Energy Storage Journal - issue 10 Autumn

Issue 10: Autumn 2015

Masters of the new game Winners in the distributed energy revolution The CEO interview Jim McDougall and the diversity that helps Younicos grow

Riders on the swarm Agglomeration and networking create new power resources

Pioneers of storage John Goodenough, father of the lithium ion battery revolution

POWERING THE SMART GRID

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Meet the team Sara Vanbruggen, Associate editor Sara, one of the founding figures of Energy Storage Journal, has since relocated to Madrid, and now works as our in-house adviser as well as a respected contributor to sister magazine, Batteries International.

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!

June Moutrie, business development manager She’s our accounting Wunderkind who deals with all things financial — a kind of mini Warren Buffett.

But more fun!

Jade Beevor, sales executive Jade, who joined the team in early 2015, is already getting a feel for the industry.

“This is an incredible business we’re in,” she says. “These people are literally changing the future of our lives — and the planet too!”

Jan Darasz, cartoonist Jan has won international fame as a cartoonist able to making anything — including an electrolyte! — funny. And as for LiCFePO4 ...

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.

Kevin Desmond, historian More than just a historian on energy storage and batteries as he’s written about many things. He’s the inspiration behind our Heroes of the Grid section.

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CONTENTS COVER STORY

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ONES TO WATCH, THE NEW MASTERS Batteries, hardware, software, and integration. That’s energy storage in a nutshell. But it’s about something else, harder to define — going the extra mile, thinking a few steps ahead or seeing a gap in the supply chain. ESJ picks a few firms that are shaping the energy storage industry as it goes mainstream • Greensmith, match-maker extraordinaire 28 • Imergy —room for flow batteries in energy storage 30 • Sonnenbatterie sets sights on global markets 32 • Younicos reduces barriers to energy storage 35 • Why Parker is the inverter partner for big grid storage 36 • Ecoult breathes new life for lead acid with UltraBattery 2.0 37 • Blue skies ahead — three others worth the watch 38

EDITORIAL

The new masters

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Price doesn’t have to be the obstacle to introducing new technology

PEOPLE NEWS

3

Second life battery pioneer Spiers assembles team for new venture • Kennedy moves to take MD position at CalCEF • Lithium-ion disagreement causes split at Focus Graphite • Manz appoints Drasch as new COO • Prokopanko joins Xcel Energy board • Digatron appoints Sobotka as new China manager • Skeleton picks Dudek as CTO following appointment of Schenk to COO slot • Exide hires Koelsch as new chief executive • Silicor CEO recognized by American Solar Energy Society • Electrovaya appoints Halka as EVP, CFO • Dziuba joins Strata Solar

Spiers and his second life team: huge implications for grid level storage 3

PRODUCT NEWS 9

Skeleton launches 4500 farad ultracap, in huge leap forward for energy density

THE CEO INTERVIEW

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Claiming a stake in the new frontiers of energy storage

NEWS

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Aquion Energy and Eguana partner after field testing ends • Milestone reached in next iteration of solar air battery • Stem gets investor thumbs up for series C investment • Powerstorm ESS receives first commercial order for telecoms in Tanzania • BIC & MESA partner to launch testing centre • Venture capital funding in battery industry falls in first half of 2015 • Panasonic sets new bar for energy conversion efficiency in boost to energy storage sector • Green Charge Networks partners • ChargePoint in new energy storage • Australia gets Gildemeister flow storage • ALABC publishes results of three-year programme • Project Helios launched by Oxis Solar Centre • Beacon to supply flywheels to Alaska, announces collaboration in Europe’s first hybrid storage plant • Trojan Battery opens Ireland R&D centre • Invenergy kick-starts new energy storage operations

BACK TO BASICS —ESSENTIAL BATTERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

CEO interview: James McDougall from Younicos 10

23

Isidor Buchmann, CEO of Cadex, explains basic BMS fundamentals.

