POWERING THE SMART GRID
Issue 26: Autumn 2019
The new heroes of the grid
Why solar+storage is the magic pairing Green electrons
Reality check needed when looking at the cost of decarbonization
Akira Yoshino
Exclusive interview with the man who designed the first lithium battery
Paul RĂźetschi
Credit due to one of the finest electrochemists of his generation www.energystoragejournal.com
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CONTENTS COVER STORY
25
SOLAR IN THE DRIVING SEAT
25
Energy storage installations are forecast to boom globally over the next 20 years, driven by widespread adoption of renewal energy and falling capital costs. Solar plus storage is in the driving seat — but things can change.
Time to get the big picture — everything is falling into place
33
EDITORIAL
2
The Empire State Building was built on time? So what! A lesson in decarbonization.
THE INTERVEW: AKIRA YOSHINO
6
Meet the founding figure behind the creation and commercialization of the lithium battery. The tale of its development is testimony to the ingenuity and persistence of its inventor
PEOPLE NEWS
13
Varta hires Stahlschmidt as GM energy storage head 13
Varta hires Stahlschmidt as GM energy storage systems • Eos Energy makes three top-level appointments • Exide Technologies appoints Judd as COO
NEWS
14
Highview power unveils first giga-scale cryogenic battery • Zaf moves Nizn Technology from laboratory to production plant • UK firm moves a step closer to commercializing lithium sulfur batteries • Duke Energy gets go-ahead for solar+storage microgrid ... and Florida too • Audi pilot project to test used EV packs to deliver grid services • Batteries to back up hydro in Swedish power project • Australia gives go-ahead for country’s first compressed air storage facility • MoU signed for hybrid floating solar/hydro system for Thailand • Upside Group bucks trend with second 25MWh using lead carbon stationary ESS • New York energy storage fund could pave way for lead battery deployment
VIRTUAL POWER PLANT NEWS
Highview: chilly energy now in giga-scale 14
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Autogrid, ENERES in world’s largest virtual power plant venture in Japan • Japanese consortium triples EV/PHEV deployment in vehicle-to-grid
FLOW BATTERY NEWS
20
Russian scientists recycle lead/silver/nickel battery 18
Saudi Arabia to make flow batteries with Schmid, Nusaned and RIWAQ • US military uses solar-plusstorage with iron flow battery system • Energy storage stakeholders join forces in move to open US research center • RedT sets out terms for merger with flow battery firm Avalon
ENERGY STORAGE HERO
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Paul Rüetschi: electrochemist extraordinaire, at the top of his game for more than four decades
EVENTS & EVENT REVIEW
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Our round-up of the coming months’ conference schedule plus a review of big changes at EUROBAT
Energy Storage Journal — Business and market strategies for energy storage and smart grid technologies Energy Storage Journal is a quarterly publication. Publisher: Karen Hampton karen@energystoragejournal.com +44 7792 852 337
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Let cool heads prevail
Ruetschi: electrochemist turns to the spiritual 35
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The lead-lithium storage debate steps up a notch The new titan of lead The CEO interview
Ecoult’s UltraBattery, Anil Srivastava and www.energystoragejournal.com ready to take lithium Leclanché’s bid for on, head-to-head
market dominance
Next gen integrators Coming soon to a smart grid near you, the ideal middle man
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 1
EDITORIAL Mike Halls • mike@energystoragejournal.com
The Empire State Building was built on time? So what! ‘Fake news’. It’s a great term.
coverage is a good start.
It suggests that the media has its own agenda and is capable of making stories up on the flimsiest of reasons.
So let’s dissect a news announcement that crossed Energy Storage Journal’s desk in late May.
US president Donald Trump used the term to a great effect — and very often rightly so. Everyone in the media spotlight can be hurt by made up stories or nasty spin on true stories.
Before we follow the story line, let’s first say that this press release has no intention to mislead or misinform. It’s issued in good faith and should be understood as that. Yet despite that, the issuer wrote:
And this applies as much to the battery industry as the superstars of screen or politics. Once issues get raised in the media there’s an overall impression that it must be true. It’s in print, after all! (Or worse still, it’s on the internet.)
The number of public charging stations for electric vehicles in the UK has surpassed the number of petrol stations for the first time. The UK’s EV market grew by a recordbreaking 19% in 2018.
But what it doesn’t explain is why the trade press as well as the mainstream titles seem to be equally adept as printing falsehoods.
There are now 13,688 public charging devices located across 8,546 locations – surpassing the 8,400 petrol stations found in the UK.
It’s not through lack of integrity. For most titles — not all, but the greater part for sure —I’ve known journalists who want to tell the truth, who don’t want to write gushing stories for potential advertisers and, most of all, want to get their facts straight.
The data highlights the ongoing transition towards EVs in the UK.
But fake news still comes out in the end. Perhaps the reason comes in two directions — the desire of the newsmaker to impress on the media their interpretation of events; and perhaps the gullibility of the media to rise up to its role of questioning what it’s being told. There is also the energy storage industry theme which, shows that it doesn’t know how to engage with the press. Apart from hype that is. Dealing with these themes — the desire of the newsmaker to make headlines and attract 2 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019
It’s factual. And there’s no need to doubt otherwise. But the conclusion… the ongoing transition? A record-breaking 19% increase… from what base? And it does miss out the more obvious facts. Petrol stations typically refuel from eight to 10 vehicles at a time, mostly on a continuous basis, so here the number of charging stations is insignificant. Is such a comparison valid? The amount of usage — the key factor in any story here and not the number of delivery points — is newsworthy. As is the time taken to recharge and the location chosen, which are not given, nor is the economic logic for their deployment. www.energystoragejournal.com
EDITORIAL Mike Halls • mike@energystoragejournal.com
Anecdotally, in the last three years of driving in the UK — admittedly outside of London — I have only seen one vehicle being charged off a public charging point. There may be 190,000 EVs on this country’s roads but well over four-fifths of them are hybrids that charge from home and use petrol if there’s a problem. How often do you ever see a deserted petrol station? And this isn’t the parochial interests of a Brit, rather the situation is being emulated across the world. The intention of the firm that made the announcement was not to mislead but to put the best interpretation of what’s happening to a wider audience. And with that, the momentum to keep the EV charging station phenomenon growing. In old-fashioned language it’s called a selffulfilling prophecy. Oddly enough there’s nothing so wrong with that. The inconvenient truth is that it’s both true and not true, which inevitably gives rise to claims from different sides of the technology camp of ‘fake news’. It’s also predicated on the chicken-and-egg idea that once there are enough EVs on the world’s roads, the charging infrastructure will appear. For one simple reason: it has to. Demand requires supply. This isn’t to disparage the notion. That endlessly repeated technology adoption curve, with its innovators and early adopters crossing the chasm as mass adoption takes place, has a lot of truth in it. In a world of pure electric vehicles, the argument for pure lithium ion EVs may largely have been won. But there are going to be hiccups on the way. The simple media fact is that bad news is www.energystoragejournal.com
intrinsically more interesting to the public than good news. The Empire State Building was built on time? No news there. Who wants to read that? The Empire State Building was built a week late? Yelps from the newsroom. Even the most positive of journalists will be reaching for their notepads. Who’s to blame? Why the screw-up? Isn’t this shame on New York’s construction industry? The trouble is that in today’s media connected world, these stories fly across the internet gathering credence with every click. And sadly, there’s little the world can do to stop this. US presidential campaigns smeared with talk of social media intervention, ruthless pirating of data mining exercises to influence EU affairs and much more are becoming a new norm. Talk is that China has literally tens of thousands of government employees churning out opinion for the state for the internet all on the West’s behalf. Stories are buried. Or invented. Or misinterpreted. Perhaps the only consolation with a free press and trustworthy journalists committed to finding the essentials of a story is that it still exists. Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 3
INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO
Meet the father of the lithium ion battery Michael Halls met Akira Yoshino, the founding figure behind the creation and commercialization of the lithium battery. The tale of its development is testimony to the ingenuity and persistence of its inventor.
There are probably a handful of people that one can truly say have shaped the way our planet is organized. Think Thomas Edison, Logie Baird, Alexander Graham Bell. Less well known are two unsung heroes of the modern world — Akira Yoshino and John Goodenough. Both were the key figures in the creation of the lithium battery. Without either man the modern world of the mobile phone, the laptop and, coming soon, a new generation of electric vehicles running on our roads, would not exist. Yoshino’s story began in January 1948 in Osaka, Japan, where his early interest in electrochemistry was sparked by a teacher who gave him Michael Faraday’s The Chemical History of a Candle to read. In an odd kind of way two of his future passions in life were fuelled by the book (a compilation of Faraday’s lectures given to children in the 1840s) — an intense interest in science and a passion for history. Talk to Yoshino now — as Energy Storage Journal did in February in Dusseldorf — and he will happily relate how the history of
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progress throws up lessons for the future, particularly in the recent adoption of technology. Making the connection between how technology advanced in the 1950s and 1960s, he says, gives us an understanding of how it will advance in the future. After graduating with a master’s degree from Kyoto University in April 1972 he joined the chemical giant Asahi Kasei — a corporation where he was to happily spend his entire career with. And even now, aged 71, he is an honorary fellow with the chemical giant and pleased to represent the corporation. He joined Asahi Kasei at a pivotal moment in the life of the specialist chemical and electrochemical markets. The onset of the oil crisis in 1973 meant that the issue of energy — its use, value and importance as a resource — had become one of the most debated areas of that decade’s science and politics. Meanwhile, the age of the Walkman was just around the corner. Leading electronics firms were already in a race to develop ever smaller and more powerful gadgets.
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INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO
“From my studies of R&D in the past we can get a glimpse of the future. If you look at, for example, what happened in the 1950s and early 1960s you can see that advances in technology took at least 10 to 15 years before they changed society”
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INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO The way was finally open to the mass adoption of a battery technology that would change the world completely. Portable electronics would be transformed forever, the world of telecoms was to be revolutionized and, with the rise and rise of hand-held cell phones, the internet — still hardly born in the early 1990s — would dominate the planet. After graduating with a master’s degree from Kyoto University in April 1972 — here pictured three months later — he joined the chemical giant Asahi Kasei, a corporation where he was to happily spend his entire career.
By 1983 Yoshino had created the first test-tube cell — pictured here — and the lithium ion battery had come of age.
Assembly of LIB prototypes, June 1986
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In 1981 Yoshino became the lead researcher looking at how a relatively obscure compound, polyacetylene, could be put to practical purposes. Polyacetylene is a highly interesting organic polymer in that it is capable of conducting electricity when doping (adding impurities into the raw material), making the compound sometimes dubbed a plastic metal. In the early 1970s they discovered that the polymer was superconductive at low temperatures. Yoshino was particularly fascinated by the possibility that the chemical could be used as the negative electrode for a new type of rechargeable battery in which he envisaged using lithium as the source of the ion exchange. Lithium was a good metal to start with. It is the metal with the lowest density and greatest electrochemical potential and energy-to-weight ratio. The low atomic weight and small size of its ions also speeds its diffusion, making it an ideal material for batteries. The first experiments on lithium as a potential battery source were made in 1912 by US physical chemist Gilbert Lewis, but there was nothing commercially available until the early 1970s with the appearance of lithium-manganese dioxide, lithium iron disulfide and lithium thionyl-chloride cells. A specialist lithium iodine primary battery had been used in heart pacemakers since the 1960s. But these were all primary batteries — once discharged, their use was over. Yoshino was on the look-out for the means to formulate a secondary battery. And a secondary battery that could be cycled — charged and discharged — hundreds if not thousands of times. Primary batteries were expensive and he was aware that the power needs of some of the electronic equipment coming to market — the first Camcorder appeared in 1982 — would only be feasible if batteries could be charged and discharged. Yoshino was also aware that some research had already been done in the
field. Stanley Whittingham, for example, had demonstrated the reversible intercalation mechanism in the 1970s — intercalation being the insertion of an ion into layered solids such as graphite. A commercial version of sorts with a titanium disulfide cathode and a lithium aluminium anode had been produced by Exxon. But there were very many things wrong with the battery. While charging, lithium tends to precipitate on the negative electrode in the form of dendrites, which go on to cause shortcircuiting and the failure of the battery and the possibility of fire. Moreover, the high chemical reactivity of metallic lithium resulted in poor battery characteristics, including inadequate cycle durability due to side reactions, and what appeared to be an insurmountable problem: the inherent risk of a thermal runaway reaction. The batteries weren’t cheap, either. But it was when Yoshino came across the research that John Goodenough, then American professor at Oxford University, had been doing that he had his own ‘Eureka’ moment. In 1979 Goodenough had identified that lithium cobalt oxide could be the positive electrode material of choice. Shortly afterwards Rachid Yazami, a Moroccan researcher working at the French Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, showed that graphite could work as a negative electrode — although there were many failings in practice. “The combination of lithium cobalt oxide with polyacetylene instead of graphite on the negative electrode showed an exciting way forward,” says Yoshino. “We at last had the building blocks to make a working cell that had commercial possibilities.” He modestly would say much later: “I consider the lithium ion battery to be the fruit of collective wisdom.” Collective wisdom aside, a host of difficulties lay ahead for Yoshino, including the choice of electrolyte, separator, current collector and the devel-
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INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO opment of a winding mechanism to create greater surface area. By 1983 Yoshino had created the first test-tube cell. The lithium ion battery had come of age. But if the first step had been taken the route ahead was a tricky one. Although this first cell was functional, the low real density of polyacetylene posed limitations on its capacity, and the chemical stability of polyacetylene was limited. Yoshino thus searched for a new carbonaceous material to use as a negative electrode. The organic electrolyte used at the time was propylene carbonate, which was unsuitable for working with graphite — it decomposed during charging when graphite was used, and
furthermore the use of solid electrolyte resulted in electrical resistance, which was too high to enable practical charging and discharging. So Yoshino studied the suitability of other carbonaceous materials at the negative electrode. He finally hit on one crystalline structure that provided greater capacity without causing decomposition of the propylene carbonate electrolyte. The secondary battery that he successfully made — by hand — in the laboratory based on this new combination of component materials enabled stable charging and discharging, over many cycles, for a long period. The result of all this was filing two patents — JP198923 in May 1985 and its US counterpart US4668595A
the following May. But it was more than just filing patents. The next task was how to commercialize the intellectual property, to take the experience of the laboratory and put it on the manufacturing line. Those outside the battery industry would be surprised to hear that it took seven years for the first commercial product to appear. For those inside the business, this was a process whose speed verged on the astonishing. “To take anything from the lab work bench to the production line takes something like 10 years, sometimes much longer,” says one battery veteran. “To introduce a new battery chemistry as a mainstream product with everything from the safety and
Without the lithium battery the modern world of the mobile phone, the laptop and, coming soon, a new generation of electric vehicles running on our roads, would not exist.
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Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 9
INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO performance guarantees was incredible.” Indeed Yoshino’s task was far from simple — there were basic electrochemical design problems that needed to be resolved before anyone could conceive of working out the process to put it on to a manufacturing line. Broadly speaking, everything had to be worked out from first principles. “Finding the right current collector was a long process as we had to work our way through a whole variety of metal combinations and thicknesses,” Yoshino recalls. “I eventually found that aluminum was the best current collector for the positive electrode and copper foil for the negative. The thickness of each was around 10µm.” Yoshino’s decision of aluminum was one of the most important aspects of this stage of work. Previously, only precious metals such as gold and platinum were considered able to withstand a high voltage of 4V or more. However, Yoshino found that aluminum foil was suitable for use as positive electrode current collector material because a passivation layer — effectively a protective layer — forms on the aluminum surface. And the process of actually making
“To take anything from the lab work bench to the
production line takes something like 10 years, sometimes much longer. To introduce a new battery chemistry as a mainstream product in just seven with everything from the safety and performance guarantees was incredible” the electrodes required new technology to be developed. The voltage barrier of an aqueous — ie water based — electrolyte of around 1.2V had to be overcome by using a non-aqueous electrolyte. But that raised problems due to its lower electro-conductivity, and a lower current density was needed to prevent heat being generated. To get around this, Yoshino increased the surface area by devising flat-sheet thin-film electrodes wound into a coil shape. “Basically we used the concept of winding used in making condensers and for that we needed a large machine that could do this and several visits to various manufacturers. It took us about two years to refine this part of the process to create a prototype,” says Yoshino.
