Energy Storage Journal, Issue 25 — Summer 2019

POWERING THE SMART GRID

Issue 25: Summer 2019

Charging the future – special supplement on ees international exhibition series

Trumping the US president

The states flying a flag for a greener future Recycling debunked Time to kill the myth that reprocessing lithium is impractical

Exide Technologies

How CEO Tim Vargo is nudging the lead giant into lithium’s arms

Hot new technology

Liquid metal firm Ambri aims to go from kWh to the MWh scale www.energystoragejournal.com

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EDITORIAL Paul Crompton • paul@energystoragejournal.com

Storage in the black as supply changes pushes it beyond just the ‘Green’ choice Are we at the tipping point of energy storage deployment? It’s a question that will depend on where you live. Caught in the bubble of energy storage reporting, it’s easy to think the whole world is on board with deploying renewables and storage — be it electrochemical, pumped hydro or one of the many alternative chemistries making its way from the laboratory bench to commercialization.

In 2017, the US president Donald Trump temporarily pricked that bubble when he withdrew his nation from the Paris agreement, thumbing his nose to the other global powerhouses committed to reducing greenhouse emissions. But as our cover story explores, individual US states are marching to their own decarbonization drumbeat — with renewables penetration increases and gigawatts of planned energy storage.

Everything from power costs to security of supply — just think of the 80MW of lithium storage deployed in the aftermath of the Aliso Canyon gas leak in 2015 — are persuading states to follow in California’s renewable jet stream. From standards to tariffs to legislation, states from the east to west coasts are realizing the benefits of integrating storage in the power roadmaps.

A vast majority, around 90%, of the major, MW+ storage projects are lithium ion.

Economies of scale, proven real world testing and delivering grid services are the big reasons.

But there are many start-ups pushing new technologies, such as Ambi on page 52.

The company is aiming to bring its liquid metal www.energystoragejournal.com

technology to market. The company straddles the long and short-duration stationary storage — although, as the firm’s David Bradwell told us, their long-term goal is grid-scale applications. So more a competitor of VRFB than lithium for those peak-shifting services.

While new technologies and the teenagers of the storage industry — namely lithium and flow batteries — get the media attention and column space, a trip to The Smarter E Europe conference and exhibition (see page 38) gave a different picture of the industry. Lead acid is alive and kicking — as our chat with Exide Technologies’ Tim Vargo on page 43 shows.

The point was driven home walking the exhibition halls in Munich, past stands featuring the chemistry for everything from SLI to grid-scale applications. One company told us they were now producing variants on the lead design depending on application requirements.

The chemistry is undoubtedly going strong, but a bigger PR push by lead companies is needed to change public and market opinions on the granddaddy of the electrochemical industry — especially as safety concerns following lithium ion fires in the US and South Korea continue to rise.

Of course, lead’s big claim is its recyclability. But as our feature on page 46 testifies, lithium battery recycling has always been done. China is one step ahead of the west. Companies in the country are even paying for batteries as demand for those key materials — lithium, cobalt and nickel — be the world’s biggest cell makers grows daily. It is, perhaps, the final piece of the jigsaw that could see lithium ion dominate the storage markets for decades to come.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 1

CONTENTS COVER STORY

20

COVER STORY: TRUMPING THE PRESIDENT As countries decarbonize their transport and power systems a notable exception from the Paris agreement is the US. But that hasn’t stopped many US states from forging their own renewable power and energy storage agendas. We look at the states at the forefront of this brave new world.

EDITORIAL

1

Storage in the black as supply changes pushes it beyond just the ‘Green’ choice.

PEOPLE NEWS

3

All the most important C-level changes and board shuffles at companies working in the energy storage industry.

NEWS • FINANCE NEWS • FLOW BATTERY NEWS • VPP NEWS

5

In the news: Vivas Kumar 3

Our quarterly round up of the most significant projects, technologies, regulations, and happenings — including a round up of all the industry deals SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT — EES INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION SERIES

29-40

FEATURES Meet Exide’s new CEO: Lithium to prove part of latest innovation approach Tim Vargo stepped in as Exide Technologies’ new chief executive last November. A highly successful career behind him makes his promises of bringing new life into the firm more than credible.

41

Debunking recycling myths of lithium ion As millions of lithium batteries — from consumer electronics to EVs and utility storage — are about to reach their end-of-life, the question is what on earth will we do with them?

44

Alternative battery chemistries Ambri invented the liquid metal battery. Now the big question is whether it can make the jump from kWh laboratory testing to MWh ESS commercialization.

50

EVENT REVIEWS

Meet Exide’s Tim Vargo 41

Lithium ion recycling 44

52

2019 Battery Council International Convention & Power Mart North America’s largest lead meetings is refocusing itself as being more sympathetic to lithium and electricity grid challenges

The Battery Show Europe 53 One of Europe’s most important, and fastest growing, battery trade fairs continues its upward trajectory.

EVENTS

55

Our comprehensive guide to the future events happening in the energy storage industry.

ENERGY STORAGE HEROES: MICHEL ARMAND

Michel Armand has made a huge contribution to our understanding of intercalation compounds. Most recently he has been at the cutting edge of LiFePO4 cell optimization.

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Liquid metal batteries: the hottest storage going 50

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Europe‘s Largest Exhibition for Batteries and Energy Storage Systems MESSE MÜNCHEN, GERMANY

Let cool heads prevail

61

The lead-lithium storage debate steps up a notch The new titan of lead The CEO interview

Next gen integrators

on, head-to-head

the ideal middle man

Coming soon to a Ecoult’s UltraBattery, Anil Srivastava and 2 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer smart2019 grid near you, ready to take lithium Leclanché’s bid for market dominance

www.energystoragejournal.com

PEOPLE NEWS

Ex-Tesla expert and a lithium analyst join Benchmark Minerals

Vivas Kumar

Benchmark Minerals made two new hires in early April. Vivas Kumar has been appointed principal consultant and José Hofer joins as senior analyst, forecasting.

Kumar joins from Tesla, where he was responsible for building Tesla’s lithium ion battery supply chain from May 2017 to April 2019. Here he sourced a multi-billion dollar yearly spend portfolio of battery metals and chemicals, as the world’s biggest battery plant emerged.

Hofer joins the UK-based firm from Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile, a lithium producer, where he was business intelligence manager based in Santiago. He will be responsible for the firm’s quarterly forecasting subscriptions.

Fluence promotes energy storage veteran to chief technology officer

Brett Galura

US energy storage firm Fluence named power industry veteran Brett Galura as its new chief technology officer on March 28. He was

previously vice president of customer solutions.

Galura was a key architect of Fluence’s lithium ion Advancion energy storage platform.

Galura will lead teams in the US and Germany, continuing the development of Fluence’s Advancion, Siestorage and SunFlex platforms.

He will also leverage the company’s relationship with Siemens and AES — the firms that launched Fluence in January 2018 — to further advance its technical capabilities.

All change at CellCube CellCube Energy Storage Systems announced the appointment of Stefan Schauss as the CEO of its subsidiary CellCube Energy Storage on March 21.

Schauss, who has worked at Gildemeister Energy Storage and Greensmith Energy Management Systems was appointed to CESS’

Stefan Schauss

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board of directors on December 10.

He has been president and CEO of the Canadian VRFB battery firm’s wholly owned subsidiary, Enerox, since April 2018.

On March 19 Cellcube announced the appointment of Michael Nobrega, Brett Whalen and Henrik Mikkelsen to its board of directors.

The directors joined Schauss, Henk van Alphen and Bruno Arnold.

Cellcube also announced in March the resignation of Chris Hopkins as its chief financial officer. Hopkins, will be replaced by a team led by chartered professional accountant John Dyer.

On March 4 the company appointed Henk van Alphen to its board of directors. He replaced Philip Hughes, a former independent director of the company whose resignation became effective on February 27.

PEOPLE NEWS IN BRIEF ENGIE Fabricom makes six appointments UK firm ENGIE Fabricom — part of global energy group ENGIE — announced six new appointments in March.

Clive Rounce becomes head of continuous improvement, Nick Maynard head of procurement, Jo Fox head of finance, Andrew Stephens head of business development, Mark Bryant interim commercial director, and David Livingstone has been made the company’s new proposal manager.

The firm said the appointments were made to meet the firm’s ambitions of achieving a turnover of £150 million ($177 million) by 2022.

FERC appoints judge in administrative law The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced on April 1 it had appointed Andrew Satten as its administrative law judge.

Satten joined FERC’s office of Administrative Law Judges and Dispute Resolution in 2012, where he worked as its supervisory attorney adviser.

On March 7, FERC announced the appointment of Jignasa Gadani as director of the Office of Energy Policy and Innovation and Lindsee Gentry as deputy director of the Office of External Affairs. Gadani has been at FERC since 2001.

Gentry started as communications director in September 2017.

Retirement paves way for company promotion NextEra Energy Resources, the renewable power generation subsidiary of NextEra Energy, announced on January 25 it had promoted John Ketchum to the role of president and chief executive officer.

Ketchum has replaced Armando Pimentel, who retired on March 1.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 3

PEOPLE NEWS

Crisis hit utility PG&E reshuffles board and appoints new CEO A major reshuffle at US utility PG&E Corporation has made William Johnson the firm’s new CEO and president and seen 10 new directors appointed and seven serving directors step down, the company announced on April 3.

The changes were made to reflect PG&E’s focus on ‘strengthening its safety culture and operational effectiveness’ and navigating the Chapter 11 process following wildfire-related issues last year, the company said.

Johnson spent six years as president and CEO of the US’s largest publicly owned utility, Tennessee Valley Authority, with the organization achieving the best safety records in its 85-year history.

Johnson started in late April.

Meanwhile, Richard Barrera, Jeffrey Bleich, Nora Mead Brownell, Cheryl Campbell, Michael Leffell, Kenneth Liang, Dominique Mielle,

Meridee Moore, Kristine Schmidt and Alejandro Wolff were elected to the board.

They join continuing PG&E directors Fred Fowler, Richard Kelly and Eric Mullins on the Board.

William Johnson

German smart storage firm Sonnen — the company bought by Shell in mid-February — announced the appointment of a new US board of directors on February 28.

The board will be responsible for leading the expansion of the company’s residential energy storage business in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The board members include: Blake Richetta (chairman and chief executive officer); Carlos Restrepo (chief technology officer); Brent Stayer (chief operations officer); and James Claflin (chief financial officer).

Leclanché promotion with new VP in e-transport sector

Philip Broad

Swiss energy storage company Leclanché announced on March 6 it had appointed Philip Broad as its executive vice president to spearhead the company’s e-Transport Solutions business.

Based at the company’s headquarters in Yverdon, Switzerland, Broad will report to Anil Srivastava, CEO of Leclanché.

Broad joined Leclanché in August 2018 as vice president of commercial vehicle leading application engineering, programme management and sales.

4 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

New head of renewable energy at Carlyle group Global investment firm The Carlyle Group announced on April 16 it had hired Pooja Goyal as a partner and head of its Renewable and Sustainable Energy Team.

Goyal will lead the company’s team of investment professionals, and starts in the New York office in July.

IREC elects two new board members

New US board of directors for Shell subsidiary Sonnen

Blake Richetta

PEOPLE NEWS IN BRIEF

US clean energy organization Interstate Renewable Energy Council announced the election of two new members to its board of directors on April 2.

They are: Ronny Sandoval, of the Environmental Defense Fund, and Jetta Wong, an energy policy consultant and former director of the US Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions.

New CEO at UK energy storage firm Engie UK energy storage firm Engie announced Nicola Lovett took over from Wilfrid Petrie on May 1 as the new CEO of the company’s UK and Ireland unit.

Lovett was divisional CEO for Engie’s business energy and services.

Petrie, who joined the firm in 1999, will work in Paris for the wider group’s executive committee as well as being head of the firm’s France B2B client solutions businesses.

AEG Power Solutions hires Audrain as CEO Uninterruptible power supply systems firm AEG Power Solutions announced on February 27 it had appointed Franck Audrain as its chief executive officer.

Audrain has taken the reins from Jeff Casper, who left the group after almost a decade in charge on March 4.

www.energystoragejournal.com

NEWS

SK Innovation sued by US arm of LG Chem over alleged IP violations The American unit of lithium ion battery maker LG Chem has sued its South Korean contemporary SK Innovation to protect its ‘core technologies and intellectual property’, news agency Reuters reported on April 30.

The Korea–headquartered firm has accused SK Innovation of misappropriation of trade secrets by hiring its former employees, and has filed concurrent suits with the US Interna-

tional Trade Commission and the US District Court of Delaware.

The suits allege the defendants accessed trade secrets when SK Innovation hired 77 employees from the lithium ion battery division of LG Chem, reported news website Yahoo Finance.

LG Chem has asked the commission to stop SK’s imports of samples of lithium ion batteries and infrastructure technology,3

infringing LG Chem’s trade secrets into the US, according to Reuters.

The news agency quoted Shin Hak Cheol, LG Chem’s vice chairman and CEO, as saying the lawsuit was an inevitable measure to protect its core technologies and intellectual property drawn from lengthy research and immense investment.

A statement from SK Innovation said: “SK Innovation’s battery business

will grasp the situation and clarify allegations raised

by LG Chem through legal procedures.”

LG Chem said it expects the ITC’s final ruling on the case in the second half of 2020, reported Reuters.

Last November, ESJ reported that SK Innovation was set to invest $1.6 billion in a new manufacturing plant in Jackson County, Georgia, to build cells for use in electric vehicles.

ESS to displace traditional power streams amid tumbling LCOE The falling levelized cost of electricity for lithium ion batteries has made the technology a challenger to fossil fuel when it comes to delivering flexibility and dispatch generation, according to research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s New Energy Outlook 2018 report published on March 26.

The latest analysis by BNEF shows the benchmark LCOE for lithium-ion batteries has fallen 35% to $187 per megawatt-hour since the first half of 2018.

The report found that batteries co-located with renewable projects are starting to compete, in many markets and without subsi-

dy, with fossil fuel generated power for the delivery of dispatchable power, especially in storage+renewable projects.

The report found that falling LCOE for lithium ion and renewable genera-

tion was posing an unprecedented challenge to fossil fuel power in the dispatchable generation, and flexibility roles it performs in the energy supply mix.

At present, flexibility is provided mainly by a com-

bination of peaking plants, pumped hydro storage, interconnectors, and largescale coal and gas plants.

The report analysed 7,000 projects in 46 countries across 20 technologies from coal to renewables.

Switzerland completes biggest ESS a year after initial finish date NEC Energy Solutions has delivered Switzerland’s largest battery storage system, a 18MW/7.5MWh GSS (Grid Storage Solution) system owned and operated by Swiss power company Elektrizitätswerke des Kantons

Zürich, the US energy storage firm announced on March 20.

The system will be mostly used for primary frequency reserve but could be used for other ancillary services from its location at an existing substation in

Volketswil, near Zurich.

First announced in September 2017, the inauguration comes around a year after the initial expected completion day.

The system is expected to have a payback of five to seven years.

LiFePO4 dominates US BTM deployment despite shortages Alternative lithium battery technologies will fail to take lithium ion phosphate’s market share in the US behind-the-meter storage industry, Brett Simon, senior analyst, energy storage at Wood Mackenzie told ESJ on March 13.

www.energystoragejournal.com

In the US, lithium ion batteries accounted for 97% of all BTM installed capacity, and the trend is set to continue if battery rack prices drop below $150/kWh in the next five years, as forecast in the energy research com-

pany’s US Energy Storage Monitor 2018 Year-inReview report published on March 4.

Demand for nickel manganese cobalt oxide cells for energy storage and transportation applications is outstripping

supply, according to the report.

However, the report said a surplus of lithium ion phosphate batteries had made the chemistry a more attractive option for both power and energy applications.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 5

NEWS

Start-up reaches 1,000Wh/kg milestone with lithium battery Innolith, the German startup that rose from the ashes of Alevo, reported on April 4 that it has developed the world’s first 1,000 Wh/kg rechargeable lithium battery. The technology has the potential to give an electric vehicle the ability to reach 1,000km per charge, the firm says.

Under development in the company’s German laboratory, the Innolith battery uses a non-flammable inor-

ganic electrolyte and conversion reaction materials — although the company would not say what those materials are at this stage.

A company spokesman told ESJ the results had been achieved in the firm’s R&D laboratories in Bruchsal and that commercial production was around three to five years away.

To put this in context, Panasonic’s 2170 cells used in Tesla’s Model 3 are

IT firm leads consortium’s V2G test project in London

Battery cycle life algorithm opens up second-life EV pack potential

IT network giant Cisco is leading a London consortium to demonstrate the use of electric vehicles in a Vehicle2Grid system that will power the grid in a project known as E-Flex, the consortium announced on April 24.

E-Flex aims to demonstrate how EV batteries can reduce the grid demand that mass adoption of EVs will cause if the Department of Transport meets its target of all new cars and vans being zero emission by 2040.

The project is calling for EV fleet owners to take part in a real-world test that will be created with 200 EVs being connected to the grid at peak demand times. Unused energy will then be sold to the grid — and bought back when the price of power is cheaper, thus cutting the costs of charging the vehicles.

According to the office of the Mayor of London, the number of EVs in London had increased by ten times between 2012 and 2018, with around 12,000 in the UK capital.

Scientists at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Toyota Research Institute have developed an algorithm that can predict the cycle life of lithium ion batteries within 9% of actual lifetime cycles.

By combining experimental data with artificial intelligence the algorithm can also predict with 95% accuracy the life expectancy of cells based on the first five charge/discharge cycles.

The findings were published in Nature Energy on March 25. The researchers have made the dataset — the largest of its kind — publicly available.

Using millions of data points from cell cycles, the scientists used AI machines to predict cycle life based on factors including voltage declines during early cycling.

Peter Attia, a Stanford doctoral candidate in materials science and engineering and a co-lead author of the report, said the algorithm cleared an expensive bottleneck in battery research whereby new cells were charged and discharged over many months

6 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

around 250Wh/kg. UK firm Oxis Energy has acheived 425wh/kg with its lithium sulfur technology, although its cells are not commercially available.

Innolith will be bringing this, dubbed as the Energy Battery, to market via an initial pilot production in Germany. The company plans to follow this with licensing partnerships with major battery and automotive companies.

and even years until they failed.

The new method has many potential applications: it can shorten the time for validating new types of batteries, deter-

Innolith has patents pending for the key inventions of the Energy Battery and is also maintaining commercial confidentiality on the cell chemistry mechanism.

Innolith’s non-flammable, inorganic rechargeable batteries are being used in its technology on the US PJM grid to provide fast frequency regulation services.

The battery has operated for more than 55,000 full depth of discharge cycles.

mine the life span of endof-life electric vehicle battery packs, and optimize battery manufacturing, such as shortening the formation process, said the researchers.

UK zinc bromine company targets stationary market with new storage product Gelion Technologies — a start-up owned by Gelion UK, a joint venture between the company’s management and Armstrong Energy — launched its Gelion Endure battery on February 27.

The battery uses zincbromine chemistry as the energy storage medium but is not a flow battery — as is more common for the chemical pair.

Gelion, formed in 2015, uses technology developed at the University of Sydney and will be used to store solar power to run mobile light towers on the university’s campus.

However, the battery can be connected in series or parallel depending on the size of deployment

from a kWh to MWh+ applications.

Gelion Technologies plans to market the product as a low cost and safe alternative to lithium ion batteries.

Using a gel electrolyte, the technology’s 120Wh/ kg matches the lower end of lithium ion battery performance but with the advantage of a 3,000+ cycle-life at 100% depth of discharge at up to 55°C (with less need for air cooling).

An integrated BMS is able to remotely detect zinc growth and rejuvenate the system to avoid electrode failure, says the firm, but it has not released details on how this works.

www.energystoragejournal.com

NEWS

Renewable energy forecourts to allay range anxiety for EV drivers Plans to build a UK-wide network of solar farms coupled with battery storage to deliver power to more than 100 forecourt charging stations were announced by energy storage firm Gridserve on March 29.

Initial construction of the £1 billion ($1.3 billion) programme is scheduled to begin later this year, with

all 100 multi-MW battery sites due to be completed within five years.

Construction on the first 35MW solar farm and 27MW lithium ion battery storage system at York is under way, with work on another in Hull also expected this year.

A company spokesman told ESJ that Gridserve’s

principal partner for batteries was Sungrow Samsung, which it is using at the first sites in York and Hull. However, the company remains technology/ chemistry agnostic.

Each forecourt will have dedicated zones to allow private and fleet vehicles (such as taxis, buses, delivery vehicles and heavy

goods vehicles) to recharge in less than 30 minutes. The forecourts will have up to 24 battery-supported, ultrafast charging bays with an ultimate rate of 500kW for cars and light commercial vehicles and multi-MW charging options for buses and heavy goods vehicles.

An app will allow drivers to reserve charging slots.

V2G testing centre opens to increase solar penetration on Texas grid The US state of Texas has deployed its first vehicle-togrid research and testing facility as it looks to increase renewable penetration on its power supply, energy research center Pecan Street and utility Austin Energy announced on February 6.

The technology will be used to offset peak demand and provide greater flexibility in accessing energy resources, namely smoothing the intermittency of renewables on the grid and avoid curtailment.

The initiative is part of Austin Energy’s Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar Photovoltaics project, which is investigating how to integrate more solar power on to the area’s grid.

The goal of the 39-month project is to increase the city’s renewable energy penetration to 65% by 2027.

To date, the initiative has included two lithium ion energy storage systems, one a solar array connected 1.5MW/2MWh system supplied by LG Chem, the other a 1.75MW/3.2MWh Younicos supplied system which is connected to rooftop solar.

www.energystoragejournal.com

Macquarie secures funding to build 340MWh ESS projects in California Project developer Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, the business formed when Green Investment Group was bought by Macquarie Group in 2017, announced on March 26 it is to build 97MWh of storage in Southern California, US, after closing its final debtfinancing round.

The third funding will allow the group to complete construction of a 63MW/340MWh project for power utility Southern California Edison.

The project includes behind-the-meter systems for large-load commercial, industrial and government

host sites in the Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Once completed, the system will deliver grid services including flexible and reserve capacity, solar integration and voltage management.

It will also deliver services such as demand management, back-up generation and security of supply.

The US CIT Group led the initial financing round in 2017 through its Power and Energy Finance unit, and was the lead lender in the second round last December.

It was joined in the final round by Rabobank, Sumitomo Mitsui Bank-

ing Corporation and ING Group.

Macquarie acquired the original project portfolio from virtual power plant firm AMS in August 2016.

Last month, AMS announced its VPP project in Southern California had delivered more than 2GWh of grid services to the California Independent System Operator in its first year of operation.