LEGAL

40

The logistics of intellectual property in joint ventures

SOLARUNITED

42

Conference in print: why better separators can make a difference 53

News from our partner association’s members

ANALYSIS

47

The swarm: a new way of networking power

CONFERENCE IN PRINT

53

High energy applications using ELDCs can experience ohmic losses when power levels are high. A better separator with a lower internal resistance is part of the solution

EVENTS

60

A listing of many of the major events in the energy storage and smart grid world

PIONEERS OF ENERGY STORAGE The energy storage industry owes a great debt to John Goodenough, the father of the lithium ion cell. www.energystoragejournal.com

68 John Goodenough: the stuff of lithium legend

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Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 1

EDITORIAL Mike Halls, editor • mike@energystoragejournal.com

Price isn’t the only decider for new technology adoption Consumer culture tends to take the view that the cost of anything is factored into the price. And that’s not just the margin, but the perception of value. If you pay a lot the product is worth more.

However, assumptions based on price and value are strange when new technologies are introduced.

Touchstones about price and value are difficult to find. And normal thinking can easily be reversed.

So those that argue about adopting distributed energy based solely on price, who perhaps say grid level storage is uneconomic are looking the wrong way. Missing the point even.

Consumer adoption of anything may be affected by price — but prices are only part of the puzzle of why technology goes mainstream.

A classic example of this is the introduction of electricity for lighting at the turn of the last century in the US. Consumer opinion was that a) kerosene was much, much cheaper b) gas lighting was already commonplace and c) the installation cost for the new-fangled incandescent bulbs was ridiculous.

It sounds all very familiar about today’s grid.

But you only have to turn on a light in your house to see that those arguments were overturned. US inventor Thomas Edison realised that change was inevitable and built a power station simply in anticipation — which he was aware might take years to achieve — that he would gain market share in the end and that industrial customers would have to subsidize the overcapacity of the residential usage.

One commentator recently put it as this. “Edison knew that he faced the challenge of ‘market creation’ — getting customers to demand a product they didn’t know they needed or wanted, and one that cost more than their current source of lighting.

“When it was first introduced, people didn’t appreciate the need or value of electricity. But over time, the safety features and the better illumination capabilities of electric power and light bulbs convinced people to switch from gas and kerosene lamps to electric lighting.”

Supplements editor: Wyn Jenkins, wyn.jenkins@serenglobalmedia.com, +44 1792 293 222

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 (0) 7792 852 337

Business development manager: June Moultrie, june@energystoragejournal.com +44 (0) 7775 710 290 Reception: Tel: +44 (0) 1 243 782 275 Fax: +44 1787 329 730 Subscriptions and admin manager: Claire Ronnie, subscriptions@energystoragejournal.com admin@energystoragejournal.com +44 (0) 1 243 782 275

Editor: Michael Halls, mike@energystoragejournal.com, +44 (0) 1 243 782 275

Research editor: William Aslan will@energystoragejournal.com

Associate editor: Sara Verbruggen, sara@energystoragejournal.com, +44 (0) 7981 256 908

Design: Antony Parselle aparselledesign@me.com

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PEOPLE NEWS

Second life battery pioneer Spiers assembles team for new venture Dirk Spiers, the key figure in introducing the concept of Second Life for advanced nickel and lithium batteries to the energy storage industry, set up his own firm, Spiers New Technologies Inc in December. He has since been recruiting senior staff for the company.

Spiers was formerly the founder of a division within Oklahoma ATC Drivetrain known as ATC New Technologies.

Three of his core team at ATC — Bryan Schultz, John Junger and Brian Enis — joined him earlier this spring.

Second life is a generic term whereby a battery that is not suitable anymore to be used in its original environment, is repaired or repurposed in some fashion to be useful again (or at worst recycled), thus capturing some of the original value of the battery.

Second life battery chemistries are lithium ion or even NiMH. Key to the success of the process is the speedy diagnosis of the health of the battery. SNT’s extensive data

— which is proprietary to Spiers — means that battery pack diagnostics start, before they are opened with algorithms that look at the pack number, age and type of use.

Spiers’ team are at the cutting edge of this process, having conducted research that have investigated everything as disparate as sound-wave detection of battery failure through to olfactory testing.

He says the initial revenue streams that have come with batteries coming from major names such as General Motors, Nissan means that his business is successful from the get go. Californian EV charger firm FreeWire is also a client.

Spiers plans to extend the firm’s operations to Fremont in California and an as-yet undecided location on the US east coast.