The choice of separator was another issue that had to be resolved. Here, Yoshino had a stroke of luck. “At that time I was based in our R&D laboratory in Kawasaki and by a stroke of good fortune in the next building to ours they were working on new polyethylene separator material. “It was incredibly handy just to walk outside the offices to see how well they were doing. Safety, of course, was a prime concern — it was always on our mind,” he says. “What we developed in fact was a microporous polyethylene membrane 20 to 30 mm thick for use as a separator.” This acted like a fuse when an electric plug blows. Excessive heat causes the material to melt and the porosity of the membrane closes, effectively stopping the current and acting as a
“I get great pleasure from being around young researchers, helping them where I can. love their enthusiasm and drive.”
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INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO brake to thermal runaway. Yoshino also devised what would probably best be described as ‘peripheral technology’, which was instrumental to the development of a practical lithium ion battery. This included safety device mechanisms, protective circuit technology, and techniques for charging and discharging. One key example is a positive temperature coefficient device that is sensitive to both electric current and temperature. Incorporation of this in the battery resulted in greatly improved safety, particularly against overcharging. Yoshino worked on a variety of design prototypes and in 1986, a US company was contracted to make a number of semi-commercial prototype cells. These were then subjected to abuse testing — mistreating the cells in the worst of expected conditions — to see how they would perform in real life and exceptional circumstances. The results proved positive. They had the required level of safety to be used by the general public and this cleared the way to the battery’s commercialization. Asahi Kasei, working with Toshiba, released their first mass-manufactured lithium cells in 1992. The two firms were a few months behind Sony, which had already been racing to develop lithium cells. But most importantly, the way was finally open to the mass adoption of a battery technology that would change the world completely. Portable electronics would be transformed forever, the world of telecoms was to be revolutionized and, with the rise and rise of hand-held cell phones, the internet — still hardly born in the early 1990s — would dominate the planet. Since then Yoshino has witnessed an extraordinary boom in technology. “We little realized just how completely lithium batteries would change the world of electronics,” he says. “The step change of raising the voltage of the cell from nickel cadmium batteries’ 1.2V to 4.2V in lithium ion opened it up so much. “The first market we aimed to use them in was video cameras. We expected sales of around a million batteries a month. But looking back the market we entered then grew explosively. And perhaps nobody at the time in the early 1990s realized how comprehensive and extensive that would become.” The figures speak for themselves. Although lithium batteries now come
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YOSHINO WINS JAPAN PRIZE For the last 20 years Yoshino has been feted for his achievements — talk is that John Goodenough and Yoshino have been nominated on many occasions for the Nobel Prize — but perhaps the most prestigious award he has received is the Japan Prize. The Japan Prize was established in 1982 by the Japanese government and Konosuke Matsushita, founder of what is now Panasonic. It is awarded annually to scientists not just for their original ideas, but also for serving “the cause of peace and prosperity for mankind”. In addition to the prize money — the award comes with a gift of ¥50 million (around $420,000) — Yoshino was given the rare honour of sitting next to His Imperial Majesty the Emperor Akihito during the ceremony.
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INTERVIEW: AKIRA YOSHINO BASIC CELL AND ELECTRODE STRUCTURE OF THE LITHIUM CELL Here is the basic cell and electrode structure of the lithium cell, as originally devised by Yoshino and which continues to be commercially applied in present-day batteries. A multilayer electrode assembly (electrode coil) is prepared by winding sheets of positive and negative electrode with separator membrane in between, and inserted into a battery can. This is then infused with non-aqueous electrolyte comprising LiPF6 (lithium hexaflourophosphate) or LiBF4 dissolved in a mixture of carbonate compounds, and sealed. Both the positive and negative electrodes are structured with electrode material coated on both sides of a current collector. The current collectors conduct electricity from the active electrode materials to tabs connected to the electrode terminals. Aluminum foil is used for the positive electrode current collector and copper foil is used for the negative electrode current collector, the thickness of each being around 10µm.
These essential constituent technologies impart the LIB with the following characteristics: • High electromotive force of 4V or more enabled through the use of LiCoO2 as positive electrode material and aluminum foil as positive electrode current collector. • High current discharge enabled with large-area thin-film electrodes using metal foil as current collector with electrode material coated on both sides. • Achievement of efficient, high-speed electrode production. • High-density packaging with the coil-shaped, multilayer thin-film electrode assembly placed in a battery can. • Significantly heightened battery safety with a polyethylene microporous membrane having certain thermal characteristics used as a separator. Source: Asahi Kasei
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in different chemistries, in 2018 some 148 gigawatt hours of batteries were sold. Yoshino’s vision of the future is an optimistic one, although he sees the energy disparity between the haves of the first world and the have nots of the developing world continuing. “That said, eventually this energy revolution will sweep over everyone,” he says. “From my studies of R&D in the past we can get a glimpse of the future. If you look at, for example, what happened in the 1950s and early 1960s, you can see that advances in technology took at least 10 to 15 years before they changed society. “The move to electric vehicles is now firmly established though there’s still a long way to go. The next area of change is likely to happen with intelligent robotics, which will affect everything we do from automated driving to devices around the home to working on the move.” In terms of future battery chemistries he reckons there are still huge gains to be made and in a variety of chemistries. He is particularly interested in solid state lithium batteries, which he says show great promise. “In 2011 we saw that this was achievable, the question now is how to take it further,” he says. Yoshino maintains contact with fellow lithium pioneer John Goodenough — now in his late 90s but still working — and in particular the advances he has made in solid state batteries. Yoshino, aged 71 this January, is still active and leads a full life. He is a professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology for Meijo University, a visiting professor at the Research and Education Center for Advanced Energy Materials, Devices and Systems at Kyushu University, president of the Lithium Ion Battery Technology and Evaluation Center, as well as an honorary fellow of Asahi Kasei representing the firm internationally. So what interests him now? “I get great pleasure from being around young researchers, helping them where I can,” he says. “I love their enthusiasm and drive.” In a recent interview he said: “Young people tend to believe there is nothing left to explore in the field of natural science, because everything has been discovered and explained. But the reality is just the reverse. “Out of the whole discipline of the natural sciences, we’ve only just scratched the surface.”
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PEOPLE NEWS
Varta hires Stahlschmidt as GM energy storage systems Bengt Stahlschmidt, former business development manager at vanadium battery firm RedT, has been appointed general manager energy storage systems within the Power & Energy division, the firm announced on June 26. Stahlschmidt will be responsible for the development, production and sales of private home storage systems and commercial large-scale storage systems. Clements said the position had been created to form a direct link between development and sales for the first time, which would allow the company to react more efficiently to changes in the market.
Eos Energy makes three top-level appointments Eos Energy Storage, the US zinc hybrid cathode battery maker, has restructured its management team with three new senior appointments, the company announced on July 23. Joe Mastrangelo steps in as CEO, having been board adviser since August 2018. Before joining Eos, Mastrangelo was president and CEO of Gas Power Systems, for GE Power. Most recently managing director and head of US Renewable Energy at GE Energy Financial Services,
Kevin Walsh has been appointed senior commercial adviser. Former COO and CFO of Virdity Energy Solutions Mack Treece has become Eon’s chief financial officer.
Joe Mastrangelo
Exide Technologies announces appointment of Judd as COO Exide Technologies has announced the latest in a number of senior changes at the lead battery manufacturer and recycler, naming Michael Judd as executive vice president and chief operations officer on June 17. Judd, who will lead the global manufacturing operations from the company’s head office in Milton, Georgia, has held senior positions in the auto industry, most notably with Johnson Controls Power Solutions (now Clarios), where he worked for 12 years. This includes two as
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vice president of operations for the US and Canada and before that in Shanghai, China, as director of operations for Asia for two years.
Bengt Stahlschmidt
PEOPLE NEWS IN BRIEF GYLP promotes Aldrich to president GS Yuasa Lithium Power, a US subsidiary of GS Yuasa Corporation, announced on May 7 it had promoted Curtis Aldrich to president. He takes over from William Moll — who becomes president of GS Yuasa Energy Solutions and remains chairman of the board for GYLP. Thomas Pusateri was promoted to director of business development to fill Aldrich’s former position.
Innolith names senior executives to lead US and China expansion Innolith announced on May 14 it had appointed two senior executives to lead expansion into the US and China markets. Stephen Wiley, the former senior director for origination at battery company Younicos, was named as the company’s vice president for business development in the US. Carrie Lin, former national executive for General Electric’s Grid Solution, will lead expansion in China, becoming Innolith’s new chief representative for China.
Sila Nano appoints former General Electric CEO as independent director
Michael Judd
Sila Nanotechnologies, an engineered materials company in energy storage announced that Jeff Immelt, former CEO of General Electric, would join the firm’s board as an independent director, on April 16.
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 13
NEWS
Highview power unveils first giga-scale cryogenic battery Highview Power, a long-duration energy storage provider, announced on June 27 that it has developed a modular cryogenic energy storage system, the CRYOBattery. This is scalable up to multiple gigawatts of energy storage. This technology, says the firm, reaches a new benchmark for a levelized cost of storage (LCOS) of $140/MWh for a 10-hour, 200MW/2GWh system. “This is a pivotal moment for the renewable energy industry and for anyone who wants to deploy large amounts of renewables,”
Solar+Storage with a difference: Eco2solar partners Sunamp in UK housing project One to watch in the future. Eco2Solar, a solar panel firm, has partnered UK heat battery company Sunamp. The two companies are installing renewable power products in a housing development in Bishopton. The homes will have Eco2Solar’s photovoltaic solar panels connected to Sunamp’s UniQ range of heat batteries. The heat batteries convert energy from the panels via an inverter into a vacuum sealed tank where the electricity is used to charge the heat battery from a solid state to a liquid state. When the stored energy is required the liquid state converts into a crystalline form giving out large amounts of heat to heat water. Sunamp says heat represents around 80% of household energy usage.
said Javier Cavada, president of Highview Power. “As more and more renewables are added to the grid, long-duration, gigascale energy storage is the necessary foundation to make these intermittent sources of power reliable enough to become baseload. “Highview Power’s cryogenic energy storage system is equivalent in performance to, and could potentially replace, a fossil fuel power station. Highview Power’s systems can enable renewable energy baseload power at large scale, while also supporting electricity and distribution systems and providing energy security.”
Liquid air is used as the storage medium and provides all the services essential for a robust grid including time shifting, synchronous voltage support, frequency regulation and reserves, synchronous inertia, and black start capabilities. “Unlike competing longduration technologies, such as pumped hydro-power or compressed air, Highview Power’s CRYOBattery can be sited just about anywhere. The CRYOBattery has a small footprint, even at multiple gigawatt-levels, and does not use hazardous materials,” says Cavada. Alex Eller, senior research analyst with Navigant Re-
search, said: “Long-duration technologies such as cryogenic energy storage will become increasingly necessary for an electricity system to transition from a primary reliance on conventional fossil fuel generation to a grid dominated by variable renewable generation from solar and wind.” Other locatable, long-duration energy storage technologies such as lithium ion or lead typically offer a range of four to eight hours of storage. Highview Power has also announced that it has won the 2019 Ashden Award for Energy Innovation with its proprietary CRYOBattery technology
Zaf moves Nizn Technology from laboratory to production plant Nickel zinc battery maker ZAF Energy Systems has moved out of its R&D stage and will begin building batteries at its Joplin, Missouri, production plant this month, the US company told Energy Storage Journal in July. The company expects to start delivering its NiZn group 31 batteries to customer projects in Q3 of
this year. Craig Wilkins, executive vice president of the firm, said: “The innovation has been transferred out of R&D to our Joplin production facility and we will build our first batteries this month for internal testing before they go out to customers. “We are projecting 800 cycles full depth-of-
discharge although our lab results have shown much better performance. Until we have built our full Group 31 format, we are being conservative.” The move into the production plant follows Kurt Salloux’s appointment on ZAF’s team in March. He had been technical adviser to the company since January.
UK firm moves a step closer to commercializing lithium sulphur batteries UK firm Oxis Energy announced on June 6 it is to establish a manufacturing plant in Wales to produce electrolyte and cathode active material specifically for the mass production of lithium sulfur cells. The electrolyte and cathode active material will be
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produced for worldwide export at the plant at the Kenfig Industrial Estate in Port Talbot in Wales. The announcement follows news in February that Oxis had secured a $60 million investment to build the world’s first commercial scale lithium sulfur battery
manufacturing plant in Brazil. The UK plant will initially supply the Brazil manufacturing plant, and eventually supply the active material for millions of units from 2020 until 2030. Oxis will retain its research and development activity in the UK.
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NEWS
Duke Energy gets go-ahead for solar+storage microgrid ... The North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved plans by Duke Energy to build a solar and battery-powered microgrid system to prevent black outs in western North Carolina, Duke Energy announced on May 21. The system — a 2MW solar installation and 4MW lithium ion battery — will improve security of supply to 500 homes as well as deliver services to the area’s power system such as frequency and voltage regulation and ramping support and capacity during system peaks. Zak Kuznar, Duke En-
Record breaking quarter for US energy storage deployment The US’s non-residential energy storage sector grew at its strongest rate since records began in the first three months of 2019. Its residential market reached its second strongest ever quarter, according to a report released on June 4 by Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Energy Storage Association. The US deployed 149MW of energy storage in three months, breaking the previous record set in Q4 2018 by 6%. In megawatt terms, behind-the-meter deployments made up 46% of all projects. The report also found front-of-the-meter and BTM solar projects were increasingly being paired with storage. Compared to 2018, Wood Mackenzie expects this year’s US energy storage market to double and then triple in 2020 as large front-of-the-meter projects come online.
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ergy’s managing director of microgrid and energy storage development, said the pilot project would also inform them how to better deliver distributed
energy and energy storage technologies. An additional component of the plan is a 9MW lithium ion battery system to add security of supply at
… and in Florida too Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy Corporation, announced plans on June 3 to install three battery storage projects totalling 22MW in Florida to improve the state’s power reliability and provide backup generation during power outages.
The utility will use the systems to balance energy demand, manage intermittent renewable generation, increase security-of-supply and defer power grid upgrades. The biggest of the systems is the 11MW Trenton lithium battery in Gilchrist County.
a Duke Energy substation site in the area. Both projects will cost around $30 million and should be operational early next year. The two others will both be 5.5MW lithium projects — one located in Gulf County, the other in Hamilton County. All three projects are to be completed by the end of 2020. Duke Energy Florida aims to invest around $1 billion by 2022 .
Audi pilot project to test used EV packs to deliver grid services German vehicle OEM Audi announced on May 24 it had commissioned a 1.9MWh lithium ion energy storage system on its EUREF Campus in Berlin in a bid to test the interaction between used electric car packs and the grid. The ESS uses used lithium ion batteries from development vehicles to store excess renewable energy from wind or photovoltaic supply or from the campus’s combined heat and power plant. Connected to Berlin’s medium-voltage power grid, the pilot project serves as a real-world testing laboratory to investigate how the system can deliver peak shifting and grid stability services such as frequency response. Audi’s long-term plans include pursuing its emissions-free mobility promise of 40% of all its new cars to be electric by 2025. If only a tenth of all passenger cars in Germany are electric then there will be around 200GWh of flexible capacity.
An Audi spokesman said: “As the number of electric models rises, a huge mobile energy storage unit is growing with it. It carries a great deal of potential, provided that intelligent use is made of the storage capacity. “Connecting electric cars with renewable energies in an intelligent way can have a positive effect on the en-
ergy transition. This would allow charging with solar or wind power, depending on what is available. Further, it would potentially allow flexible reactions to short-term power fluctuations in the grid.” The company is also developing concepts on how to recycle batteries from used modules.
Batteries to back up hydro in Swedish power project Clean energy firm Fortum announced on May 16 it had activated its latest project that combines hydro-electric power with a 5MW/6.2MWh lithium ion energy storage system in Dalarna, Sweden. Fortum, based in Finland, said the batteries would help deliver capacity regulation services as well as reduce wear and tear on the plant caused by quick changes in power supply and demand. Hydropower is the
backbone of the Nordic renewable energy system, accounting for around half of Sweden’s power supply. The country has a 100% renewable energy target by 2040. Tatu Kulla, Fortum’s head of business development, said: “The fact that there has to be sufficient amount of well functioning and precise regulation capacity in Nordic power system, the new batteries, will reinforce the regulation power in the Nordic system.”