Last June, Irvine Ranch Water District and Macquarie completed a 2.5MW/15MWh installation in Orange County that is powering the district’s largest water recycling plant.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 7

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NEWS

VW end-of-life battery plans include building a German recycling centre The question of what to do with aging battery packs from electric vehicles hangs over the e-mobility industry, but vehicle OEM Volkswagen Group announced its answer on February 20: packs will be re-used or sent to its new battery recycling plant in Germany.

The company aims to reuse packs as flexible charging stations — in stand-

alone applications or quick EV charging stations — or send them to a pilot recycling plant the German firm aims to build in Salzgitter by 2020.

Packs unfit for second-life applications will be recycled with raw materials returned to the manufacturing process chain.

Recycled batteries — initially 1,200 tonnes per year,

or 3,000 vehicle batteries — will be shredded, the material dried and sieved, allowing the extraction of ‘black powder’, which contains the cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel.

To this end the company is also building a pilot plant for battery cell production in Salzgitter, together with the Center of Excellence for batteries.

Packs unfit for second-life applications will be recycled with raw materials returned to the manufacturing process chain.

40MWh of energy storage could halve Massachusetts’ black-outs The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities has granted power firm Eversource permission to go ahead with plans to deploy 40MWh of lithium ion batteries to deliver emergency power in Massachusetts, US, on April 5.

The first project is a 25MW/38MWh system to deliver black-start services and offset high electric usage in Provincetown, Truro and Wellfleet.

The battery will provide

10 hours of back-up power in the winter and up to three hours at the height of summer.

Provincetown town manager David Panagore, said the project would eliminate roughly half of the area’s power outages entirely.

The ESS will defer 13 miles of power distribution line construction.

The project should start at the end of the year and be in service by the end of 2020.

A second planned 15 MW lithium ion battery project on the island of Martha’s Vineyard will replace diesel generator supply during periods of high demand, providing a backup to supplement power supplied from the mainland by four undersea cables.

If approved by MDPU, Eversource expects to start work this year on the first part, a 5MW with the additional capacity installed by the end of next year.

FPL reveals plans to develop world’s biggest lithium ion ESS Plans to replace two fossil fuel generation units with the world’s biggest lithium ion energy storage system were unveiled by Florida Power & Light Company, a subsidiary of Florida-based NextEra Energy, on March 28.

The FPL Manatee Energy Storage Center includes 409MW of storage charged by an existing FPL solar power plant in Manatee County. The system is due

to begin serving customers in late 2021.

The project is part of a modernization plan to accelerate the retirement of two, 1970s-era natural gas generating units at FPL’s neighbouring power plants.

The Center will cover a 40-acre parcel of land and will enable the distribution of 900MWh of power when completed.

FPL is also planning

10 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

smaller battery installations across the state, numerous solar power plants and upgrades to existing combustion turbines at other power plants to replace the lost 1.6GW of generating capacity.

FPL remains poised to eliminate its only remaining coal plant in Florida by the end of this year, following the closure of two coal plants in Jacksonville in 2016 and 2018.

The plant in Salzgitter is to be followed by further decentralized recycling plants.

See page 46 for our indepth look at the lithium ion recycling industry

Munich Re battery insurance scheme makes project financing easier German insurance firm Munich Re has launched an insurance product that allows large-scale energy storage developers to guarantee their project’s longterm performance, the company announced on March 7.

Munich Re believes the insurance will make it easier for developers to obtain project financing because it caps the maximum warranty costs incurred in the repair or replacement of defective or weak battery modules.

The cover is primarily aimed at major projects, such as those delivering grid stability and peak shifting services.

In a second phase, the product will be introduced onto the mobility market to insure performance of batteries in electric vehicles.

The coverage can optionally be expanded to protect selected investment projects directly, so that the insurance will pay even if the manufacturer that issued the warranty files for insolvency within the warranty period.

The first customer for the new insurance product is the US redox flow battery manufacturer ESS Inc.

www.energystoragejournal.com

NEWS

Battery maker to use VRLA plus solar for Portugal project Exide Technologies will use its VRLA lead acid batteries alongside solar panels to power its production plant in Portugal, the US battery maker announced on April 10.

The system will cover part of the power demand at the facility in Castanheira do Ribatejo when completed in the first quarter of next year.

Exide will use a 50kWh VRLA battery storage system consisting of 280 cells using Sonnenschein A602 from Exide’s subsidiary GNB Industrial Power.

The system will be coupled with some 10,000 photovoltaic panels and around 70 inverters.

Exide will power the workers’ dressing room with a Sonnenschein A600 Solar gel battery with 0.5MWh capacity. The room will work as an isolated island powered by PV during the day and batteries at night.

The project will be managed and delivered by energy provider EDP working with Exide, which will deliver the energy storage component.

EDP said the batteries

would be charged by the solar panels, with surplus energy stored for use at night-time and during periods of reduced sunlight.

Surplus power will be fed on to the grid when the plant’s energy consumption was lower.

The project forms part of a range of investments by Exide at its Castanheira plant, including the start of a AGM Network Power production line.

Stefan Stübing (pictured with EDP’s Vera Pinto Pereira), Exide’s president EMEA, said he believed more and more companies would rely on self-generated power backed by a BESS in years to come.

The systems will cover part of the power demand at Exide’s production facility in Castanheira do Ribatejo and its battery recycling plant in Azambuja when completed in the first quarter of next year.

The systems will include around 10,000 photovoltaic panels, around 70 inverters and a 500kWh bank of GNB Sonnenschein A600 VRLA batteries from Exide’s subsidiary GNB Industrial Power.

The project will be managed and delivered by energy provider EDP. The batteries would be charged by the solar panels, with surplus energy stored for use at night-time and during periods of reduced sunlight.

Surplus power will be fed on to the grid when the plant’s energy consumption was lower.

The project forms part of a range of investments by Exide at its Castanheira plant, including the start of a AGM Network Power production line.

Capitol Hill hears case for lead from industry thought leaders The US debate over the merits of energy storage and the benefits of lead batteries in the future of the country were discussed in a special panel session organized by Battery Council International held on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on February 12 in advance of National Battery Day, February 18.

The meeting was led by the head of BCI, Kevin Moran and two of the 2017

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co-founders from the Advanced Energy Storage Caucus — congressmen Mark Takano, a Democrat representative from California and Chris Collins, a Republican for New York.

The caucus is technology neutral and chemistry agnostic and looks at energy storage from a variety of viewpoints that include environmental sustainability, recyclability, affordability and utility.

Tim Ellis, president of RSR Technologies and chair of the Consortium for Battery Innovation, predicts lead battery cycle lives of around 3,000 would be achieved by using second generation carbon additives and bipolar batteries next year.

This compares with the average cycle life of 750 in 2000 — meaning lead battery performance has improved six-fold in 20 years.

Upside Group commissions 25MWh of Pb-C stationary storage Solar power plant and battery storage system group of companies Upside Group fired up a 16MW/25MWh lead carbon energy storage system in Europe on May 3, expanding its own battery portfolio to 40MW, the firm announced.

The Dülmen, Germanybased firm said the storage would stabilize the grid 24/7 in an energy climate that was seeing more and more grid fluctuation, with frequency being adjusted several hundred thousand times a year.

Chinese firm Narada made the 10,500 lead carbon cells for the system.

Upside Group partnered Narada in September 2018 in a lead carbon energy storage system in Leipzig, Germany — one of five planned to deliver grid services.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 11

NEWS

UK deploys country’s first Pb-A and Li-ion hybrid ESS for peak shifting A 325kWh hybrid lead acid and lithium ion energy storage system has been deployed in the UK to deliver peak shifting services through a partnership that includes the Infinite Group, University of Sheffield, Innovate UK and GS Yuasa, the companies announced on February 6.

The ADEPT (advanced multi-energy management and optimization timeshifting platform) was built at GS Yuasa’s manufacturing facility in Ebbw Vale, Wales.

The platform includes a 75kWh lithium-ion battery system of 36 GS Yuasa LIM50 modules alongside a 250KWh valve regulated lead acid battery system of 240 Yuasa SLR500 cells.

HiT Power, a spin-off

from the University of Southampton, delivered the 100kW bi-direction power conversion unit, and the battery management system comes from energy storage specialist Swanbarton.

Peter Stephenson, senior technical co-ordinator at Yuasa, told ESJ: “For the same power output — 100kW for example — it is possible for us to supply four hours of dual chemistry storage for the same price as two hours of pure lithium ion storage.”

The ADEPT concept — consisting of micro-grids with a variety of generation types and storage in the range of 200kW to 2MW — is being expanded to nine sites in Wales with support from the Welsh European Funding Office.

“In Europe alone, demand for battery energy storage is set to jump by at least 10 times in the next few decades.”

Lead battery consortium refocuses to break lithium domination of ESS market The Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium, the organization charged with coordinating research into lead battery development, has re-launched with plans to promote the chemistry’s use in energy storage systems.

Along with a name change to the Consortium for Battery Innovation, the organization is preparing to unveil new research plans and a programme of work promoting lead batteries for energy storage applications.

Alistair Davidson, CBI director, said: “There is a real potential for innovation to develop advanced lead batteries to meet what is set to

be a huge spike in demand for this mainstay of battery energy storage technology.”

A feature of the consortium will be greater collaboration with governments, leading research universities and industry, together with the introduction of more demonstration projects, demonstrating the capability of lead batteries in new applications.

In early 2017, GTM Research published a report on the state of the US energy storage market through 2016.

The study found lithium ion accounted for 95% of deployed systems in the grid-scale battery market.

12 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

Infinite Renewables was the lead member, and Innovate UK the fund holder for the project. The University of Sheffield was the lead academic partner for the project, contributing PV inverter hardware and software.

Andy Bush, chairman of ILA, said: “In Europe alone, demand for battery energy storage is set to jump by at least 10 times in the next few decades. We need governments to focus on policies that support all forms

of battery innovation to help create the best conditions for battery companies to grow.”

There have been a few examples of lead and lithium used together: GS-Yuasa has been supplying dual chemistry telecoms base station systems in Asia since 2015; Hoppecke has a large scale demonstration system in Germany; and German start-up BOS intends to deploy 20,000 hybrid battery units in the future.

Monbat granted licensing rights to bi-polar technology Bulgarian lead acid battery firm MonBat announced on February 20 it had acquired the licensing rights to the full suite of GreenSeal bipolar technology from Advanced Battery Concepts, the US firm that has six companies on its books.

It follows the announcement the firm plans to build a 2.4GWh bipolar lead battery plant in Vratza, Bul-

garia.

The plan has been put in front of Vratza municipality “to research the local authority’s interest in such future projects”, a statement says.

MonBat Group, which began life in 1959 with a lead-acid battery plant, now has recycling plants and also makes lithium-ion batteries.

Wirtz deal opens nickel zinc battery manufacturing using lead processes US lead battery equipment designer and manufacturer Wirtz Manufacturing has invested an undisclosed sum into start-up Zaf Energy Systems, the nickel-zinc battery maker announced on February 14.

Zaf will use the undisclosed seven figure investment to expand its manufacturing capacity from hundreds of batteries a month to up to 2,000 batteries a month in its Joplin, Missouri, facility.

The investment involves cash, equipment and the internal processes Wirtz

uses for production to allow Zaf to manufacture nickel zinc batteries with traditional lead acid processes.

Wirtz CEO John Wirtz said the partnership came after experiments with Zaf’s electrodes had showed its plates could be produced at similar production rates as that of lead acid technology.

Last year, Zaf received a pledge from the Missouri Department of Economic Development Fund for $600,000 to spend on staff, expand production and new partnerships.

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NEWS

Australian gigafactory plans advancing after licensing deal Battery start-up Cadenza Innovation announced on February 20 it had signed a licensing agreement with Energy Renaissance, the company that has a memorandum of understanding with the Darwin government to build a lithium ion gigafactory in Australia.

The deal gives the Australian company exclusive manufacturing rights of the US firm’s patented technology in Australia and worldwide sales rights, excluding China and the US.

The terms of Energy Renaissance’s agreement with Cadenza Innovation have not been disclosed.

Energy Renaissance’s 1.3GWh Renaissance One facility will manufacture commercial-scale cells, initially using imported wound jelly-rolls and electrolyte. Eventually the company aims to source all processed materials from Australia.

To date the company has secured A$64 million ($46 million) in equity and A$47 million in debt and obtained around 300MWh

Firms join to bring 10MW grid-connected ESS to India

in preliminary orders — the exact initial capacity of the facility.

The company plans to begin a 12-month construction and commissioning process this July, around six months after its initial start date.

The company said development work had been slower than anticipated,

mostly due to the complex inter-dependence of technology, industrial automation and off-take negotiations.

It said early reticence from institutional firms to invest in early stage Australian advanced manufacturing had hampered the raising of pre-project finance capital.

Australia deal paves way for 34MWh of energy storage deployment A framework contract worth A$304 million ($214 million) was announced on February 20 by SA Water and South Australian company Enerven, a wholly owned subsidiary of power transmission firm SA Power Networks.

The deal allows Enerven to deploy around 154MW of solar photovoltaic generation and 34MW of energy

storage across 70 sites during the next 18 months.

The Adelaide headquartered firm is expected to mobilize the first group of sites, including large facilities like the Bolivar Wastewater Treatment Plant and Morgan Water Treatment Plant, in the first half of this year.

SA Water has a goal of achieving zero net electricity costs next year.

Australia to pilot CAES technology in disused mine

Tata Power, The AES Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation announced on February 13 they had inaugurated a 10MW/10MWh lithium ion energy storage system project in India.

The system at Tata Power Delhi Distribution’s Rohini Substation will provide peak load management, system flexibility, frequency regulation and security of supply to more than two million customers.

The grid-connected system is owned by AES and

Mitsubishi Corporation, with Fluence supplying its Advancion technology.

The energy storage system in Rohini, Delhi is the joint biggest storage system in India according to the Department of Energy storage database.

Panasonic and AES India released plans in 2016 to build a 10MW/10MWh energy storage facility in Haryana, India. Plans included using AES’s Advancion platform in conjunction with Panasonic’s lithium ion batteries.

14 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

Plans to turn a disused mine in South Australia into a compressed air energy storage facility by Hydrostor Australia, a subsidiary of the Canadian start-up, announced on February 8 the Australian Renewable Energy Agency had earmarked A$6 million ($4 million) for the project.

The 5MW/10MWh pilot project to re-purpose the Angas Zinc Mine in Strathalbyn, 60km southeast of Adelaide will cost A$30million. It has also received A$3 million in funding from the South Australian government

through its Renewable Technology Fund.

The commercial demonstration project will provide synchronous inertia, load shifting and frequency regulation, reliability and security-ofsupply services to the grid.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said: “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 utilising a cavern already created at a disused mine site.”

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NEWS

Australia ESS deployment projects pipeline grows by 2GW in two months Australia’s energy storage pipeline grew 2.4GW in the first two months of the year — around 40% of the total capacity deployed in Australia in 2018 — Norwegian research and consulting firm Rystad Energy reported on March 17.

The firm said 16 projects equalling 1.7GW of battery

storage were paired with renewables in hybrid projects in the total battery pipeline.

The biggest storage additions to the pipeline are two Queensland projects: German firm Kraken Power is providing 500MW of lithium ion storage for the 1.5GW solar farm Sunshine Energy Project; and 400MW

CATL to deliver 1.85GWh of cells for BESS projects Chinese cell maker Contemporary Amperex Technology has signed a deal to supply 1.85GWh of lithium-iron-phosphate cells to Powin Energy Corporation, the US firm announced on March 13.

CATL’s cells will be integrated into Powin’s Stack modular energy storage systems for utility-scale, commercial and industrial, and microgrid applications through to 2022.

Danny Lu, senior vice

president at Powin, said: “As the storage industry matures, we believe shortages of top-quality lithiumion batteries for BESS will become a challenge to the industry, Powin is taking proactive steps to mitigate that risk by securing strategic supply agreements to meet the demand of our project pipeline.”

CATL has supplied cells for EV customers including BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover and Daimler Benz.

of storage is being linked to 1GW of solar at the Desailly Renewable Energy Park project. In South Australia, 250MW of storage is due to be added to the 500MW Robertstown solar farm.

Pumped hydro storage accounted for 490MW of pipeline projects in January and February — an 8% in-

crease on the pumped hydro pipeline.

Rystad forecasts that Australia’s renewable energy pipeline will reach 100GW

by May after 6.7GW (double year-on-year figures) of new capacity from 62 assets were added to its database in the first two months of the year.

NEC announces 24MW of China ESS projects NEC Energy Solutions — through its exclusive distributor in China, energy provider Puxing Energy — announced on April 4 it had commissioned two projects. Both will add a total of 18MW. The company has also won a third tender for a 6MW project.

The two 9MW systems will be owned and operated by frequency

response services provider Ray Power and be used to deliver frequency regulation in Ordos City, Neimongol Province and Tanshan City, Hebei Province.

The third 6MW project

by Ray Power is under construction in Puzhou City, Shanxi Province.

Once completed in the middle of this year it will provide frequency regulation services.

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Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 15

NEWS – DEALS

Envision completes purchase of AESC Chinese renewable energy firm Envision Group completed the purchase of the electric battery operations and production facilities of Automotive Energy Supply Corp, a joint venture between Nissan and NEC Group, the company announced on April 2.

The new company — Envision AESC Japan — began operations on April 1.

The company falls under Envision AESC Group, the holding company

Envision owns with Nissan, in an 8020 split respectively.

Envision AESC is to take control of Nissan’s battery assets in the US and UK, as well as the entire share capital of battery electrode maker NEC Energy Devices.

KepVenture, a wholly owned subsidiary of Keppel Corporation, is to buy a minority stake in Envision AESC Group for $50 million.

Equity firm buys into blockchain technology

LG Chem, VinFast set up lithium ion battery JV in Vietnam

Private equity firm Greenbacker Labs acquired a stake in renewable energy company Exergy Energy, the Missouri, US-based company announced on April 8.

Formed last year, Exergy Energy — a subsidiary of blockchain technology firm L03 — offers back-up generation and security of supply to commercial and technology business customers.

South Korean battery maker LG Chem announced on April 8 it had set up a joint venture with Vietnam automaker VinFast to produce lithium ion batteries for electric scooters and cars. The joint venture, named VLBP, will supply VinFast’s e-mobility vehicles with lithium ion batteries from the manufacturing factory it is set to build in Vietnam’s northern port city of Hai Phong.

Sila Nano announces $170m funding round led by vehicle OEM Daimler Battery materials company Sila Nanotechnologies announced on April 16 that it had closed a Daimler-led $170 million Series E funding round.

The latest round brings the company’s total funding to $295 million.

In addition to the automotive OEM Daimler, investor group 8VC joined returning investors Bessemer Venture

Partners, Chengwei Capital, Matrix Partners, Siemens Next47, and Sutter Hill Ventures.

The funding will allow the California, US company to increase production of its silicon-based anodes with the goal of supplying its first commercial customer within the next year.

Tata Chemicals signs an MOU to gain space grade lithium ion cells Tata Chemicals, the Indian chemistry product maker, signed a memorandum of understanding on March 18 with the Indian Space Research Organization to gain knowledge of its lithium ion cell technology.

ISRO will transfer various space

grade lithium ion cell technologies developed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, a part of ISRO, on a non-exclusive basis. Tata aims to use the knowhow to manufacture lithium ion cells of varying capacity, size, energy density and power density in India.

Centrica signs DSR contract with TEPCO British company Centrica began supplying Tokyo Electric Power Company with its industrial demand side re-

16 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

sponse platform to provide flexibility services for the reserve market in the Kyushu region of Japan on April 1.

DEALS IN BRIEF Ford partners Solid Power in funding round Solid Power is teaming up with Ford Motor Company to develop all solid-state batteries for next-generation electric vehicles, the Colorado firm announced on April 11.

This partnership will leverage Solid Power’s first fully automated production facility, which should be fully operational this Q2.

Ford participated in Solid Power’s $20 million Series A investment round, which closed last September and included investors Volta Energy Technologies, Hyundai CRADLE, Samsung Venture Investment, Sanoh Industrial, Solvay Ventures, and A123 Systems.

DHG Hydro signs PPA with VPP firm Limejump UK virtual power plant firm Limejump has signed a power purchase agreement with DHG Hydro/Canaird River Company to manage generation from DHG’s 1.2MW Langwell Hydro Power Plant in Scotland.

The deal will provide Langwell with wholesale energy market trading access, valued at £300,000 ($390,000) per year.

Limejump will enter Langwell into system operator National Grid’s Balancing Market as part of its VPP aggregated balancing unit. It will be the first hydro power plant Limejump has utilised in its aggregated balancing unit.

Exide sells distribution business, appoints EVP and chief legal officer Lead battery manufacturing and recycling giant Exide Technologies sold its North American distribution business to Battery Systems, Inc, the firm announced on April 2.

The move came a day after it announced the appointment of John Gasparovic as its executive vice president, chief legal officer and company secretary.

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NEWS – DEALS DEALS IN BRIEF ARENA pledges A$10m to DER firm in Australia The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has committed A$10 million ($7 million) in funding to Australian energy tech company GreenSync to help it deploy its Decentralised Energy Exchange (deX) software platform.

The open access software platform allows behind-the-meter energy assets to be registered and visible to grid operators.

The deX system allows residential and commercial-based energy assets and appliances such as solar, batteries, smart air conditioners and hot water systems to bid for grid services such as frequency control and provide energy for the wholesale market.

Equinor, Hanon make five-year investment pledge to Volta Energy

ABB and Rolls-Royce team up for microgrid deployment partnership

Equinor and Hanon Systems have made a five-year investment agreement with energy storage investment firm Volta Energy Technologies, the US firm announced on March 26.

Technology giant ABB and automotive OEM Rolls-Royce will offer microgrid solutions for utilities, commercial and industrial applications following a global partnership.

RDIF and Aggreko sign strategic partnership to develop microgrids The Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and energy storage firm Aggreko announced an agreement on March 20 to cooperate on the development of microgrids.

Magnis unveils term sheet to build US gigafactory Australian graphite mining firm Magnis Energy Technologies announced on March 13 that Imperium3 New York — the consortium in which it has a 47% share — had signed a term sheet for $52 million in funding via a pre-issued European bond used to fund renewable energy projects.

GS Yuasa re-organizes operations to focus on energy storage markets A restructuring of Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa’s United States business operations in the states of Pennsylvania and Georgia became operational from April 1.

Saft signs JV deal with TET to expand lithium battery activity in China

Fully continuous electrode slurry production.

The Bühler fully continuous mixing process for LIB electrode slurry production meets the requirements of large scale battery manufacturing and provides various benefits compared to conventional batch mixing.