“Essentially our services, business model and data algorithms are something we can duplicate across the US and we’ll be looking at doing something in Europe and Asia in the

next few years,” he says. “We have a huge amount of experience, we have testing equipment and procedures so that analysing any type of battery pack can be made routine.

When Energy Storage Journal last conducted a site visit this May it was clear that the initial 25,000 square foot facility in Oklahoma City will shortly be too small.

Spiers plans to acquire a further 15,000 square foot facility nearby that will process second life NiMH batteries and the growing business of dealing with lithium ion battery packs will stay in the original larger place.

“The art in this business is creating value-added — and the only way to do this is by being able to make an accurate diagnosis of the problem within a battery as quickly as possible, be efficient and safe”.

He anticipates winning other major automotive battery contracts for dealing with second life EV batteries this summer.

Just part of a formidable gang: (Left to right) Brandon Carter (technician), Luke Cruz, John Junger (R&D), Bryan Schultz (engineering director), Tyler Helps, Dirk Spiers, Chris, Dave LaRue, Brian Enis (operations), Dave Howell, Steve Wilson (technician).

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Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 3

PEOPLE NEWS

Kennedy moves to take MD position at CalCEF

Danny Kennedy, managing director of CalCEF, the California Clean Energy Fund

Danny Kennedy, co-founder and executive vice-president of Sungevity became managing director of CalCEF, the California Clean Energy Fund on September 1.

Kennedy heads up CalCEF’s three organizations — called Innovations, Ventures and Catalyst — directing investments, as well as the organization’s work to forge policies and businesses that drive growth and innovation in clean energy.

Kennedy will continue working at Sungevity on a limited basis as a strategic advisor.

CalCEF is a non-profit

Manz appoints Drasch as new COO Martin Drasch was appointed the new chief operating officer for high tech manufacturer Manz at the July annual general meeting of the firm. He started on August 1. The firm said he would “will act as support of the chairman of the managing board, Dieter Manz, and chief financial officer, Martin Hipp, and

will be responsible for production, logistics and procurement.

Drasch worked more than 15 years in the areas of production, project management and design for the equipment manufacturer Eisenmann SE. Since 2012 he was responsible there as vice president for the automotive system technology division.

organization set up in 2004 with a mission: “to identify and launch new financial vehicles and institutions geared to fill critical gaps in the clean tech marketplace, reinvesting returns in support of the broad CalCEF agenda.”

Kennedy co-founded Sungevity in 2007 with company CEO, Andrew Birch, a former investment banker;

and also company board director, Alec Guettel, a social entrepreneur.

Kennedy is credited with helping to establish Sungevity’s business model, securing key angel and venture round investors at the onset. He also forged a diverse mix of business partnerships for Sungevity, including more than 100 non-profit organizations among the likes of Sierra Club and CREDO. Most recently, Kennedy had been focusing on driving Sungevity’s international market development.

Lithium-ion disagreement causes split at Focus Graphite Gary Economo (pictured) , chief executive of Focus Graphite, also took on the duties of president and chief operating officer in June on an interim basis after an apparent falling out between the board of directors and Don Baxter, the previous COO and president. A board statement said the announcement results from “a decision to end the company’s professional relationship with Don Baxter, due to a significant divergence of vision”.

In a letter message to shareholders, Economo explained the decision: Although supplying batterygrade SPG graphite for the battery market will undoubtedly be a critical

component of the Focus Graphite suite of graphite products for end users, it is just that — a component.

“It is not in the company’s best interest to consolidate all its efforts and resources in pursuing that singular market as it will take time for the Li-ion battery market to grow sufficiently to reach the level of demand necessary to absorb the tens of thousands of tonnes of additional natural spherical graphite supply.

Prokopanko joins Xcel Energy board

The new triumvirate: (l to r) CFO Martin Hipp, chairman Dieter Manz and new COO Martin Drasch

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Jim Prokopanko (right) was elected to US utility Xcel Energy’s board of directors in mid-August. He will contribute to the board’s audit and operations, nuclear, environmental and safety committees.

Prokopanko recently retired as president and chief executive officer of The Mosaic Company, an international agricultural supply firm. He remains on Mosaic’s board.