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 15
NEWS
Australia gives go-ahead for country’s first compressed air storage facility Australia’s government gave the go-ahead in July for the country’s first compressed air energy storage facility, to be provided by Canadian firm Hydrostor’s Australian subsidiary Hydrostor Australia. The 5MW Angas ACAES project, costing A$30 million ($20.7 million), to be sited at the Angas Zinc Mine near Adelaide, will provide synchronous inertia, load shifting and frequency regulation to support grid security and reliability for Australia’s National Electricity Market.
The project will repurpose existing underground mining infrastructure to install the sub-surface compressed air system, thus converting an unused brownfield site to a clean energy project. A total of A$9 million ($6.2 million) in grant funding has been awarded to Hydrostor for the project, A$6 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and A$3 million from the government of South Australia through its Renewable Technology Fund. “Compressed air stor-
age has the potential to provide similar benefits to pumped hydro energy storage, however it has the added benefits of being flexible with location and topography, such as utilizing a cavern already created at a disused mine site,” said ARENA CEO Darren Miller. The technology works by using electricity from the grid to run a compressor, producing heated compressed air. Heat is extracted from the air stream and stored inside a proprietary thermal store, preserving the energy for
MoU signed for hybrid floating solar/hydro system for Thailand Petrochemical firm Chemicals Business, SCG and floating solar company Ciel & Terre have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a floating solar system for hydro dams in
Thailand, the companies announced on July 19. The floating solar systems can be combined with hydropower dams to create energy-generating hybrid systems, and floating solar
installations can use existing substations, transmission lines and other infrastructure to boost the energy yield hydro dams. Periods of low water availability can be com-
Europe residential storage at tipping point as solar+storage nears grid parity The European residential storage market deployment base is expected to grow five-fold to 6.6GWh by 2024, according to research from analysis firm Wood Mackenzie released in early August. Rory McCarthy, Wood Mackenzie senior research analyst, said: “Germany’s world-leading foray into the residential storage market has enabled Europe to claim the title of the largest residential storage market globally. “Our research shows that annual deployments within the region are set to more than double to reach 0.5GW/1.2GWh by
2024.” Another market commentator said the greater proliferation of residential energy storage “is likely to give a huge fillip to moves to integrate storage into the emerging grid scale virtual power plants of the future. In addition this bodes well for micro-grids as well as the region’s transition to a decarbonized future.” McCarthy’s report is called Europe Residential Energy Storage Outlook 2019. He said: “Off the back of Germany’s success, residential storage is beginning to proliferate into other European
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countries, particularly where market structures, prevailing power prices and disappearing feed-in tariffs create a favourable early-stage deployment landscape. “The economics of storage have been challenging in the past, however we are in the midst of an economic tipping point. The major European markets of Germany, Italy and Spain are moving towards grid parity for solar-plus-storage in the residential space — when the costs per KWh of power from the grid meet the cost per kWh of the solar-plusstorage system.”
use later in the cycle. Compressed air is then stored in the underground cavern, which is kept at a constant pressure using the hydrostatic head from a water column. During charging, compressed air displaces water out of the cavern up a water column to a surface reservoir, and during discharge water flows back into the cavern forcing air to the surface under pressure, where it is re-heated using the stored heat and then expanded through a turbine to generate electricity on demand. pensated by floating solar systems in a hybrid system, allowing the hydropower plant to operate in peaking rather than baseload mode. “SCG is totally committed to innovation for sustainability,” said Suracha Udomsak, chief technology officer at Chemicals Business SCG. “We are always striving to innovate our polymer performance and its application with our R&D activities and networks globally, “With Ciel & Terre, we will provide the best floating pontoon system for floating solar photovoltaics installation.” “Thailand has been a promising market for Ciel & Terre, a country where the solar industry is in demand of cost competitiveness without compromising the safety and quality of the PV installation,” said Ciel & Terre CEO Harold Meurisse. “Partnering with SCG combines the best of two worlds, polymer and floating solar experts, to embrace the major opportunity of hybridization of a floating solar system with a hydroelectric dam.”
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NEWS
Upside Group bucks trend with second 25MWh using lead carbon stationary ESS Solar power plant and battery storage system group of companies Upside Group fired up its second lead carbon energy storage system in Germany on May 3, expanding its battery portfolio to 40MW. The 25MW system, the second of five planned, will deliver primary control reserve grid services — balancing frequency and capacity changes automatically — using advanced lead carbon technology. In a move that bucks the trend, the firm uses lead acid as the storage medium, rather than lithium ion, because the technology offers the economy and safety of lead acid with the low maintenance requirements
of lithium cells, said Upside managing director, Marc Reimer. “The lower energy density compared to lithium cells is not a disadvantage in stationary storage systems. Most lead carbon battery cells are dry accumulators, and the electrolyte is bound in a glass fibre fleece and there are no internal liquids. “Although these cells must also be equipped with a one-way valve for possible outgassing (in the event of over charging), they can be tilted or even flooded without any problems, without the possibility of substances such as sulfuric acid escaping.” The system in Bennewitz, a Saxony municipality, is
able to stabilize the grid 24/7 in a power climate that is seeing grid frequency being adjusted several hundred thousand times a year to cope with an intermittent power supply, the German firm said. The ESS was successfully dispatched in January, ahead of its official commissioning, to prevent a major blackout due to a significant drop in Germany’s grid frequency to below 50 Hz. Reimer said grid frequency must always be readjusted externally due to volatile generation and consumption. He said: “Batteries can do this much better than other technologies. As well as un-
New York energy storage fund could pave way for lead battery deployment The Consortium for Battery Innovation has responded to a decision by New York State governor Andrew Cuomo on April 25 to plough $280 million into energy storage. The CBI says this is a clear opportunity to boost the deployment of advanced lead battery technology. The funding is part of $400 million to further the deployment of 3GW of energy storage by 2030 under a ‘Green New Deal’ that aims to get New York State carbon neutral. CBI believes lead is a better fit for storage than lithium ion because of New York’s stringent planning restrictions, such as fire regulations in buildings, which are “no barrier for lead battery technology”. The cash should provide an incentive for energy storage firms to bid for tenders and lead batteries should be among the first, offering products with a
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99% recycling rate that fits with the green pledge. There have been a number of high profile lithium fires, including a reported 16 in South Korea last year and a fire at a substation of power utility Arizona Public Service that injured eight people last month.
“Many cities want to improve their energy storage capacity but they need battery technology that is both reliable and safe,” said CBI director Alistair Davidson. “Fire safety is of course important in any building, but in built-up areas or
beatably fast response times, it is also much easier for the battery to provide control power, because there is no need to generate electricity first, but excess electricity is stored temporarily if the frequency is too high. “If the frequency is too low, this electricity is returned to the grid. The battery is always half charged and reacts in the required direction, fully automatically, 365 days a year.” Bennewitz is the second joint project between Upside and SMA Sunbelt Energy. The other in the Leipzig area of Germany was inaugurated last September 14, once again using cells manufactured by Chinese firm Narada. tower blocks it is critical. “That’s why buildings in New York are using lead battery storage, and as a consortium we are carrying out research that will develop batteries with improved performance and lifetimes, making it possible for buildings in cities to provide secure and safe electricity and back-up supplies throughout the year.”
UK heritage organization snubs lithium, opts to remain with VRLA batteries Lower costs and simplicity of deployment are the reasons given for why the first heritage site in the UK is to operate 100% off-grid and continue to use lead acid batteries to store power generated by hydro and solar technologies, the National Trust announced on June 5. The new system — a 48volt, 24-cell architecture — uses a VRLA gel cell system from BAE with 30% more energy density than the original 48V battery
bank, installed 14 years ago, using a Sonnenschein gel battery bank of 24 cells. Chris White, technical consultant at Dulas, a renewable energy installer and consultancy firm, said: “The existing lead acid system has worked effectively for 14 years without issue. “We chose lead acid because of its lower cost relative to lithium ion. It’s also simpler to connect lead acid to the existing battery charge controllers and
battery inverters. There are some incompatibility problems with certain lithium ion batteries and charge controllers/inverters that we have experienced in the past. “There is no space constraint on this site, and with the damp environment within the mill we considered lead batteries would be better. We also have greater field experience of using them relative to lithium ion.”
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 17
NEWS
Orion releases extended carbon black product range for greater DCA For the record, Orion Engineered Carbons has extended the range of its speciality carbon blacks, which are tailored for lead batteries. They were showcased for the first time at the Battery Council International meetings in New Orleans at the end of April. “Our new range of high quality carbon blacks act as conductive addi-
bon blacks increase hydrogen evolution as the battery’s negative electrode side resulting in high water loss during charging. The modified surface of these products maintain their conductivity and surface area while suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction lowering water loss to acceptable levels and which gives battery
manufacturers the freedom to use higher loading to achieve higher charge acceptance.” Orion’s new range of products — Printex kappa 210, 220 and 240 grades — follow the acquisition last November of French acetylene black manufacturer SN2A. The firm has since been renamed Orion Engineered Carbons France SAS.
Russian scientists find way to retrieve lead and recycle silver-zinc batteries
suddenly blow up. “With silver zinc you always get a warning when something’s going to happen. It can’t be fully cycled more than 50 to 100 times, but then neither can lithium be fully cycled as many times as we are led to believe. “Once the silver zinc batteries reach their end-of-life they are collected and everything is reclaimed to come back to us.” Adamedes said BST also sometimes used lead as an additive along with other elements such as mercury. “Everything is sent off to our reclamation people and it all comes back,” she said.
Scientists at the National University of Science and Technology in Russia announced on May 21 they had developed a way to recycle silver from silver-zinc military batteries even when it has had lead added to it. Some batteries made for the Russian Navy are colossal, 14-tonne alkaline batteries that contain seven tonnes of silver plate, the scientists said. To save some of the expensive silver, a decade ago manufacturers began adding lead to them as it did not affect performance — yet ultimately saved nearly 500 million Russian roubles ($7.8 million) per battery. However this almost completely prevented recycling the silver — until now. Working with JSC Shchelkovo Plant of Secondary Precious Metals, the procedure is a cascade method that purifies the silver from spent batteries used in military submarines and aircraft so it can be reused. The technology is a twostage melting of silver, as a result of which the melt is separated from the slag,” said Sergey Rogov, associate professor of the university’s MISIS Department of NonFerrous Metals and Gold. “Subsequent rapid cooling
tives and increase the dynamic charge acceptance of batteries by up to 60% while maintaining acceptable water loss,” said Kane Henneke, a sales engineer at the BCI convention. “Our latest Printex kappa grades have very low metallic impurities which results in extended battery cycle life. “Most conductive car-
enables the capture of oxygen, which oxidizes the lead in the composition of the silver material. In the second melting under the coating layer of flux (magnesium and sodium salts) oxidized lead is separated and goes into the slag. “As a result of this twostage process, lead is removed, and a commercial product of 99.99% purity is obtained from raw materials with 85% silver content. The pure product is suitable for the manufacture of a new battery.” Rogov said the technology had been used at JSC Shchelkovo and no additional equipment had been required apart from a highspeed melt cooling unit. “The use of the new technology has allowed involving previously non-recyclable waste of silver-zinc batteries in the production, increasing the volume of products manufactured by the plant by 7.5%,” said Aleksandr Savisko, director for production at JSC Shchelkovo. Using silver in military batteries is ideal because volumetric energy density is very high, says Zoe Adamedes, business development manager at BST Systems, a US designer and manufacturer of power systems
18 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019
including silver zinc batteries for military and deep sea applications. “They’re ideal in places where there’s not a lot of room, especially underwater, where space is very small,” she said. “Often the machines are designed and just an odd-shaped space left for the battery. “Lithium ion has very good energy density and lots of cycles but it needs lots of control circuitry and when it goes, it goes suddenly. Larger applications can work and work then
“As a result of this two-stage process, lead is removed, and a commercial product of 99.99% purity is obtained from raw materials with 85% silver content. The pure product is suitable for the manufacture of a new battery” – MISIS’ Sergey Rogov www.energystoragejournal.com
NEWS — VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS
Autogrid, ENERES in world’s largest virtual power plant venture in Japan Energy software company AutoGrid and Japanese energy services and trading company ENERES announced on June 17 their plan to create the largest storage VPP in the world by asset volume. The project anticipates adding more than 10,000 assets to the VPP between 2020-2021, with rapid scaling in subsequent years. “This project is truly exciting. This is the assimilation of multiple power generation assets forming new microgrids and electrical grids of the future,” says one commentator. AutoGrid will supply ENERES with VPP and customer engagement software to aggregate, dispatch and market energy from demand response and distributed energy resources. The partnership will enable ENERES to combine DR resources into large enough blocks of energy to sell into capacity markets.
The first phase of the project begins this year and will result in a large, dispatchable DR portfolio. A second phase will enable ENERES to deploy a full-scale VPP to aggregate behind-the-meter DERs, including solar PV panels, energy storage systems, combined heat and power units and electric vehicle batteries, along with DR. ENERES will pool DERs from its customers into a dispatchable virtual resource to participate in Japanese wholesale energy and capacity markets. “As solar and storage costs continue to decline and new capacity markets open, DER and DR resources are becoming a key component of our daily operations,” said Masahiro Kobayashi, president of ENERES. “AutoGrid Flex gives us a proven, AI-driven comprehensive distributed energy management solution that allows us to fully
Japanese consortium triples EV/PHEV deployment in vehicle-to-grid experiment The second stage of a project to test V2G technology on Japan’s grid began on June 3 after the country’s ministry of economy, trade and industry approved plans by a consortium of power, gas and vehicle OEMs. It is the second time the companies have participated in this project; this time 40 more electric vehicles/ Plug-in Hybrids (for 59 EV/ PHEV vehicles) will be added to create the VPP. Trials at five locations within Japan will continue through to February 17, 2020, after the consortium was granted cash to cover the costs of the FY2019 virtual power plant construc-
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tion demonstration project. The consortium, of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, TEPCO Energy Partner and TEPCO Power Grid, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Hitachi Systems Power Services and Shizuoka Gas, will investigate demand-side energy resources during the project. The project will investigate how EVs used as a virtual power plant can balance the supply of renewables on the power grid. The consortium will adjust power supply and demand through a two-way power exchange between the accumulators in EV/ PHEV and power grids.
leverage our own DER and DR resources and those of our customers in real time.” “Japan is in the midst of a massive market transformation that requires much greater supplies of flexible energy,” said Amit Narayan, CEO of AutoGrid. “We’re excited to team with ENERES to provide a scalable platform to meet this critical challenge.” This March, the feed-in tariff for Japan’s commercial and industrial solar segment was cut by 22%, with the expectation that the residential sector will follow suit after the 2020 review. AutoGrid says its activity in Japan has increased as the new energy market’s generation targets have driven rapid adoption of storage and as the industry races to
integrate more renewable and storage into the mix to achieve 2030 goals. Separately in May, Schneider Electric, the French energy giant, became a major stakeholder in AutoGrid. Schneider Electric says it “will leverage AutoGrid’s Energy Internet and Flex platforms to add artificial intelligence-driven solutions for customers’ distributed energy projects. “This will accelerate new capabilities for Schneider Electric’s leading microgrid and behind the meter solutions, as well as advance its ability to better serve the utility segment as the grid becomes more distributed and prosumers demand greater participation and control over their energy usage.”
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.
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Innovations for a better world.
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2/6/2019 8:37:08 AM
FLOW BATTERY NEWS
Saudi Arabia to make flow batteries with Schmid, Nusaned and RIWAQ Three firms — Schmid Group, Nusaned Investment (an investment company owned by SABIC) and RIWAQ — announced on May 14 that the parties had agreed to set up a joint venture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia focusing on manufacturing and technology development of vanadium redox flow batteries. The joint venture said it aims to become a global technology leader and champion in the utility-
scale energy storage segment, supporting Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic diversification objectives. With research and development facilities in Germany and Saudi, the joint venture plans to set-up a GW scale manufacturing facility in the kingdom for production in 2020. Saudi Arabia aims to install 57.5GW of renewable capacity by 2030. Utility-scale stationary energy storage systems
will be critical to ensure that the new renewable capacity is stabilized and connected reliably to the grid. The kingdom could also leverage this technology in upcoming mega-projects in the kingdom. The partners in this investment say they are aiming to position the kingdom to become an R&D and manufacturing hub for utility-scale energy storage, and play a leading role in the development of
domestic and international markets. Nusaned Investment is an investment company based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and owned by SABIC with a mandate to increase local content in the kingdom. The SCHMID Group is a technology group based in Freudenstadt, Germany. The RIWAQ Industrial Development Company is an investment and project development company based in Saudi.
