STARTUP NEWS

ION Energy’s Data Analytics To Power 581 MWh esVolta Storage Project

Randolph Mann President & Founder esVolta

Lizette Moses Director, Asset Management esVolta

Akhil Aryan CEO and Co-Founder ION Energy

Mumbai-based battery management firm ION Energy has scored a major win for its data analytics platform, Edison Analytics. The firm has been selected by esVolta, a global utility scale energy storage company with a portfolio of battery energy storage projects across North America. ION Energy also develops infrastructure for EV's, besides battery storage. The focus of this project will be on improving the efficiency of a total of 581MWh of battery storage for esVolta in North America. ION Energy claims that its platform will save esVolta an estimated rupees three crore annually,on its contracted portfolio of 581 MWh of energy storage projects. For ION Energy, its Edison Analytics is a battery analytics platform combining ION Energy's expertise in batteries with that in data analytic and cloud computing. The firm claims that unlike generic platforms, Edison is designed to improve operational efficiency of battery energy storage systems (BESS) by reducing battery degradation and maximizing energy trading revenues. All batteries undergo ageing which reduces their capacity to supply energy to the grid, resulting in a decline in dispatch revenues for battery operators. Some ageing in batteries is cyclical and normal, however, abnormal ageing is detrimental to battery health and affects the profitability and reliability of the project. Edison Analytics analyzes battery data and identifies the causes of abnormal degradation of the batteries. It simulates the batteries’ operational performance and suggests charging/discharging schedules that will result in minimum degradation of the batteries. Additionally, the platform plugs into the energy market managed by the local Independent System Operator (such as California ISO) and helps BESS operators optimize their bidding strategy. By syncing between the optimum charging schedule and forecasting the best possible dispatches into the market, Edison Analytics will help BESS operators take data-driven decisions on timing and number of daily cycles to run.As part of a pilot study, Edison Analytics worked with the esVolta team on improving the efficiency of one of their sites, the Millikan BESS project - a 8 MWh battery system located in Irvine, California. Using the data from the site, it was able to simulate the number of cycles the batteries could safely undertake per day without excessive degradation. Based on the pilot study, Edison Analytics estimates savings of Rs. 3,00,00,000 (Rupees Three Crore) annually for esVolta by reducing excess battery degradation through improved heating and discharge management. Seeing value in the platform, esVolta has decided to deploy Edison Analytics across their entire portfolio of energy storage systems across 10 locations in North America. Randolph Mann, President of esVolta, says, "Edison Analytics helps us keep an eye on the operational and financial performance of our portfolio. While scaling up, we felt the need for a data analytics platform that was developed, keeping the needs of a BESS business in mind, and that's where Edison fit in perfectly." Lizette Moses, Director of Asset Management at esVolta, said, "We initially didn't see a need for complex analytics, but the business needs are changing. Not only is it important to optimize our bidding strategies, we need the ability to do so while protecting the health of our batteries. Edison helps us achieve this by simulating battery health under different dispatch conditions.” Akhil Aryan, CEO & Co-founder, ION Energy on this landmark deal, said, "Battery storage is an emerging technology that is becoming an indispensable component in the energy market and will help generate renewable power on a much larger scale. We are elated to have partnered with esVolta and demonstrate Edison’s capability to improve the profitability of BESS. This partnership has offered us immense potential to grow and deliver the best solution in all the markets we serve. It bolsters our core offering and defines our leadership in the battery analytics space." This partnership with esVolta is a significant milestone for ION Energy, proving the value of data analytics to developers of BESS in the US and around the world. Launched in September 2019, this is the biggest win by far for the Edison Analytics offering. The deal with esVolta comes barely three years after ION Energy was launched. The firm had raised an indislosed amount of funding from senior professionals in multiple sectors at the time of launch, and also acquired a french battery management firm, Freemens SAS in February, 2018.

Scientists Identify new Catalysts for More Efficient Hydrogen Electrolysis

A team of scientists led by the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has discovered the parameters that determine the efficiency of a class of low-cost catalysts called spinel oxides – a discovery that breaks a bottleneck in the extraction of hydrogen from water through electrolysis, the process of splitting water with electricity. A major challenge of this process lies in the energy loss as the chemical reactions involved in water electrolysis take place, driving up the cost to produce hydrogen through this method. Catalysts are therefore necessary to speed up these chemical reactions. Spinel oxides, which are typically made of cheap transition metals, have garnered interest in recent years as a stable, low-cost catalyst that could overcome this challenge, but the design of high-performing spinel oxides has been hampered by the lack of understanding of how they work. Now, NTU Singapore’s Associate Professor Jason Xu Zhichuan and his team have made two important advances. They have unravelled, at the atomic scale, how spinel oxides work to speed up water electrolysis. Primed with that new understanding, the team then used machine learning to select new spinel oxides with increased

catalytic activity, making water electrolysis more efficient. The water electrolysis process takes place in an electrolyser, where two main chemical reactions take place as water is split: one results in hydrogen production, while the other leads to oxygen production and the two gases are kept separate by a membrane. Based on key parameters that the team had identified, the team trained a machine learning model with a dataset of over 300 spinel oxides in order to screen and predict the efficiency of any spinel oxide catalyst in a matter of seconds. Using this method, the team found that a new oxide comprising manganese and aluminium was predicted to show superior catalytic activity. This was validated experimentally.