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PEOPLE NEWS

Digatron appoints Sobotka as new China manager Digatron Power Electronics, the testing and electronics firm, appointed Karl Sobotka as general manager for Digatron Qingdao China in May. Digatron said the appointment would consolidate its growth in the China market.

Kevin Campbell, Digatron’s

chief executive officer, said: “During Karl’s 33 years with Digatron, Karl has spent more than 10 years working within China, and from 2006-2008, Karl lived permanently in Qingdao for Digatron.

“Karl’s knowledge of Chinese culture (especially

sales culture), his extensive networking with clients throughout China, coupled with his previous production and quality management experience within Digatron Aachen provide the Digatron Qingdao China operation a fantastic platform for business growth.”

Skeleton picks Dudek as CTO following appointment of Schenk to COO slot Skeleton Technologies, a manufacturer of high-performance ultracapacitors, appointed Volker Dudek as chief technology officer in June. Dudek will be responsible for technology and product development as well as quality control.

Dudek was previously

Thuet joins Entek as VP business development Christophe Thuet joined Entek as vice president for business development in the Asia Pacific region in June.

EnerSys appoints Tufano to board of directors For the record, Paul Tufano joined the board of directors of EnerSys in April. He was CFO of the Alcatel-Lucent Group from 2008 to 2013 and also COO from September 2012.

Tufano was previously executive vice president, CFO and interim CEO at Solectron Corporation from January 2006 to October 2007.

From 1996 to 2004 he worked as initially as CFO but later as EVP, COO and CEO at Maxtor Corporation.

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CTO at Telefunken Semiconductors in Heilbronn and CTO at the cleantech company Clifton, based in Estonia and Germany.

Here he was responsible for technological development, strategic business development, patent management and the development of the product roadmap.

Until 2008, Dudek was director of technology development at Atmel Corporation. which designs and manufactures microcontrollers and supporting equipment.

The appointment of Dudek is part of a general ramp-up of the startup firm as it prepares for larger scale manufacturing of its ultracapacitors.

The firm announced in June that its SkelCap 4500 series had achieved an industry record level of 4500 farads and that the firm aimed to double capacitance by 2017.

Separately, the firm appointed Hermann Schenk as chief operating officer in February. Schenk will be responsible for the company’s day-to-day activities, including overseeing the development of Skeleton Technologies’ manufacturing facility in Saxony, Germany.

Schenk has over 20 years’ experience in the high-tech sector, combining a background in research with over a decade in executive positions. He has a track

record of scaling highyield manufacturing in the chemical and semiconductor industries.

As founder and chief executive of Covion Organic Semiconductors he led the company to a successful exit to industrial conglomerate Merck. He was previously CEO of Freiberger Compound Materials.

Schenk was also director of new business development at Merck OLED Materials.

Oliver Ahlberg, one of the founders of Skeleton Technologies and who was previously chief operating officer becomes general manager and will be in charge of the company’s operations in Estonia.

Exide hires Koelsch as new chief executive Exide Technologies has appointed Vic Koelsch as its president and chief executive officer. The appointment became effective on June 22 and follows the acceptance of the restructuring plan for the company as it moved out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.

Koelsch, who joins the board of directors, takes over from Robert Caruso, who has been president and CEO since August 2013 and was brought in as a managing director from

Alvarez & Marsal who has been in charge of the restructuring. Caruso was a managing director for Alvarez & Marsal in Chicago Koelsch joins from tire manufacturer Michelin Groupe where he most recently was executive vice president of Michelin North America and chief operating officer for Michelin Americas commercial tires.

Koelsch has more than 29 years of experience in a variety of global industrial and technology businesses.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 5

Taking Pb-acid batteries to the next level.

FOR THE CHALLENGES AHEAD...

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PEOPLE NEWS

Silicor CEO recognized by American Solar Energy Society Theresa Jester (pictured right) , chief executive of Silicor Materials, a global producer of solar silicon was given the 2015 Women in Solar Energy Award from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) in July.

As part of a longer tribute the ASES noted that: “With more than 35 years in the solar industry under her belt, Jester has guided manufacturing, engineering and operations for pioneer-

Mott MacDonald appoints Karl Johnson as project director Mott MacDonald has appointed Karl Johnson as a project director looking after the consultancy’s commercial and project management capabilities in the energy and utilities market in the UK. Before this he was a business director at Capita Property and Infrastructure for over 20 years where his team were responsible for managing the delivery of major projects.