US military uses solar-plus-storage with iron flow battery system ESS, the flow battery manufacturer, announced on May 14 that it had deployed its long-duration flow battery system known
as Energy Warehouse at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California. “The 50 kW / 400
kWh battery is integrated into a microgrid with a CleanSpark microgrid controller, and provides up to eight hours of
Ees industry award celebrates energy storage technology mix This year’s ees prestigious annual award recognized solid-state lithium metal polymer and redox flow battery technologies during a ceremony held on the first day of The Smarter E exhibition in Munich on May 15. The annual awards pay tribute to companies’ pioneering products and solutions that advance storage deployment from stationary and mobile solutions to virtual power plants. The year’s winners were French firm Blue Solutions, Austria’s Enerox and German firm Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen. • Blue Solutions’ solidstate, lithium metal polymer battery LMP (lithium metal polymer) 250/400
rack system impressed judges with its high level of safety and the performance offered by the solution. LMP batteries do not contain liquid electrolytes and can be operated at up to 105°C without the need for cooling. • Enerox — part of the CellCube Energy Storage Systems family — also caught the eye of judges with its CellCube FB 5002000. The CellCube storage system is one of the first in the industry to offer vanadium redox flow batteries with a 1,000 volt DC range. The flow battery stores energy in vanadium electrolyte tanks. The scalable, high-performance 250 kilowatt
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units can be used in largescale solar parks and wind farms, self-sufficient building solutions, and standalone grids The vanadium redox flow battery was commended for its ‘electrolyte as a service’, business model that brings capital costs below €300 kW/h — an innovation in the field of flow batteries. • Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen’s Gridcon PCS 4W — power conversion system is a modular, bidirectional storage inverter for on-grid and off-grid applications. Designed as a four-wire system, it can be operated as a TN grid without the need to install additional transformers.
storage to enable backup capabilities for critical loads; operational energy cost savings through on-site generation with storage; and full islanding capabilities for resilience,” says ESS. The project is being completed in partnership with the project’s prime contractor, Bethel-Webcor JV. It is the second Energy Warehouse system deployed in a military microgrid application, says ESS. “The Camp Pendleton project, is the first ever deployment of a solar-plusstorage system utilizing an iron flow battery,” said Anthony Vastola, SVP of projects for CleanSpark. “The solution operates in off-grid mode by default so as to maximize efficiency, utilize solar overgeneration and extend the overall life of the system. CleanSpark provides intelligent energy monitoring and controls, microgrid design and engineering, microgrid consulting services and turn-key microgrid implementation services.
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FLOW BATTERY NEWS
Energy storage stakeholders join forces in move to open US research center Southern Research has opened an Energy Storage Research Center in collaboration with industry leaders, government departments and other scientific bodies, it announced on July 16. The center, which is at Southern Research’s Oxmoor, Alabama engineering campus, is to be an industry-wide resource for testing and validating energy storage technologies. Among the participants are energy firm Southern Company and its subsidiary Alabama Power, the Electric Power Research Institute, the US Department of Energy and its Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “The center will focus on grid-scale energy storage applications in combination with renewables in the southeast through the devel-
opment of joint energy storage research, demonstration and test projects,” Southern Research said. “Additionally, the ESRC will serve as an industrywide resource to evaluate the emerging energy storage technologies needed to fully realize the potential of energy sources such as solar generation, and to improve the reliability and resiliency of the power grid.” One of the ESRC’s first projects is to evaluate a rechargeable flow battery produced by Californiabased Avalon Battery. Its cofounder and chief product officer Matt Harper said he was pleased to help promote technology for grid-scale energy storage systems. “This is the result of years of dedicated work by a team with decades of flow bat-
tery experience and it has been selected by the ESRC for evaluation. We look forward to working with them,” he said. “A well defined portfolio of different energy storage technologies is critical to allow a variety of energy storage plus renewables necessary to optimize the energy mix, increase grid resilience and power quality while minimizing the carbon footprint inherent in the power generation and delivery process,” said Bert Taube, energy storage and renewables program manager with Southern Research’s Energy & Environment division. Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research with the US DOE’s Office of Electricity, said: “A regional research center can provide needed validation of storage
technologies as well as validation of business cases and benefit streams.” The ESRC will be independent, providing thirdparty services to technology vendors and users, among other stakeholders. “The ESRC will broaden our work with stakeholders and technology developers from across the industry to better understand energy storage systems and how to fully use this technology to build the future of energy,” said Roxann Walsh, research and development director at Southern Company. According to the Energy Storage Association, the global energy storage market is growing exponentially, predicting an annual installation size of 40GW by 2022.
RedT sets out terms for merger with flow battery firm Avalon UK vanadium flow battery firm RedT outlined terms on July 25 to merge with Avalon Battery Corporation, the San Franciscobased flow battery company. It will also look for a fundraising of £24 million ($30 million). The two firms have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding and, if approved by shareholders, the deal will see both companies combined to create a flow battery firm that will have a foothold in North America, Europe and Asia. RedT announced in October that it was seeking strategic partners to support its continued growth. “After an extensive search for strategic partners, getting to this stage is a major step forward,” said Neil
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O’Brien, RedT executive chairman. “We will have a global reach, worldleading technology and an enhanced ability to drive down production costs and attract new capital.” Larry Zulch, chief executive of Avalon, said the two firms in combination would create a company with scale, resources and products ‘unprecedented in our segment’. “Vanadium redox flow batteries have long been the safe, dependable and economical choice in energy storage. We can’t imagine a better opportunity than this merger to translate those qualities into business results.” The merger, if approved, will take the form of a share-for-share acquisition of Avalon, RedT shares are valued at 1.65p which val-
Neil O’Brien: “RedT will have a global reach”
ues Avalon at $37.5 million. A fund raising is also planned. The firms said: ‘The merger remains subject to inter alia further due diligence by each party, definitive legal agreements being reached, and a total of at least £24m ($30m) of new
funds being raised to fund the enlarged business. The fundraising and the merger will be subject to the approval of redT’s shareholders and the merger itself is also subject to the approval of the shareholders of Avalon.
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 21
NEWS IN BRIEF
East Penn moves into lithium Lead battery manufacturing giant East Penn announced on August 16 it had bought a majority interest in lithium battery firm Navitas Systems. East Penn says the move will accelerate its expansion into motive power applications and allow it to integrate into other market segments. East Penn said the acquisition was in line with plans
to provide ‘the most robust array of optimized energy storage system solutions’. Michigan-based Navitas Systems was formerly MicroSun IESS, LLC, before the company bought A123 Systems’ Government Solutions Group in 2013 to form Navitas. It makes larger-format lithium battery technology and systems for heavy-duty
Syncarpha and Engine in unique project financing arrangement
the first utility-scale solarplus-storage offering using ENGIE’s new integrated product for wholesale market participation. It will provide Syncarpha with the turnkey system for 20 years and under a market participation agreement, each of the six sites will pay fees in exchange for the rights to operate the solarplus-storage system in the ISO-NE wholesale capacity, reserves and frequency regu-
Energy giant ENGIE Storage is to supply and operate a 19MW/38MWh combined solar-plus-storage portfolio comprising six sites in Massachusetts, the firm announced on July 30. The portfolio will be operated by Syncarpha Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, and it will be
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off-road equipment, deep cycle motive and traction, mission-critical stationary and standby, transportation, defence and renewable energy. East Penn, traditionally a lead acid battery manufacturer, announced in 2016 that it intended to expand its range to lithium ion batteries. In April 2019 it released a Ready Power lithium bat-
tery for forklift trucks, but this is likely to be the first of many new offerings by the company, which said Navitas’ lithium research and development expertise ‘will add to East Penn’s current lithium R&D program’. “We are happy to be joining in partnership with such a strong, well established company,” said East Penn CEO Chris Pruitt.
lation markets. “This unique arrangement delivers substantial added contracted revenue for the projects while implementing ENGIE Storage’s marketleading energy storage sales platform for the long-term benefit of each of the six combined solar and storage sites,” the company said. “Syncarpha selected ENGIE Storage for the portfolio due to ENGIE’s sophisticated and integrated offer, leading software, operational experience, and bankability,” said Cliff Chapman, CEO of Syncarpha. “Working with ENGIE creates incremental value for these assets in addition to the SMART program and meets the financial and risk requirements of tax eqcellcare.com uity investors and lenders.” ENGIE Storage CEO Christopher Tilley said: cellcare.com “This announcement will be the first of many as ENGIE Storage is executing more than 100MWh of solar and storage contracts with market participation agreements for the SMART program.”
private utilities to operate within rural communities on the continent, a PowerGen company statement said. Both Power Gen and Rafiki Power, the statement said, had been instrumental in the new sector of private utilities bringing power to rural Africans. The combination of the two will give PowerGen micro-grid assets, a project pipeline, software IP and human resources, and it means PowerGen can provide 50,000 people with power across various African countries. “We are excited to combine our experience, knowledge, resources and cultures to progress towards a shared vision of transforming lives by building the energy system of the future in Africa,” said Aaron Cheng, president of PowerGen. Jessica Stephens, global coordinator of the Africa MiniGrid Association, formed last year, said that mini-grids made the most sense in communities in rural areas. Of the 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who don’t have access to electricity, 80%-85% of them lived in rural areas, she said. “The International Energy Agency says that mini-grids and other distributed renewables are the most cost effective way to deliver electricity to those people,” she said. “Centralized grids will also play an important role too, but there has to be an integrated approach that includes mini-grids.”
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22 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019
Powergen buys Rafiki Power to boost microgrid offering in Africa
Micro utility developer PowerGen Renewable Energy bought Rafiki Power, the offfor your standby grid specialist arm of European energy giant E.On, on battery systems August 19. The acquisition combines two leading micro-grid companies in Africa, which will help build momentum for
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NEWS IN BRIEF Sumitomo Corporation, Shell invest in blockchain innovator LO3 energy Japanese industrial giant Sumitomo Corporation and oil and gas major Royal Dutch Shell are to invest in US blockchain-powered peer-to-peer energy platform LO3 Energy, according to an announcement by LO3 on July 10. The investments will back the commercialization of its blockchain-based community energy networks. “With the rapid growth of renewable energy and battery storage technologies within the marketplace, Sumitomo Corporation Group anticipates decentralized energy systems becoming an essential function to support efficient use of clean energy, making LO3 Energy’s technology an integral part of this ecosystem,” said a Sumitomo spokesperson. Kirk Coburn, the investment director for Shell Ventures, said: “As we move into a less carbonized future, Shell aims to invest in innovative companies that will help enable the energy transition. LO3 Energy fits right into that space.” LO3 Energy provides peer-to-peer electricity trading platforms using blockchain technology to both retail power consumers and prosumers — those who both produce and consume energy. This technology allows consumers to buy and sell electricity directly from and to one another in a transparent, traceable way.
BMZ, Kion to launch JV for lithium ion batteries BMZ Holding, the European manufacturer of lithium ion battery systems, announced on July 11 it plans to form a joint venture with industrial truck and automation technology maker KION Group. The firm will trade under the name KION Battery Systems, and will manufacture lithium ion batteries for industrial trucks in the EMEA region. Across its brands, KION has sold more than a million electric trucks over the past decade. KION has sold more than a million electric trucks in the past decade. Last year they accounted for 80% of unit sales. BMZ Holding and KION Group will each hold a 50% stake in the firm. “The objective of the JV is to broaden the lithium ion product offering and to increase production capacity to www.energystoragejournal.com
best serve the rapidly growing demand for lithium ion battery systems in this market,” said the firm. The production facility for the joint venture is to be built by BMZ Holding in Karlstein am Main in Germany, the headquarters of the BMZ Group. By 2023, the workforce should consist of around 80 employees working in mainly research, development and production functions. Initially, the new JV will focus on the production of 48V and 80V batteries for counterbalance trucks. The range will later be expanded to 24V batteries for smaller warehouse trucks. The transaction still needs to be approved by antitrust regulators.
Lithium Australia forms alliance with China’s DLG battery Lithium Australia announced on May 9 it had signed a letter of intent with Chinese battery producer DLG Battery to establish a business that would supply and sell DLG’s lithium ion batteries, packs and modules in Australia. The firms will operate a 50:50 owned company called Lithium Australia DLG for this purpose. The partnership also marks the formation of a technology alliance that will fast track the commercialization of Australian firm Very Small Particle Company’s patented cathode powders for use in DLG batteries.
Leclanché signs up Comau to build automated line to make transport batteries Industrial automation company Comau has been commissioned by energy storage firm Leclanché to develop an industrial-scale automated manufacturing line for lithium battery modules for transport applications, the firms announced on June 20. “This partnership will enable us to produce energy storage solutions for e-transport and e-marine applications at an industrial scale,” said Leclanché CEO Anil Srivastava. Comau, which is headquartered in Turin, Italy, will install a line that will fully automate the entire batterymaking process, from stacking and welding pouch cells to the final assembly of up to 32 different product configurations.
Saft buys microgrid firm Go Electric French battery company Saft has bought Go Electric, the US-based developer of distributed energy resiliency systems for microgrids and renewables and generators integration, the firms said on June 17. Saft, which is wholly owned by the oil and gas company Total, aims to build up the energy storage systems side of its business. The acquisition, it says, will enable it to expand from battery design and manufacture to deploying turnkey distributed renewable storage that allows customers to connect to the grid. Go Electric’s microgrid power controller technology enables customers to island them from the grid should a power blackout occur. It has been deployed in military microgrids and commercial sites across the US and Canada.
Cellcube and Pangea Energy sign letter of intent for 50MW/200MWh Cellcube Energy Storage System, through its Austrian subsidiary Enerox, announced on May 13 it had signed a letter of intent with Pangea Energy Pty to supply a 50MW/200MWh vanadium redox battery system in Port Augusta, South Australia. The ESS is being built alongside a planned 50MW solar project at the same site.
Centrica, US DoE to explore second-life EV battery use for grid service Centrica Business Solutions, the distributed energy and power arm of Centrica, announced on June 4 it is to partner the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory on a trial to explore the use of energy storage systems to deliver grid services.
Power solutions firm Generac Holdings buys into battery maker For the record, US power firm Generac Holdings has taken over lead acid and lithium battery maker Pika Energy, the firm announced on April 29. The take-over signals the possible start of a greater willingness to use lead battery products as part of a storage mix. Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 23
NEWS IN BRIEF Tesla completes buy-out of supercap firm Maxwell Tesla, the US electric car company, has finalized its purchase of supercapacitor maker Maxwell Technologies, it announced on May 16. Headquartered in California, US, Maxwell develops ultracapacitors and supercapacitors for automotive, heavy transportation, renewable energy and other energy storage applications. The definitive agreement to buy Maxwell was made in February, when industry sources estimated the sale price was $218 million.
Akasol opens first lithium plant in North America German lithium battery maker Akasol is to open its first production facility in the US in response to growing demand for its high-energy battery modules, the company announced on June 26. The $40 million plant will be built in Detroit, Michigan, with production slated to begin in 2020 and capacity to reach 400MWh a year in 2021. The company says the state of Michigan has given its full backing to the plan, awarding a business development grant to help with construction costs. The facility will have a similar capacity to the current one in Langen, Germany, and will initially focus on the second generation AKASystem OEM PRC battery system, with high energy density battery systems to follow. Akasol’s batteries are mainly used in commercial vehicles, buses, trains, industrial vehicles and the marine sector.
BASF and NGK team up for long duration MW-scale sodium sulfur battery sales Japanese firm NGK Insulators, the first firm to commercialize sodium sulfur batteries in scale, and BASF New Business, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German chemical group BASF, announced on June 11 the conclusion of a sales partnership agreement. The move is timely as system developers are increasingly looking for longer duration energy storage. NGK commercialized its sodium sulfur battery system some 15 years ago. The firm says it has delivered NAS battery systems to about 200 locations worldwide with a total output 24 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019
of more than 560MW and a storage capacity of 4GWh. The partnership allows BASF another entry point into the energy market and also allows NGK the ability to use BASF’s worldwide distribution network, which should allow it to achieve higher market penetration.