French battery firm Saft, a subsidiary of Total, announced on April 4 it had a 40% stake in a joint venture with Tianneng Energy Technology, a subsidiary of the Chinese privately owned Tianneng Group, to ramp up production at its Changxing lithium ion gigafactory.

– 60% lower investment costs – 60% lower operating costs – consistent product quality Got a question? Let’s talk about it. gdnorthamerica@buhlergroup.com

Statkraft and RedT announce partnership Norwegian renewable energy firm Statkraft and vanadium redox flow battery company RedT announced on March 25 they would provide behind-the-meter solar and energy storage projects, initially up to 10MWp of solar and 6MWh of energy storage, scaling to 10 times that number over three years.

Innovations for a better world.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 17

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2/6/2019 8:37:08 AM

FLOW BATTERY NEWS

UK ESS project to be world’s biggest Li-ion-VRFB hybrid A project to decarbonize the UK city of Oxford will see energy management firm Pivot Power install a 50MW hybrid lithium ion/ vanadium redox flow battery coupled with smart energy management, the company announced on April 3.

The £41 million ($54 million) project by the Energy Superhub Oxford consortium will combine energy storage with electric vehicle charging stations.

The project should be completed by 2020.

The hybrid system, a combination of a 48MW lithium ion battery and a 2MW/5MWh vanadium redox flow battery from UK firm RedT, will be the world’s biggest energy storage system of its type when installed.

RedT said: “Lithium is well suited to delivering short power bursts but it degrades with heavy use.

Projects can get best return on investment by using flow

as the workhorse supplying routine power demand and extending the life of lithium batteries by saving them for power spikes.

The project includes a network of 100 power transmission systems connecting ultra-rapid public charging stations with others at Oxford council’s main vehicle depots and the city’s two main bus depots, providing the opportunity for their fleets to go electric.

Habitat Energy will develop software to balance the grid second by second, allowing the management of energy storage and EV charging to reduce the strain on the grid and allow it to accommodate more renewably sourced energy.

The optimization platform will also manage electric vehicles to provide additional flexibility to the electricity network.

Oxford City Council aims

to save 20,000 tonnes of CO2 a year by 2021, rising to 44,000 tonnes annually by 2032 through the project.

The University of Oxford, with energy research consortium EnergyREV and the Energy Systems Catapult “Energy Revolution Integration Service”, will study the project to produce recommendations supporting the rollout of similar initiatives.

Hybrid VRFB and Li-ion microgrid brings power to remote Thai village A microgrid project will combine lithium ion and zinc bromide flow batteries coupled with solar at a remote Thai village, flow battery maker Redflow an-

nounced on February 13.

The Thai governmentbacked project in the village of Ban Pha Dan in Lamphun province combines 10 Redflow ZBM2 10kWh batter-

ies, three 100kWh lithium batteries from Chinese firm KStar, and solar cells.

TSUS (Tusas Excellent Engineering Company) installed the flow batteries

Deal paves way for 80MWh of flow battery deployment on UK market A strategic partnership deal between Canadian firm Cellcube Energy Storage Systems and UK-based Immersa aims to bring 20MW/80-120MW of vanadium redox flow battery systems to the UK market, Immersa has told ESJ.

Following our initial coverage of the deal on February 7, ESJ can reveal that Immersa plans to straddle both short and long-term markets with a goal of delivering up to 15 projects this year under multiple operating modes.

18 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

The company aims to use flow batteries to enter the UK’s Firm Frequency Response and demand side response markets, despite flow batteries traditionally being associated with the longer duration and longer response applications.

that will supply power to the community’s school, town hall and temple, while the lithium batteries will deliver power to individual houses. Villagers can also use the power for their water systems for drinking and agriculture.

While primarily meeting the energy needs of Ban Pha Dan, this hybrid ESS is intended to provide experience and insights for future projects.

The project is the first commercial installation of Redflow batteries in Thailand since it began manufacturing batteries in its Bangkok facility last June.

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NEWS — VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS

Project to create biggest mixed asset VPP in the UK Energy storage firm Moixa announced plans on April 18 to create 17MW of virtual power plant capacity in the UK using smart technologies including batteries and electric vehicles.

The first stage of the project in the county of Sussex will involve Moixa creating the UK’s largest mixed asset VPP, aggregating up to 2MW of capacity using batteries from a range of manufacturers in combination with EVs plugged into the power network.

Once operational, the UK firm will integrate other smart technologies to form a VPP with 17MW of capacity, managed by de-

How Moixa’s Gridshare platform works

mand-response company Flexitricity.

The firm will supply its residential, 4.8kWh lithium iron phosphate energy

storage systems to homes, schools and council buildings as well as 250 EV chargers.

The project is part of a

consortium of UK technology firms and organizations that has secured £13 million ($17 million) from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Moixa will use £7.2 million of the project budget for this project.

The project assets will include a marine source heat pump and combined heat and power system; gridscale energy storage using second-life electric car batteries; a hybrid refuelling station serving electric and hydrogen vehicles; and air source heat pumps supporting domestic boilers.

The project should be completed in 2022.

VPP trial to test operational capabilities of DER on Australian energy market Power and gas organization Australian Energy Market Operator is set to run a trial VPP integration project after receiving A$2.46 million ($1.7 million) from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the agency announced on April 5.

AEMO will run the trial over a 12-18 month period to demonstrate the operational capabilities of VPPs to deliver frequency control ancillary services, system security and deliver local network support services.

The VPP portfolio consists of distributed energy resources including rooftop solar, batteries and controllable behind-themeter loads.

Existing pilot scale VPPs around Australia, including the ARENA-funded AGL and Simply Energy pilot scale VPPs in South Australia, have been invited to take part.

The organization will col-

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lect data to inform changes to regulatory settings and operational processes.

AEMO forecasts the scale of VPP capacity to rise from 5MW-10MW to 700MW by 2022.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the ability to test how VPPs operate

within the market could maximize the benefit to consumers and to the power system.

He said: “This trial will allow us to learn how to better integrate larger scale VPPs in the coming years as we transition to a more decentralized energy system.

“VPPs have an important role to play in harnessing the collective potential of consumer owned energy assets like rooftop solar, batteries, smart appliances and electric vehicle charging. VPPs could see vast improvements in the reliability of the network.”

Energy blockchain pioneer Electron receives investment from utility OVO Grid technology firm Kaluza, the intelligent energy technologies subsidiary of power utility OVO, announced on March 12 it had secured a minority stake in blockchain startup Electron.

Electron will use the investment to accelerate the development and deployment of its energy platforms and systems.

The deal is the first strategic investment for Kaluza, which develops and manages software and hardware to support the integration of electric vehicles, electric heating and battery storage on to the grid.

The deal means that Paul Massara will be stepping down as CEO but will remain involved in Electron as an adviser

and an investor. Electron co-founder Jo-Jo Hubbard moves from COO to CEO. The deal comes a month after OVO announced Mitsubishi Corporation had taken a 20% stake in the business.

OVO will use the proceeds to expand into new markets across Europe and Asia Pacific and accelerate the development of Kaluza.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 19

COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH

Trumping the As countries decarbonize their transport and power systems a notable exception from the Paris agreement is the US. But president Trump’s decision to leave the global initiative hasn’t stopped many US states from pushing ahead with their own renewable power and energy storage agendas, as Paul Crompton finds out.

S Last year the US installed just under 11GW of grid-scale solar, bringing the country’s total to around 62GW

The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts more than 15GW of PV capacity will be installed annually by 2024

olar power capacity is growing. In the past 15 years cheaper PV panels, tariffs and enthusiasm from endusers and project developers have all contributed to the industry growing from a small group of start-ups to a global business. Last year the US installed just under 11GW of grid-scale solar, bringing the country’s total to around 62GW. The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts more than 15GW of PV capacity will be installed annually by 2024.

The issue today is not too little renewable generated power, but too much.

The short-term answer has been curtailment — in the first four months of this year alone California ‘wasted’ more than 200,000MWh of wind and solar power.

The obvious answer, to some, is battery energy storage systems. But just like solar a decade go, individual states are still working out how to make storage work through tariffs, regulations and policy.

Last year, the US deployed 311MW/777MWh of both front-of-meter and behind-the-meter storage, 80% more than 2017, according to Wood Mackenzie’s U.S. Energy Storage Monitor 2018 YIR and Q1 2019 report.

California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York Energy are leading the way when it comes to ESS adoption, with a number of other states pursuing storage on straight economics. “We expect that trend to continue to put new states on the map”, says Nitzan Goldberger, the Energy Storage Associations’ state policy director.

Unsurprisingly, California, a first-mover state with solar, is leading the way; but New York, Hawaii and Massachusetts are expected to lead growth in the coming years in terms of market share for both FTM and BTM applications.

20 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

Three of those four states have announced overall storage deployment targets and have developed programs to support their overarching deployment goal.

While Hawaii has no such firm storage targets, it is growing rapidly thanks to market conditions. It’s worth noting Oregon has a storage target of a minimum of 10MWh and maximum of 1% of peak load for both utilities, and New Jersey has a 2GW storage goal.

Innovative market-based mechanisms such as non-wires alternative competitive solicitations (New York) and a first-of-akind clean peak standard (Massachusetts), as well as incentive programs, are forging the path to ESS adoption, Goldberger says.

In total, 29 states are pushing ahead with their own renewable power standards, despite both president Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from its Paris Agreement commitments, and reports the world’s biggest oil and gas producer will ramp up production, rather than decrease it, in the next decade.

“This is how I look at it,” says Sue Babinec, Argonne National Laboratory program lead – grid storage, “In the US the thing that’s primarily driving the market is renewables. The grid of the future will have to integrate renewables, while being cyber secure. But for renewables integration, in the 29 states that have renewable goals, there are very few that have stand alone energy storage.”

Last year, the California Energy Commission approved a law that requires all new build homes to be fitted with rooftop PV panels as the state moves toward its goal of 50% renewables in its energy mix by 2030 and reducing greenhouse gasses by 40% from 1990 levels in the same time frame.

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COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH

president The US states forging a path to a decarbonized future In real terms, California-based residential PV supplier Sunrun predicts that if the percentage of new single and multifamily solar installations that include a battery in Los Angeles increases to 80% by 2025, the cumulative amount of solar-charged residential battery capacity available to utility Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as a dispatchable resource could grow to more than 1GWh by 2030.

“The adoption of residential batteries is growing nationwide, predominantly in tandem with home solar,” stated Sunrun in its 2019-2030 Repowering Clean Gigawatt-Scale Potential for Residential Solar & Battery Storage in Los Angeles report.

It went on: “In response to utility programs, incentives and ‘Time of Use’ rates, customers are embracing storage to manage their electricity bills and store energy to have backup power in outages.”

The report states that through Q3 2018, residential battery deployment increased 526% year-over-year, with residential ESSs constituting 35% of all energy storage deployed in the first three quarters of 2018.

As utilities across the US invest in energy storage, including replacing gas peaker plants, the first three quarters of 2018 saw more residential storage installed than EESs deployed by utility companies.

As more and more utilities pair storage with renewables the question remains how can they aggressively move into the various grid-scale service markets?

Leading the way In terms of public policy, California, New York, Massachusetts and Hawaii are likely to continue to lead the nation’s other 46 states in terms of energy storage deployment.

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In 2010, California established the nation’s first energy storage target with the passage of AB 2514, which established a goal of 1.3GW of energy storage by 2020 for the state’s three investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric (580MW), Southern California Edison (580MW), and San Diego Gas & Electric (165MW). In 2016 the state added a new target with the passage of AB 2868, which called for 500MW of storage, or 167MW for each IOU. In February, 2018, SDGE announced plans to add 166MW of storage in San Diego County to ensure the region’s security of supply in case of another major emergency like the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas leak which led to Tesla (20MW), Greensmith Energy (20MW) and AES Energy Storage (30MW) deploying lithium ion battery projects in the area to replace the gas plant.

The utility’s seven proposed projects were in response to AB 2868, which was signed into law in 2016 and allows companies to add distributed energy storage.

Lessons learnt by the Golden State are informing the mandates of other states.

“They threw the gauntlet down and that’s a really good thing because the folks

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 21

COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH In 2010, California established the nation’s first energy storage target with the passage of AB 2514

that are in behind-the-meter and front-ofmeter projects have to respond,” says Babinec.

“So what that does is there are rules for utilities advising them of what’s allowable in terms of technology risk.

“People are looking at each other to see what’s going on. For example, in California, for the first two or three years they had a lot of demonstration projects, so it starts at a low level.

“Now that many of those demonstration projects are done the floodgates can open.

They are not going to go from a tenth of a gigawatt-hour to 2GWh until they have pilot demonstrations completed.

“That happened in California and one of things that really impressed is they had

that Aliso Canyon problem. California had set its mandate and then had this catastrophe of the natural gas leak and it wasn’t something they could fix in a day, so they installed a bunch of energy storage as a way to fix that problem.”

Making the most of their SMARTs In its Energy Storage Initiative, Massachusetts aims to find the most cost efficient and effective way to make the commonwealth a national leader in the emerging energy storage market. The initiative aims to install 200MWh of energy storage by January 1, 2020 and 1GWh by 2025.

The state also has its Solar Massachusetts Renewable Tariff, known as SMART. “The SMART program is the successor to their net metering program and includes an incentive adder for any solar system that enrols under the tariff and is paired with storage,” says Brett Simon, a senior analyst at consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables who focuses on energy storage.

Additionally, Massachusetts is pursuing a clean peak standard to reduce the amount of fossil fuel generation used to address system peaks. Which, Simon says, is another opportunity for storage.

In January, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved the state’s new three-year energy efficiency plan. Known by many through Mass Save — its energy saving initiative — it brought energy storage, normally in the form of residential batteries, into the program.

The plan made batteries eligible for state energy efficiency incentives, a move its advocates believe should be considered by

Last year, storage deployment in the US grew 80% from 2017.

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Source: Wood Mackenzie

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COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH

FIX THE ITC SO AMERICAN ENERGY INNOVATORS CAN THRIVE

By Carl Mansfield — senior vice president, oversees NantEnery’s SmartStorage intelligent energy management products and services for commercial and industrial customers. He founded Sharp Electronics Corporation’s Energy Systems and Services Group and served as its general manager, focusing on developing energy management and energy storage products for the US market.

A

s the US works to modernize its aging electric grid for reliability, and to meet aggressive environmental protection goals, energy storage has become an essential component in the process. Increased deployment of storage, particularly advanced battery technology, will enable us to capture and effectively use increasing amounts of intermittent renewable energy sources, as well as create a wealth of distributed power sources that will make the grid more resilient.

The technology used in the latest storage systems has advanced almost as fast as the cost has diminished, and it stands poised to improve both our nation’s electric grid and our economy as a whole.

Yet storage isn’t deployed nearly as widely as it should be — in large part because of a major deficiency in the federal Investment Tax Credit that needs to be fixed by congress in order to keep our nation’s infrastructure and our nation’s storage industry on the cutting edge.

The ITC currently applies to a wealth of energy resources, including renewables like solar power, that require storage technology to reach their full potential. What’s more, congress has already extended the ITC for those technologies through 2022 in an effort to continue providing a vital incentive to the entire energy sector.

Unfortunately, neither the prior version of the ITC nor the extension addressed energy storage with sufficient clarity, despite the major role it will play in grid modernization.

Without clear statutory rules, the industry operates in a state of uncertainty because of a lack of unambiguous IRS guidance about the eligibility of energy storage equipment for Section 48 & 25D tax credits when

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paired with ITC-eligible resources.

Congress has a ready opportunity to correct this oversight through the Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act, bipartisan legislation introduced in both the House (H.R. 4649) and the Senate (S. 1868). Passage of this legislation would ensure the tax credit applies to energy storage explicitly by making it an ITC-eligible resource in its own right, so that it can compete fairly with all the other energy resources that enjoy favorable ITC treatment.

Extending the ITC to storage would benefit our industry in many ways. It would create greater opportunities to obtain financing, for companies in both the storage and renewable energy businesses. That capital would allow the market to scale more easily and accelerate both new technologies and cost reductions in products, as well as create more jobs, including high-quality manufacturing jobs.

It would also help the nation’s economy on a much larger scale by accelerating deployments of energy storage systems at large commercial and industrial operations, which can both reduce rapidly escalating utility bills and prevent economic loss during grid outages. Energy storage allows these companies to either generate their own power with solar or wind and tap it when needed, or to purchase power from the grid when prices are lowest and use it during peak periods when demand charges are highest. The substantial savings in demand charges frees up capital those companies can put into job growth and innovation.

Extending the ITC to storage is also important for American competitiveness in the global energy storage market. Many new and highly promising battery technologies are emerging in the US and the ITC will

help these new technologies gain a foothold that might otherwise be hard to achieve. This can help technology innovators thrive and grow in the face of intense competition from overseas giants. As such, the ITC is a worthwhile investment in US innovation and competitiveness and will provide substantial benefits to American business and residential customers.

We fully agree with Secretary of Energy Rick Perry when he said in February that battery storage is “the holy grail of this whole renewableenergy quest.” Storage will transform the American electrical system into a 21st century global leader in the use of sustainable, renewable, and cost-effective energy. By passing the Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act, Congress can acknowledge the importance of this industry to the American economy, our global competitiveness, and to ensuring our nation’s grid remains the best in the world.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 23

COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH other states. The report Energy Storage: The New Efficiency - How States Can Use Efficiency Funds to Support Battery Storage and Flatten Costly Demand Peaks, was published by the Clean Energy Group in response to the plan on April 4. It covers the process the state made to finalize the plan, and presents economic analysis showing that energy storage can be cost-effectively deployed behind the customer’s meter.

Report author Todd Olinsky-Paul says that as more renewable energy is deployed, reducing peak demand becomes more important. And while battery storage can do this, states need to expand their efficiency plans to embrace peak demand reducBabinec: While a person tion and the new technologies, like battery storage, that may buy an EV they like for can accomplish it. emotional reasons or status, The project director with this is a grid. It’s a commodity, CEG said it marked the first time any state had included period. It’s economically batteries in an energy effidominated and the economics ciency plan. He added that making batteries eligible for of that are really about the life energy efficiency programs cycle cost. opened a new and steady source of funding to pay incentives to customers that install batteries at their home, business or rental property.

Lewis Milford, president of CEG, said: “Energy efficiency programs always have included new energy technologies. Storage is now a technology that deserves early stage funding support, a trend that other states should follow to bring down their energy costs and bring more customers into this emerging storage market.”

Massachusetts also has its ACES (Advancing Commonwealth Energy Storage) program that promotes leadership and innovation in energy storage deployment. It is the state’s first substantial investment on energy storage projects with the goal of growing the market. Over the last few months a number of ACES projects have come online and most should be operating by early 2020.

Babinec: Now that many of those demonstration projects are done the floodgates can open. They are not going to go from a tenth of a gigawatthour to 2GWh until they have pilot demonstrations completed.

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It focuses on programmes that demonstrate new applications or business models that show storage can provide services that are not currently monetizable through existing markets.

“Massachusetts has always been an early adopter of clean energy and environmental issues, but right now there happen to be some people in positions of leadership interested in energy storage that are very interested in getting storage developed in the state,” says Olinsky-Paul.

“There’s also a good number of people in top positions that are interested in making the state the Silicon Valley for storage, not just developing policy and deployment but making the state a place that attracts industry to come and set up shop in Massachusetts to gain early mover advantage.”

Urgency for reform comes from Massachusetts paying some of the highest demand charge rates— which are utility-specific — in the country, equal to California, with commercial customers in the state paying $20-30 per kW, CEG’s report found. However, an important qualifier is the high rates in Massachusetts are in the Eversource territory (which includes Boston). Much lower rates are found in National Grid territory.

Moving forward, one of the lessons Massachusetts learned from New York, another early adopter state, is not to spend years and millions of dollars on studies alone.

“It’s a fine line,” says Olinsky-Paul. “You have to spend money on a feasibility study, because you want to make sure you are not throwing money at a project that will fail.

It’s helpful for customers and third parties.

“But it has to be about more than just studies. Massachusetts saw that the New York Prize grant programme issued 83 grants for microgrid feasibility studies, at a cost of more than $8 million.

“The idea was that this would lead to communities building projects. A few will get implementation grants, but who knows whether the rest will move forward? Microgrids are complicated and expensive. So when you provide studies, it’s important to also provide support for people to act on them.”

That said, New York still intends to fund actual project developments, but microgrids, which is what the NY Prize program was intended to support, are extremely expensive and take a long time to develop.

“I would say another lesson here is that big, expensive microgrids are much harder to develop and much more expensive than individual storage projects at homes or businesses. It’s not the way to bring storage to scale quickly,” says Olinsky-Paul.

Making the most of the sun In 2015, the volcanic archipelago of Hawaii became the first US state to set the goal of www.energystoragejournal.com

COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH 100% renewable energy supply by 2045, with a goal of reaching 30% by the end of next year.

Investor-owned utility Hawaiian Electric Company reached 27%, last year.

To do this, the state is deploying residential to grid-scale storage-plus-PV systems. Across the Hawaiian Electric Companies’ five-island service territory, 18% of residential customers use rooftop solar — around double that of Connecticut, which is second at 6.8%. Incidentally, California is third at 5.9%, Arizona, fourth at 4.5%, and Utah and Massachusetts both at 3.4%, according to the Smart Electric Power Alliance. As a renewable energy source, there is now 418MW of residential solar capacity online in the state.

Parallel to the state’s adoption of PV is the adoption of storage. On the island of Oahu, solar+storage installations rose 1,830% (773 solar+storage permits granted) in 2017 from the previous year, according to a report from the state’s Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism.

In March, the state’s Public Utilities Commission approved plans for projects totalling 247MW of solar with almost 1GWh of storage: three on Oahu, one on Maui and two on Hawaii Island. The ESSs will be used for peak shifting services and provide enough power for 105,000 homes per year while eliminating the use of more than 48 million gallons of imported fossil fuels annually.

Two months earlier, Californian firm Clearway Energy Group was awarded two projects on Oahu: 156MWh storage coupled with 39MW of PV capacity (Mililani 1 Solar plant) and a 144MWh systems coupled with 36MW of PV (Waiawa Solar project). The company signed 75MW of power purchase agreements with utility Hawaiian Electric Company for the projects.

The projects are just the tip of the iceberg in the state, with HECO expressing the desire to install around 1.4GWh of storage along with 135MW solar to its grid by 2022.

Simon: New York is doing a big over haul of their storage rules in terms of how storage can participate in the wholesale markets. Again, this points to opportunity opening up for storage to provide grid services.