Fraunhofer puts Sarstedt on trustee board For the record, the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP in Dresden, Germany appointed Margit Sarstedt, managing director of Meyer Burger’s MicroSystems business unit, to its board of trustees in May. The board of trustees advises the institute management and the Fraunhofer Society as an external advisory board on strategic matters.

ing companies including Arco, Siemens, Shell and SunPower. She has also authored more than 50 technical publications, and holds three patents.

“Jester is leading the development of the company’s first large-scale solar silicon production facility in Grundartangi, Iceland, which will produce at least 16,000 metric tons of solar silicon each year.

Silicor was also selected as a 2015 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, which honors innovative organizations from around the world that are

poised to have a significant impact on business and society.

On a more sombre note, Silicor announced the death of its chairman, John Correnti, at the age of 68. Correnti is best known for his innovations in the steel in-

dustry, expertise he brought to Silicor’s metals-based process.

“John was a revolutionary thinker, a respected leader, and a dear friend,” said Silicor CEO Theresa Jester. “ Jester who will take over Correnti’s role on the Silicor board of directors paid tribute to him: “His profound impact on Silicor Materials—not just on our business, but also on the men and women he guided along the way—will be forever felt. Like so many others, we are fortunate to have known John, and we will miss him immensely.”

Electrovaya appoints Halka as EVP, CFO Canadian battery manufacturer Electrovaya has appointed Richard Halka as executive vice president and chief financial officer. He takes over from Paul Hart as CFO From 2006 onwards Halka previously led several high-tech companies in similar positions during periods of growth, strategic realignments, financial restructuring and organisational change.

Before that he worked as EVP and CFO of Iridium Satellite, a commercial satellite network operator, where he led its private-equity backed turnaround. He provided leadership and financial focus for this operator of the world’s largest commercial satellite network.

This privately held company had acquired the assets from one of the largest bankruptcies in US history. Brought in along with CEO to lead a turnaround and lay strategic foundation for growth.

Before that he spent three years with Stratos in a similar position. He was brought in to provide financial leadership for this global leader

8 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

in the remote satellite communications industry, a Canadian public company.

Sankar Das Gupta, chairman and chief executive officer of Electrovaya, said: “His experience in managing rapid growth of high-tech products in a global context will be a tremendous asset for Electrovaya’s immediate future as it rapidly scales for expansion across its smart grid, motive power, automotive and battery component markets and as it integrates its recent acquisition of the

0.5GWh battery plant that was formerly a DaimlerEvonik joint operation.”

Richard Halka, executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Dziuba joins Strata Solar Henry Dziuba, joined solar development firm Strata Solar as a senior vice president of commercial and industrial affairs in August.

He was previously the president and general manager of inverter builder SMA America, Before that he was the managing director of SMA’s UK operations which he set up in 2011.

He previously spent seven years as a sales and marketing director of Weidmuller UK.

Henry Dziuba, senior vice president of commercial and industrial affairs

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PRODUCT NEWS

Skeleton launches 4500 farad ultracap, in huge leap forward for energy density Skeleton Technologies, the ultracapacitor start up firm, has launched a new range of ultracapacitors that it says offers the highest level of energy density on the market.

Through the use of patented graphene material, the new series boasts a capacitance of 4500 farads. “By contrast, the closest competitor product has a capacitance of only 3400 farads,” Taavi Madiberk, the chief executive told Energy Storage Journal. “This is the single biggest increase in energy density for ultracapacitors in the past 15 years.

“We’ve actually reached 5,000 farads already,” he says. “But for commercial purposes it’s better to show a consistently achievable figure even though it’s lower.”

Energy density is a key development challenge for the ultracapacitor market and is fundamental if the technology is to eventually replace battery storage. Madiberk says the firm, which was set up in 2009, is aiming to double its capacitance by 2017.

“This would give us an energy density approaching that of lead acid batteries,” he says.

The energy density achieved by the SkelCap 4500 series will allow Skeleton Technologies, it says, to maximize opportunities in the heavy transportation and industrial markets where weight and space are at a premium.