Highview signs up Tenaska to develop four cryogenic storage plants Up to four giga-scale long-duration cryogenic energy storage plants will be developed in the US over two years in a contract signed on July 18 between Highview Power and Tenaska Power. Highview Power, which provides long-duration energy storage systems using liquid air, signed the contract with Tenaska Power Services, which provides energy management services to generation and demand-side customers in the US. The two partners will identify, model, optimize and provide energy management services for the plants, the first of which will be developed in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas market. This is the first project in the US for the London-based Highview Power.
DNO set to deploy UK’s biggest onshore wind farm connected ESS Plans by UK distribution network operator Scottish Power to build a 50MW lithium ion battery energy storage system connected to a wind farm in Whitelee, Scotland, has been given the go ahead, the DNO confirmed to Energy Storage Journal on June 11. Commentators say this is the most ambitious energy storage project in the UK to date. South Lanarkshire Council granted initial planning permission in May, with Scottish ministers rubber-stamping the proposal on June10. The ESS will store power from the wind farm’s 215 turbines to provide system operator National Grid resilience and stability services such as reactive power and frequency response.
Consortium Inaugurates 22MW German BESS Three companies — renewables management firm Enel Green Power Germany (a subsidiary of Enel), renewable energy company Enertrag and energy storage company Leclan-
ché — have inaugurated a 22MW lithium ion energy storage system in Cremzow, Germany, the companies announced on May 16. The project is owned by EGP Germany (90% share holding), with the remainder owned by Enertrag. Swiss firm Leclanché will be the project’s storage supplier. The €17 million ($16 million) ESS will deliver primary control energy services to help stabilize the German power grid in real time within 30 seconds.
Stem partners Syncarpha to provide solar + storage in Massachusetts Stem, the US energy firm, has partnered Syncarpha Capital, the New York-based private equity firm that develops energy systems, to build 28.2MWh of large-scale solar plus storage projects in Massachusetts, the company announced on July 9. Five sites will be provided with AI-driven storage solutions across the US state, all developed and owned by Syncarpha Capital with partial support from the Solar Massachuetts Renewable Target Program, a state initiative. “The deal represents Stem’s expansion into the front of meter market, where distribution-connected sites are participating in the regional wholesale markets,” the company said.
Huge solar plus storage system to be built near Las Vegas in Nevada A partnership between US energy firms NV Energy and 8minute Solar Energy and the Moapa Band of Paiutes Indian reservation has agreed to develop the largest solar plus storage project in the US state. It will also be one of the largest in the world, the companies announced on June 25. The Southern Bighorn Solar & Storage Center will be built on the Moapa Band of Paiutes Indian reservation near Las Vegas, and will include a 475MW solar array with 540MWh of lithium battery storage. Once up and running, the system will have an annual production capacity to power more than 180,000 homes. Subject to approval by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, construction of the project will begin mid-2022, to be operational by the end of 2023. www.energystoragejournal.com
COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE Energy storage installations are forecast to boom globally over the next 20 years, driven by widespread adoption of renewal energy and falling capital costs. Solar plus storage is in the driving seat — but things can change.
Solar in the driving seat
Energy storage installations around the world will multiply exponentially over the next 20 years — and the largest proportion of these will likely be used to store energy generated by solar power. But the dynamics of this sector remain driven by government or public sector, and changes to these or a wider inertia in some governments could stymie growth and change the mix of renewal energy in years to come. The long-term growth of energy storage installations is forecast in a report by research company BloombergNEF (BNEF), which suggests the size of the market will grow from a modest 9GW/17GWh deployed in 2018 to 1,095GW/2,850GWh by 2040. The report, Energy Storage Outlook 2019, covers stationary batteries used in eight applications. It excludes pumped hydro storage. Powering this growth will be investors looking to capitalize on the world’s growing need for energy stor-
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age: a 122-fold boom in stationary storage over the next two decades will require $662 billion of investment, according to BNEF estimates. Logan Goldie-Scot, head of energy storage at BNEF, says the capacity of energy storage installations doubled between 2017 and 2018, illustrating the buoyancy of this sector. He says the real momentum is with solar plus storage. “As developers and utility companies begin to better understand how they can use this technology to both manage their renewable portfolio and meet their peaking capacity, this has been a major driver of growth,” he says.
“There are a lot of contracts being signed and installations in the pipeline. “But what has really changed is the rapid reduction in total energy storage system costs, which has changed the perspective on the viability of this technology. It has opened up many opportunities that did not exist a few years ago. “In the near term, renewables-plusstorage, especially solar-plus-storage, has become a major driver for battery build. This is a new era of dispatchable renewables, based on new contract structures between developer and grid.”
“Overall, 2018 was a banner year for energy storage, and 2019 is primed to repeat and expand on these successes” — Kelly Speakes-Backman, Energy Storage Association Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 25
COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE Falling costs
Goldie-Scot says this has been achieved by a mixture of the cost of lithium itself falling slightly, but more importantly a large increase in the size of manufacturing plants, resulting in economies of scale. Lithium ion batteries have also benefited from what he calls “meaningful” advances in technology in recent years. “All this means the batteries are cheaper and performing better in terms of life span, operational performance and energy density,” he says. Within the power market, he says, lithium ion batteries now dominate;
lead acid batteries are now only really used in uninterrupted power supply installations for telecoms companies. Lead has made little headway elsewhere, flow batteries are occasionally used, but in 2018 85% of all new storage commissions used lithium ion. “This is a new era of dispatchable renewables, based on new contract structures between developer and grid,” Goldie-Scot says.
Pricing arbitrage
Goldie-Scot says the reason solarplus-storage projects have taken the lead over wind-plus-storage is because
“This is a new era of dispatchable renewables, based on new contract structures between developer and grid” — Logan Goldie-Scot, BNEF
A second local authority solar-plus-storage installation in West Sussex, UK has 4.4MW of battery storage
26 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019
of when they can generate energy. Solar assets deliver energy at consistent times of day — meaning that the value of that energy is diminished. If it is stored and used at peak times, its value increases. Though wind is less consistent it is more balanced in terms of when it delivers energy to the grid. “The pricing arbitrage possible between when it is generated and when it can be sold after being stored means that solar is the better option in terms of the economics,” Goldie-Scot says. “Power purchase agreements can be based around this; it is much harder to get the same economic to work with wind.” The other reason is that state and government policies have favoured solar-plus-storage projects. In the US, solar projects benefit from a Investment Tax Credit (ITC) scheme, while some states have their own initiatives to encourage investment in the sector. States were encouraged to act by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which in February 2018 passed a regulation directing regional grid operators across the US to encourage the use of storage in wholesale electricity markets. The federal ITC, meanwhile, is set at 30%, falling in annual steps to 10% in 2022 for commercial and utility-scale solar-plus-storage. In March 2018 the IRS clarified, to the benefit of solar-plus-storage, that batteries could receive this credit as long as most of their energy was sourced from solar panels. Jason Burwen, vice president, policy with the US Energy Storage Association, says it’s important to bear in mind that storage optimizes all assets on the electric grid, and solar-pairing is driven largely by the opportunity to avail the Sec 48 & 25D ITCs. Goldie-Scot agrees that the use of tax credits in the US has been critical to the development of solar-plus-storage. “It really is a result of the ITCs. They change the economics,” he says. But this mix could change in future years if further legislation is passed. In April, additional legislation was filed to apply the credit to all forms of stand-alone energy storage. Burwen says that technically, most energy storage on the grid is pumped hydro (22GW), which is not covered in the BNEF report. Of the ~1GW of battery storage now on the grid in the US, approximately half is standalone, with the remainder co-located with solar — driven by tax credits. Burwen says momentum is growing to change this dynamic. “There’s
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COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE a bipartisan, bicameral effort to make storage eligible as a standalone asset for the federal investment tax credit enjoyed by solar; ESA is working with the Solar Energy Industries Association, the American Wind Energy Association, and other clean energy trade groups to pass this bill,” he says. “If that happens, we would expect a larger diversity of configurations, with some solar-paired, some paired with other types of generation, and a large share standalone. Congress needs to pass a national Investment Tax Credit now for energy storage.”
ALSO ON THE RISE: THE SCALE OF EMERGING PROJECTS
Strong US growth
This robust growth in the US storage market is illustrated by research produced by Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the ESA, released in March 2019, which shows that US energy storage nearly doubled in size in 2018 and is expected to double again in 2019. The report, US Energy Storage Monitor 2018 Year in Review, shows that some 777 MWh of grid-connected energy storage was deployed in the US in 2018, 80% more than in 2017. The report shows that 2018 saw robust growth in both behind-the-meter and front-of-the-meter energy storage. The final quarter of 2018 broke the previous record for Megawatt hours deployed in a single quarter by 50%, with large FTM projects in Hawaii and Texas making up a significant portion of the total. “Overall there was strong US energy storage market growth in 2018, especially in the residential market, which came into its own,” Brett Simon, senior storage analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of ESA, said: “Looking back on 2018, states continued to lead, with a series of gubernatorial, legislative and regulatory actions aimed at unlocking the potential of storage as a central catalyst for modernizing and creating a more resilient, efficient, sustainable and affordable electricity grid. “Incorporating energy storage in utility planning processes proved to be a key policy theme as well, with the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners adopting a resolution calling on utilities to include storage in long-term planning efforts. At the federal level, FERC’s landmark, bipartisan Order 841, provided a critical policy signal that triggered discussions on storage deployment barriers in regional markets. Overall, 2018
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The growth is not just in the number of solar projects but also their scale. In 2012 you could probably count the number of true solar storage projects on one hand. The scale of the projects now emerging was exemplified in March this year, when Florida Power & Light, a utility owned by NextEra Energy, revealed plans to build a 409MW energy storage project powered by solar energy, enough to distribute some 900MWh of electricity and power 329,000 homes for two hours. The Manatee Energy Storage Centre, expected to be up and running by late 2021, will be four times the size of the largest battery system operating anywhere, according to Florida Power & Light. It also pointed out that, though this is the biggest, it follows hot on the heels of other similarly large projects.
There are others in the pipeline. In February this year, utility company Arizona Public Service revealed plans to build 850MW of solar-plus-storage in the state. It is now seeking two partners on the project: one to add batteries to its existing solar plants and another to develop a large new solar plant paired with storage. Meanwhile, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, in its latest integrated resource plan, revealed in June 2019 it was aiming to add 1,800MW of solar PV and 920MW of energy storage. “Now, both the frequency of projects and their size is increasing,” Goldie-Scot says. “These projects are on a completely different scale from what we have been used to seeing in the market. They are also way beyond testing pilot projects now. These things are full scale commercial.”
Planned to be up and running by late 2021, Florida Power & Light’s Manatee Energy Storage Centre will be four times the size of any battery system anywhere
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 27
COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE “Congress needs to pass a national Investment Tax Credit now for energy storage. A national storage ITC is a common sense policy that everyone can agree on: it creates jobs, bolsters the economy, and improves America’s energy reliability and resilience” — Jason Burwen, US Energy Storage Association
HERE COME THE MONEY MEN …
Different types of deals attract different types of investors. Where longterm power purchase agreements are in place on solar-plus-storage, Goldie-Scot says the banks will back projects. “If they have those longterm guarantees there is certainly interest from banks,” he says. Where projects are more exposed to potential merchant risk, such as changes in energy prices and capital costs, private equity money is more likely to be involved with the likes of Gore Street Capital and Gresham House active players. In April Gresham launched a fund designed to invest in some 182MW of battery storage projects. In June, Gore Street entered into agreements to acquire a 160MW portfolio of battery storage projects in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, private equity firm Energy Capital Partners recently acquired Convergent Energy + Power, securing a foothold in the energy storage development business in the process. It might seem that little is likely to
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halt the rise and rise of solar-plusstorage globally. Indeed, there are a number of trends driving this market, such as falling capital and production costs and decarbonization targets, which seem unlikely to change. But it might not be as straight forward as that. One emerging nuance in how the market might develop is the emergence of storage projects that combine solar and wind. In July 2019, wholesale electricity supplier NextEra Energy Resources revealed plans to develop the largest co-located wind, solar and energy storage project in the US, which will boast total capacity of 700MW when it is completed in 2023. Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC) has signed a PPA with NextEra Energy Resources for the power from the project. Such projects could become more commonplace. And as Burwen at the ESA says in relation to the federal tax credits in the US, it seems likely that legislative changes could well drive investment in a wider mix of energy projects and storage.
was a banner year for energy storage, and 2019 is primed to repeat and expand on these successes.” The report says 311MW of energy storage was deployed in the US in 2018, with FTM accounting for 47% in MW terms. California led the US market and Texas, New York and Hawaii also saw significant activity. More BTM storage was deployed in 2018 in the US than any previous year on record, accounting for 53% of MW deployed in 2018. The US BTM market will pick up an increasing share of overall storage market value and is expected to account for more than half of annual market value in dollar terms by 2021. Not everyone is happy with the dynamic between state incentives and the growth of solar. In California, the number of jobs in solar has been falling in line with a decline in its annual solar installations, which dropped nearly 10% in 2017 and 2018.
Anesco executive chairman Steve Shine says lack of energy storage made recent UK power blackouts inevitable
“Everything is stacking up against batteries at the moment… No one is investing. But we need storage with more wind and solar being built and the government and grid need to get a grip on this quickly. Demand is only going to increase” —Steve Shine, Anesco www.energystoragejournal.com
COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE This is something the California Solar & Storage Association blames on policy changes at state level, including modifications in investor-owned and publicly-owned utility net energy metering policies as well as changes to rate structures that have been designed to be less solar friendly. “In addition, persistent utility interconnection barriers and permitting red tape continue to drag the California solar market, causing delays and added costs and slowing down the consumer adoption of solar energy and energy storage,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director, California Solar & Storage Association. “As the state deepens its commitment to clean energy on paper, establishing a 100% clean energy goal by 2045 in 2018, it has simultaneously weakened foundational policies that support local clean energy markets. If California hopes to lead the world in realizing a clean energy future it must maintain strong policies that allow local renewable energy technologies to compete and thrive.”
In the near term, renewables-plus-storage, especially solar-plus-storage, has become a major driver for battery build. This is a new era of dispatchable renewables, based on new contract structures between developer and grid.” WORLD’S LARGEST SOLAR+STORAGE COMING TO AUSTRALIA
The global picture
While the US is growing fast, it’s just one of a number of other countries pushing the energy storage market forward. Just 10 countries are on course to represent almost three quarters of the global market in gigawatt terms, according to BNEF’s forecast. South Korea is the lead market in 2019, but will soon cede that position, with China and the US far in front by 2040. The remaining significant markets include India, Germany, Latin America, southeast Asia, France, Australia and the UK. Some interesting solar-plus-storage projects have occurred in the UK with a number of public bodies investing in this technology. In late 2018, for example, West Sussex County Council completed the UK’s second subsidyfree solar farm, the first by a local authority using battery storage. The Westhampnett project combines 7.4MW of solar with a 4.4MW battery storage unit on a closed 35-acre landfill site owned by the council close to a local grid connection. The project is the second solar farm to be completed by West Sussex Council following a 5MW Tangmere project in October 2015. However, Westhampnett is unsubsidized. Energy will be repurchased from Your Energy Sussex, a council-backed energy supplier formed to power the local authority’s operations. This will be
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Australia’s Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner on July 19 gave the go-ahead for possibly the largest solar-plus-storage project in the world to be built in its desert region, ultimately providing Singapore with a fifth of its electricity. Talks have begun with developer Sun Cable, which is based in Singapore, to install solar panels on a 15,000-hectare site near Tennant Creek and connect them to a High Voltage Direct Current undersea cable that will send the generated power to the island nation some 4,000 kilometres away. It will also supply the city of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, with power. The solar farm will generate 10GW and have storage capacity, using batteries, for 20GWh-30GWh. Sun Cable’s $20 billion AustraliaSingapore Power Link project, which has been given ‘major project status’ by the Northern Territory government, was called a ‘game changer’ by Gunner. He said
the project would ‘announce the territory as a major world player for renewable energy exports’. “The Tennant Creek region has one of the highest solar irradiance resources on the planet, making it a perfect location for the proposed solar farm,” he said. “The project will seek to supply long term, competitive, stably priced renewable electricity to the Darwin and Singapore markets. Integrating the ASPL into the developing ASEAN power grid will also be assessed in the detail during the development phase.” A Project Development Agreement will now be negotiated between the Northern Territory government and Sun Cable. In June, the country’s largest solar-plus-storage project was unveiled, a 25MW Tesla battery integrated into a 60MW solar farm in the state of Victoria. The project was financed by a mixture of the Australian government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and private equity.