Design Breakthrough can Spur Advances in Solar Lasers and Hydrogen Generation

Solar-pumped lasers convert sunlight into laser beams, which can be used to produce hydrogen—a clean type of fuel that can help to tackle the current environmental crisis. But, these lasers usually require bulky optics and solar-tracking systems, which makes them inconvenient. Now, with the new developments and with its thickness of a few millimetres and great scalability, this design breakthrough may herald the widespread adoption of eco-friendly solar-driven lasers. In spite of some progress in this field, all existing solar-pumped laser devices require large lenses or mirrors to concentrate as much sunlight as possible into a small area. In fact, the minimum threshold of solar light intensity that can generate a laser in existing devices is approximately 10,000 times that of natural sunlight. In addition to the sheer bulkiness of the telescope-like lenses needed, complex solar-tracking mechanisms are required for these devices. To make things worse, these lasers cannot use diffuse sunlight, meaning that they would not work on cloudy days at all. These serious limitations have greatly hindered the adoption of solar-pumped lasers. Fortunately, in an effort to revolutionise this field, a team of scientists from Toyota Motors and Tokai University, Japan, led by Dr. Masamori Endo, have recently published a study in Communications Physics on their latest development: a fully planar solarpumped laser. This solar-pumped laser does not require complex light-concentrating systems and—by virtue of being fully planar and having a thickness of only a few millimeters—can be easily deployed like traditional solar cells.

NMAMIT Team Transforms ICE Vehicle to Electric Vehicle

A team of students and teachers of the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering at the NMAM Institute of Technology (NMAMIT) in Karnataka have transformed a petrol-based internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle into a pollution-free, energy efficient & eco-friendly Electric Vehicle. The power electronic converters designed and developed by the team successfully drive the electric motor and charge the battery array of the vehicle. NMAMIT principal Niranjan N Chiplunkar launched the electric car at the campus recently and appreciated the efforts of the team. Project Mentor, Dr. Suryanarayana K, Professor, Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering explained that a microcontroller unit designed and developed in the research and innovation centre of the institute controls the electric vehicle with Semikron power electronic stack, an array of 25 batteries of 12V, 45Ah each, and a three-phase 7.5HP induction motor. The team has not only developed a microcontroller system with algorithms and required controls, but also has designed a battery charging circuitry. Consistent endeavours of the team for about nine

months in converting the engineering theory into practice resulted in the successful execution of the electric vehicle with a peak speed of 50 kph and estimated the distance of 80 kms with the batteries fully charged.

IIT Kharagpur Team Awarded for Generating Power From Wet Clothes

A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Kharagpur has been conferred with the ‘Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award 2020’ for clean energy research for their work on developing a mechanism for generating power from wet clothes left under sunlight to dry. Another team from the institute was separately granted the same award for addressing the problem of energy conservation and thermal management in wearable and flexible electronic devices. IIT Kharagpur Director Prof Virendra Tewari said, “we still have sectors which need sourcing and efficient management of clean energy to meet our augmented power requirements, even in the remote areas.” The spokesperson of IIT KGP said that Professor Suman Chakraborty, Professor Partha Saha and Dr. Aditya Bandopadhyay from the Department of Mechanical Engineering have been awarded for their work – “Electrical power generation from wet textile”. While Professor Sunando Dasgupta and his team from the Department of Chemical Engineering have also been awarded for their work – “Smart, flexible, and multi-functional thermal and energy management systems for next-generation electronic devices”. The novelty of the first innovation, the nano- electricity generator, is in its frugal means instead of energy harvesting from complex resources, the spokesperson said. The device has been tested in a remote village where around 50 wet clothes were left for drying by washermen. These clothes were connected to a commercial supercapacitor which discharged electricity of around 10 volt. This

stored energy is enough to glow a white LED bulb for more than an hour. “The clothes we wear are made from cellulose-based textile which has a network of nano-channels. Ions in saline water can move through this interlace fibrous nano-scale network by capillary action inducing an electric potential in the process,” explained the researchers from the department of mechanical engineering.