300MW of storage, with other state IOUs required to procure 10MW. Each four-hour duration system must be ready for dispatch

by January 1, 2022.

Additionally, New York is rolling out its $280 million (with more to come and doesn’t include a $40 million addition to the NY Sun program) Storage Bridge Incentive storage program to accelerate the growth of the energy storage industry and drive down the cost of deploying energy storage projects.

Cuomo announced the war chest during Earth Week, with commentators suggesting it could spur a 1.8GWh flurry of additional storage capacity. The cash is part of a larger $400 million investment to achieve its ambitious storage target.

He says: “The state is also overhauling its wholesale market participation rules for storage. Again, this points to opportunity opening up for storage to provide grid services.

“There are quite a few opportunities that are coming out. The only reason storage

In 2015, the volcanic archipelago of Hawaii became the first US state to set the goal of 100% renewable energy supply by 2045, with a goal of reaching 30% by the end of next year. Investor-owned utility Hawaiian Electric Company reached 27%, last year.

The big cheese In his 2018 State of the State address, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced a 1.5GW energy storage target for the state by 2025. The target is part of a far-reaching Energy Storage Roadmap that includes adding 3GW of energy storage by 2030, a figure established by the Public Service Commission in December 2018.

To meet these goals the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority and the Department of Public Service expects investor-owned utility company Consolidated Edison to procure at least www.energystoragejournal.com

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COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH Olinsky-Paul: Massachusetts has always been an early adopter of clean energy and environmental issues, but right now there happen to be some people in positions of leadership interested in energy storage.

hasn’t been built out to satisfy the high demand charges in New York, especially downstate, are certain permitting challenges, which are being worked through, though the timeline remains murky.

“Then there’s also the resilience angle for New York. It was a state that was hit hard

by Hurricane Sandy, which is still pretty strongly in the public consciousness. So we are going to see municipalities and local governments and critical infrastructure like hospitals and fire stations look to solutions like storage to ensure they have back-up in the event of another catastrophe.”

In April, the state also launched its NYPA Innovation Challenge, devised by utility New York Power Authority and Urban Future Lab at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.

The challenge connects early stage cleantech start-ups to the utility, enabling nextgeneration technology demonstrations designed to rapidly scale across its network of businesses and customers.

The utility will seek public and private partners with expertise in innovation, energy efficiency and clean energy generation to support advanced pilots of new technology and business models as the power grid transforms and begins to work with more distributed energy resources and grid edge solutions.

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Moving forward Above all, when it comes to BTM and FTM deployment, the main drivers for the market are the declining installed costs of storage — roughly 10% year-on-year — and the increasing needs for flexibility on the power system.

For BTM systems, incentive programs play a critical role in driving down soft costs.

“Long term, the key for these systems will be regulatory and market reforms that create additional opportunities to provide services and secure revenue streams beyond the primary application for the customer (back up or bill management),” says Goldberger.

Today, when it comes to BTM deployment, the pecking order sees California remain in the lead with Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York following.

Hawaii will continue to be a very strong state in the coming years, but Massachusetts and New York are catching up, albeit at the start of their upward trajectory right now, says Simon. “Both states have, over the past year, and especially in the past six months, been initiating policy directives that are opening the door for behind the meter storage.”

Moving forward — possibly as early as the mid-2020s — Massachusetts and New York could pull ahead of Hawaii in the BTM market because policy initiatives will lead to storage market growth in both states, starting in the early 2020s, and lead to them to overtaking Hawaii’s commercial and industrial market during that period, says Simon.

However, because the BTM market includes both residential and non-residential applications, Hawaii will probably remain the number two-state. But when it comes to C&I applications, then New York and Massachusetts could very likely pass Hawaii, with Simon predicting that New York could become the definitive number two in the C&I markets by the early 2020s.

In states where there are integrated resource planning and transmission planning processes in place, FTM systems can compete head-to-head with traditional peaking plants and transmission investment if states revise their rules to require that ESSs are evaluated and considered fairly, as seen in Colorado, Washington, and New Mexico.

“As for front-of-the-meter systems on distribution systems,” says Goldberger, “Regulatory reforms are needed to enable the same asset to serve several applications, including clarifications around ownership and dual market participation for assets that are providing grid services — doing so can unlock significant value and make project economics quite favorable.”

Laying foundations The foundation for US market expansion www.energystoragejournal.com

COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH was laid during the past 12 months with a number of developments that laid the groundwork for further market expansion and new business-model development in 2019.

These developments, according to Wood Mackenzie, include: • Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 841 filings that expand the opportunities for storage participation in wholesale markets • Programs that implement residential storage to provide grid services, creating new revenue streams for a segment historically limited to backup power • Record low solar-plus-storage PPA pricing that illustrates the technology continues to compete head-to-head with incumbent generation • Battery supply shortages, which plagued the market in 2018, are set to abate in early 2019, which will alleviate system pricing issues Taken together, such activity shows clear opportunities for the expansion of storage deployment.

In terms of policy, anything where developers can ensure demand will be helpful when looking at the main challenges of deploying grid-scale ESS in the US. A major development came on February 15, 2018, when FERC passed Order 841.

The order, first proposed in November 2016, sets out rules for the participation of electric storage resources in the capacity, energy, and ancillary service markets.

The ruling stated its goal was: “To remove barriers to the participation of electric storage resources in the regional transmission organization and independent system operator markets.”

The draft Final Rule requires each RTO and ISO to revise its tariff to establish a participation model consisting of market rules that, recognizing the physical and operational characteristics of electric storage resources, facilitates their participation in the RTO and ISO markets. In other words, it removed barriers that prevented storage resources from realizing multiple value streams.

Although there are some concerns — economic, regulatory and market barriers — consulting firm Brattle Group found there was a potential to add 50GW over the next decade if storage costs continued to decline and state regulatory policies built upon the order.

“Policy changes are underway in New York to open the door for more storage,” says Simon. “These include opportunities in wholesale markets spinning out of FERC Order 841. As more BTM storage is able to access wholesale market revenue streams, we’ll see further opportunity for growth, www.energystoragejournal.com

Olinsky-Paul: A good number of people in top positions are interested in making Massachusetts the Silicon Valley for storage, making the state a place that attracts industry to set up shop in Massachusetts to gain early mover advantage. especially as system prices continue to decline.”

Brattle’s 2018 study Getting to 50 GW? The Role of FERC Order 841, RTOs, States, and Utilities in Unlocking Storage’s Potential estimated at least half of the total value storage could provide would be achievable in wholesale electricity markets, with the remainder accruing at the transmission and distribution and customer level.

A statement by the group to herald the report noted: “To fully realize the value of electricity storage, including benefits related to reduced T&D costs and reduced customer outages, the FERC wholesale market reforms will have to be matched with similar efforts at the state regulatory level.”

In essence, the Brattle study showed the market could increase up to five-times by combining the policy with state-level initiatives, compared to a future that limited storage to capturing only wholesale market benefits.

“Ultimately, the more sure the demand, the more likely industry is to start spending,” says Babinec.

Simon: Massachusetts and New York could pull ahead of Hawaii in the BTM market because policy initiatives will lead to storage market growth in both states, starting in the early 2020s.

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COVER STORY: US STATES TO WATCH compressed air, which can be stored for later use, says Jason Burwen, the vice president of policy at the ESA. Carl Mansfield, head of NantEnergy’s commercial & industrial energy storage business applauded the proposed bill (see box out). He believes it’s an important recognition of the critical role energy storage plays in modernizing the electric grid and the tax credits would support diversity in the storage market.

Meanwhile, US Senators Amy Klobuchar (district of Minnesota) and Jerry Moran (representative of Kansas) introduced bipartisan legislation to give clean energy and microgrids a boost in April.

The Expanding Access to Sustainable Energy act aims to assist rural communities and rural electricity cooperatives to overcome the barriers to renewable energy storage and grid improvements by providing them access to relevant resources and expertise.

Goldberger: Long term, the key for these systems will be regulatory and market reforms that create additional opportunities to provide services and secure revenue streams.

Solar+storage It’s clear the combination of solar with storage is the next step in developing a reliable and clean electrical grid, and policy will have its part to play in enabling opportunities to deploy batteries beyond the few markets where energy storage is currently economic.

US representative Mike Doyle introduced a key policy on April 4. The updated version of the Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act — first introduced by US senators Cory Gardner and Martin Heinrich in 2016 — aims to extend to batteries and other energy storage systems the same 30% investment tax credit offered to solar PV systems. As it stands only a small subset of energy storage projects co-located with solar are eligible.

If ratified, the bill will establish a federal investment tax credit for business, residential, and utility-scale projects using batteries and other energy storage technologies.

Importantly, the legislation seeks to establish the tax credits for both commercial and residential energy storage through 2021. The incentive would then be phased down annually — 26% in 2020, and 22% in 2021 — before levelling off after that to a standard, permanent 10% tax credit for commercial projects and zero for residential projects.

The energy storage industry believes the new investment tax credit should cover not just batteries but also other storage technologies—such as pumped hydropower, more efficient flywheels, and technology that converts electrical energy into high-pressure 28 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

Economics of deployment Politicians can do their bit by introducing policy and legislation, but the factor determining if storage is deployed across all 50 states is economics, especially in terms of lifecycle. The variables of that are the up front costs, and throughput — in its lifetime how many megawatts can the user put through it.

Wood Mackenzie forecasts battery rack prices will drop below $150/kWh over the next five years. So that’s one element. But what about throughput?

Babinec says it’s the most important factor. “While a person may buy an EV they like for emotional reasons or status, this is a grid. It’s a commodity, period. It’s economically dominated and the economics of that are really about the life-cycle cost.”

When it comes to managing throughput there is not just one variable, and the complexity of the question can be handled by mining data and testing.

“When we come into this brave new world we are entering we have to think in terms of life cycle throughput, which is called the levelized cost of storage. Cycle life is a common metric people use, but in fact it is only one part of the better metric of total energy throughput,” says Babinec.

“Its all about throughput versus capital and the way you optimise the use of a battery. There are general guidelines for how you cycle a battery, but those are only rules of thumb.

“If you are going to build a giant plant and you are going to put in 20MW of storage you want to know, in detail, exactly how you optimise that asset. You are going to need to do very detailed calculations and measurements and that’s what Argonne is working on.” www.energystoragejournal.com

TURBULENT POWER SYSTEM BREEDS SOLAR+STORAGE OPPORTUNITIES IN LATAM BATTERIES TO INTERUPT STORAGE MARKET IN BRAZIL RENEWABLE ENERGY GOALS PAVE WAY FOR BIG STORAGE OPPORTUITIES IN INDIA SUCCESS AT EUROPE’S LARGEST ENERGY INDUSTRY EVENT ENERGY STORAGE DEPLOYMENT IN MIDDLE EAST IS A QUESTION OF WHEN

EES SOUTH AMERICA

TURBULENT POWER SYSTEM BREEDS SOLAR+STORAGE OPPORTUNITIES THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT FOR LATIN AMERICA’S SOLAR INDUSTRY, NOW IT'S ENERGY STORAGE'S TIME TO SHINE IN THIS RAPIDLY EXPANDING MARKET. Market analysts are bullish about Latin America’s solar market development, with growing populations, unstable grids and an abundance of renewable power — particularly solar — making the region an attractive emerging market.

Solar has become the area’s fastest growing power generation

STORAGE-DEFINED STORAGE MARKET: REVENUE SHARE (%) BY REGION, GLOBAL, 2017

Source: Mordor Intelligence

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source, with the region expected to account for more 10% of global solar demand by 2022. Today it has more than 7 GW of solar PV installed across the area, with an additional 46 GW expected to be developed in the next three years; industry analysts Navigant Research predicts 21 GW of wind and 15 GW of solar will be added by the close of next year.

A report in 2017 by the World Bank Group stated there was around 1 GW of energy storage in the region, albeit 95% of that capacity was from pumped hydro in Argentina. However, the battery storage market is growing, with large scale systems by AES Energy Storage and Altairnano in Chile and El Salvador adding 42 MW of storage capacity.

The Energy Storage Trends and Opportunities in Emerging Markets report by the International Finance Corporation noted Chile, Mexico and Brazil had emerged as the most attractive markets in the region, helped by significant resources and supportive governments.

Relatively stable and transparent regulatory framework for renewables in these countries, along with longer-term power purchase agreements and contracts, have provided the stability for major foreign investors and developers to enter the market.

While similar contract structures could pave the way for energy storage, stated the report.

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PHOTO: Special Exhibition ees at Intersolar South America 2018.

Mexico’s place in the energy mix One on the country’s making the most of this Latin America’s boom is Mexico, a country that boasts an abundance of solar resources, high power prices, falling technology costs, and an increasing need for resource diversification. These factors have pushed Mexico to the forefront for solar development since it deregulated its electrical grid in 2013.

The country is set to become the fifth biggest market for new solar capacity by 2021. No surprise when you see the numbers: its annual daily solar irradiance levels range between 4.4 kWh/ m2 and 6.3 kWh/m2 and the Mexico Secretariat of Energy expects 11.6 GW of cumulative solar power and 58.5 GW of clean energy to be reached by 2032.

With that much generation potential, the country’s federal government aims to have renewables account for 35% of its energy mix by 2024 — of which Wood Mackenzie predicts will be split evenly between distributed and utility scale generation — and half by 2050. Last year, its Ministry of Energy launched its 2018 edition of a program to showcase the country’s energy demand for the next 15 years and predicts an $11,906 million investment opportunity in solar energy.

The growing number of solar installations is also stimulating the energy storage market as declining battery systems costs open significant opportunities in the sector. Economies of scale are due to materialize in the early 2020s as deployments increase and CAPEX projection falls, according to Wood Mackenzie.

Mexico’s largest ESS to date is a 12MWh system in a car factory in Monterrey, in the north-eastern state of Nuevo León, to deliver spinning reserve, voltage support, and frequency for a fully selfcontained microgrid.

An energy fund created to finance the development of PV plus ESS projects in Mexico and Latin America, offers customers in Mexico an integrated PV+ESS solution. Plans include the deployment of 100 MWh of ESSs in Mexico, with some reportss stating up to 50% of capacity could be deployed within 12 months.

➔ INTERSOLAR MEXICO Intersolar has been actively involved in the LATAM region since 2013 with various events, such as the Intersolar South America – Latin America’s largest exhibition and conference for the solar industry in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2019 Intersolar is also teaming up with The GREEN Expo® in Mexico City, Mexico.

The partnership will co-deliver an outstanding platform for the renewable energy and greentech industry in Mexico. The new event builds upon the already strong solar offering, with the aim of providing a platform which best serves the trends and investment opportunities in the renewable energy industry.

The solar industry is expected to grow exponentially in Mexico. Intersolar Mexico, taking place in the World Trade Center (Pepsi Center) in Mexico City from September 3—5, 2019 co-located with The GREEN Expo®, will be the largest gathering of solar professionals in Mexico for international manufacturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers.

➔ EXHIBITION QUICK FACTS Date: Venue:

September 3—5, 2019 World Trade Center (Pepsi Center), Mexico City Focus area: Photovoltaics, PV Production Technology, Energy Storage, Solar Heating & Cooling Technologies

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PHOTO: ees South America

BATTERIES TO INTERUPT STORAGE MARKET BRAZIL’S POWER SECTOR STARTED A SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT CYCLE IN 2009, WHICH REACHED ITS APEX IN 2012, WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF LARGE HYDROELECTRIC PLANTS IN BELO MONTE, SANTO ANTÔNIO AND JIRAU IN THE NORTH OF THE COUNTRY. NOW IT’S TIME FOR ENERGY STORAGE. Brazil's power consumption has increased at a rate of 1.6% per annum since 2013, and conservative estimates predict that will increase at 3.7% p.a. by 2026. This rise in demand could be met by national grid infrastructure upgrades, but that is costly and slow, especially as more and more renewable generated power is brought online.

There is around 2 GW of operational installed capacity from large-scale PV and more than 500MW of installed distributed generation in the country. Adoption is so fast that Brazil has taken over Chile as the second largest solar market after Mexico in the region, according to new figures released by Brazilian solar association ABSOLAR, based on data from energy regulator ANEEL. To meet wind and solar supply — expected to grow from 10 GW to 38G W by 2026 — it’s believed that 12 GW of battery capacity will be needed for peak demand alone, with grid tied storage systems enabling the adoption of distributed renewable energy sources along the power system.

Energy storage system deployment offers a quick and cost effective means of meeting demand. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicted in its New Energy Outlook 2016 report that flexible capacity, ie battery storage, would account for 11% or around 44 GW of Brazil’s installed capacity by 2040.

This would make energy storage the country’s fourth biggest power source — behind hydropower, biogas and renewables.

The use of decentralized energy storage can provide operators

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the ability to ensure security of supply and stability — through frequency regulation, load shifting, and contingency reserve management services — while decarbonizing its power system.

Among the many service storage can deliver, those identified as the most beneficial in Brazil are: peak load reduction and energy arbitrage; ancillary service, such spinning reserve, frequency regulation, voltage support; continues supply in isolated systems; alternative energy integration; support of DG integration; and assistance to the fleet of electric cars.

“The variation in generation and the need to balance power and regulate voltage and frequency, the use of energy storage systems is inevitable in the modern network,” noted a report titled Energy Storage Technologies Towards Brazilian Electrical System. “For that reason, the results brought by the present work, although they come from a simple analysis, mark the guideline to be taken by governmental organs and regulatory agents referring to ESS applications. The present study found that technologies such as batteries, PHS, D-CAES, FES were the ones that present the best applicability to meet emerging Brazilian needs and are expected to be the most prominent at the national level.”

Fertile energy storage ground Brazil is a fertile field for energy efficiency. There are trends such as the use of batteries in partnership with the DG systems by prosumers and the use of batteries at the distribution level

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providing peak hour power instead of relying on traditional generators to diesel.

Marcel Haratz, director general of Brazil energy management firm Comerc Esco, said that batteries are already widely used.

“The battery can be charged during off-peak hours while it is dispatchable in the period when energy is more expensive, and this is because we are not yet talking about the use of these devices with the hourly price in Brazil, when this is true in the country the market will be much more dynamic, "he said in his presentation during the second day of the 7th National Meeting of Energy Consumers.

Another factor highlighted by Haratz was the issue of meeting demand faster than traditional generators. Battery storage also allows operators to ramp up power within milliseconds, rather than wait 90 seconds from traditional generators.

Making storage pay During the conference, Haratz argued that battery prices were no longer a problem as cost continued to fall. Instead he highlighted the question of change that currently presents instability.

A point that Alexandre Moana, CEO of Abesco, believes is an important current issue in the national market, as was confidence in the country’s market.

"If confidence comes back many will make investments in energy efficiency in the country,” he said. “That's why I say, trust in an efficiency plan is something good and profitable; technology has changed shape and cost reduction will happen.”

Investments in energy efficiency bring cost savings, reduce pollution and create a much more competitive economy as it uses less energy to achieve or exceed results. But, how to make an energy efficiency project feasible?

Looking ahead, the decisions to invest in the sector, especially in the short term, will be more related to the change in the profile of consumption and the energy matrix than to the increase in

ALEXANDRE MOANA, CEO of Abesco

energy demand, wrote Alexandre Pereira and Fernando Puga for Brazilian bank BNDES. Regardless of the macroeconomic scenario, investment opportunities will be greater in the diversification of the energy matrix, due to the growing global awareness of the harmful effects that energy projects can cause on the environment, restricting the construction of large hydroelectric dams.

➔ EES SOUTH AMERICA QUICK FACTS This debut event follows two years as a special exhibition during Intersolar South America.

Organizers expects to welcome 60 exhibitors and 20,000+ visitors from along the energy storage value chain.

The program schedule and details will be available in early summer 2019.

Date: Venue:

August 27–29, 2019 Expo Center Norte, White Pavillon, Soa Paulo, Brazil

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EES INDIA

PHOTOS: Talking business at ees India

RENEWABLE ENERGY GOALS PAVE WAY FOR BIG STORAGE OPPORTUNITIES IN INDIA INCREASING DEMAND IS FUELLING INDIA’S REMARKABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY GOALS, BUT WITHOUT STORAGE THE COUNTRY IS CURTAILING HUGE AMOUNTS OF WIND AND SOLAR ENERGY. ONE WILL SURELY NEED THE OTHER IF IT IS TO MEET ITS AMBITIONS. Industry forecasters predict India’s energy consumption will increase 4.2% per annum up to 2040 — faster than all major economies in the world. It currently has around 73 GW of installed solar capacity, making it the fifth biggest market in the sector.

The forecast is backed by India’s ambitious goal of adding 227 GW of renewable energy by 2022 through mainly solar (113 GW) but also wind (66 GW), biomass (10 GW) and small hydro (5 GW). Offshore wind and solar farms will likely generate around 31 GW of the energy mix.

The country’s energy evolution is so rapid that BP’s Energy Outlook states that renewables will overtake gas and oil in India’s domestic energy production by 2020, but will remain behind coal for at least two decades.

EXPECTED ALL INDIA DUCK CURVE

(After considering 20,000 MW of Solar Generation by 2021-22)

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Leading the charge While countrywide goals are moving forward, first-mover advantage of individual states like Karnataka are opening up as it positions itself as the leading renewables energy state in India.

One of the state’s primary objectives is to achieve a minimum additional capacity of 6 GW by 2022 building on the successful instalment of 12 GW of renewable capacity as of March — after having added 5 GW in 2017/18 alone.

By 2028 the state wants renewable energy to account for 60% of available power capacity.

Bangalore, the capital city of Karnataka — India’s self-styled Silicon Valley technology hub and future capita for energy storage production — is said to be the best place in India to do business in the energy storage industry.

The government’s Electric Vehicle and Energy Storage Policy 2017, has set the state a specific EV and energy storage policy with the goal of making Bangalore India’s hub for energy storage and electric vehicle production. The government is set to create charging infrastructure by subsidizing charging and battery swapping stations. Around $4.8 billion is expected to be poured into this program and 55,000 jobs are expected to be created.

However, today peak renewable energy production is being curtailed as the state lacks the ability to shift the peak supply at noon to the time of peak demand at 7.00pm.

The southern state has reported it curtailed 18% of its energy production last October and November and up to 3.5 GW each day last June, according to figures from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Rahul Verma, senior associate and energy economist at consultants Fractal Energy Storage said the challenge of integrating renewables would come as supply moves independently of demand, with both solar and wind energy

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RAHUL VERMA, senior associate and energy economist at Fractal Energy Storage consultants

varying seasonally and even day-to-day.

He said: “Coping with the summer daytime peak and lower output during winter and at night will mean partly storing the peak electricity supply from renewables for use at night and in winter.