Skeleton Technologies’ ultracapacitors have already been chosen by the European Space Agency, where their use should lead to cost savings by reducing the volume of heavy batteries required for energy storage.

This summer the company will be announcing the first ultracapacitor product for the hybrid truck market.

“Graphene has long been heralded as a wonder material for a range of applications, including energy storage. However, a mass-market, graphene-based product has been slow to materialize. Our ultracapacitors will be that market breakthrough,” says Madiberk.

“We are harnessing the power of graphene to make the most significant advances in ultracapacitor performance seen for years.

“Elon Musk has predicted that ultracapacitors will be the future for

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electric vehicles, replacing batteries in the longer term. We will fulfill that prediction.”

The new range has been designed for mass-market applications and the needs of systems engineers. The format has been developed to meet the industry standard of a 60 mm diameter cylindrical cell. Skeleton Technologies had previously offered prismatic cells, which are more compact in modular arrangements but more expensive to produce.

Skeleton is already working on incorporating ultracapacitors into smart grids and is involved in the EU funded Artemis Joint Undertaking Project.

Skeleton Technologies has also achieved one of the lowest ESR (equivalent series resistance) levels on the market at 0.095 mΩ. This factor greatly increases the efficiency of the cells by reducing the amount of energy that is lost as heat. For example, if a 3900A current is run through the SkelCap 4500 cell, it will lose only 0.30 joules per farad, whereas competing products can lose as much as 1.00 joules per farad, the firm says.

“The ultracapacitor market is dominated by organic precursor carbon from coconut shell. It is the successful development of a graphene-based carbon that is allowing us to set new records for product performance,” says Volker Dudek, the newly appointed chief technology officer at Skeleton Technologies.

“We have set ourselves an ambitious technology devel-

opment target of 20 Wh/kg by which is comparable with battery level energy density. With the launch of the SkelCap 4500 range we are already half way towards that goal.”

In June, Skeleton Technologies announced it had secured €9.8 million ($10.7 million) in a series B financing from a consortium led by Harju Elekter Group, which owns electrical equipment manufacturing plants in the Nordic-Baltic markets, and UP Invest, one of the largest investment firms in the Baltic region. The financing should allow Skeleton to ramp up the deployment of its graphene ultracapacitors.

Andrus Allikmäe, chief executive of the said: “We are convinced that ultracapacitor-based solutions will increasingly be used in electrotechnical and manufacturing automation applications for energy storage, control and high-power fast switching. Our participation in this field gives us the ability to cooperate in potential future applications and also creates a synergy in participating in the development of ultracapacitor modules.”

Skeleton is already working on incorporating ultracapacitors into smart grids and is involved in the EU funded Artemis Joint Undertaking Project. As part of this ultracaps are being installed at the electricity grid company NTE in Norway.

Skeleton is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia where it conducts research and development as well as pilot production. It has opened up a plant in Saxony, Germany, where it has plans for mass manufacturing.

Skeleton Technologies raised €3.9 million in July 2014 in a Series A financing.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 9

THE CEO INTERVIEW: YOUNICOS Younicos is a company that’s hard to pin down. Where does it stand in the new frontiers of energy storage? At its core it’s a software company but it also holds a substantial utility grid storage portfolio.

Chief executive James McDougall explains to Sara Verbruggen why that ambiguity is a good thing.

Claiming a stake in the new frontiers of energy storage Since acquiring the assets of bankrupt energy storage player Xtreme Power in April 2014, Younicos is on a roll.

The Berlin-headquartered company, which has developed software that lets the electric grid talk to batteries, has wasted no time muscling its way into territory occupied by ABB, Siemens, and other grandees of the global power infrastructure equipment market.

James McDougall, the chief executive, credits the approach to something that had already begun

by Xtreme Power. Before declaring bankruptcy, Xtreme had supplied the 36MW Notrees energy storage project in Texas, one of North America’s biggest grid battery installations and the largest connected to a wind farm.

Xtreme had played a key role in advising the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the deregulated energy market for much of the state, on creating policy framework that lets energy storage provide ancillary grid services.

