battery capacity and longer driving range. Contact Centre for Management Technology — CMT. Tel: +65 6346 9138 www.cmtevents.com/aboutevent. aspx?ev=200412

Bangkok, Thailand

106 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Rescheduled from March 30-April 2 Coventry, UK

Battery Cells & Systems Expo and Conference July 8 – 9 Coventry, UK Battery Cells & Systems Expo will bring together automotive manufacturers, electric utilities, battery system integrators, cell manufacturers and the entire manufacturing supply chain. A truly unique showcase, companies from around the world will use the show to launch products and demonstrate their technology to an audience of over 4,000 professionals. Co-Located with Vehicle Electrification Expo and The Advanced Materials Show, this will be a highly concentrated two days of networking, lead generation and education featuring the leaders and innovators responsible for shaping the future of this industry. Contact Event Partners Tel: +44 1273 286 399 Email: alex.oliver@event-partners.org www.batterysystemsexpo.com

PlugVolt’s July 2020 Battery Seminar July 21 – 23 Plymouth, MI. USA PlugVolt will be hosting its next Battery Seminar in Plymouth, MI (USA) featuring an entire day of in-depth technical tutorials on fundamental materials’ challenges for electrochemical energy storage, opportunities and challenges with solid-state batteries, best design practices for cell engineering, battery modeling and health monitoring, second life design considerations for energy storage, etc. Next two days will include complementary industry updates provided by subject matter experts from Automotive and Grid Storage OEMs, major battery manufacturers and global Tier 1 system developers and suppliers. Attendees will also get an exclusive opportunity to tour A123 Systems’ new Novi, Michigan (USA) facility first-hand and ask questions to resident experts, and enjoy some light appetizers and beverages while networking with industry peers. Contact PlugVolt JC Soman Tel: +1 877 7584 8658 Email: juratesoman@plugvolt.com www.batteryseminars.com

Founded in 1983, the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit has established itself as the premier event showcasing the state of the art of worldwide energy storage technology developments for consumer, automotive, military, and industrial applications. Key thought leaders will assemble to not only provide broad perspectives, but also informed insights into significant advances in materials, product development, manufacturing, and application for all battery systems and enabling technologies. As the longest-running annual battery industry event in the world, this meeting has always been the preferred venue to announce significant developments, new products, and showcase the most advanced battery technology. Contact Cambridge Enertech Tel: +1 781 972 5400 www.internationalbatteryseminar.com

The 5th Asia (Guangzhou) Battery Sourcing Fair 2020 — GBF August 16 – 18 Guangzhou, China Asia GBF is one of the professional demonstration and trade platforms of battery & energy storage industry, in which hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of professional visitors will gather there. Contact Guangdong Grandeur International Exhibition Group Tel: +86 20289 67766 E-mail: grand@grahw.com www.battery-expo.com/index.php?lang=en

Guangzhou, China

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The Leading Exhibition Series for Batteries and Energy Storage Systems

NOVEMBER 16–18, 2020, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL SOUTH AMERICA’S HOT SPOT FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-southamerica.com

DECEMBER 15–17, 2020, MUMBAI, INDIA INDIA‘S LEADING ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE EXHIBITION www.ees-india.in

MARCH 2–4, 2021, DUBAI, UAE EES@MIDDLE EAST ENERGY: MENA‘S MOST COMPREHENSIVE ENERGY STORAGE EVENT www.ees-mena.com

JUNE 9–11, 2021, MUNICH, GERMANY EUROPE’S LARGEST EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-europe.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS ees South America August 25 – 27 São Paulo, Brazil

30th Annual Energy Storage Association Conference & Expo

20th International Automobile Recycling Congress — IARC 2020

August 26-28 Phoenix, Arizona. USA

September 2-4 Geneva, Switzerland

Rescheduled from April 8-10 The 30th Annual Conference and Expo is the industry’s premiere conference and networking event. It is the most influential gathering of market leaders, customers, decision makers, and technology innovators. Attending will provide you with new strategies, new connections and innovative ideas that will move your organization forward. The special exhibition “ees South America” is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary and mobile electrical energy storage solutions. It will be hosted for the second time at Intersolar South America, taking place at the Expo Center Norte in São Paulo. Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technologies – from components and production to specific user application - it is the ideal platform for all stakeholders in the rapidly growing energy storage market. The focus at ees is on energy storage solutions suited to energy systems with increasing amounts of renewable energy sources attracting investors, utilities, installers, manufacturers and project developers from all over the world. Contact Solar Promotion International Tel: +49 7231 58598-0 Email: info@solarpromotion.com www.intersolar.net.br/en/home/for-visitors/ about-intersolar/focus-ees-south-america. html

Contact Energy Storage Association Tel: +1 202 293-0537 www.esacon.energystorage-events.org