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 29
COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE combined with grid power purchased during periods of low pricing to be sold back at times of demand under an arbitrage model. Given the longer payback period of such projects, local authorities are well placed to get such projects off the ground. “We anticipate others will look at this and mimic the model in the future,” Goldie-Scot says. In the UK too the future growth of the market will depend much on government policies and incentives. In June, the UK became the first major economy to commit to aiming for
net zero carbon emissions. The aim is 2050 and the solar-and-storage industries are now watching closely to see how government policy may be used to ensure this becomes a reality. Jack Dobson-Smith, head of public affairs for the Solar Trade Association in the UK, says the move will trigger opportunities in the market but much also needs to be done legislatively — not just in terms of incentives but in terms of the wider way in which the energy network works in the UK. “The market for large-scale energy storage in the UK has tremendous po-
SOUTH KOREA, THE LEADER … FOR NOW
tential, and is poised for growth over the coming years,” he says. “The government’s recently-announced net zero ambitions will drive further deployment of wind and solar in the near term, and this will open up significant new opportunities for gridscale storage to manage fluctuations in output from variable generation. “Government has a key role to play in unlocking this growth by reducing constraints on new storage development, establishing a clear and robust carbon price signal post-Brexit, and setting out a legislative definition for energy storage as distinct from generation and demand, so as to remove double-charging of network charges. “We are also advocating on behalf of our members for the network companies and the system regulator, Ofgem, to enable more flexible network connection options and prioritize storage to reduce network congestion and enable more renewables connect.”
Ambitious targets
South Korea topped the rankings of energy storage deployment in 2018, accounting for one third of all global capacity installed in 2018 for grid scale and behind-the-meter installations. The country has also installed 1.64GW of solar capacity in the first seven months of this year alone. Although not all of that will include storage, the country is investing
heavily in the sector driven largely by initiatives launched in the country in 2017, whereby operators that install energy storage systems at their solar plants will be given additional points on assessment of their renewable energy certificates. The incentive covers storage colocated with new solar PV plants as well as retroactive storage installations with existing PV plants.
Global cumulative storage deployment
BNEF says just 10 countries will represent up to three quarters of the global market in gigawatt terms for energy storage
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The moves towards energy storage are partly driven by a bigger picture, where many parts of the world are setting increasingly ambitious targets on decarbonization and moving away from fossil fuels. In the US, for example, California and a number of other states have committed to 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045. California governor Jerry Brown signed in the new law, regarded as ambitious by many, in September 2018. Such initiatives, though they may seem a long way off, are important because they influence the way investors think today on long-term projects. “These concrete commitments to zero carbon emissions are making a huge impact on investment decisions today,” Goldie-Scot says. “If you are considering investing in building a gas power plant in California, which might have a 25 or 30-year life-span, you are close to that cut-off point. So it is having a dramatic affect on how investors and utilities are making decisions right now.” There is also a wider fundamental transition developing in the power system and transportation sector. Falling wind, solar and battery costs mean wind and solar are set to make up almost 40% of world electricity in 2040, up from 7% today. Meanwhile passenger electric vehicles could become a third of the global passenger vehicle fleet by 2040, up from less than 0.5% today, adding huge scale to the battery manufacturing sector.
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COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE Investigators now suspect the problems on the grid started when lightning hit part of the network near Cambridge
Major power blackouts in the UK could have been resolved with battery storage The UK experienced a severe blackout this August, caused by two outages at a gas-fired power plant and an offshore wind farm at almost the same time. These triggered a rapid drop in frequency, in turn promoting parts of the grid to shut down as an automatic safety precaution. The result was chaos for almost a million people in England and Wales, including London and major transport networks. Steve Shine, the executive chairman of Anesco, the biggest solar energy and energy storage developer in the UK, says the event was inevitable and known as a risk to National Grid. “Battery storage technology would have resolved this issue and is absolutely essential as we move towards a much larger renewable network,” he said. “Despite everyone knowing how important they are to the system, and promises being made about tariffs that would make batteries investable, we are still waiting.” He says government needs to convert objectives and strategy into action. While the government has set many laudable targets relating to carbon emissions and renewable energy, a much more coordinated strategy is required to improve the UK network to the point it can better manage more types of renewable energy — and a big part of this should be incentives or certainty to encourage investors to invest in energy storage. Storage can provide the balance the system needs and deal with the volatility, Shine says. He says solar lends itself well to storage because of the arbitrate between the price the energy can be sold for at peak generation (when the sun is shining) and the price it can be sold for at other times of the day — which works as long as it can be stored. But wider financial incentives also need to be reviewed. Shine claims that the land tax applied to sites designated for solar is three times what it is for coal generators — and it is four times for energy storage sites. “Yet we are meant to be phasing coal out,” he says. On top of this, no feasible tariffs or certainty exist for storage projects. Investors don’t need subsidies, they need certainty. “Investors are taking on the full merchant risk, and therefore require higher returns,” he says. “That means they are simply not going to invest. The truth is there are almost no new storage assets being built in the UK because the
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investment case is simply not there. “Everything is stacking up against batteries at the moment. They keep tweaking around the edges but as a result of that, investor confidence is weak. No one is investing. But we need storage with more wind and solar being built and the government and grid need to get a grip on this quickly. Demand is only going to increase with electric heat and EV charging. Someone needs to get hold of this and produce a joinedup strategy. “Solar is a very cost-efficient option, hybrid sites (solar or wind with storage) will be the best investment but sensible tariffs need to be put in place that make batteries investable. You need to de-risk this sector for investors; at present no one looks at batteries as a good investment, yet nearly everyone knows we have to have them. “Battery capital costs are as low as they are going, Anesco is getting the best revenues and managing the lowest costs, we are looking at new solutions but to move this on we must treat this asset class differently from a normal generator, it is a great tool for the network and essential if we are going to meet the climate change targets, but investors simply don’t like the returns against the risk.” Despite these challenges, Anesco was behind the UK’s first subsidy-free solar-storage farm, completed in late 2017 in Clayhill, Bedfordshire. In March 2019, a deal was struck that saw EDF Energy provide a guaranteed floor price for storage — a first within the sector at the time — but Shine says the main reason that project went ahead was because Anesco saw it as a pilot project and a way of developing skills and knowledge in what will be a growth sector in the future — if the government’s energy strategy is sorted out. The 44.6-acre site houses 31,240 solar panels, totalling 10MW of solar PV, and is co-located with five 1.2MW batteries. EDF Energy works with Anesco and technology partner Upside Energy to enhance the efficiency and profitability of the Clayhill assets, securing contracts with grid operators and generating revenue through direct access to wholesale markets. But Shine says unless the government acts, further projects will not follow. “If something isn’t done, we will not deliver the carbon targets and events like last Friday will be a more regular event,” he says.
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COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE Research analysts around the world are predicting a huge boom in the match of solar+ storage, reports Paul Crompton.
Time to get the big picture — everything is falling into place
The figures speak for themselves. Renewable energy provided a record 44% of all the electricity consumed in Germany in the first half of this year. In the UK, John Pettigrew, chief executive of the UK’s National Grid recently trumpeted that 2019 will be the year zero-carbon power beats fossil fuel-fired generation for the first time. A similar pattern, to varying degrees, is emerging across Europe — and in the US too. The latest report US Solar Market Insight, compiled by Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables with the Solar Energy Industries Association, predicted that more than 13GW of solar would be installed in the US by the close of this year. In total the world’s solar generation plant capacity should reach 1,026GW
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by 2022, according to member-led industry association SolarPower Europe in its Global Market Outlook 20182022 report. But if the growth in distributed energy is unmissable, the growth in battery storage is patchy and variable. So Europe, a contender for the largest energy storage market in terms of deployments as a whole, was left behind last year as the global front-ofthe-meter, solar-plus-storage market grew six fold, according to industry analysts Wood Mackenzie. The firm says this is because of auctions for renewables held by European government member states continue to drive the front-of-the-meter markets and are the primary driving force behind utility solar development
in Europe today. The auctions are technology neutral (both wind and solar compete head to head) and technology specific (auctions for buckets of solar, or wind as separate auctions). But, importantly, they do not incentivize solar-plus-storage development unlike other regions with strong deployment rates such as Australia, South Korea, and the US, which led the way in terms of megawatts last year with a combined installed capacity of 540MW, compared to just 6MW in Europe. This is because the European auctions do not value dispatchable solar as there is no system level need for it in most power markets, says Rory McCarthy, senior storage analyst,
Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 33
COVER STORY: SOLAR + STORAGE Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. “These auctions are just for renewables, and there is no value for dispatchability. “Therefore, adding storage will increase the project cost, and the developer will lose to a less expensive, solar only bid. Storage type requirements may be added to these type of auctions in future, as we recently heard potentially from Portugal, but we will have to see how auction dynamics develop,” he says. “The market needs renewables for decarbonization, and can achieve further penetration of solar without the need for large volumes of storage at present, particularly as most of Europe is well interconnected with big volumes of conventional plant that can balance the system.” However, this will change in coming years as the penetration of renewables increases and conventional power generation plants drop off. He forecasts that by 2030 Europe’s power supply will be at 50% renewables penetration or more, destabilizing the system and paving the way for a thriving storage market. BloombergNEF predicts wind, solar and battery technology will account for almost half of all global power supply by 2050. In the past decade the utility-scale ESS market has seen almost 9GW of non-pumped hydro come online, found Navigant Research in its How Utilities Can Look Beyond Natural Gas with Cost-Effective Solar Plus Storage Strategies report. Lithium ion battery storage accounts for around 30% of that capacity, and 70% of all advanced battery capacity deployed in the seven years up to 2018. But, that capacity is fitted either independent of renewable sources, as a means of managing supply, or retrospectively. That path to a thriving storage market will be lined with the seeds of falling battery costs, which will lead to energy storage systems becoming an increasingly cost-competitive alternative to natural-gas-fired power plants. In its New Energy Outlook 2019, BNEF reported that lithium ion battery pack prices reached $176 per kWh last year, down from an average $1,160 per kWh in 2010, and forecasts that within five years the price could drop below $100. The cost decline has meant that the benchmark levelized cost of electricity for lithium ion batteries has declined 35% to $187 per MWh since the first half of
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“Even a few years ago you would talk to solar installers and they wouldn’t even be thinking about storage, they wouldn’t even have a product offering. Now practically all of them, if they don’t have a storage offering, are investigating ways to have it because they see it as a cornerstone of their business.” 2018, the research company reported in March. The company also reports the benchmark LCOE for offshore wind had tumbled by almost a quarter, and onshore wind and solar has reached $50 and $57 per MWh, respectively (down 10% and 18% from last year), for projects that began construction at the start of this year. Elena Giannakopoulou, head of energy economics at BNEF, said at the time of the report that batteries co-located with solar or wind projects were starting to compete, in many markets and without subsidy, with coal and gas-fired generation for the provision of ‘dispatchable power’ that could be delivered to meet grid demand, rather than at the time of generation. Tracking the trend for FTM solar plus system projects is the market for pairing solar with behind-the-meter applications at the time of deployment. “One thing that continues to be a growing trend in the BTM sector in the US is the growth of solar plus storage,” says Brett Simon, senior analyst at consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables who focuses on energy storage. “We are seeing more and more solar developers and installers start to offer storage and install storage and see it as a really substantial growth area in the US. “Even a few years ago you would talk to solar installers and they wouldn’t even be thinking about storage, they wouldn’t even have a product offering. Now practically all of them, if they don’t have a storage offering, are investigating ways to have it because they see it as a cornerstone of their business. “When you talk to some that are active in Southern California they are already reporting that one-in-five or one-in four solar systems also have storage attached, and they see that value as only increasing.” The trend is based on the falling
LCOE projections for both renewables and lithium ion storage. As projects become more attractive to investors, the industry will only witness will see more projects coupling renewables with energy storage on the BTM side of the supply chain. “It’s very much to their advantage to couple energy storage directly so you have a guaranteed output,” says Sue Babinec, Argonne National Laboratory Program Lead – Grid Storage. “When they do that, one of the things that is happening in storage is that the duration the batteries are being used for is longer. So it’s getting shifted to four hours. “Ten years ago frequency regulation was the only thing you could afford to do with battery storage but as their cost comes down you can afford to use it for longer periods so they went to one hour, then they went to two hours and now they are using four hours.” While lithium ion batteries can meet four-hour demand, there is a gap for longer duration storage. This is where the eight hours offered by flow batteries could find its market place. “Theoretically the best equals low cost. So the best, lowest cost approach to energy storage, on paper, changes as a function of duration. So right around six hours of duration, depending on the details, becomes economically viable,” Babinec says. “Flow cell manufacturers are just ramping up in their deployment but they don’t have the economy of scale of lithium ion and today the majority of all deployments for the majority of durations are lithium ion. However, as the market matures and demand goes up, funding for demonstration projects will continue to increase, but at the moment flow cells are just not as mature as lithium ion, that’s why they are behind. “It’s a question frankly that lithium ion keeps coming down in price and so the bar for flow batteries is getting higher as lithium ion gets cheaper.”
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BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI ‘Innovator’ may be an over-used term in modern battery circles, but it certainly applies to Paul Rüetschi. Rüetschi has been a pivotal figure in solving many of the development problems that plagued the advent of VRLA batteries, as well as a host of other energy storage chemistries and technologies. Kevin Desmond reports.
Understanding the mechanisms of energy Lead batteries may not be flavour of the month for many in the lithium world. But it would be foolish to ignore some of the giants of energy storage who took battery development to new heights in the 1960s through to the new century. Among the forefront of some of these brilliant men and women is Paul Rüetschi, an all-round electrochemist as comfortable in researching, improving and commercializing lead batteries as working with fuel cells, nickel-cadmium, nickel-hydride batteries, silver oxide-zinc, manganese dioxide-zinc primaries, thermal batteries, and more…
Rüetschi — pronounced Richey — was born in 1925 in Schafisheim, a small town in the Swiss district of Lenzburg and a half hour’s drive from Zurich. An early aptitude for science led to studies at the Teacher’s College in Wettingen and then on to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The institute — known in German as ETH Zurich — was already one of the most famous polytechnics in Europe. Today it’s ranked third in the continent, just behind Oxford and Cambridge. And in the 1950s it was quite simply one of the foremost institutions of its kind in post-war Europe. It was at ETH that Rüetschi’s first
He returned to the US, this time to take the position of manager of the electrochemical research department at the Electric Storage Battery Company — nowadays better known as Exide Technologies
full involvement with the world of batteries and energy storage began. And it was here where he obtained a PhD from the Department of Physical Chemistry, studying under its professor, Gottlieb Trumpler. Trumpler was a leader in his field at this time. His research work made a major contribution to the understanding of electrochemical passivation of metals of decisive importance in the field of corrosion. His work included polarography, the electrolytic deposition of metals, the flow of material on electrolysis, and the examination of chemical and physical equilibriums. There was a strong bond in the relationship between Rüetschi and Trumpler. In Rüetschi, Trumpler found a collaborator, eager and very quick to learn. For Rüetschi, Trumpler was a keen and sympathetic teacher and provided the gateway to much of his later research.
Top left: Identity photo of Rüetschi as a student. Middle: Rüetschi some time in the 1950s in the US (PHOTO CREDIT: AIP EMILIO SEGRE VISUAL ARCHIVES, PHYSICS TODAY COLLECTION). Right: Rüetschi (2018) now in his 90s, but going strong.