Texas boasts some of the highest amounts of installed wind power in the US and is also building out its solar PV capacity. Increasing amounts of renewables are placing strain on the grid. The Notrees battery plant was built next to Duke’s 153MW Notrees

wind farm, partly financed with US Department of Energy funds. Since its commissioning in January 2013, the storage facility has been participating in ERCOT’s fast responding regulation service (FRRS) market.

Younicos has crystallized the approach taken by Xtreme in a consultancy division, which McDougall describes as, “the tip of the spear of our commercial strategy”.

The consultancy business, announced earlier in 2015, is headed

by Robert Manasse an energy industry veteran who has worked at Enel and Enron. In staffing terms the team is small — about eight to 10 of Younicos’ 150 headcount.

They are busy sitting down with heads of grid operators, energy ministers, as well as company executives, with findings, data and analysis from nearly 100MW of operational battery capacity worldwide to assess the feasibility for using energy storage before presenting the best option.

“We discuss it in a straightforward way, strip out the jargon so that it becomes easy to understand what energy storage can do and, crucially, show how it can save money,” says McDougall.

This is especially important when entering new markets, which McDougall implies is going to be an increas-

“Tesla has generated noise for the whole industry not only itself. Younicos is not going to supply the entire market. We’re definitely open to partnerships with other technology providers.”

10 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

ingly relevant part of Younicos’ strategy.

Of the 4GW pipeline of Younicos’ projects, the bulk are in Europe and North America, while in the mid to long term, the company is focused on opportunities in emerging markets also.

“In Africa and the Middle East we expect to see projects unfolding in the next one to two years and in southeast Asia and Australasia, in the next two to three years,” says McDougall.

“The consultancy is an accelerator, in markets that lack the framework and legislation that recognizes energy storage as an asset class. With the energy-storage-as-service model we offer, the utility or other end-user signs a power purchase agreement as an off-taker, which is a widely used instrument in the power industry, which everyone is familiar with.”

The energy-storage-as-service model, which is also being adopted among other companies expanding their presence in the utility grid storage market, including Siemens, means Younicos can move fast.

“We do not have to wait for governments to come up with tender programmes, or deal with issues around getting the project financing in place to cover the capex costs with this model. We put solutions in the field.”

A spectrum of size At one end of the scale the utility grid storage segment is being colonialized by traditional players in the power equipment sector.

ABB, for example, has traditionally

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THE CEO INTERVIEW: YOUNICOS

“Our approach to battery technologies is how a tradesman uses his tools in his toolbox. Batteries are the buttress that sits under the whole system, so when we are going in to win a bid or an IRR, we have about 20 qualified technologies to select from.”

JAMES MCDOUGALL BIO McDougall was appointed CEO of Younicos in April 2014. He has worked for over 20 years in the rechargeable batteries industry, starting his career at International Components Corporation, the battery charger technology firm.

At ICC, McDougall held a variety of executive positions including managing director of the company’s power supply division where he was responsible for worldwide sales, marketing and operations.

While at Valence Technology, which developed the industry’s first commercially available, safe, largeformat range of lithium iron magnesium phosphate rechargeable batteries, McDougall was director of marketing and licensing, where he marketed lithiumpolymer battery solutions to OEMs and licensed related technology to top-tier battery manufacturers.

More recently McDougall was a consultant to Dow Chemical for the spin out and formation of Aveso Displays, a pioneer in printed electronic displays and subsequently led the business development efforts of the company.

At Solicore, a producer of thin, flexible, lithium polymer batteries featuring a proprietary solid polymer electrolyte, McDougall established the Flexion battery line and strategic positioning in the powered card market. In his last assignment, as executive vice president of sales and business development, he secured several global distribution and purchase contracts to enable the battery’s commercialization.

At ReVolt, McDougall acted as chief executive officer and worked at commercializing a zinc air battery.

McDougall is also a non-executive director at European ultracapacitor company Skeleton Technologies.

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Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 11

THE CEO INTERVIEW: YOUNICOS done energy storage on a project-byproject basis. Then, when renewables — solar PV in particular — really took off in 2009 and some stimulus funding became available in the Europe and the US for financing energy storage pilots, the company decided to formalize its energy storage activities.