“On seasonal timescales, this involves renewable electricity conversion into a suitable form of stored primary energy or fuel.”

Changing the energy mix While India’s renewable energy ambitions should be applauded, news of utility-scale energy storage projects in the country is scarce. The 42 MWh of tenders announced by the Solar Energy Corporation of India, a company of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India, is a drop in the ocean.

The country will need storage to provide, among other services, peak load management, system flexibility, frequency regulation and security of supply to balance its grid as the intermittent nature of more than 200 GW of renewable generation is added the power mix.

The one project of note so far is the 10 MWh system at Tata Power Delhi Distribution’s Rohini Substation. A project by Tata Power, The AES Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation. There is also an agreement in place to build a 10 MWh energy storage facility in Haryana, India, by Panasonic India and AES India.

More storage projects will come on line as the cost of storage, as well as costs of components associated with energy storage like inverters or battery management systems, decreases. But while component costs are dropping, Rashi Gupta from Vision Mechatronics, told delegates at last year’s Intersolar India that cost comparison should be done on the basis of levelized cost of energy for true comparison.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance has been analyzing the numbers on LCOEs for the different technologies since 2009, based on its database of project financings and work by its analyst teams on the cost dynamics in different sectors.

In that nine-year period, the global benchmark LCOE for solar PV without tracking has tumbled by 77%, and for onshore wind by 38%.

LCOEs for older established sources, such as coal, gas, nuclear and large hydro, have seen only very modest reductions, at best, in that time – and in some countries, they have actually increased.

The analyst’s lithium ion battery price index has also shown a fall from $1,000 per kWh in 2010 to $209 per kWh in 2017.

Gupta also highlights the need for policy and regulatory frameworks to be designed and fine tuned to boost the confidence of investors to encourage energy storage deployment, with appropriate financial resources earmarked for meeting energy storage targets intermittently.

“Financial incentives could be provided in initial stages where their cost is higher than existing alternative like diesel generator,” Gupta told delegates. “Domestic energy storage manufacturing needs to be developed for retaining major parts of the storage value chain in India.”

Promising market However, the market potential for electrical energy storage in India is expected to mirror that of the global market, which is forecast to double six times between 2016 and 2030. Together with US and Japan the country is predicted to install 50% of ESSs by 2030, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Out of 70 GW, more than half of demand is expected from newer applications like solar integration or electric vehicles hence there is a sizable opportunity for advanced storage technologies in the new applications.

➔ EES INDIA Co-located with Inersolar India and Power2Drive India, ees India is India’s leading electrical energy storage exhibition and part of the innovation hub The smarter E India.

With three parallel energy exhibitions, the event covers the entire spectrum of the new energy world.

Meet India's key players of the solar, energy storage and electric mobility industry!

➔ EXHIBITION QUICK FACTS Dates Hours

Venue

November 27–29, 2019 10am–6pm | Wednesday & Thursday 10am–5pm | Friday Bangalore International Exhibition Centre Hall 4 Exhibitors 75+ Visitors 10,000+ Delegates 500+ Speakers 150+

EES EUROPE

PHOTOS: ees Europe

BIGGER, BETTER AND COOLER: SUCCESS AT EUROPE’S LARGEST AND MOST WELL ATTENDED ENERGY INDUSTRY EVENT FRIENDSHIPS WERE FORMED, BUSINESS DEALS FINALISED AND DELEGATES AND VISITORS FROM AROUND THE WORLD LEFT INFORMED AT THE SMARTER E EUROPE — WITH ITS FOUR INNOVATIVE PLATFORM EXHIBITIONS: EES EUROPE, INTERSOLAR EUROPE, POWER2DRIVE EUROPE AND EM-POWER. This year’s ees Europe event was held a month earlier than usual, allowing delegates to enjoy the lower temperatures of Munich’s May climate. But where the ambient temperatures were cooler, business was as heated as usual as a total of 466 exhibitors (out of 1,354 exhibitors — up 15% from last year) showcased their energy storage technologies and systems to around 50,000 visitors (up 8%) from 162 countries at the continent’s largest and most international exhibition for batteries, e-mobility, renewables and residential to utility-scale energy storage systems.

Walking around the stands its was clear that domestic and commercial storage systems are a key driving force in the market.

While the show was technology-agnostic — on show were usecases for lead batteries and alternative, emerging technologies in connection with renewables — the trend in ESS is clearly focused on lithium ion and redox flow batteries. For example, in 2016 the European market for ESSs grew by 49% to nearly 600 MWh in 2017. Even decades old lead battery companies are turning to lithium ion such as Hoppecke, who were included in the manufacturer overview guided tour.

Another key market trend in battery production has been highlighted by strong growth in annual installations of stationary

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storage systems and by the rapidly growing electromobility.

It is clear the production of batteries and battery cells is becoming a key industry of the future. For the EU Commission, battery production has therefore become a strategic necessity for Europe, both for the energy transition and for the competitiveness of the automotive sector.

Exhibition tours With an event as large as The Smarter E Europe — the exhibition space was 16% bigger than 2018 at a foot throbbing 100,000 square meters — the exhibition tours proved a great way to gain a quick and compact overview. Held in German and English, the tours gave insight into firms over three days.

The tours took delegates along the value chain to exhibitors with know-how in component and electrode production, cell, module and pack assembly as well as plant manufacturers. In addition, experts from the fields of research, engineering of the overall system and recycling of batteries were visited.

The tour on battery production, given in English by PEM from RWTH Aachen University, was a particular highlight of the event.

Focused on sustainability in production, the two-hour tour ran

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twice a day starting from the PV and Battery Production Forum in hall C1. The tour took a closer look at the technologies presented in the PV and Battery Production Forum and supplemented them with a look at other innovations from a range of companies along the supply chain of a battery.

Another highlight was the manufacturer overview tour in Hall B1, which included visits to the stands of international brands including Eaton and Tesvolt, as well as wind and solar firms.

As the trend to deploy storage alongside renewables grows, there was also the chance to join the PV Guided Tours that presented solutions for domestic storage systems applications as well as storage systems and off-grid solutions for industry and commerce.

Expert insight As always, delegates were given two days of insights and specialist opinion during the comprehensive ees Europe Conference program.

The in-depth program included numerous sessions exploring the technologies of the future. A notable example was the ‘Quality Assurance for Products and Projects – Safety, Reliability and Performance’ session, which addressed the key concerns in the field of quality assurance for stationary battery storage applications.

The session was led by Dr. Matthias Vetter, head of Department for Electrical Energy Storage at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Germany and chairman of the ees Europe Conference. He said: “When it comes to achieving a widereaching and sustainable market penetration of stationary battery storage systems in the widest possible range of applications the topics of safety and reliability are paramount and create the basis required. But efficiency and effectiveness also have to be addressed for worthwhile applications.”

In all, the sessions shone a light on the important topics affecting the industry from technical and economic perspectives, describing the current status of norms and standards and presenting exemplary results from professional practice.

Practical forums The ees Forum was held in hall C2 under the motto “Innovating energy storage”. It was here the ees AWARD finalists’ were introduced and current topics and developments discussed in sessions ranging from monetizing solar & storage and alternatives to lithium ion battery storage — including flow batteries (Enerox won an ees AWARD for their lithium metal polymer solution), nickel metal hydride, sodium and thermal solutions, all of which were exhibited during the event.

The PV and Battery Production Forum in hall C1 was held in cooperation with PEM (Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components) at RWTH Aachen University. Here, the spotlight was on battery production as a trend in technology, automation and process innovation.

Christoph Schön, from PEM, said the discussions explored innovations which were extremely important for sustainable production in Europe. “These range from energy-efficient processing technologies — such as the use of lasers — to a strong machine and plant construction sector with solutions for automated module and pack production to the next generation of battery technologies,” he said.

A highlight of the forum programme was on Thursday in hall C1, the space dedicated to the topic of production technologies.

The ‘Fab Manager Day Focus Battery Production: Automation of Module and Pack-Assembly - Scalable Production Processes’ was two hours of discussion on building batteries beginning with a look at solid state lithium ion technology and closing with a look at inline optical inspection in battery production.

EES EUROPE

THE EES AWARD Rounding off the first day of the exhibition, one of the most hotly anticipated evenings in the industry’s calendar is the presentation of the renowned ees, The smarter E, and Intersolar Awards.

The presentation ceremony paid tribute to companies pioneering products and solutions that advance storage deployment from stationary and mobile solutions to virtual power plants, and renewable energy from PV facilities to wind farms.

The award winners 2019 were: ees AWARD – Electrical Energy Storage French firm Blue Solutions’ solid-state, lithium metal polymer battery LMP® (Lithium Metal Polymer) 250/400 rack – modular system impressed judges with its high level of safety and performance offered by the solution.

Austria’s Enerox — part of the CellCube Energy Storage Systems family — caught the eye of judges with its CellCube FB 500-2000 – high-output storage device for photovoltaic systems. The vanadium redox flow battery was commended for its ‘electrolyte as a service’, business model that brings capital costs below €300 kW/h.

Judges noted the holistic approach to maximizing power quality by Germany firm Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen’s Gridcon® PCS 4W — dubbed the ‘Swiss army knife of inverters”.

The central DC bus enables the connection of different loads and feeders such as various kinds of batteries and PV units.

The smarter E AWARD – Outstanding Projects German company BayWa r.e. renewable energy was recognized for its Don Rodrigo solar plant in Spain, which is Europe's first unsubsidized utility scale PV power plant. Comprising of 500,000 solar modules, the 175MW park amounts produces power at less than €25/MWh. The judges were excited by the integration of digitalization in solar thermal CHP technology by Mondas. The German firm’s smart heat grid for 1,350 Freiburg inhabitants uses a modular design of the solar heat grid with 38 decentralized solar ther-

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mal systems connected to 525 residential units.

German company Siemens won for its Isabela hybrid power plant project on Isabela Island, the largest of Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands. The judges recognized the project’s use of PV energy and sustainably grown jatropha biofuel to supply the island with 100% renewable power.

The smarter E AWARD – Smart Renewable Energy Judges were impressed with German firm Axiotherm’s kraftBoxx. The thermal energy storage unit’s modular and scalable system uses surplus solar power for heating purposes and increases the proportion of self-consumption.

Ukraine's SolarGaps was acknowledged for its energy-generating solar blinds. The judges honoured the invention for its compatibility with smart building systems and the products ability to maximize energy generation by adjusting to the position of the sun.

Power-Blox, the mobile power socket by Germany’s Stäubli Electrical Connectors impressed judges for its user-friendly “portable socket” aspect for off-grid energy demands, as well as the ease and convenience of supplying electricity to households or small businesses.

Intersolar AWARD – Photovoltaics The high-end features of Huawei Technologies’ smart PV string inverter SUN2000 15-20KTL-M0 caught the attention of judges. The china firm’s inverter can reduce the negative impacts of shading or differing module layouts.

Israeli firm Raycatch’s DeepSolar™ automated AI diagnostics system for solar PV systems impressed judges with its ability to use data from existing monitoring systems to optimize system performance and replace interval-based maintenance.

The trendsetting nature of the Cheetah Bifacial HC Swan modules by China’s Zhejiang Jinko Solar — as well as its 30-year power warranty — impressed judges. Swan combines the benefits and extra yield of bifacial technology with the simplicity and easy installation of DuPont-manufactured Swan transparent glass back sheet modules.

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EES MIDDLE EAST

PHOTOS: ees and Intersolar Middle East Conference at Middle East Electricity in Dubai.

ENERGY STORAGE DEPLOYMENT IN MIDDLE EAST IS A QUESTION OF WHEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST POWER HAS TRADITIONALLY BEEN SOURCED FROM FOSSIL FUELS OR INTERCONNECTORS FROM NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. BUT WHAT NEXT FOR A REGION STILL IN ITS INFANCY IN TERMS OF RENEWABLE POWER AND ENERGY STORAGE DEPLOYMENT? In the Middle East and North Africa security of supply and reliability is a key concern. A solution to the problem is the area’s vast renewable expansion, with solar predicted to reach 6.4 GW by 2021 — up from 2.7 GW last year; annual supply from wind is set to rise to 2.7GW in the next three years.

A number of gigawatt-scale renewable projects are leading to the integration of storage for a range of grid services from ancillary, short term (up to a few minutes), to peak shaving, mid-term (up to two hours), and long term (up to six hours) for peak shifting.

The most notable projects to date are in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority has delivered two systems: the biggest, in 2015, is a 120 MW sodium sulfur system in 4 MW or 8 MW systems at various 33 kV/11 kV substations across their distribution network.

Most recently the country’s Abu Dhabi Department of Energy delivered the region’s first grid-scale virtual power plant system and the first integrated control system for energy storage in Abu Dhabi.

➔ EES MIDDLE EAST CONFERENCE Date: Venue:

March 3 —5, 2020 Dubai World Trade Center

The conference provides insights into the dynamics of renewable energies, emphasizing how various technologies can produce synergies and, in turn, create an integrated energy system.

The conference is a must-visit for those who want to get the inside track, a comprehensive overview of the global energy transition and its potential benefits for their company.

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The 108 MW VPP will secure additional power supply for six hours at a time when the solar power plant, Noor Abu Dhabi, comes online with 1.2 GW of renewables in the second quarter of this year.

The country has also opened a smart grid station in Al Ruwayyah, Dubai, which includes 200 kW of photovoltaic power, a 9kW wind turbine and a 500 KWh lithium ion storage system. The system uses thermal ESS to store surplus energy.

Back in 2015, 2 MW of nickel batteries were installed at Dukhan Oil Field, Qatar. The 40,000 battery plus solar power system is used for back-up power and renewable energy smoothing services.

Building on its future Elsewhere the region is in different stages of energy storage installations, with a number of projects announced or contracted. These include: Jordan (54 MW), Saudi Arabia (around 1 MW), and United Arab Emirates (108 MW).

As the cost of lithium ion batteries fall — by as much as 50% between 2017-225, according to Apricum — energy storage will become an increasingly applied solution to boost the penetration of renewable energy at prices that are competitive to alternatives such as fossil fuel. A 2017 report by the consultancy firm stated that renewable energy had already reached 0.26 US cents per kWh. Three drivers to success When it comes to storage growth in the region, there are three principal drivers: demand, competiveness and frameworks.

The first will be driven by renewable energy expansion, the second by declining energy storage costs and the third with power purchase agreements like those seen at the Al-Mafraq solar-plus 12 MWh ESS plant in Jordan.

The Leading Exhibition Series for Batteries and Energy Storage Systems

AUGUST 27–29, 2019, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL SOUTH AMERICA’S NEW HOT SPOT FOR BATTERIES & ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-southamerica.com

NOVEMBER 27–29, 2019, BANGALORE, INDIA INDIA‘S LEADING ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE EXHIBITION www.ees-india.in

FEBRUARY 4–6, 2020, SAN DIEGO, USA NORTH AMERICA‘S ULTIMATE HOT SPOT FOR ENERGY STORAGE SOLUTIONS www.ees-northamerica.com

MARCH 3–5, 2020, DUBAI, UAE EES@MIDDLE EAST ELECTRICITY: MENA‘S MOST COMPREHENSIVE ENERGY STORAGE EVENT www.ees-mena.com

JUNE 17–19, 2020, MUNICH, GERMANY EUROPE’S LARGEST EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-europe.com

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EXIDE TECHNOLOGIES’ CEO TIM VARGO

New Exide leadership looks to lead/lithium innovation for its future Tim Vargo, the new CEO at Exide Technologies, says innovation will be a key pillar in keeping the battery giant ahead of its competitors. This may be as much to do with pushing advances in its lithium product range as placing increased focus on customer service to cement its position as a quality supplier of regular and advanced lead batteries.

It has had to emerge twice from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and has been fined millions of dollars for the Vernon recycling plant pollution — but Exide Technologies refuses to stay down, instead constantly coming back with new products, new acquisitions — and new CEOs. Latest in the top job, brought in last November, is Tim Vargo, a seasoned professional with more than 40 years’ leadership experience in the automotive supply chain and process improvement arena.

He’s got an impressive track record.

As president and COO of AutoZone, the largest aftermarket automotive parts and accessories company in the US, Vargo increased the number of stores from 1,000 to 3,250 before he moved to Exide.

Sales quadrupled under his tenure, from $1.5 billion to more than $5 billion.

It wouldn’t be a ridiculous assumption to make that Vargo is looking to do something similar at Exide, where he replaces Vic Koelsch, who had been in place since May 2015 and who remains in an advisory capacity.

But the question is what to do. If Vargo’s words sound like other voices in the industry they are said with sincerity and passion.

“Exide truly excels in innovation,” he says. “We have a 130-year history, which was built by the merging of many battery companies, each with their own rich history of innovation.

“Innovation is critical in our industry to ensure that batteries continually become ‘smarter’ to meet

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new demands from customers and environmental regulations.

“We are not operating in a ‘one size fits all’ industry, meaning that we have to develop the best battery for each market we serve, taking into account numerous industry trends and factors that impact battery operation.

“I believe the innovations we are bringing to our customers will really set Exide apart from our competition.

The drive into lithium

And one of these innovation areas look set to be in the way Exide advances its portfolio of lithium products.

In 2013, while the company was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, in Europe it was turning its sights to lithium.

The GNB Industrial Power team put itself at the forefront of this burgeoning

In terms of the future, we clearly see a role for lithium-ion because of all the advantages these batteries offer. But lithium is just part of our product range. Our battery portfolio will continue to include both lead acid and lithium ion options.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 41

EXIDE TECHNOLOGIES’ CEO TIM VARGO

industry by launching its first lithium battery for material handling systems, the GNB Sonnenschein lithium battery, to be used in large distribution centres, AGVs, hybrid cruise ships and other demanding applications.

“Following the success of these batteries in Europe, Exide launched its GNB LiFTFORCE LPX lithium battery in the US in April 2018,” says Vargo. “Its benefits are streamlined operations, reduced downtime and lower total cost of ownership than traditional lead batteries.”

It can charge in just 15 minutes, up to eight times faster, and provides increased cycle life and lower maintenance requirements in forklifts and AGVs. It is suitable for large distribution centres and companies that run heavy-duty or multiple shifts looking to lower their operational costs.

“In terms of the future, we clearly see a role for lithium-ion because of all the advantages these batteries offer,” says Vargo. “But lithium is just part of our portfolio. Our battery portfolio will continue to include both lead acid and lithium ion options. The focus is always on the customer and the economics driving the decision.”

As its lithium battery business grows, Exide is going to have to consider the recycling implications, especially since environmental concerns are one of its three key focuses.

“For our lithium products, we are exclusively working with external business partners,” says Vargo. “From the beginning of Exide’s entry to the

42 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

market for lithium-based batteries, we have had end-of-life management integrated into the development of our product line.

“We have a clear understanding of the end-of-life transport requirements and have selected our business partners in light of these requirements.

Recycling efficiencies

“Also, we have designed products in a way that facilitates dismantling them to achieve the best recycling efficiency.

“The remaining challenge in lithium collection and recycling is recycling efficiency. While reclaiming the content of metals such as copper, aluminium, steel and cobalt is well established, the recovery of the lithium content (about 1%-2% w/w) is still a technological and economical challenge.

“This is addressed in multiple ways. On one hand our business partners in the recycling industries are addressing this, and on the other we see public-funded programmes (eg the Strategic Action Plan for Batteries of the European Commission) that can improve the sustainability of battery systems.

“It makes no difference whether we talk about lithium or lead-based batteries, At the end of the useful life, all batteries are collected and processed for the recovery of the materials used.”

Vargo believes that commercial success is inextricably linked with quality delivery— and that’s irrespective of battery chemistry or technology.

Vargo says major investments made globally have and will continue to increase production capacity, more important at the moment is customer delivery.

“The goal of our company is not to achieve world leadership position in terms of volume in the battery business,” he says.

“We want to be the best battery supplier for our customers and make sure we are providing them with what they need. We want to make sure we are their preferred supplier in whatever segment we serve.”

And with this premium customer service must go innovation.

“There is a renewed vision for Exide to be the quality provider in the industry, something we have worked hard to earn back over the past few years. We are now ready to take advantage of the opportunity we see for us to earn a larger piece of our customers’ battery businesses.

We will do this with innovative, highquality and energy efficient products delivered on time.”

But the approach will differ from region to region.

“In Europe, even as we see some hybrid and electric vehicles emerging from OEMs, the aftermarket’s main focus will continue to be on lead batteries for many years,” he says.

“European Union environmental regulations on limiting carbon emissions and increasing fuel economy standards have encouraged the rapid adoption of start-stop AGM and EFB batteries as well as lithiumbased energy solutions in automotive, industrial motive and stationary energy storage applications. These environmental trends and the market demand for those types of batteries have developed later in the US.” When it comes to the different sectors in which Exide operates, the company is keen to expand its capabilities.

Last June, the company bought Aker Wade — a charging, software and telemetry firm — whose purchase was made with the intention of growing Exide’s motive power business worldwide, Vargo says.

“Exide offers a battery portfolio with a solution for every application using a variety of technologies including flat plate, tubular and lithium. Adding the Aker Wade capabilities to this portfolio will allow us to be more competitive in applications that require advanced lead and lithium ion batteries,” he says.

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EXIDE TECHNOLOGIES’ CEO TIM VARGO New batteries have been launched across the marine and leisure, material handling and heavy-duty truck applications, with AGM, gel and VRLA ranges across the board.

But automotive is where Exide began and where it’s going to stay tuned, Vargo says.

“Exide’s 130-year history is in the transportation battery business and that is our clear focus on both enhancing the technology to starting and charging wherever that may go.

Yes, we’re in other segments, but we

are primarily a transportation battery manufacturer. Motive and network power are good, solid businesses for Exide, but the bulk of our business is in transportation and we see that as a great growth opportunity for our business.”

Employee culture

One of the key messages that comes up time after time talking with Vargo is his belief in the importance of Exide’s employees. It’s a sentiment that echoes the mindset of the late CEO Gordon Ulsh, the man who was responsible for successfully restructuring Exide a year after it came out of Chapter 11 in 2004.

When he took charge in 2005, Ulsh identified one key problem at Exide was its low morale, and that this was taking hits from the outside as well as within.

“You really have to thank people and praise them, and after just a little bit of celebration, you raise the bar so that we keep trying to get better the next time,” Ulsh said in an interview with ESJ’s sister publication Batteries International in 2008.

“The only thing that erases selfdoubt is success. Turning around morale is the constant reinforcement of successes, be they small or large.”

The issue is intrinsic in every area discussed with Vargo: when he stresses the importance of continuous

improvement he says it benefits employees as well as customers; when we talk about investments in manufacturing facilities, he says a big focus has been ‘to improve ergonomics and to provide an even safer work environment; and when it comes to customer service, he says ‘how we do that starts with our employees’.