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Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 35
BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENT OF THE UNIVERSE On retirement Rüetschi, a family man with four children and wife Elizabeth, made a farmhouse into his home at Vers-chez-Grison, at the foot of the Jura Mountains. It is here that, as a nonagenarian, he continues to reflect on the world and its nature. Like many of the great battery electrochemists and scientists — names such as John Goodenough, Kathryn Bullock and Jun Furukuwa spring to mind — he is a Christian and wants to assimilate his science and his faith. Last year he wrote Verdichtete Gedanken und Gefühle [Condensed Thoughts and Feelings] and in 2017 he wrote Der Physiker und sein Engel: eine allegorische Geschichte [The Physicist and his Angel: an Allegorical Tale, subtitled Dialogues on Existential Questions in the Age of the Physical World]. It is illustrated with pen and ink drawings from his teenage years. As a Christian, Rüetschi writes: “I do not say that God is identical to the physical forces. He just works in them and through them. It manifests itself in the laws of nature, in the
laws by which the physical forces, such as the gravitational force or the electrodynamic force, operate. “If it is that God is at work in the physical forces, then he is in every atom, every celestial body, as far as the universe goes, and also trillions in our brain when we think and feel, for thoughts and feelings (including religious ones) are based on physical and chemical processes driven and directed by electrodynamic forces. “He may not be at work anywhere in the universe in such a special human and personal way as in us humans here in this world. Through our consciousness he becomes an inner you, and we can consciously participate in his work.”
PAUL RÜETSCHI: THE IRREVERENT SIDE Rüetschi is a gifted sketch artist with a life-long interest in art. This cartoon, which he drew, hardly conceals his excitement, wonder and confusion with the wave of technologies and chemistries emerging.
The Battery System Tower of Babel
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In 1953, Rüetschi received the first of his industry awards: the Silver Medal of the ETH. Rüetschi stayed with Trumpler as his assistant until 1955, only leaving for a year’s sabbatical in a research group in the US run at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, by Belgium electrochemist professor Paul Delahay. The results of their collaboration resulted in a joint publication in the US, Influence of Electrode Material on Oxygen Overvoltage: A Theoretical Analysis. America impressed Rüetschi but so did the practical application of his research work. And, aged 30, he returned to the US, this time to take the position of manager of the electrochemical research department at the Electric Storage Battery Company — nowadays better known as Exide Technologies. Here he was involved in a number of investigations relating to lead acid batteries, though other disciplines were connected. One of his first studies, for example, was the development of fuel cell type auxiliary electrodes for gas consumption in sealed lead acid cells. Another area of research was the study of corrosion phenomena and the composition of multilayer corrosion films on lead and lead alloys. His second official honour came in 1957, when he was presented with the Young Author Award by the Electrochemical Society. As an example of his multi-disciplinary approach to energy storage, in 1961 he filed a patent for an “improved storage battery utilizing positive electrodes of zinc or magnesium … another object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved electrolyte for use in batteries of the so-called alkaline type”. He was also active in many scientific societies. During his time in the US, Rüetschi became chairman of the physical electrochemistry division of the electrochemical research department for the Electrochemical Society, as well as executive committee officer of the battery division. Perhaps the haunting ring of the bells echoing around the Jura mountains was too great and nine years after arriving in the US, in 1964, Rüetschi returned to Switzerland. His new position at Yverdon-lesBains was technical director at Leclanché, a manufacturer of a wide range of primary and secondary batteries. The firm itself dates back to the development of zinc carbon batteries by Georges Leclanché in 1866, and the
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BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI creation of the company in 1909. He was to remain at Leclanché for the next 28 years. With characteristic energy, Rüetschi threw himself into work at Leclanché and under his guidance, research took off. This included a quantitative description of the pH-gradient that exists in corrosion layers and alkaline primary battery electrolyte-lithium miniature primary batteries with long service life. Rüetschi continued to make major contributions in lead acid battery research, including: • the discovery of α-PbO2 in corrosion films formed on lead and lead alloys at high anodic potentials • disclosure of the individual self-discharge processes in lead acid batteries, and the stability of lead oxides in H2SO4 solution • determination of the composition of the corrosion layer on lead electrodes in H2SO4 at various potentials; investigation of ion selectivity and diffusion potentials in such corrosion layers; quantitative description of the pH gradient in the corrosion layer • development of a cation-vacancy model that relates defects in the crystallographic structure of MnO2 and PbO2 to their electrochemical activity • various other achievements in the research of HgO, Zn, MnO2 and Ag2O electrodes. By this time he had already attracted an international audience for his research. One leading industry figure later said: “In the 1950s, many authors writing about their battery findings were vague and imprecise in describing what they did and what they found out. They were only soft and qualitative in their conclusions. Often they did not clarify what was hard proven fact and what was merely speculation. “By contrast Rüetschi’s papers have always presented results in a quantitative manner, providing values and potential variations in detail, and considering potential disturbances. Sample preparation and conditions of the experiments were precisely described. Conclusions were clear in wording, without any kind of speculative touch.” The breadth of his research was deepened by his now extensive contacts with the electrochemical giants of the day across Europe. “Contacts provide new ideas. Without contacts, the performance suffers; there is pre-
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Rüetschi addressing a LABAT conference in Bulgaria in the 1990s PHOTO CREDIT: DETCHKO PAVLOV
mature capacity loss!” he later said. To this day he pays tribute to the memory of Detchko Pavlov, professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Pavlov’s co-workers describing how his work was stimulated by Pavlov’s series of conferences held in Varna, Bulgaria from 1989 onwards. In 1978, Rüetschi published the seminal paper Review on the leadacid battery science and technology in the Journal of Power Sources. It begins: “In spite of extensive and continued efforts aimed at developing new light-weight, low-cost secondary electrochemical power sources, the old lead-acid battery has still not been dethroned as the major battery system.” It concludes: “What makes it so hard for new electrochemical power sources to compete with it is not only its long headstart, but also the high degree of sophistication and perfection it has reached.” He was both right and wrong, as
history would later prove. In 1980 he was awarded the Frank Booth Medal of the International Power Sources Conference Committee. In 1988 Eberhard Meissner — now senior technical leader, electrochemistry at Clarios (the former Johnson Controls Power Solutions) but then giving his first public presentation at the International Power Sources Symposium in Bournemouth, UK — met Rüetschi. “He was very interested in the relaxation effects of PbO2, which I presented, and my interpretation,” he recalls. “In his polite and precise manner, he asked several questions in the Q&A — it was a great feeling for a youngster like me. He was one of those scientists whose publications I admired from the very beginning. Rüetschi combined the values of a scientific education with expertise in the battery industry.”
As an example of his multi-disciplined approach to energy storage, in 1961 he filed a patent for an “improved storage battery utilizing positive electrodes of zinc or magnesium… another object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved electrolyte for use in batteries of the so-called alkaline type”. Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2019 • 37
BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI Rüetschi retired, aged 67, at the end of 1992, although he continued to work part-time as a consultant for Leclanché. The following summer he was awarded the Gaston Planté medal — the electrochemical battery equivalent of an Oscar — for his “significant contribution to the development of leadacid battery science and technology”. But his life in research and problem solving was not over. Four years after retiring, and then into his seventies, Rüetschi, the doyen of lead acid batteries, was still writing and still ex-
cited at the wave of new technologies and chemistries emerging. Alongside Felix Meli and the late Johann Desilvestro, he co-authored the paper Nickel-Metal Hydride Batteries. The Preferred Batteries of the Future? His last battery book, Batterien und Akkumulatoren: Mobile Energiequellen für Heute und Morgen, was written with Lucien Trueb, science editor of a Swiss daily newspaper. Batteries and Accumulators, Mobile Energy Sources for Today and Tomorrow was written to be understandable
and easily readable — for laymen as well as scientists. As late as 2002, Rüetschi received a patent for a lead battery into which at least one silver-silver sulfate reference electrode was permanently integrated. The reference electrode is used to control the charging or discharging of the battery, and can also be used to measure the acid density and charging state of the battery. In total Rüetschi has contributed to more than 70 scientific publications and been granted more than 30 patents.
MIXING THEORY, CHEMISTRY AND COMMERCE Rüetschi was famous for having a variety and depth of knowledge that went from the theoretical, sub-atomic, to the practical and mechanical through to the commercial. This example, from a patent filed in 1980 (US4315977A), highlights this. As ever looking for better performance, Rüetschi set his mind on improving tubular-plate batteries that could withstand from 1,000 to 2,000 charge-discharge cycles of a certain type, whereas batteries having ordinary pasted plates (at least at that time), in comparison, could withstand only 400 to 800 cycles of the same kind. However, the casting of the hardlead grids for tubular plates presents greater difficulties than regular ones. Increasing energy requirements and the relatively small floor surface in electric vehicles means that tall cells must be constructed for traction batteries — which means tall plates as well. Although the central grid rods are typically only 3mm in diameter, they must be produced in lengths of up to 800mm or more. Very tall plates entail particular problems with casting. The patent then speaks for itself. “Pressure die-casting methods are widely used nowadays for producing tubular-plate grids. Special die-casting machines for this purpose are commercially available from a number of manufacturers. In such machines, the lead is injected into the die under pressure in the longitudinal direction of the lead rods through a conical nozzle. The longer the casting, the more expensive the die-casting machine.
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“Experience has shown that the pressure die-casting of grids containing very little or no antimony presents particular difficulties, for the casting properties of the lead alloys decrease as the antimony content is reduced. Until now, therefore, it has customarily been necessary to use lead alloys containing up to 12% antimony for tubular-plate grids, depending on the height of the plate. “The high antimony content of the lead grids is, however, undesirable. “Firstly, it makes the battery more expensive since antimony costs a great deal more than lead. “Secondly, technical drawbacks arise when the antimony content is high. Antimony which is dissolved out of the grid by anodic oxidation diffuses in the electrolyte to the negative plate, where it is deposited in the form of metallic antimony. The result is antimony contamination of the negative plate, for antimony reduces the hydrogen overvoltage of the negative lead electrodes. Hydrogen is then generated much more rapidly, which leads to increased self-discharge of the negative electrodes. “When the battery lies unused for a longer period of time, the acid density drops as a result of the selfdischarge, and this in turn accelerates the corrosion of the positive grids. Moreover, the generation of hydrogen means a loss of water for the battery. Consequently, there must be more frequent addition of water, ie, more maintenance. “It would therefore be advantageous to produce tubular-plate grids of alloys having a low antimony content or none at all.
“It is an object of this invention to provide a means by which antimonyfree or low-antimony tubular-plate grids can be easily and simply produced. This should also enable the casting of very tall grids without difficulty.”
In casting tubular-plate grids, a molten lead alloy is poured into a mould along the long side of the grid perpendicular to the grid rods. Temporary connectors joining adjacent grid rods are simultaneously cast. These connecting portions have a thickened cross-section in the middle and a constricted cross-section at their points of junction with the grid rods. In a subsequent operation, the connecting portions are punched out.
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POWERING THE SMART GRID www.energystoragejournal.com
Meet the team Issue 8: Spring 2015
Let cool heads prevail The lead-lithium storage debate steps up a notch The new titan of lead Ecoult’s UltraBattery, ready to take lithium on, head-to-head
The CEO interview Anil Srivastava and Leclanché’s bid for market dominance
Next gen integrators Coming soon to a smart grid near you, the ideal middle man
Mike Halls, editor Mike, a former journalist with the UK newspaper the Financial Times, has been involved in journalism, publishing and print for three decades. “I’m particularly fond of writing about the energy storage industry,” he says. “It’s an unusual mixture of being fast-paced but slow to change — and friendly too. There’s always something more to learn.”
Claire Ronnie, office manager and subscriptions Claire’s our unflappable person — she’s the go-to girl for subscriptions or account enquiries. Go ahead and challenge her!
Karen Hampton, publisher In her recent years of working within the energy storage business Karen has become a well known figure at conferences — not least as our social butterfly. “My job,” she says, “is to get the maximum benefit for our advertisers to make sure their name and brand is out there, while maintaining the integrity, fairness and excellence our publications are renowned for.”
Antony Parselle, page designer Better known in the office as ‘Ant’ he’s been working in magazine design and layout since the early 1990s. Not so good on showing his best side however!
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Jan Darasz, cartoonist Jan has won international fame as a cartoonist able to making anything — including an electrolyte! — funny. And as for LiCFePO4 ...
EDITORIAL Mike Halls +44 (0) 7977 016 918 editor@energystoragejournal.com
Wyn Jenkins, Supplements Editor Don’t let his boyish charm deceive, Wyn’s been a journalist and respected editor on major financial titles for some 20 years. When not heading his own publications firm, Seren Global Media, he looks after our supplements.
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EVENT REVIEW: EUROBAT 2019 EUROBAT 2019 Berlin, Germany • June 13-14
EUROBAT readies lead industry action plan Europe’s energy storage trade body seeks level playing field EUROBAT’s forum in Berlin on June 13-14 called members to arms at a powerful assembly that also elected new president Marc Zoellner — who was widely hailed by many delegates as the man who could save the European lead battery industry. Delegates also told Energy Storage Journal the forum was the first time in many years they had witnessed such strong support for lead batteries from EUROBAT. Many said off the record that they had great faith in Hoppecke
CEO Zoellner, who was elected president after Johann-Friedrich Dempwolff retired from the post after six years. Dempwolff has been widely appreciated by EUROBAT members for providing leadership through a turbulent time of change in the industry. He was initially appointed for a two year position as president. Thomas Bareiss, parliamentary state secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and
Thomas Bareiss, parliamentary state secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy gave the keynote address about the importance of energy storage in the future.
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Energy gave the keynote address about the importance of energy storage in the future. However, Zoellner immediately challenged Bareiss about the lack of investment being channelled towards lead battery development despite a pledge from the German government to make funding available for lithium ion projects. Bareiss admitted that while the German government was supposedly chemistry agnostic, lead batteries had not been considered in the drive towards electric vehicles. “We want to emphasize the potential that’s in our technology with advanced lead acid batteries, projects we have heard about that need funding. It’s only fair that lead technology is budgeted for as well,” Zoellner told Energy Storage Journal afterwards. “What the minister was saying was that there’s a focus on electro-mobility so there is a logic behind what he said but it needs to be fair. “Technology agnostic means to support different technologies for different applications and there are certainly clear lead markets ahead of us which we see rising. There are certainly applications for lithium ion ahead of us — big energy storage systems, electric vehicles, automotive. But there are other applications clearly staying with lead — automotive, low-voltage systems, UPS applications and I also see lead with hybrid applications.” The recent European parliamentary elections proved a worthy topic to look at given the push-and-pull forces at work within the European Union. Karl Lannoo, the chief executive of CEPS, the think-tank on EU policies, presented his analysis of the EU
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EVENT REVIEW: EUROBAT 2019 elections and what they mean for the battery industry and future legislative developments. “Given the major changes and challenges from the past five years, the previous EU Commission did better than generally perceived”, he said. “Europe got a huge legitimacy boost with a voting percentage of 51% versus 43% previously. Specifically for the battery industry, the election results seem to confirm that decarbonization and the circular economy will be even more top of the agenda during the next term.”
Call for lobbying EU affairs manager Francesco Gattiglio called on EUROBAT members to lobby their local MEPs, trade associations, national governments and all political parties to get the message across that all battery chemistries were valid and must be given equal consideration when it came to regulation and budget. “We are calling on all members to lobby the lobbyists,” he said. “We need to be talking to MEPs, political parties, national associations. We have a sustainable industry and we have to prove it to the European Commission. That’s our challenge.” The initiative involves EUROBAT working with the International Lead Association in a five-year campaign to put forward the case for lead — starting off just as new MEPs take their seats in the European Parliament. EUROBAT and the ILA would be seeking clarification from the new ministers on many issues, he said. “With hazardous materials there is an exemption in lead used in SLI
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“The European Commission proposes the legislation, the European Parliament checks it, then the council of member states looks at that. We need to lobby all of them.” batteries — we need to know if this exemption will be granted again. There are also socio-economic considerations — they must be taken into account or it will not be fair. And we need to show that lead is sustainable. “Who will have the biggest obligation to recycle the batteries? Will this be clarified in the new directive?” (The EU is purportedly revising the directive next year, but timing and extent are vague.) “We are going to try to convince them that targets for collection are not necessary, that we don’t want codes on batteries for scanning, nor recycling efficiency rates put higher.” When asked by a member of the assembly who had decided that lithium batteries were ‘green’ and lead batteries were not, Gattiglio said: “It’s not that they don’t see lead as green — it’s that they don’t see lead. “The European Commission proposes the legislation, the European Parliament checks it, then the council of member states looks at that. We need to lobby all of them.” Gattiglio said the next five years — from 2019 to 2024 — would see campaigns launched by EUROBAT and the International Lead Association, such as ‘Charge the Future’, which would focus on the new Battery Directive, REACH consortium proposals to add lead to its list of
hazardous substances, and End-of-Life regulations. In a later presentation, Steve Binks, regulatory affairs director at the ILA, made the point that while all batteries made in Europe would have to adhere to whatever regulations were eventually put in place, none of the rules would apply to imports. “It will stop European manufacturing in its tracks but not apply to imported batteries,” he said. “The Battery Directive is too inflexible — it hasn’t caught up with the technology, and we will try to address this point.” So will the lead battery companies step in and lobby the decision makers? Gertrud Moll-Möhrstedt, managing partner at lead battery manufacturer Akkumulatorenfabrik MOLL, based in Bavaria, Germany, says her company is already doing its part. “I’m talking to everyone,” she said. “We give company tours to anyone who asks, we talk to local politicians, we even talk to schools to explain the value of a lead battery. You have to make them understand it’s a great technology and it’s the only one with such a high recycling rate. “We make presentations to ministers, we are doing what we can and I believe other companies are too.” The next EUROBAT general assembly and meeting will be held in Brussels in early June 2020.