12th Shanghai International Lithium Battery Industry Fair August 26 – 28 Shanghai, China 12th Shanghai International Lithium Battery Industry Fair will be held on Shanghai New International Expo Centre, China. The exhibitions of new energy vehicles, super capacitors, charging equipment and energy storage will be held at the same time. The show area is expected to reach 30,000 square meters, while more than 600 exhibitors from the whole industry chain will show their latest products and technology. Over 100 visitor groups and 35,000 people are going to visit the site with a purpose to purchase or communicate, making sense to promoting industrial innovation and development. Contact Guangzhou Zhenwei International Exhibition Tel: +86 208 395 3211 Email: cnibf@zhenweiexpo.com www.cnibf.net/en/

IARC 2020 is the international platform for discussing the latest developments and challenges in automobile recycling, bringing together more than 250 decision-makers in the ELV recycling chain such as car manufacturers, metal and plastic scrap traders, recyclers, shredder operators, policy-makers and many more. A large exhibition area is integrated into the conference facilities, where vendors meet their clients. Cocktail receptions and a networking dinner create an excellent atmosphere to get in touch with business partners and colleagues. Furthermore, the congress will offer interesting two plant tours. Contact ICM AG Susann Schmid Tel: +41 62 785 10 00 Email: info@icm.ch https://www.icm.ch/iarc-2020

2020 International Zinc Conference Europe September 7-9 Istanbul, Turkey Rescheduled from March 30-April 1 In addition to providing an update on key market trends, including supply and demand for concentrates and metal, sustainable development, first use markets with a focus on hot dip and continuous galvanizing, innovative applications and regulatory issues, this 1.5day conference offers excellent networking opportunities. The conference will be complemented by an optional plant tour to a galvanizing plant. Contact International Zinc Association Tel: +1 919 361 4647 www.zinc.org/international-zincconference-europe-2020/

the12th Shanghai International Lithium Battery Industry Fair will be hosted in Shanghai

108 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Istanbul, Turkey

www.batteriesinternational.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Intersolar Mexico September 8 – 10 Mexico City, Mexico. USA Intersolar Mexico serves as the industry’s go-to source for invaluable technology trends and premier B2B contacts in the promising Mexican solar market. Intersolar Mexico sits at the crosssection of photovoltaics, solar heating & cooling technologies, and energy storage. The event will be the largest gathering of professionals in Mexico for international manufacturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers in the fields of solar, renewable energy and cleantech.

17th European Lead Battery Conference and Exhibition (ELBC) September 22 – 25 • Milan, Italy

Contact Solar Promotion International www.intersolar.mx/en/home.html

The Battery Show North America September 15 – 17 Novi, MI. USA This is your chance to hear from and meet the technical champions and industry experts who are setting the pace for the next generation of lead batteries, at an event with the industry’s most comprehensive technical conference programme. The exhibition is designed for suppliers to the lead battery industry including materials, components, bat-

The Battery Show connects you with more than 8,000 engineers and executives, and more than 600 leading suppliers, across the advanced battery supply chain. A powerful, end-to-end showcase, this leading global industry event covers today’s emerging advanced battery technology for the automotive, portable electronics, medical technology, military and telecommunications, and utility and renewable energy support sectors. Explore the full spectrum of cuttingedge solutions you need to make faster, smarter, and more cost-effective products at the most comprehensive industry event in North America.

An exhibition area is integrated in the conference facilities where vendors can meet their clients. Cocktail receptions and a networking dinner create an excellent atmosphere to get in touch with business partners and colleagues.

Contact Informa Markets/UBM Melissa Adams Tel: +1 310 883 8822 Email: Melissa.adams@ubm.com www.thebatteryshow.com

Contact ICM AG Susann Schmid Tel: +41 62 785 10 00 Email: info@icm.ch www.icm.ch

25th International Congress for Battery Recycling – ICBR 2020

Battery Experts Forum

September 16 – 18 Salzburg, Austria ICBR is the international platform for presenting the latest developments and discussing the challenges faced by the battery recycling industry. The 25th edition of ICBR will bring together many experts and decisionmakers of the battery recycling value chain such as battery manufacturers, battery recyclers, OEMs from the electronic and e-mobility industry, collection schemes operators, service and transport companies, policy-makers and many more.

www.batteriesinternational.com

tery manufacturing equipment, testing equipment, environmental services and manufacturers of battery recycling equipment. Contact International Lead Association — ILA Maura McDermott Email: mcdermott@ila-lead.org www.17elbc.ila-lead.org

• Exchange with experts. • And bring your knowledge up to date - at our BATTERY EXPERTS FORUM. Expect high class speakers and top topics. This event is an absolute must for those involved in battery technologies. Contact www.battery-experts-forum.com

September 29 -October 1 Frankfurt, Germany In order to meet the great demand, the Battery Experts Forum will be taking place in the financial metropolis of Frankfurt am Main. With even more exhibition space, additional capacity in the conference halls and a great backdrop, the Battery Experts Forum is growing in the premises of the Forum Messe Frankfurt. Be there when over 100 TOP experts in the battery industry report on the latest technology! • Discover the hottest trends in battery and charging technology live and up close.