“I see our responsibility as being first to our employees and to continue in investing in and nurturing a culture based on integrity, accountability, quality, customer success, courage and safety,” he says.

“Our employees embrace the ‘Powered by You!’ rallying cry, which means each of us knows what we have to do each day to help drive the success of Exide Technologies.

“When employees are aligned with our company strategy and believe in the future success of our company they will naturally be more engaged with customers, provide excellent service levels and partner them to help them more profitably grow.”

This is new, he says. “Who we are today is different from who we were in the past. We have improved our team in the past three years and have hired great people from this industry and others to up our game so that we can improve all facets of our business.

We’ve done it and now we’re going for it.”

“We have improved our team in the past three years and have hired great people from this industry and others to up our game so that we can improve all facets of our business. We’ve done it and now we’re going for it.”

NEW PRODUCTS, NEW APPROACHES Vargo says the company is setting out a new approach to customers, with products tailored towards specific needs, for example whether a vehicle requires more starting power, or more power for its electrical systems.

“Modern vehicles demand more from their batteries than ever. In a race to provide more modern conveniences and safety features, car makers have dramatically increased the number of electrical components in their vehicles.

“All of these systems create an additional burden for the car’s electrical system. To put this in perspective, a modern vehicle may contain more than 100 pounds (45kg) of wiring and as many as 90 small computers, whereas a base model vehicle from the 1970s contains less than 10 pounds (4.5kg) of wiring. In addition to these electrical

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demands, features such as stop-start functionality place additional strain on the batteries.”

Improving batteries to meet these demands is what Exide calls ‘reinventing batteries from the inside out’, says Vargo, and the new EFB Marathon and Marathon Max products released by the company were specifically designed for the North American market: Marathon uses enhanced flooded battery technology, which was introduced to North America for the first time in November, when the Nautilus marine battery was launched on the continent to meet growing energy need in modern boats.

“Overall, our new products and new path-to-purchase strategy will reduce customer confusion, increase customer satisfaction, and strengthen profits in the battery category,” he says.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 43

FEATURE: RECYCLING From consumer electronics to electric vehicles and utility storage, there’s no question that lithium batteries have had a dramatic impact on modern life, most noticably in the past decade. But the problem is they don’t last forever — and as millions are about to reach their end-of-life, the question is what on earth we do with them. Debbie Mason spoke to the companies and scientists who are working out the answer.

Debunking recycling myths of lithium ion T

he booming demand for electric vehicles, with countries in Europe and India setting targets for all new cars to be electric in the next few decades, the issue of recycling the batttery packs is a growing problem the US Department of Energy calls ‘critically important’.

“Global EV sales are expected to reach 30 million by 2030, up from 1.1 million in 2017,” says a spokesman from the DoE. “This growth, as well as increased demand for consumer and stationary uses, is expected to double the demand for lithium ion batteries by 2025 and quadruple the demand by 2030. Demand for global production of lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel and graphite will grow at similar rates.

“Currently, lithium ion batteries are collected and recycled at a rate of less than 5%.”

It appears to be even worse in Australia. LIB waste is already growing at a rate of more than 20% a year, according to the April 2018 CSIRO report Lithium battery Recycling in Australia: Current status and opportunities for developing a new industry.

In 2016, it says, 3,300 tonnes of LIB waste was generated ­— of which just 2% was collected and exported for offshore recycling.

LIB waste generation is forecast to grow to between 100,000 and 188,000 tonnes by 2036, the report predicts. “Unfortunately, the majority of Australian LIB waste is disposed of in landfill.

“This constitutes an economic loss to the Australian economy due to the estimated potential recoverable value of between A$813 million ($570 million) and A$3 billion based on current commodity prices (of cobalt, lith-

ium, base and other metals and graphite),” states the report.

And that’s just Australia, and it’s just the beginning.

The clock is ticking

Executive director of NAATBatt James Greenberger says the clock is ticking while the industry works out what to do. Lithium battery recycling is in its infant stage, he says, and the volume is low.

“Batteries are not yet reaching end-of-life,” he says. “A lot of what is coming in is manufacturing scrap, but we do expect it to go up very quickly as the number of EVs rises. But unlike lead batteries, where someone will always pay for a used lead battery, the output from lithium batteries is for the time being not sufficient to pay for the recycling process itself.

“If the technology doesn’t change there will be a tipping fee, we will have to pay someone to take the battery away and it’s likely to be assessed against the buyer of the EV in the form of a deposit or fee upfront, and this will not be good for EV business.

“Probably the leading candidate is direct recycling, cathode to cathode — take the waste battery and rather than reducing it to the base elements of cobalt, copper, nickel and lithium, keep the cathode materials together and recycle them, getting a new cathode material out of the back end that a maker of cathode materials could use directly. This is not a new technique, but it needs to be refined.”

Greenberger says this has been done ‘at some bench level’ by the CATL subsidiary Brunp, as well as one or two other Chinese battery companies.

“Global EV sales are expected to reach 30 million by 2030, up from 1.1 million in 2017. This growth, as well as increased demand for consumer and stationary uses, is expected to double the demand for lithium-ion batteries by 2025 and quadruple the demand by 2030” – US Department of Energy 44 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

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FEATURE: RECYCLING “It’s a bit opaque exactly what is going on, and it’s not clear whether they are getting it to work efficiently enough so that the value out of the back end is high enough that you will be able to eliminate the necessary tipping fee,” he says. “There is a lot of cathode-to-cathode recycling out there, it may have been done at a lab scale, at some pilot scale, but we’re still in the early stages of figuring out which is the most effective.

“I believe most of the recycling going on is the consumer batteries, and I sense that’s what Brunp and so on is doing. No one really has auto batteries yet in such quantities that they know what to do with them.

“But the clock is ticking. We’re so early in the EV age that we don’t know what the true life cycle is going to be — it varies tremendously, depending on how often they’ve been used and cycled, and where. So there’s a whole bunch of variables to which there will be a mathematical answer in time — but in the meantime, the clock is ticking.”

Realizing this, the US DoE has offered a $5.5million ‘Battery Recycling Prize’ to incentivize businesses to develop a process that can profitably capture 90% of all discarded or spent lithium batteries in the US. It has also donated $15 million over three years to the Argonne National Laboratory, which is working with a consortium of companies and research institutes – including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Worchester Polytechnic Institute and the University of California — to set up a ReCell Center to develop a pre-commercial prototype for the industry to take and scale up by the end of that period.

Linda Gaines is systems analyst at the ANL, and chief scientist with the ReCell Center.

One of her principal research tasks is looking at extricating the cathode structure in its entirety rather than separating its constituents – a technology that is being tried elsewhere but has yet to achieve results that prove it could be profitable.

“None of the materials in the battery makes up the lion’s share of the mass and you have to separate them from each other, which isn’t so easy because there isn’t one that’s a lot heavier than everything else,” she says. “And right now you’ve got cobalt driving the recycling process in the plants where it is happening, because it’s profitable.

“But one of the areas the DoE is concentrating on is how to make batteries with less and even no cobalt ­­— which is good in that we wouldn’t be dependent on importing it, but bad because it means at the end-of-life there’s less to recover, reducing the materials of value to get out of the process.

“This is what makes the structure of the cathode a valuable commodity to recover.

Even if you have less valuable elements, if you put them into a structure that’s valuable and can recover that structure, you have the possibility of having an economical process.”

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Right now you’ve got cobalt driving the recycling process in the plants where it is happening, because it’s profitable. – Linda Gaines

RSR Technologies is also working with the ReCell Center. President Tim Ellis says the company has been researching the recycling of lithium batteries for 10 years.

“We have a lot of technology that allows us to reclaim the elements, we just can’t figure out the economics of it,” he says. “It’s part of our normal technical development; we are the largest recycler of lead batteries in the western world but we don’t see ourselves as a lead company, we’re an electrochemical cell recycling company. We’re in lead because it’s the biggest volume. But we believe all the chemistries will show up and one thing it seems the world agrees on is that digging mines and holes in the ground to make batteries and then throw them in a landfill is a bad thing.

“The DoE is very honest because it’s not wedded to anyone’s business plan. There is a lot of hype in recycling batteries but some of these guys are just interested in flipping a venture start-up, they’re not interested in building a business. And there’s a lot of interest in second use because it’s not obvious that material reclamation from the lithium battery is an obvious path like it is for lead.

2,500,000

1,875,000

1,250,000

625,000

2010 2011

2012

2013

2014

Placed on the market

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

End-of-life

EV batteries POM, EOL, recycling (tonnes global)

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Available for recycling

Source: Global Battery Alliance

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 45

FEATURE: RECYCLING ganese, iron, phosphate — a bunch of contaminants, and the question is how do those contaminants affect battery performance, which sets the definition for what the purity specs need to be for the materials going back in to the battery.”

He says the Joint Center for ElectroChemical Research, also at Argonne, is looking into this. “They have access to a good range of technologies,” he says. “They can look at electrostatics and magnetics and froth flotation and acid leaching — and this direct recycling.”

Umicore approach

Argonne battery post-test lab

“Frankly lead is easy to recycle, which is why we do it. Lithium is not. But the DoE is interested because it’s trying to build an energy storage economy. It has a lot of technology related to that, which has come out of its work in nuclear fuels and special alloys. It has a lot of technology in metallurgy, chemistry and process chemical engineering to do these kinds of processes.”

But there are lots of unanswered questions.

“In any secondary material, and this includes lead, what is the spec that you have to meet?” says Ellis. “How much of a contaminant can you put back into a battery and how does that affect performance? When you mine it out of the ground in the Congo, you separate the copper and the cobalt and you get a very high purity cobalt. If you start recycling scrap, you start getting aluminium, lithium, copper, man-

“There are a lot of people trying to find the recycling solution, I think some are coming a little late to the game, we have a lot of expertise and our mining experience has really helped us because a lot of the equipment we use in mineral processing is similar” – Zarko Meseldzija 46 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

Belgium-based Umicore’s battery recycling process recovers the full battery, the company says.

“The recycling rate is about 95% for target metals like Cu, Co and Ni,” says Marjolein Scheers, media and external affairs manager.

“Metals are infinitely recyclable without losing their properties.

“Our recycling is a combination of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgial processing. We have proprietary smelting technology, minimizing energy consumption and treating potentially harmful gases.

“After sorting and dismantling, metals are recovered in a high temperature smelting process. Treatment includes the safe dismantling of large industrial batteries such as EV batteries without crushing or shredding the cells.

The advantage of this process is that operators and the environment are not exposed to hazardous battery compounds.

“Recycling includes the transformation of battery materials in a smelter into a metal alloy, containing Co, Ni and Cu and a concentrate containing Li and Rare Earth Elements.

This fraction is further refined for Li and REE recovery in a refinery outside Umicore. Manganese is not being processed.

“The process is energy efficient as it recovers the energy present in the batteries, while treating potentially harmful gases. The plastics and other organic compounds, including solvents and electrolytes, are burned as a gas to produce heat for the process. The gas is cleaned so there are no harmful emissions.”

Scheers says all Li-ion and NiMH batteries are recycled and metals retrieved in their purest form for re-use in cathode materials. Lithium is also recovered with a pyrometallurgical process and externally refined for re-use.

“Lithium plays a vital role in powering the rapid trend towards electrified mobility. By recovering lithium from end-of-life batteries, Umicore is leading the way towards a circular economy, providing solutions to the growing demand for sustainably sourced materials,” says Scheers.

“Eventually batteries will have to be recycled as valuable metals like Co and Ni should not go to waste and hazardous components should not end up in the environment. The pilot plant has a capacity of 7.000t/y. When the

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FEATURE: RECYCLING market in end-of-life EVs will start to grow, we can and will scale up our recycling activities.”

Canadian miner turns LiB recycler

It was almost coincidental that American Manganese already had the bones of a process for recycling lithium batteries ­— thanks to its mining processes.

It began in Arizona, when this Surrey, Canada-based manganese mining company developed a very low-cost process for recovering the low-grade manganese it was mining –without using the heat that conventional processing required. Instead, it used reagents combined with ‘unit operations’.

“We were actually able to get very competitive with conventional processing methods — we did a pre-feasibility study and so on — but manganese prices started dropping and the project was no longer feasible,” says chief technical officer Zarko Meseldzija. “So we got patents for the process, but we put it on the shelf.

“A few years later, we saw the trend in EVs, the electrification of everything, and with the help of Kemetco Research, we realized this could work for cathode materials which contain cobalt, nickel, manganese, aluminium and lithium. We did some initial bench testing and the theory proved out — it was spot on. We got out the pure cathode material with 100% recovery.”

Meseldzija accepts that in an industrial process the results are unlikely to be so impressive because of impurities in the feedstock and so on, but he still reckons on 90% recovery.

“And the material comes back as a cathode

“Someone said that the recycling of lithium batteries would be a $23 billion business in 2025. Actually there’s room for a lot of people – and I think it’s reached that flexion point where it’s going to be a runaway trade over the next decade.” – Larry Reaugh

material so it reduces the number of steps involved in the manufacture of the cathode,” he says.

Meseldzija says he’s aware of other laboratories doing the same thing — but they have had their own patent granted in record time.

“It was done in 13 months — they normally take up to five years, so it was a great achievement and shows it’s a hot topic,” he says.

One of the most important aspects is reducing the number of steps required in the re-

Li-ion reaching end-of-life, (global tonnes)

Li-ion batteries available for recycling (global, tonnes)

800,000

800,000

600,000

600,000

400,000

400,000

200,000

200,000

0

2018

2019

2020

2021

Electronics Industrial automation

2022

2023

2024

Power tools UPS/data centers

2025 Electric cars Telecom

Li-ion reaching end-of-life Vs available for recycling (global tonnes)

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-

2018

2019

2020

Electric buses Other

2021 ESS

2022

2023 2024

Ebikes

2025

E-scooters

Source: Global Battery Alliance

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 47

FEATURE: RECYCLING American Manganese is way past the research stage – it simply needs the materials to work with, but there just aren’t any batteries yet – Meseldzija

manufacture, he says.

“Where other processes are used, the batteries are smelted down. But that breaks it down into a black slag, and from that slag you have to process more and break out the individual metals, which means they’re not going to come up to the purity that batteries need. It’s most likely that maybe 50% of the metals that are recovered go into industrial metals like alloys for steel, if they even manage to get any of it refined. And to refine it you have to go through so many steps it’s just not worth it.”

Meseldzija says American Manganese has been tackling the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in its pilot plant to prove its technology – the scrap

material that’s coming off the battery production line and doesn’t go into the cell.

“But it still has all of the material on it, and it’s a perfect way for us to tackle the issue and prove our technology. The calculated value of the metals on a NMC 622 are about $16 a kilogram, and the reagents we’re using in the pilot work out to be just under a dollar per kg.

“When you consider our utility costs, it’s very minimal. No heat, no energy. When it gets to being commercial, you’ll have labour costs and whatnot but with the economies of scale and processing more material, that’s also going to drop off on your operating expenses.”

Meseldzija says American Manganese is way

LITHIUM BATTERY RECYCLING HAS ALWAYS BEEN DONE, Hans Eric Melin is the founder of Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting, based in London and specializing in lifecycle management of lithium ion batteries. The firm helps companies develop end-of-life strategies for lithium batteries and gives advice on how the end-of-life sector affects the energy storage market overall.

T

here are three widely upheld beliefs within the lead acid battery industry when it comes to lithium batteries. One — they are more expensive. Two — they have a tendency to blow up. And three — they’re unrecyclable.

While the first two are undeniably true to a certain extent, the third is now being strongly challenged, not just by the companies who are making money doing it, but by consultants and industry observers as well.

“Lithium batteries have been recycled for a long time, almost 20 years, and it has not changed for years,” Melin told Energy Storage Journal. “The lack of recycling has become one of the pillars in the dark side of the EV and there’s a lot of interest in keeping up that image.

But when we talk about lithium batteries not being recycled, the case is that they’re primarily not recycled here.”

And that, he says, is where China, Japan and South Korea are playing a massive part.

“To me, lithium batteries are more

48 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

circular and sustainable than many other products and if you compare them with lead acid, they’re not toxic in the same way,” he says. “Sure, cobalt and nickel are not good for you, but they’re not as hazardous as lead. And the batteries are always re-used, in a second application. To be able to still be using something in 15 years’ time is sustainable, and much more circular.

The reality is there are processes in Europe and North America — just not the batteries.”

In China, recycling is being done because of the need for materials. In the west, the focus has always been on getting rid of the batteries responsibly, which has meant packing them off on ships to China. The waste ban implemented a year ago, when China stopped taking the rest of the world’s rubbish, did not apply to batteries because they are imported for ‘re-use’ – in power banks, for instance – and only sold to recyclers if they were found to be not fit for purpose.

Melin says the perception that it costs

more to recycle lithium batteries than make new ones is not really true.

“There is also this perception that there is a lack of technology, which is the reason why we are not recycling the batteries — but the main reason is simply that there aren’t that many batteries to recycle,” he says. “So even in Europe, where we have a few companies that have hydrometallurgical processes, they haven’t really been able to use it because they don’t have enough materials — so they export it, either as a black mass or in some cases exporting batteries whole, because it’s not economical to run that process.”

90% of LiB materials are recovered Melin says he has read up to 100 studies on hydro processes in which more than 90% of the materials have been recovered — “and it’s been done for quite a long time,” he says. “None of the new processes has been invented — there may be new patents filed, but everyone is able to get their own patent for something — it doesn’t mean it has been invented from scratch.”

A perception that most processes are pyrometallurgical is also simply not true, he says.

“It might be used as a pre-step, going down to cell level to take smaller modules and packs, and from that they get an alloy with nickel, cobalt and copper. But that will be further refined if needed and they will do that with a hydro process.

“In China and South Korea, they never use smelting as a pre-step. They can use pyrolysis, or calcination, and some only use a mechanical process, like a straightforward one where the battery is discharged in a brine, which

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FEATURE: RECYCLING past the research stage – it simply needs the materials to work with, but there just aren’t any batteries yet.

“There are a lot of people trying to find the recycling solution, I think some are coming a little late to the game, we have a lot of expertise and our mining experience has really helped us because a lot of the equipment we use in mineral processing is similar,” he says.

The company’s CEO, Larry Reaugh, says there are lots of other companies claiming they recycle lithium batteries. “They all talk about recycling batteries like it’s a slam dunk,” he says. “But they’re not transparent about it.

We know that some of them are using solvents

“They all talk about recycling batteries like it’s a slam dunk, but they’re not transparent about it” – Reaugh and hydrogen peroxide and those types of chemicals. We’re lucky to have a lab that’s got battery expertise and they’ve worked on all of those things — they’re not user friendly.

“Someone said that the recycling of lithium batteries would be a $23 billion business in 2025. Actually there’s room for a lot of people — and I think it’s reached that flexion point where it’s going to be a runaway trade over the next decade.” The clock is ticking.

JUST NOT HERE — HANS ERIC MELIN enables them to crush the battery without it exploding.

“There are machines which can cut the batteries open to get out the anode and the cathode but normally the battery will be crushed. Most recyclers are targeting the cathode, which is an aluminium collector, and you want to get out that powder to get black mass.

This sometimes contains only cathode powder but normally has graphite from the anode. This powder is then taken out and put into a hydro process. Leaching may then be used to leach out the different materials using acid like hydrochloric acid, and liquid extraction is used to separate the materials – unless they are not separated, and kept in the same mixture as it was at the beginning.

“In China, recyclers are paying for all batteries. They are even paying for lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are the least valuable Li-ion chemistry because they don’t contain cobalt or nickel. That’s why they require big scale, and Chinese companies are recycling them. They’re in a good position – they want the lithium and they don’t have to compete with the other recyclers who are more targeting the

cobalt and the nickel.”

Melin says there are recyclers in Europe and North America – but the difference is that there is much greater demand for the materials in China, where the ballooning battery manufacturing industry in the past decade means two thirds of all lithium batteries in the world are made there.

“It’s such a huge part of the market.

There is Tesla in Nevada, some being made in Japan and South Korea, and all the rest are made in China,” says Melin.

“China is importing all the materials — the lithium, cobalt, nickel — the only material they use from domestic resources is graphite, so recycling has always been a very important part of the build-up of the industry and it’s a very important source of materials.”

Melin cites the cobalt miner and producer Huayou Cobalt, which recycles 65,000 tonnes of lithium batteries a year. CATL subsidiary Brunp last year recycled 30,000 tonnes, and Gansu High Power 10,000 tonnes. This is more than Europe and North America combined, he says.

Huayou has its own mines in the Congo, and has recently repositioned itself as a cathode maker.

The growth in EVs is going to change the situation on a massive scale, says Melin.

“Today about 80% of the batteries coming in to be recycled are from electronics,” he says. “By 2025 the proportion will be down to 40%. Another 40% will be different kinds of vehicles — light duty vehicles and trucks, which will hugely change the market.

“On the end-of-life side the change will not be as quick, because the batteries replaced in cars will last much longer than they do in an electronic device.

“In EV batteries, the first warranties were for six years, then extended to eight years — and now it’s expected that the battery will outlive the vehicle.

“Then second life for these batteries means they will be used in energy storage applications, so a lot of the batteries on the market now won’t reach end-of-life until 2027/8. It doesn’t mean they won’t be recycled — they will be, and in an efficient market, like in China and South Korea, they have a positive value right through the entire chain.

“It will get to the stage where you will pay to get hold of the battery, not pay to dispose of it, as is the case in Europe today.”

Automized battery dissassembly plant in China. Right: Black mass awaiting processing in Chinese plant.

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Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 49

ALTERNATIVE BATTERY TECHNOLOGIES With its dream of developing the next generation of batteries, Ambri invented the liquid metal battery. But the big question is whether it can make the jump from kWh laboratory testing to MWh energy storage systems.

Liquid metal: the hottest topic in energy storage In 2005, the committee planning the new Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative was looking to develop a new battery.

At the time the institute was focused on lithium ion batteries, but Donald Sadoway, the institution’s professor of materials chemistry, had another idea after talking with his colleague professor Ceder, who was engaged with MIT’s Energy Initiative.

Sadoway had 40 years working with extreme electrochemical processes, ranging from aluminium smelting to lithium polymer batteries. He had a team of students and post-doctoral fellows, chief among them David Bradwell, who played a pivotal role in advancing the technology. They began to work on a liquid metal battery.

Five years later, Bradwell and Sadoway, along with Luis Ortiz, cofounded Ambri with the goal of commercializing the technology they had invented.

Before spinning out Ambri, while at MIT, Sadoway and Bradwell worked on this novel battery platform, with all three active components in liquid form as the battery operates.