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Bali, Indonesia. Home to the 18th Asian Battery Conference
Birmingham, UK. Home to the Future Resource — The event for energy and water efficiency
18th Asian Battery Conference
The Battery Show North America
Bali, Indonesia September 3–6
Novi, Michigan. US September 10–12
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.
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 Conference Works Tel: +61 3 9870 2611 Email: events@conferenceworks.com.au www.asianbatteryconference.com
Contact UBM Tel: +1 833 202 3467 Email: batteryregistration@ubm.com www.thebatteryshow.com
Future Resource — The event for energy and water efficiency September 11-12 Birmingham, UK 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, Future Resource attracts the most influential visitors and buyers who are attracted by the industry’s best content programme, speaker line-up and world-class exhibition. Contact Prysm Group Dale Sweatland Tel: +44 117 929 6083 Email: dale.sweatland@prysmgroup.co.uk www.futureresourceexpo.com
10th Annual Microgrid Global Innovation Forum September 9-11 London, UK. The 10th edition of the Microgrid Global Innovation Forum in London, focuses on microgrid advances, case studies and applications in EMEA, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Organized by the Smart Grid Observer, the emphasis is on maximizing the effective use of renewable and distributed energy resources, refining the positive business model for a range of microgrid deployments, and sharing real-world case studies in both grid-tied and off-grid/remote environments. Contact Smart Grid Observer Daniel Coran Tel: +1 815 310 3343 Email: dcoran@smartgridobserver.com www.microgridinnovation.com
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London will host the 10th Annual Microgrid Global Innovation Forum
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS International Congress for Battery Recycling — ICBR 2019 September 18-20 Lyon, France ICBR is the international platform for presenting the latest developments and discussing the challenges faced by the battery recycling industry. The 24th edition of ICBR will bring together many experts and decisionmakers of the battery recycling value chain such as battery manufacturers, battery recyclers, OEMs from the electronic and e-mobility industry, collection schemes operators, service and transport companies, policy-makers and many more. Contact ICM AG Susann Schmid Tel: +41 62 785 10 00 Email: info@icm.ch www.icm.ch/icbr-2019
CTI Symposia China September 23-25 Shanghai, China Since 2012 CTI has been organizing its famous CTI SYMPOSIUM CHINA. The three day event provides an update on latest automotive transmission and drive engineering for passenger cars and commercial vehicles. The international industry event delivers the appropriate platform to find new partners for purchase and sales of whole systems and components. Automobile manufacturers, transmission and component companies give an overview and outlook on technical and market trends. Contact CTI, Car Training Institute-A division of Euroforum Deutschland Tel: +49 211 88743-43333 Email: info@car-training-institute.com www.car-training-institute.com
Shanghai, China will host the CTI Symposia China
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Salt Lake City, US, will host the Solar Power International & Energy Storage International
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. 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. Contact Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) www.solarpowerinternational.com/about
Energy Storage Canada Toronto, Canada. USA October 1-2 Energy Storage Canada is the voice of leadership for energy storage and the only industry association in Canada that focuses on advancing opportunities and building the market for energy storage. ESC has made energy storage a key focus for policy makers. We educate stakeholders and drive awareness about the value that energy storage delivers. We work to create new competitive markets and ensure regulatory fairness. Our mission is to advance the energy storage industry in Canada through policy advocacy, collaboration, education, and research. Energy Storage Canada works closely with sector allies and with other energy storage stakeholders to push the industry forward. Contact Energy Storage Canada Tel: +1 416 997 3095 Email: information@energystoragecanada.org www.energystoragecanada.org
5th EVs & the Grid Los Angeles, California, USA October 1-3 Infocast’s 5th edition of EVs & the Grid convenes major players from the energy, transportation, and real estate sectors. Utilities with mature EV incentive programs share lessons learned, best practices, and next steps. Innovative OEMs will showcase the latest technological developments for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles. Providers of electric vehicle supply equipment, EPCs, electricians, and expert consultants will provide energy management strategies for electric fleet owners and property developers. This is a must-attend event for all stakeholders involved and an opportunity to make the right connections, participate in advanced discussions, and profit from transportation electrification. Contact Infocast Tel: +1 818 888 4444 www.infocastinc.com/event/ev-grid
The Business Booster Paris, France October 3–4 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
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Advanced Lithium Batteries for Automobile Applications (ABAA) Ulm, Germany October 6-9 The ABAA 12 conference brings together high-level policy makers from Europe, US, China, Japan and Korea, as well as representatives from the automotive industry, battery manufacturers, material providers, and world-renowned scientists from academia. The conference will be accompanied by a specialised industrial exhibition. Contact Conventus Congress Management & Marketing
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.
R-Zinc Brussels, Belgium October 14-15 At EverZinc, we are convinced that zinc will become a key component of the energy ecosystem in the next decades. R-ZINC offers you the opportunity to discover the latest developments and applications from the energy sector during the first meeting entirely dedicated to rechargeable zinc battery technologies and markets in the capital of Europe. Contact Ever Zinc Email: info@r-zinc.com www.r-zinc.com
Mandy Wagner Tel: +49 3641 31 16-160 registrierung@conventus.de www.abaa12.org
Contact Dufresne Research Tel: +44 203 289 0312 www.energystorageforum.com
12th Energy Storage World Forum
Entech
Intelec 2019
London, UK October 8–9
Singapore October 13–17
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.
This international annual technical conference has, for the past 39 years, 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.
Exploring new and innovative regulatory frameworks have long been a topic of discussion in the energy storage world-it’s a programme topic in this year’s Energy Storage World Forum. 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. Since then we have executed successfully 11 different events featuring over 80% of utilities/end users as speakers. The programme covers more than 60 in depth topics covering the key questions from the industry. Over 2,000 delegates and 40+ sponsors have attended our events in total so far.
Contact Solar Media Email: entech@solarmedia.co.uk www.entech.solarenergyevents.com
Contact www.intelec.org
October 14-18 Rome, Italy
Contact Dufresne Research Tel: +44 203 289 0312 www.energystorageforum.com
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.
Rome will host both the 12th Energy Storage World Forum (Large Scale Focus) & 6th Residential Energy Storage Forum and the 12th Energy Storage World Forum in October.
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Contact COEX Irene Kim Tel: +82 26000 1393 Email: irenekim@coex.co.kr www.interbattery.or.kr/en/
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Osaka, Japan will host the 2nd Japan Solar + Energy Storage 2019 in October
Alexandra, Virginia, USA
10th Annual Battery Safety Summit Alexandria, Virginia, USA October 22-25 Research continues to boost the energy storage capability of lithium-ion batteries leading to expanding applications and consumer use. Higher energy plus increased use leads to higher risk. Therefore, accurate tests and models are critical for predicting and controlling the complex electrochemical, thermal, and mechanical behaviour of LIBs. Additionally, regulations to promote protection and information derived from forensic investigations to enhance prevention are required. The task of implementing effective safety strategies falls on R&D scientists (chemical, electrical, material, and software engineers), battery manufacturers, regulatory authorities, forensic scientists, and the public. The 10th Annual Battery Safety Summit convenes these stakeholders to continue the vital dialogue of integrating and implementing LIB safety to meet ever-increasing energy demands.
The Battery Technology Show Coventry, UK October 22–23 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. Contact Evolve media group Tel: +44 117 932 2586 www.batterytechnologyshow.com
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Batteries Event Nice, France October 22–24 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
Contact Cambridge EnerTech Tel: +1 781 972 5400 Email: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.cambridgeenertech.com/battery-safety
2nd Japan Solar + Energy Storage 2019 Osaka, Japan October 28-29 Japan Solar + Energy Storage is the large-scale change and business networking platform between public and private stakeholders in the Japanese solar value chain. Aiming to lay the groundwork for the development, investment, and partnership across all industrial peers, the event brings together 800+ participants, 70+ speakers, 100+ gov/utility/ developer/investor/EPCs, 20+ consulting companies and other third-party associates. Contact Leader Associates Candice Fang Tel: +86 21 6143 2082 Email: candice@leader-associates.com www.leader-associates.com/jses
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Advanced Engineering 2019
Digital Solar & Storage
EV Infrastructure Summit
Birmingham, UK October 30-31
November 5-6 Brussels, Belgium
November 12-13 London, UK
Bringing together thousands of attendees from OEMs, tier 1 manufacturers, and supply chain partners, Advanced Engineering is the UK’s largest annual advanced engineering and manufacturing event. With a two-day attendance of some 15,000 engineering professionals, Advanced Engineering promotes supply chain business and technology transfer across aerospace, automotive, medical technology, energy, and indeed any sector that involves high-value manufacturing, R & D and innovation.
Join high-level executives from digital innovators and storage solution suppliers active in solar and representatives from Europe’s new European Parliament and Commission to discuss the latest business models and market trends shaping the New Energy World based on digital solar & storage. The event is timed to welcome the new European Parliament and Commission and discuss with key stakeholders from industry and politics what’s needed to keep up the new solar momentum in Europe.
Contact EasyFairs Tel: +44 203 196 4300 www.easyfairs.com/advanced-engineering-2019/advanced-engineering-2019/
Contact Solar Power Europe Lorena Morales Tel: +32 2709 5541 Email: l.morales@solarpowereurope.org www.digitalsolar-storage.org
The EV Infrastructure Summit provides a platform on which senior representatives from the key sectors involved discuss the national 2050 zero-emission targets, at a time when there is a great deal of uncertainty about how they will be achieved. Energy industry leaders attend to obtain insights that will inform their investment decisions in the upcoming year. Car manufacturers are present to strategize about their EV manufacturing strategies and to meet key stakeholders to discuss their fleet deployment in the UK. Charging infrastructure providers come to the summit so that they can make assessments about future demand for their product. The transition to EVs will be covered in full during two days of invaluable networking opportunities and a stellar outline of speakers and content.
International Battery Production Conference (IBPC)
Energy Storage North America
November 4-6 Braunschweig, Germany
Pasadena, CA. US November 5–7
Join us for the second International Battery Production Conference (IBPC) in Braunschweig. The Battery LabFactory Braunschweig (BLB) in cooperation with the VDMA Battery Production, the German competence cluster ProZell and Fraunhofer IST invite you to share and discuss your research and innovations in battery production.
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 Battery Lab Factory Braunschweig (BLB) Tel: +49 531 391-7154 Email: info@battery-production-conference.de www.battery-production-conference.de
Contact Messe Düsseldorf North America Matt Spikehout Tel: +1 312 621 5804 Email: mspikehout@mdna.com www.esnaexpo.com
Contact City and Finance www.cityandfinancialconferences.com/EVInfrastructure2019
E-Waste World Conference and Expo Frankfurt, Germany November 14-15 E-Waste World Conference and Expo is a two-day international conference and exhibition dedicated to discussing the latest recycling technology, materials recovery solutions, green electronics, sustainable materials, non-toxic substitutes, and endof-life strategies, as well as regulatory and business models to help reduce the environmental impact of all forms of consumer and industrial E-Waste. The event will bring together globally renowned experts from consumer and industrial electronics manufacturers and suppliers, E-Waste recyclers and waste management companies, recycling technology manufacturers, materials recovery experts, sustainable material and chemical suppliers, science and academia, policy-makers, NGOs, research institutions and consultants. Contact Trans-Global Events Tel: +44 1483 330 018 Email: info@trans-globalevents.com www.ewaste-expo.com
Pasadena hosts Energy Storage North America in November
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Frankfurt, Germany
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Singapore
Energy Storage Academy — Singapore Masterclass
4th Australia Solar + Energy Storage
November 26-27 Singapore The Energy Storage Academy is a training division designed to enable attendees to delve deeper into solutions in smaller groups helped by an experienced professional from the field. This masterclass will enable the audience to examine and implement storage from an economic and technical perspective. It has been designed to evaluate different energy storage technologies, identifying profitable niches for storage, and learn how to set up a business case for storage based on past experiences. Contact Dufresne Research Tel: +44 203 289 0312 www.energystorageforum.com/singaporemasterclass
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
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November 28-29 Adelaide, Australia
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 4th Australia Solar + Energy Storage 2019 is one of the largest business platforms to anticipate and manage the changes of Australia’s immense solar & energy storage markets, aiming to lay the groundwork for the development and partnership across all industrial peers. As the leading renewable energy event and premier business platforms in Australia, the event anticipates and manages the updates of Australia’s immense renewable energy markets, aiming to expedite the further development, investment and partnership in the sectors of solar, storage and renewables. Contact Candice Fang Tel: +86 21 6143 2082 Email: candice@leader-associates.com www.leader-associates.com/auses
Bangalore, India. Home to ees India in November
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Advanced Automotive Battery Conference Europe (AABC)
Warwick,. Home to the Battery & Energy Storage UK 2019
January 12-16, 2020 Wiesbaden, Germany Make plans to participate at the European AABC event where chief battery technologists from major European automakers will present their development trends and projected battery needs, and their key suppliers will share their latest offerings and roadmaps for the future. Each year, AABC Europe brings together a global audience of battery technologists and their key suppliers for a must-attend week of development trends, breakthrough technologies and predictions of the market for years to come. As more European nations and international automotive OEMs make their own commitment to vehicle electrification, we are excited to carry that momentum forward for 2020 and beyond.
Battery & Energy Storage UK 2019
Battery India
December 4-5 Warwick, UK
January 10-12 Karnataka, India
As the UK’s energy generation and distribution market accelerates, attention is steered towards balancing generation, supply, and demand and creating necessary storage facilities. The integration of cross-sector and collaborative projects becomes crucial for a sustainable energy future but what are the next steps? Battery and Energy Storage 2019 returns for its 3rd year to unite all aspects of the ecosystem to showcase applications of the latest in battery and energy storage innovation across the transportation, energy, aerospace, transportation and industrial sectors. Contact Email: info@iob-media.com www.bess.internetofbusiness.com
CTI Symposia Germany December 9-12 Berlin, Germany The International CTI Symposium and its flanking specialist exhibition is the international industry event in Europe for people seeking latest information on developments in automotive transmissions and drives for passenger cars and commercial vehicles! Contact CTI, Car Training Institute-A division of Euroforum Deutschland Tel: +49 211 88743-43333 Email: info@car-training-institute.com www.drivetrain-symposium.world/de/
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Contact Cambridge Enertech Dave Mello Tel: +1 781 972 5400 Email: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.advancedautobat.com/europe
World Future Energy Summit January 13-16, 2020 Abu Dhabi, UAE
Battery India will bring together from all of the world leading battery manufacturers interested in technology and business cooperation, battery equipment and component manufacturers, experts in waste management and in environmentally sound technologies for the recycling of batteries. Battery India 2020 will ensure a direct opportunity towards international co-operation and business promotion by ensuring quality lectures by eminent specialists and researchers, buyer and seller meetings. Contact Battery and Recycling Foundation International Ajoy Raychaudhuri Tel: +91 11 2955 2649 Email: info@bfi.org.in www.bfi.org.in/conference.htm
The annual World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi is the leading global industry event and exhibition for future energy, clean-tech and sustainability. Bringing together government and business leaders, 800 specialist exhibitors and 33,500 visitors from 170 countries, it showcases pioneering technologies and ground breaking thinking in energy, energy efficiency, water, solar, waste and smart cities. Contact Reed Exhibitions www.worldfutureenergysummit.com
Abu Dhabi, UAE
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Contact Karen to get your FREE India 2019 Yearbook karen@batteriesinternational.com Bringing the industry together www.batteriesinternational.com