Frankfurt, Germany hosts the Battery Experts Forum

Batteries International • Spring 2020 • 109

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Lyon, France

Battery Show Europe October 15 – 17 Stuttgart, Germany

Batteries Event 2020 Lyon, France October 7 - 9 For 20 years, the Batteries event has remained one of the World’s most attractive event and the meeting place for technologies (lead acid, NiMH, Li-ion, Post Li-ion), applications (from micro batteries to large format batteries) and the value chain (raw material suppliers, components manufacturers, OEMs, end users, recyclers, investors,)... BATTERIES 2020 will be held in Lyon at Marriott Lyon Cité Internationale. It will cover all aspects of the battery circular economy, beginning from the production of the battery through raw materials, battery manufacturing, battery use and safety, management and applications, going through market trends, research and development, new technologies and finally closing the loop with a focus on recycling, second life and regulations. International battery industry key players such as OEM, battery manufacturers, end users, experts, researchers and recyclers will come together to discuss and exchange on new chemistries, manufacturing process, battery components, battery second life, recycling, producer regulatory obligations in Europe, future expectations and innovations. Contact Avicenne Energy Laurent PILLOT Email: contact@batteriesevent.com www.batteriesevent.com

The Battery Show Europe, co-located with Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo Europe, is the industry’s largest and fastest-growing trade fair for advanced battery and H/ EV technology. 400+ suppliers from across the battery supply chain, such as A123 Systems, CATL, Leclanché, Voltabox and Bosch Rexroth will display thousands of design, production and manufacturing solutions, including battery management systems, battery pack assemblers/ integrators, materials, components, research, testing and recycling. This free trade fair is an opportunity to source the latest energy storage solutions to reduce costs and improve the performance of battery applications. Contact Informa Tel: +44 (0) 20 7921 8166 Email: thebatteryshowcs@informa.com www.thebatteryshow.eu

Battery Tech Expo Nordic November 3 Gothenburg, Sweden The Battery industry is on the cusp of a power revolution with big technology companies investing heavily in the next generation of battery development and energy storage. The Battery Tech Expo Nordic runs 3rd November 2020 in Gothenburg — the hub of the high tech industrial sector and will bring together professionals from across the advanced battery technology industry.

The event will provide a unique opportunity to showcase the latest products, technologies and services covering the Battery Management Systems, EV Battery, Battery Storage, Battery Development/ Discovery, Commercial and Mobile Power Device sectors. Contact 10fourMedia David Reeks Tel: +44 1283 815719 Email: david.reeks@10fourmedia.co.uk www.batterytechexponordic.com

6th Residential Energy Storage Forum — Europe November 16 - 20 Munich, Germany With speakers from 12 Utilities, 3 Commercial and Industrial companies, 4 Regulators and 16 Countries, gain insights on operational projects from over 12 utilities including: VATTENFALL, EDF, E.ON, GREENPEACE ENERGY, ENEL, EVOLVERE, VIESGO, WESTNETZ, WEMAG, EDP and many others. Join us for a fun-filled dinner at the Löwenbräukeller in the centre of Munich. Get to know your peers outside of work and enjoy the impressive architecture of this historical building with a long tradition offering modern Bavarian cuisine, and of course some of the best beer in town! Contact Dufresne Davide Bonomi Tel: +44 203 289 0312 davide@energystorageforum.com www.energystorageforum.com/residentialforum-program

Battery Tech Expo October 8 Northampton, UK Rescheduled from March 26 The Battery industry is on the cusp of a power revolution with big technology companies investing heavily in the next generation of battery development and energy storage. The event will provide a unique opportunity to showcase the latest products, technologies and services covering the Battery Management Systems, EV Battery, Battery Storage, Battery Development/ Discovery, Commercial and Mobile Power Device sectors. Contact 10fourmedia Tel: +44 1283 815 719 Email: david.reeks@10fourmedia.co.uk www.batterytechexpo.co.uk

110 • Batteries International • Spring 2020

Gothenburg, Sweden hosts the Battery Tech Expo Nordic in November

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Kallstrom 89 LABAT 105 Mac Engineering & Equipment

29, Outside Back Cover

Maccor 3 O. M. Impianti

18-19

Penox 25 Polyworld 25 Separator Technology

Solar Promotions/ees

107

Sorfin Yoshimura

Sovema 61 STC 13 Wirtz Manufacturing Co Inc

82-83

Zesar 99

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