The two liquid metal electrodes are separated by a molten salt electrolyte.

These liquid layers float on top of each other based on density differences and immiscibility.

The original cell chemistry had the negative electrode (anode) floating as the top liquid layer in the cell made of low density, low-cost, lightweight liquid magnesium. The positive electrode (cathode), pooled as the bottom liquid layer in the cell, was made of high-density liquid antimony.

Sadoway and Bradwell came up with these two metals when searching the periodic table for a pair of metals that would meet the constraints of being earth abundant, low cost, suitably low melting points, have sufficient density differences and a high mutual reactivity.

The magnesium-antimony liquid metal battery discharges by spontane-

50 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

Sadoway and Bradwell: wanted to invent a technology that could meet a price point, and not just invent a ‘nice new technology’.

ously releasing electrical current from the magnesium atoms in the negative electrode, which causes them to lose two electrons to make magnesium ions (Mg2+), which then dissolve into the molten salt electrolyte.

These magnesium ions migrate across the electrolyte and accept two electrons at the surface of the antimony positive electrode, which then mix together to form an Mg-Sb alloy.

During this process, electrons flow through a circuit connected to both electrodes, providing electrical power.

In order to keep the electrodes and electrolyte in a liquid state, the cells must operate above 500°C. To charge the battery, the current is reversed and this forces the magnesium to de-alloy and return to the upper electrode, restoring the initial constitution of the battery.

Powered from within

Sadoway and his team initially built a 1Wh cell. They operated hundreds of cells to test out a plurality of liq-

uid metal battery chemistries, not just magnesium and antimony. Following this success they were able to build a 20Wh, 200Wh and a 1kWh cell.

The process that inspired Sadoway — aluminium smelting using the HallHéroult process — has a reputation of consuming massive amounts of electrical energy, with some smelters consuming GWhs of electricity every day. It is even, sometimes, disparagingly referred to as ‘congealed electricity’.

In fact CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, calculates the embodied energy (the overall energy required to make the material) for aluminium is 211GJ per tonne, compared to 22.7 GJ per tonne for steel.

In 2016, after spending several years developing other critical cell and system components, such as a high temperature seal for each cell, Ambri built its first in-house prototype system that proved critical performance metrics of the technology, such as questions that were previously faced by the aluminium smelting process.

“A common question we get is ‘doesn’t your battery require a lot of energy to stay hot’,” says Bradwell, now Ambri’s senior vice president of commercialization and chief technology officer. “But it only needs energy to take it up to the operating temperature of 500°C. For a 1MWh scale battery you will need about 3MWh to heat it.

“Once at operating temperature the current passing between the electrodes generates enough heat to keep it at its optimum operating temperature.

“The battery runs at 80%-85% efficiency and the rest of that energy is released as heat by the cells. Our thermally insulated containers retain that heat to keep the cells warm, so as long as the battery is cycled once every one to two days, the system is self-heated, and requires no extra energy input to stay hot,” says Bradwell.

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ALTERNATIVE BATTERY TECHNOLOGIES Real world applications

The high operating temperatures and liquid constituents mean that the technology is not suited to mobile applications. But its system-level energy density of a 1MWh system in a 10 foot ISO shipping container makes it comparable to lithium ion batteries and better than lead acid batteries.

The technology’s niche lies in stationary applications that regularly require daily, full depth of discharge, four to eight-hour duration services.

The focus of Ambri is on multiple hour, charge and discharge services, which lends itself to the peak demand and peak shifting markets.

“This can be on the grid at the right price point as more renewables are integrated onto the grid,” says Bradwell.

“We see the need for peak-shifting batteries increasing significantly over the next 10 or more years, and there is growing demand for this sort of a battery.

“Our long term vision has always been to target grid scale applications.

Lithium ion could move from its regular use in 15-minute, frequency regulation to longer duration services, and you’re already seeing this at some levels, but there’s the question of cost.

“Economies of scale may lessen the weight of that argument, but the perceived shortcoming in the materials supply chain in the next five years will be a much bigger hurdle for the chemistry to navigate.

“Multiple hour duration storage is where the market is going. We straddle the long and short duration markets. Lithium ion is coming down in cost and shifting from the higher power to higher energy applications. However, one of the key advantages compared to many other emerging battery technologies is that we are pretty close to the energy density and footprint of lithium ion systems.

“But we’ve got a technology that’s very low cost, and has a very long life span.”

Low cost gigawatt plant

On paper, a technology that can straddle application services, offers long cycle life, is made from abundant materials and is safe sounds like the ideal energy storage solution.

But those descriptions can be applied to flow batteries, and the fortunes of companies in that market are at best fluctuating, with some big names in the sector folding. The driver for adoption is cost, and Ambri has been tracking prices closely.

www.energystoragejournal.com

“Our long term vision has always been to target grid scale applications. Lithium ion could move from its regular use in 15-minute, frequency regulation to longer duration services, and you’re already seeing this at some levels, but there’s the question of cost.”

So close, in fact, it says they were set to ramp up production and were preparing to deploy their battery into the field when they decided instead to modify the cell design and chemistry amid falling lithium ion prices.

The company says it is building towards commercializing its cells in the next two years, when it will start deploying systems.

“When we started at MIT we wanted to invent a technology that could meet a price point and not just invent a nice new technology,” says Bradwell.

“Lithium ion prices have dropped since we started Ambri, so we have had to pivot a few times to stay below future cost projections, and we feel good about the cost opportunity against even optimistic future lithium ion cost projections.

“But we decided to not discuss cost projections because we are still in development mode, and until the product is finalized, things can change. We didn’t want to add to the noise of the marketplace as just one more aspirational vendor that is excited about the potential of their pre-commercial technology and is not yet at scaled manufacturing.

“Plus, as a start-up company, we need to be able to price to the market, not our costs.”

Bradwell, however, does disclose the capital required for a factory making their liquid metal batteries at a gigawatt-hour scale. He puts the price of a new factory at around $30 to $40 million, equipment, cap-ex, and building upgrades included. Compare that with some lithium gigafactories, which have reasonable economics, but require billions of dollars of investment to achieve.

“Our factory cost is very low and we still achieve high volume scaled manufacturing costs for a relatively small capital requirement,” he says.

So how close is Ambri to entering the battery market?

“We’re still in the development mode,” says Bradwell, “but when we do enter the market we are targeting systems that are housed in 10 foot shipping containers at the 1MWh size,

with a product that can scale to be the lowest cost product in the marketplace.” He says the technology is scalable up to tens or hundreds of megawatt-hours. The key will be if, and when, liquid metal can make the jump from kWh laboratory testing to MWh field-ready storage system.

CYCLES AND LIFETIMES Bradwell says the chemistry has demonstrated more than 4,000 cycles under accelerated conditions, with no degradation.

Some early cells have operated for thousands of cycles after more than four years of continuous operation, and continue to run today.

So how many years does it take until the battery reaches 80% of its initial capacity — a standard metric for specifying the lifespan of a battery?

“Looking at our data, if we assume one cycle per day, the data extrapolates to suggest that our cell chemistry could last for 360 years,” says Bradwell. “ Of course, we don’t think our system will last for that long because something other than the electrodes or electrolyte will degrade, but the fundamentals of the chemistry are extremely stable, and this could allow for an extremely long lifespan system.

“We are targeting a 10 to 20 year lifespan, but we may ultimately find that the technology can last for many decades. We haven’t demonstrated this yet, but the chemistry doesn’t seem to degrade, which is very different from other batteries.

“Other chemistries suffer, particularly due to irreversible reactions between the electrolyte and the electrodes, but common degradation mechanisms like this simply aren’t active in our cell chemistry, so it doesn’t degrade in the same way as, say, lithium ion or lead acid.”

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 51

EVENT REVIEW: BCI 2019 BCI Convention & Power Mart Expo April 28-April 30 • New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Convention discusses advanced lead, electricity grids, accepts lithium The annual Battery Council International meetings opened with a difference this year reflecting a change of direction for the convention taken by its new executive vice president, Keith Moran.

The emphasis continued to be on the huge networking opportunities that the meetings provide for the great and the good of North America’s lead battery industry.

But this year there was a palpable difference.

For the first time two sessions looked at the impact that lithium was having on the industry — and from a positive viewpoint too. There is now a real acknowledgement that lithium has an important role to play in the new energy storage landscape that is emerging across the continent.

But it’s very much a recognition that the lead industry is changing too.

“I don’t think there’s a single US battery maker that isn’t also working on either providing a lithium product or already has products in place,” one consultant told ESJ. Certainly all the major players US players — think East Penn, Exide Technologies, Trojan (now part of C&D) and Clarios (formerly part of JCI’ — have products in place.

The choice of speakers reflected this change too. The keynote address for the opening meeting was given by Curt Hébert, a former chairman, of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who argued persuasively that energy storage was going to be a huge growth area in supporting electricity markets throughout the country. So far North American grid use of battery energy storage has been almost entirely using lithium products.

Given the scale of the deployment required there is a clear need for every available battery chemistry to be used.

A point argued by at least two of the speakers.

The continued price advantage lead has over lithium and its easy recyclability suggested that lead should be a more prominent player but it still continues to be regarded

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as yesterday’s news and outdated.

A shame given that much of this is disinformation.

As in previous years the winner’s ceremony at the start of the convention was eagerly awaited. This year the annual award for the most important and innovative achievement in 2018 went to RSR Technologies for a development that helps level the playing field between lead and lithium battery performance.

BCI said the award was given in recognition of the combination of RSR’s research into the fundamentals of lead battery charging and discharging and the resultant use of a ground-breaking alloy that can double cycle life and vastly reduce water loss.

RSR, working with East Penn Manufacturing and the US Argonne National Laboratory, has been using Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source synchrotron to look at, in real time, the crystallization of lead plates at the atomic level during the charging and discharging process. The results of the research enabled the firm to

develop its alloy, known as SupersoftHycycle, which enhances lead battery performance.

Tim Ellis, president of RSR Technologies, said: “This has been a tremendous opportunity to dramatically improve the performance of the active material in lead batteries to reach the full theoretical potential of the lead battery system.

“We can compete and win against lithium in many applications with higher performance.

“The work at Argonne has helped us understand the physical processes taking place in real time inside batteries to develop higher performance advanced lead batteries.

Our Supersoft-Hycycle lead really improves cycle life as validated by many of our customers, especially in higher temperature and extreme operating conditions.”

The alloy is already being used by South African battery firm Auto-X, the maker of the Willard brand of batteries.

Kelvin Naidoo, Willard’s manufacturing and technical director, said: “The results are spectacular and showed vastly improved cycling and greatly reduced water loss — the holy grail for lead batteries…

We are getting results that we can’t understand because we expect there to be a failure amount and we’re not getting one at all.

“In Africa with the high temperatures you expect grid corrosion and we’ve just tested some imported batteries in the field, which all failed. But this alloy is performing remarkably well.”

Naidoo said he expected the new material will prove to be a spectacular game changer for the lead battery industry.

Supersoft-Hycycle is undergoing trials with half a dozen companies in North America and Europe. Ellis says he anticipates it will be fully available commercially by the end of the third quarter.

The 2020 BCI Convention & Power Mart Expo will next be held in Las Vegas on April 26-28.

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EVENT REVIEW: THE BATTERY SHOW EUROPE 2019 The Battery Show Europe 2019 May 7-9 • Stuttgart, Germany

Europe’s fastest growing trade fair moves to new home This year’s Battery Show Europe kicked off on May 7 with a busy conference agenda and an even busier exhibition.

In the space of just three years it has clearly become one of the most important energy storage events on

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the continent’s calendar.

The event is a spin-off from its North American parent, which was launched in eight years ago in the US and for the past seven years has been firmly embedded in Novi, a suburb of Detroit in Michigan. This year’s

meeting in September promises to attract more than 8,500 attendees and 650 suppliers.

Since being shipped across the Atlantic three years ago, the Battery Show Europe has taken the European market by storm since the first event in April 2017 in Sindelfingen — strategically located near both BMW’s and Mercedes’ manufacturing plants. In 2018 the organizers said it attracted 368 exhibitors and over 6,000 attendees. All the big OEM names of the European and international industry attended.

Again size proved to be a limitation and this year’s shift to Stuttgart reflected the fact that the number of exhibitors had jumped to more than 450 and the number of attendees had grown to more than 8,000.

As has been the case in the past, the event was co-located with an Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology show.

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 53

EVENT REVIEW: THE BATTERY SHOW EUROPE 2019 Although the conference and the exhibition started on the Tuesday, there were two pre-conference workshops on the Monday.

In the morning, the first workshop looked at specifying thermal management solutions to optimize battery safety and performance — a highly topical issue given the recent lithium blaze in Arizona in April that sent four fire-fighters to hospital.

Atendees heard about reducing cost and increasing speed to market through virtual battery design and simulation. This proved particularly relevant with delegates the following day whern they were able to toy with used virtual reality packages to examine products at a couple of stands.

The second workshop was held in the afternoon. Titled ‘Fast charging and XFC infrastructure evolution and impact’ it continued the theme of fast charging.

This yet again continues to be a topical theme — although some OEMs are claiming that range anxiety is now a thing of the past (it isn’t), all are aware that until the majority of consumers can charge their vehicles in roughly the same time as filling them with petrol, mass adoption will be problematic.

The following day there were swarms of people queuing to storm the exhibition hall.

The conference started with a bang too as Jim Greenberger, the head of NAATBatt international, opened the plenary session introducing the keynote speech from the European Commission outlining its strategies

54 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

for an emission-free future and a European battery supply chain.

The theme is extraordinarily relevant when put into context — it is no secret that Asian manufacturers continue to dominate lithium ion battery production. In China the adoption of electric vehicles and the strength of the lithium ion battery industry has been largely due to extensive government support and funding.

“Over the past five years the growth of the energy storage sector in China has outpaced the global market by six times,” said the conference agenda. “In the face of this competition and in light of the requirement to lower emissions to meet environmental legislation, significant investments must be made in Europe’s automotive and largeformat battery industries.

“Failure to do so could undermine Europe’s ability to compete on the automotive and industrial stage.”

The session titled ‘Realising a European based battery value chain’ aimed to address the following issues.

• What is necessary to make European-based cell manufacturing cost competitive with the Asian market?

• What role should/can governments play in creating a European supply chain?

• What is necessary to enable a low-cost localised battery manufacturing supply chain in Europe?

• What are the OEMs’ strategies on battery sourcing and how

might these support a localised supply chain?

• How will the opening of manufacturing facilities in Europe

by Asian cell makers impact the market?

• Will cell makers evolve to become module manufacturers, creating and owning their own tier of the market and moving into the battery integration space?

• How will European-based manufacturing impact the supply chain and the market?

Industry response to these plans was highlighted by European battery industry heavyweights in the plenary session such as Leclanché and Saft.

Anil Srivastava, chief executive of Leclanché, and responsible for the turn-around of the traditional lead battery firm into a lithium chemistry one, talked the talk eloquently.

He argued that Europe had the competency, the resources, the finance and the regulations that would enable the continent to become a world leader.

Many in the audience were enthused but others remarked that Asia already had a five year leap in experience in manufacturing and in volume. Their potential to squash — economically at least — an emerging European gigafactory market could even happen in the next couple of years.

The next Battery Show Europe will be held on April 28-30, 2020, in Stuttgart, Germany.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Berlin: Home to the Eurobat General Assembly/Forum in June

Eurobat General Assembly/ Forum Berlin, Germany June 13–14

International Conference on DC Microgrids Japan May 20-23 The conference aims to bring together practitioners and researchers in the field of DC microgrids and related technologies to advance our understanding and capability for endpoint use of DC power.

Technical sessions will be arranged around two foci — the use of DC at the commercial and industrial scale, MW, and use at the residential scale, kW. Contact ICDCM Hiroaki Kakigano Email: kakigano@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp www.power.aitech.ac.jp/ICDCM2019/index

Europe Solar + Energy Storage Congress Rome, Italy May 23–24 Europe Solar + Energy Storage Congress 2019 is the only event in Europe that discusses “Solar + Storage” concepts & business models specifically.

Estimated to draw more than 400 industrial thought leaders representing regulatory offices, utilities, network operators, developers, investors, financiers, as well as third-party consultants, and solar storage equipment & system experts, the event is a business networking platform that connects key stakeholders who’re interested in the European solar storage market and are seeking creditable partners.

Contact Leader Associates Molly Huang Tel: +86 21 6143 2100 Email: molly@leader-associates.com www.events.leader-associates.com/europe2019/

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International Energy Storage, Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Conference & Exhibition Shanghai, China June 3-6 International Energy Storage and Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Conference & Exhibition (IESH) covers the entire industry chain, focusing on PVplus-storage, mobile energy and storage, hydrogen energy and fuel cells.

The aim of the exhibition is to promote international cooperation and exchange these industries.

The conference will gather policy makers, industry experts, scholars, leading enterprises, financial institutions, consultancies and media, in the field of PV-plus-storage, mobile energy and storage, hydrogen energy and fuel cell, to discuss the policies, cutting-edge technology, market trends, business model, and the financing channels.

Contact SNEC Tel: +86 21 33685117-888 Email: info@iesh.org.cn www.iesh.us

Shanghai will host the International Energy Storage, Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Conference & Exhibition

Eurobat is the association for the European manufacturers of automotive, industrial and energy storage batteries.

Eurobat has 52 members from across the continent comprising more than 90% of the automotive and industrial battery industry in Europe.

The programme comprises this year the following three sessions: • Decarbonisation of energy and mobility systems and batteries as key enabler.

• Global macro-economic environment and Europe after the elections.

• Sustainability of batteries Listen to representatives of government, associations and global business brands.

Contact Eurobat Tel: +32 2761 1653 Email: eurobat@eurobat.org www.eurobat.org

Pb2019 – 21st International Lead Conference Madrid, Spain June 18–21 The premier event encourages debate on the lead industry, including mining, production, batteries, recycling and the environmental management of the metal and its compounds.

This year its programme includes the latest market trends and forecasts from world-renowned industry experts and analysts together with updates on breakthroughs in advanced lead battery technology from the newly-formed Consortium for Battery Innovation.

Contact International Lead Association Maura Mcdermott Tel: +44 207 833 8090 Email: McDermott@ila-lead.org www.ila-lead.org/home

Madrid will host the Pb2019 – 21st International Lead Conference

Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 55

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Advanced Automotive Battery Conference 2019 (AABC)

E-Mobility & Circular Economy – EMCE 2019

San Diego, California USA June 24-27

Tokyo, Japan July 1–3

AABC was founded to review the status of automotive battery technology and provide informed glimpses into the future. The AABC 2019 program will uncover the underlying technical and business issues that will impact the pace and path of vehicle electrification worldwide.

Lithium-ion batteries are the chief candidate for most xEV applications.

Yet, for each of them, some fundamental questions remain: What are their specific anode, cathode, and electrolyte chemistries? Which cell design? Which pack design? Which suppliers? At what cost? And in what volume for each category?

These questions will be addressed at AABC 2019, where chief battery technologists will present their development trends and projected battery needs, and key suppliers will present their latest offerings and roadmaps for the future.

The industry gathers to present its latest services, technologies and future designs in the field of E-Mobility, Power Distribution and Energy Storage.

Meet industry stakeholders in a spacious exhibition parallel to the conference and experience Demo Rides with participants and media on Tokyo’s roads.

If you seek for great opportunities to promote your products and services, the E-Mobility & Circular Economy is the ideal event for you!

Contact Cambridge Enertech Dave Mello Tel: + 1 781 972 5400 Email: davem@advancedautobat.com www.advancedautobat.com/us/

Denver, Colorado, USA July 8-10

and professional communities to think about America’s energy challenges in new and innovative ways.

Now in its 10th year, the summit offers a unique, three-day program aimed at moving transformational energy technologies out of the lab and into the market.

ARPA-E is the US Department of Energy’s advanced research projects agency. ARPA-E advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too high-risk for private-sector investment.

The ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit is an annual conference and technology showcase that brings together experts from different technical disciplines

Contact ARPA-E & US Department of Energy Email: arpa-e-comms@hq.doe.gov www.arpae-summit.com/

Contact ICM AG Susann Schmid Tel: +41 62 785 10 00 Email: info@icm.ch www.icm.ch/emce-2019

The ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit

The International Flow Battery Forum Lyon, France • July 9-11

Flow batteries make electricity flow Long duration storage ensures the stability and safety of our electricity networks. The recent burst of enthusiasm for battery storage to provide frequency regulation has pushed bulk storage into the shadows, but the need to store hours worth of energy is still there.

We only have to think about the wrong time energy produced from our renewable resources to realise that the market potential for longer duration energy storage is huge.

But can longer duration energy storage be cost competitive? The manufacturers of flow batteries believe so — the low cost of production, low operating costs and residual value all help with the economic analysis.

Deployment of flow batteries is on the increase, with installations in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. These markets are driving research and development throughout the world. Resourceful minds continue to find new applications for flow batteries — not

56 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

just in large scale stationary storage plants, but also in smaller units suitable for commercial and domestic use.

Some of the earliest flow batteries were used in small electric vehicles, the history books recall motorbikes and golf carts and even the airship, La France which took flight in 1884.

Interest has now returned to flow batteries for transport applications as the vehicles can be recharged by electrolyte exchange. Flow batteries are also ideal for locating alongside EV charging points to reinforce local networks.

Flow batteries are really out of the laboratory and into real applications.

Of course, ongoing research improves performance and reliability and lowers costs of manufacture and production. Improved electrolytes have increased the temperature range of operation, improved energy and power density. Battery lifetimes have increased and many manufacturers view battery degradation as other battery types’ problems.

Now in its 10th year, the IFBF brings the flow battery industry together with its suppliers and customers to discuss, learn and understand the latest developments in commercialisation, deployment, performance and R&D. As the world turns to electricity as the energy vector to link renewable energy to transport, domestic, commercial and industrial use, long duration energy storage is a key to unlocking a more sustainable future.

Flow batteries are part of that future, so come and join us and find out why and how to gain an insight into this exciting development.

Contact Aud Heyden Swanbarton Tel: +44 1666 840 948 Email: aud@swanbarton.com www.flowbatteryforum.com

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS PlugVolt 2019 Battery Seminar

Guangzhou Opera House, Guangzhou, China

Plymouth, MI. USA July 16-18 This event will feature an entire day of in-depth training by experts on battery design considerations, manufacturing best practices, thermal runaway events, failure analyses, battery management systems and the lick.

The next two days will include complimentary industry updates provided by subject matter experts from automotive and grid storage OEMs, major battery manufacturers and global tier 1 system developers.

Attendees will also have an exclusive opportunity to tour Intertek’s 100,000+ square-foot Battery Testing Centre of Excellence, along with a cocktails reception for industry networking.

Contact PlugVolt JC Soman Email: juratesoman@plugvolt.com www.plugvolt.com/seminars/

ees South America São Paulo, Brazil • August 27-29

SEPA Grid Evolution Summit Washington DC, USA July 29-August 1 There is only one place where all of the top electricity stakeholders, from regulators, ISOs, and utilities to technology providers, academics, and government agencies, put their heads together to determine how we will modernize the electric sector: the Grid Evolution Summit.

You’ll have the opportunity to create solutions that will leave a lasting impact on our energy future. Don’t miss it!

Contact Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) Tel: +1 202 900 9030 www.sepapower.org/event-complex/2019grid-evolution-summit-a-national-townmeeting/

The 4th Asia (Guangzhou) Battery Sourcing Fair 2019 Guangzhou, China August 16–18 Asia GBF is a professional demonstration and trade platform for the battery and energy storage industry. Hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of professional visitors are expected to gather there.

Contact Guangdong Grandeur International Exhibition Group Aileen Chen Tel: +86 20298 06525 Email: grand.fi@grahw.com www.battery-expo.com/index.php?lang=en

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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.

Contact Solar Promotion International Dorothea Eisenhardt Email: eisenhardt@intersolar.us www.ees-southamerica.com

Intersolar Mexico Mexico City, Mexico September 3–5 Making its debut in 2019, 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. Together, the two events will be the largest gathering of professionals in Mexico for international manu-

facturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers in the fields of solar, renewable energy and cleantech.

More than 250 exhibitors and 13,000 visitors from over 35 countries are expected to participate in this year’s events.

Contact Freiburg Management and Marketing International Ms. Daniela Friedrich Tel: +49 761 3881 3803 Email: Intersolar_mx@fwtm.de www.intersolar.mx/en/home.html

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Exceptional speakers, combined with a diversifying exhibit hall that represents a comprehensive view of smart energy solutions, the show continues to build and expand upon its role as a leader in the solar and energy storage industries.

Bali, Indonesia. Home to the 18th Asian Battery Conference

Contact Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) www.solarpowerinternational.com/about

The Business Booster Paris, France October 3–4

18th Asian Battery Conference Bali, Indonesia September 3–6 Designed for people all along the battery industry chain, the event has a long history of bringing together the world’s leading battery industry C-Level executives, marketers, technical staff and sales teams biennially to remain updated on new and emerging technologies, understand future directions, meet new suppliers, conduct business and network with industry peers.

An integral feature of the conference is the exhibition; a true international opportunity to see major battery companies showcase their capabilities and leverage the considerable business development and direct sales opportunities the conference provides.

Contact Conference Works Tel: +61 3 9870 2611 Email: events@conferenceworks.com.au www.asianbatteryconference.com

The Battery Show North America Novi, Michigan. US September 10–12 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 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 to make faster, smarter, and more cost-effective products at the most comprehensive industry event in North America.

Contact UBM Tel: +1 833 202 3467 Email: batteryregistration@ubm.com www.thebatteryshow.com

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Future Resource - The event for energy and water efficiency Birmingham, UK. September 11–12 Future Resource is the leading water and energy management event in the UK, showcasing the latest innovations shaping the sustainability sector to the industry’s most influential names and organisations.

From the UK’s leading local authorities and government departments to the largest retailers, commercial & industrial end users, energy and water suppliers and trade associations, the event attracts the most influential visitors and buyers attracted by the industry’s best content programme, speaker line-up and world-class exhibition.

Contact Prysm Group Tel: +44 117 929 6083 www.futureresourceexpo.com

Solar Power International & Energy Storage International Salt Lake City, Utah, US September 23–26 As the anchor of North America Smart Energy Week, the event has diversified to include Energy Storage International — the largest storage event in North America, the Smart Energy Microgrid Marketplace, Hydrogen + Fuel Cells North America, and The Technical Symposium.

The Business Booster is an annual twoday international networking event showcasing 150+ sustainable energy technologies under one roof.

Discover cutting edge technological solutions, detect new opportunities and business models, view innovations segmented by market, find partnership opportunities, and visit live product demonstrations. Delegates can also pitch challenges to start-ups and increase brand awareness by exhibiting in the Open Innovation area.

Contact InnoEnergy Email: tbb@innoenergy.com www.tbb.innoenergy.com

Entech London, UK October 8–9 As the Energy sector accelerates along its digital transformation journey, the industry is faced with how best to deploy technology in order to transform operations, drive efficiency, reduce cost and lessen environmental impact.

EnTech features a case-study led agenda providing expert market insight and an unrivalled networking opportunity to discuss the latest innovation and implement the right technology roadmap.

Contact Solar Media Email: entech@solarmedia.co.uk www.entech.solarenergyevents.com

Salt Lake City, US, will host the Solar Power International & Energy Storage International

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS 12th Energy Storage World Forum (Large Scale Focus) & 6th Residential Energy Storage Forum Rome, Italy October 8–10 Exploring new and innovative regulatory frameworks is a programme topic in this year’s event. But while regulations fail to keep pace with new advances in the sector, how much is this holding back the adoption of energy storage technologies?

This is the first Forum on Energy Storage in Europe since 2010. The programme covers more than 60 in depth topics covering the key questions from the industry.

Contact Dufresne Research Tel: +44 203 289 0312 www.energystorageforum.com

Intelec 2019 Singapore October 13–17 This international annual technical conference has, for the past 39 years,

Interbattery Seoul, Korea October 16–18 First launched in 2013 in Seoul, Korea, this event is Korea’s leading battery exhibition showcasing new products and technologies related to the battery industry. Running concurrently as a part of ‘Energy Plus’, it attracts more than 900 domestic and overseas exhibitors and 1,500 booths.

InterBattery2019 will serve as an exclusive business platform showing battery industry’s forthcoming prospects since its first launch.

been the premier forum for the science and engineering of energy systems for Information and Communications Technologies.

Research and technical papers explore the needs and trends in the subject areas of power conversion, energy storage, and high-reliability and mission-critical powering infrastructure.

Topics include DC power plants, powering architectures, converters, inverters, batteries, fuel cells, grounding, physical and thermal designs, building and equipment cooling systems.

Contact COEX Irene Kim Tel: +82 26000 1393 Email: irenekim@coex.co.kr www.interbattery.or.kr/en/

Contact Intelec www.intelec.org

The International Flow Battery Forum

TM

N REGISTRATIO IS OPEN

IFBF 2019 9

to 11th July Le Centre de Congrès de Lyon France th

The leading international conference covering flow battery applications, deployment, commercialisation, manufacturing, technologies and research.

The tenth conference in the series includes a visit to IFP Energies nouvelles in Lyon.

“An exciting opportunity for industry to showcase the business to potential clients “ “The variety of high quality presentations “Valuable networking and great from industry and research led to engagement from leading experts interesting and important discussions” in the industrys” “Great place to understand the commercial “The IFBF is unique” evolution of flow batteries” “Exciting insight to battery installations, new markets and flow battery technologies”

For further information, exhibition and sponsorship opportunities, or to register visit www.flowbatteryforum.com or email info@flowbatteryforum.com

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Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 59

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Pasadena hosts Energy Storage North America in November

The Battery Technology Show

Energy Storage North America

Coventry, UK October 22–23

Pasadena, CA. US November 5–7

Showcasing the incredible developments happening across the battery and energy storage markets, the event aims to give delegates the latest news in breakthrough technologies, invaluable insight from key players in the market, and showcase emerging technologies at the frontier of the energy revolution.

This show will feature a select lineup of world-leading manufacturers in the battery and energy storage space on its Expo floor, alongside a first-class conference programme featuring three thought-leading symposiums: The Future of Battery Technology, The Future of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles, and The Global Battery Market.

Once a year, a marketplace for the energy storage sector is established for the entire value chain to meet, network and learn in one location over three days. Thousands of developers, energy users, utilities and policymakers are due to gather in Pasadena to advance the understanding and deployment of energy storage.

Contact Evolve media group Tel: +44 117 932 2586 www.batterytechnologyshow.com

Batteries Event Nice, France October 22–24

Contact Messe Düsseldorf North America Matt Spikehout Tel: +1 312 621 5804 Email: mspikehout@mdna.com www.esnaexpo.com

ees India Bangalore, India November 27–29 The market potential for electrical energy storage in India is expected to be tremendous in the future — driven by

incoming policies for the e-mobility industry.

With the great success and support of ees Europe, Europe’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage, ees India becomes the most powerful energy storage exhibition in India.

The exhibition is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions. Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technologies – from components and production to specific user applications.

Contact Solar Promotion International Ludmilla Feth Tel: +49 7231 58598 215 Email: feth@solarparomotion.com www.intersolar.in/en/for-visitors/about-intersolar-india/focus-energy-storage.html

The Energy Management Exhibition – EMEX London, UK November 27–28 EMEX is the UK’s must-attend energy event for everyone wanting to increase their organisation’s energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

EMEX connects commercial energy consumers with leading experts, policy makers and suppliers.

The event is a platform for practitioners and experts from various backgrounds and sectors to gather and share their knowledge and experiences from successful implementations of energy efficiency strategies.

Contact EMEX Tel: 020 8505 7073 Email: rr@emexlondon.com www.emexlondon.com

The market for batteries and their components has experienced a strong double-digit growth for 21 years and several positive factors should ensure that continues.

For two decades, this has been one of the world’s most attractive events and the meeting place of technologies (lead acid, NiMH, Li-ion, post Li-ion), applications (from micro batteries to large format batteries) and of the value chain (chemists, OEMs and end users).

Batteries 2019 will focus on battery market issues, latest trends and will allow you to meet new partners and customers.

Contact Hopscotch Congres Véronique SAINT-AYES Tel: +33 170 946535 Email: congress@hopscotchcongres.com www.batteriesevent.com

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Bangalore, India. Home to ees India in November

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ENERGY STORAGE HEROES: MICHEL ARMAND Michel Armand has been at the forefront of many advances in electrochemistry theory and application and made a huge contribution to our understanding of intercalation compounds. Most recently he has been at the cutting edge of LiFePO4 cell optimization.

Opening up the space between worlds Precocious. That’s about the only way to describe the young Michel Armand.

Within days — aged just 10 — of exhausting the experiments from a chemistry set Christmas present he was clamouring for more. His parents, both chemistry and physics teachers, sighed and gave him the keys to the school laboratory. An electrochemist had been born.

Armand was born on April 29, 1946 in Annecy, Haute-Savoie, France.

But it was not until he was 20 that Armand’s brilliance was to show. Taking part in a nationwide competitive exam to enter the Ecole Normale Supérieure at Saint-Cloud — one of France’s most respected scientific teaching establishments — he came first.

Academically he was on a roll. His MSc in physics and chemistry was followed by a post-masters diploma in inorganic chemistry and electrochemistry. Now aged 24, he began to look for the next step in his education and in 1970 he obtained a Fullbright travel Fellowship to go to Stanford University.

It was a crucial moment in setting a direction for his life. He was to spend 18 months there in the Materials Science and Engineering Department headed by Robert Huggins and where Stanley Whittingham, working as a post-doctorate researcher, was already making a name for himself.

Armand recalls: “Arriving at Stanford, I was assigned to make tungsten bronzes to measure the conductivity of beta-alumina, a clever way to avoid interfacial polarization. I immediately realized intercalation material could also be used for making batteries.

This work contained the first generalization of Nernst equation in the solid-state, to predict the variation of the voltage with stoichiometry, a model that has remained indisputable. www.energystoragejournal.com

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ENERGY STORAGE HEROES: MICHEL ARMAND

“I also started on my own initiative work on Prussian Blues as cheap, nonstoichiometric iron derivatives. I was quite surprized that neither Bob Huggins nor Stan Whittingham realized immediately the importance of intercalation for battery operation as their use for impedance measurements was a close concept.”

On his return to France in early 1972, Armand rekindled his doctoral research on intercalation compounds for solid-state batteries at what is now Laboratoire d’ionique et d’électrochimie du solide, a large laboratory in Grenoble devoted to solidstate electrochemistry.

In 1972, he attended the NATO conference on Fast Ion Transport in Solids in Belgirate in northern Italy, where he presented the use of ternary graphite intercalation, a new family of interstitial compounds derived from graphite, as promising candidates for solid-state electrode materials.

Armand’s paper and metallurgist professor Brian Steele of Imperial College’s paper, which clearly suggested the use of solid solution electrodes in his own terms such as NaxTiS2, were the starting point of what was to become a booming activity on intercalation chemistry during the 1970s.

Whittingham, for example, became involved at Exxon in the programme for making batteries using LixTiS2 as an electrode material. Moreover, the solid-state chemistry community

“I literally took the first flight out to Texas to meet John Goodenough to offer him a collaboration within a Hydro-QuébecUniversity of TexasUniversité de Montréal triangle” had realized the potential of these compounds for electrochemistry. Paul Hagenmuller in Bordeaux and Jean Rouxel in Nantes, who had been investigating non-stoichiometric compounds, saw their work come into the limelight and extended.

For the scientific/engineering community, intercalation electrodes came as a possible competitor to batteries using b-alumina (sodium/sulfur), with Wynn Jones and British Rail in the UK. There was also at Argonne National Laboratory a huge programme on Li(Al)/FeS2 batteries using molten LiCl/KCl as electrolyte, but working at 350°C, where the corrosion from the molten salt proved to be a crippling handicap. In 1974 Armand joined the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) as a research associate, He became its director of research in 1989.

“The CNRS did not bother me when I did not publish for five years, and let me supervise students before defending my thesis. In retrospect, the results of my PhD should have been submitted to prestigious journals,” he says.

“But I was already into the induction period for polymer electrolytes. I benefitted from great tolerance at the beginning of my career and this helped creativity.”

The rationale behind polymer electrolytes was that they would be preferable contact-wise to hard ceramic materials or glasses when intercalation compounds were to be used as electrodes, with volume change. Initially the idea seemed bizarre, as polymers are known for their insulating properties while ions were thought to move only in channels or in twodimensional openings with an optimal size, like b-alumina, which polymers do not provide.

Armand selected polyethylene oxide after ceramics researcher Peter Wright at the University of Sheffield had shown in 1975 that it is a host for a number of sodium or potassium salts and displayed some conductivity.

Here he established the electrical properties of the polymer-salt complexes formed with selected lithium salts, and pointed out that these material, would be useful for batteries. A little earlier in 1978, he obtained his PhD in Physics cum laude.

This work contained the first gen-

The rationale behind polymer electrolytes was that they would be preferable contact-wise to hard ceramic materials or glasses, when intercalation compounds were to be used as electrodes with volume change.

62 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019

www.energystoragejournal.com

ENERGY STORAGE HEROES: MICHEL ARMAND eralization of Nernst equation in the solid-state, to predict the variation of the voltage with stoichiometry, a model that has remained indisputable.

Also, a wealth of intercalation compounds, many new, had been screened electrochemically. This work also contained the first mention that intercalation compounds could be used both at the positive and negative electrodes — defining the Li-ion battery principle.

Around this time Armand and his collaborators filed a patent through the CNRS which ended up in a long litigation with the US Patent Office, due to an unknown premature disclosure. Nevertheless, it prompted a joint research project between the CNRS, the French oil company Elf-Aquitaine, and Canadian electricity utility Hydro-Québec, aimed at designing ultimately a lithium-polymer battery for electric vehicles.

Armand was in charge of the scientific orientations, to be materialized with Michel Gauthier, head of the corresponding research group at HydroQuébec.

This patent contained the first specific mention of the use of graphite negative electrodes, as polymers do not co-intercalate in graphite like most liquid solvents do. “I later suggested to a PhD student, Rachid Yazami, to include this work in his thesis,” says Armand. “The proof being given

by X-rays to the formation of LiC6.”

Around this time he met Maryse Cirera, who was working for Motorola in Grenoble. They married and later a daughter, Caroline, was born. “She is now a perfume specialist, from her childhood passion for fragrances,” he says. “It’s another more pleasant side of chemistry in our family.”

In 1982 Armand was invited to be a visiting scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He would go back regularly two months every summer for the next six years.

The company Polyplus was then created in California for batteries using the then novel concept of S–S reversible redox bond cleavage, i.e. a polymerization-depolymerization of a high polymer (dimercaptothiadazole), predating by 20 years the interest in LiS batteries we see today.

Independently, within the CNRS/ Hydro-Québec/Elf collaboration, 30 patents were filed between 1980 and 1986, including the introduction of new families of highly conductive, ultra-low lattice energy salts (perfluoroimides such as [FSO2)2N ] and [CF3SO2)2N], respectively FSI and www.energystoragejournal.com

Armand’s identity card while studying at the Ecole Normale Supérieure at Saint-Cloud

TFSI) for liquid and polymer electrolytes.

Salts of these anions are produced now on a large scale as solutes for liquid and polymer electrolytes, but are also the most used, by far, ingredient of ionic liquids. These new materials draw considerable attention as they have conductivities comparable to that of aqueous solutions, an extremely wide range of temperature (400°C), where they are stable liquids with no vapour pressure (non-flammability).

They find use as green solvents in which a wealth of chemical reactions can be accomplished without resorting to volatile organic solvents;

as supporting electrolyte for batteries, photo-electrochemical solar cells, light-emitting diodes and antistatics.

“But the collaboration between the state agency and industrial companies failed because the CNRS had ceded the property of the patent to Elf-Aquitaine, who offered them to Japan’s Yuasa, in 1986. Hydro-Québec used its pre-emptive rights but was forced into a collaboration with Yuasa.

In 1995, Michel Armand moved to the Université de Montréal’s Department of Chemistry to be closer to the development team at Hydro-Québec, and to its manufacturing arm created for this purpose, Argotech. The

In recent developments, Armand was involved in the co-discovery of metal fluorosulfates LiFeSO4F as possible improvements over phosphate positive electrodes.

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ENERGY STORAGE HEROES: MICHEL ARMAND first electric and hybrid cars powered by an all-solid state polymer battery (LMP — lithium metal polymer) were available for test-drives at the 17th EV International Symposium held in Montréal in 2000.

From 2000 to 2004, Armand was appointed director of the new Joint CNRS-Université de Montréal International Laboratory on Electroactive Materials (LIME), which brought together scientists from both sides of the Atlantic to work faster towards the finish line of the LMP project.

Earlier on, in Austin Texas, John Goodenough at the University of Texas had proposed a new electrode material, LiFePO4, which did not use rare cobalt, but the reported performances in terms of capacity and power were quite poor.

Upon reception of the book of abstracts from the electrochemical society describing this material, Armand, who had been testing LiMnPO4 a few years before, realised the promises of such materials.

“I literally took the first flight out to Texas to meet John Goodenough to offer him a collaboration within a Hydro-Québec-University of TexasUniversité de Montréal triangle,” says Armand.

“Curiously, Goodenough was reluctant as he thought that the very low electronic conductivity of this material would be a crippling handicap, and he had not even bothered to take a patent before the ECS abstract disclosure,” he says.

“A few months later, I was able to show that superb electrochemical performances could be obtained when a thin (a few nm) layer of carbon was deposited on the surface of LiFePO4, and this carbon could be obtained by simply charring organic materials (including simple sugar) mixed with the LiFePO4 powder.”

“However, tensions grew within the LIME Laboratory over the potential monetary value created by the value of LiFePO4@C carbon-coating patent,” says Armand. The company Phostech was created based on this. However, a long period of litigation was to ensue over the exclusivity of the patent due to issues of premature disclosure, and tens of millions of dollars of royalties were lost. The end result was that China has become by far the largest producer of LiFePO4 but without royalties.

Armand came back to France and joined Jean-Marie Tarascon’s team in Amiens, where he worked until his of-

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ficial retirement age, in 2011. He had time to make a significant contribution to usher the first electrodes materials from the organic world, in particular the polyquinones (Å electrode) and the conjugated dicarboxylates (y electrode).

Research on these materials is now extremely active worldwide, simply considering the non-depletability of carbon-based materials and their easy processing.

In recent developments Armand was involved in the co-discovery of metal fluorosulfates LiFeSO4F as possible improvements over phosphate positive electrodes. In terms of salts as solutes for the electrolyte, he introduced a new family of anions based on the 5-membered cycles with a stabilized negative charge according to Hückel’s rule. These very stable salts, developed with Warsaw University of Technology and the chemical company Arkema, are on the brink of being used commercially in batteries.

Since retirement as Emeritus in Ami-

ens Armand has joined, part time, the CIC research centre in Vitoria, Spain as senior scientist. He has been visiting scientist at CSIRO, Melbourne, Australia and is a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics in Beijing, and at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan. From 2013 to 2014 he was thinker in residence at Deakin University, Melbourne and is now honorary professor at Deakin.

The last word goes to Armand.

“The progress made in the last 20 years in terms of new concepts and materials for energy management and storage surpasses that of the last two centuries since Volta’s invention of the pile,” he says.

“These promises come at a time when humanity has an ever-growing need for a sustainable environment.

The progressive replacement of rare elements (Ni, Cd, Co) by abundant, innocuous Fe derivatives or organic molecules as electrode materials is a good omen for this technology.”

MICHEL ARMAND

Michel Armand has written or coauthored 370 publications, including 304 in international journals, books and book chapters; 225 presentations at conferences, of which 185 were invited, 167 patents delivered or pending. He has been PhD advisor for 23 students.

He has acted on the editorial board of several journals (SolidState Ionics, Journal of Applied Electrochemistry, Synthetic Metals, J. Power Sources, JNMES) and the conference advisory committees and organizations of 35 international conferences.

Acknowledgements for Armand’s distinctions read like a roll of honour: Bronze then silver medals from CNRS (1978, 1989); Royal Society, Faraday Division, Medal Award (1985); Médaille Blondel, Société des Electriciens et Electroniciens, – Paris (1987).

Preis fur Umweltteknologie Saarland Länder (1988); Battery Division Award, The Electrochemical Society USA (1988); Prix Yvan Puech de l’Académie des Sciences (1989); Prix Bardy/Comité des Arts Chimiques, Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale (1989); Pergamon Medal, International Society for Electrochemistry (1995); Volta Award ECS European Section (2000); first recipient; Doctor Honoris Causa from Uppsala University (2006); Galileo Award for polymer electrolytes research (2010); Prix Aymé Poirson de l’Académie des Sciences (2012); Catalan-Sabatier Award from La Real Sociedad Española de Quimica –Madrid (2012); OREBA conference on Olivines for rechargeable batteries in honour of Michel Armand Montréal June 2528, (2014); IBA medal of excellence and Conference in honour of Michel Armand, – Nantes (2016).

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