It has also made a number of strategic acquisitions and deals, in areas concerning microgrid integration, mass transport electrification, fastcharging and energy storage, including behind-the-meter and in-front-ofmeter applications.

A firm for all sizes If ABB had been a smaller company it would be spreading itself thin. However, as an incumbent player it has to respond to changing dynamics — brought about by renewables — and provide utilities with alternatives, to smooth the transition.

What incumbents have in terms of size and scale can also mean that they may lack the flexibility required to react quickly to new opportunities that a new market, like energy storage, throws up.

At the other end there are start-ups, heavy on software smarts but light on real-world installations. McDougall believes that Younicos benefits from combining the best of both.

The company is funded by private equity. “And our shareholders want to remain private, so we’re not the traditionally VC-backed firm in that respect either. But as we have grown they have continued to invest to support this growth.”

It’s a software-driven business, for sure, but with one of the biggest energy storage asset fleets in operation, with 150MW-200MW expected to enter operation in the next six months. About half of the company’s 4GW pipeline is energy-storage-asservice, where customers have opted not to make costly capital investments in battery assets.

But is the energy-storage-as-service model an intermediate step, something that’s needed to unlock investment until the technology becomes well understood enough for utilities or other organizations to invest in owning such assets themselves?

“It could be a bridge, but it’s important that the model is a flexible one, reflecting the different needs of various markets and different end-users.

Storage is only just becoming an asset class. Some utilities for instance may already operate these assets, but will

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Amber Rudd (centre), UK secretary of state for energy at the opening of the 6MW/10MWh energy storage project in Leighton Buzzard in the UK. Over the project’s 10 year time-frame the system will perform multiple grid services to maximize revenues. The project’s lead developer S&C Electric brought Younicos on-board because the system required additional control modes that S&C did not have inhouse

want to extend their life, so may buy this ability to do so as a service, for example,” says McDougall.

To support such a business model, Younicos is able to tap into debt and equity finance through its links with banks and insurers. In south-east Asia, the company has established relationships with regional development banks and institutions such as the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank.

There are plans to set up a regional headquarters in Singapore, to consolidate work there. “It’s a progressive place in terms of having a robust technology sector and we have been active in the region working with utilities and setting out different solutions that our energy storage platform can offer.”

Battery talk Working with utilities in developing markets has also led Younicos to adapt its platform. “The plan is to come up with a more standardized offering. We can determine the size of the box of batteries for projects based on the power versus energy regime of the application, place our software over it, with four to five control modes designed to run simultaneously.”

In fact, Younicos has developed 22 different control modes in total, though the maximum number deployed in one single installation tends to be no more than seven at present.

With a career spanning 20 years in the rechargeable batteries industries – from consumer batteries up to mega-

watt modules — McDougall wholeheartedly endorses the company’s technology-agnostic ethos.

“I see a place for hybridization of different batteries or storage technologies, to increase penetration of renewables in the grid, such as we are seeing happening with flow batteries and I also see potential for second generation sodium sulphur.”

However, he believes lithium ion and next generation lithium batteries will continue to capture the lion’s share of the market. ‘Lithium batteries have good round-trip efficiencies and are very reactive, which lends itself to many types of energy storage projects,” he says.

Long term the future is less clear.

“There are some interesting technologies in development,” he says. “But how they will play out, it will be difficult to determine. Software with lithium batteries is a powerful combination. But what we’ve been able to demonstrate is that in something like a microgrid, our software platform is

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THE CEO INTERVIEW: YOUNICOS

The Azorean isle of Graciosa in the mid-Atlantic: The 2.8MW battery park will be a core component in the island’s grid, integrated into the energy management system developed by Younicos. Graciosa will be a reference project with the view to working with Leclanché again on similar installations in future. The collaboration between the two suggests how advanced energy storage systems are as much about the software and controls — the intelligence — as much as they are about batteries; the hardware

YOUNICOS TO DOUBLE HEADCOUNT able to control every single generation source in that grid, be it solar PV, wind, batteries, diesel gen-sets.”

A technophile at heart McDougall is also hard-headed, gathered from various roles giving him inside-out knowledge of the industry. “I’ve run factory operations as well as corporate teams, I’ve worked at start-ups, dropped in to take companies from development to commercial phase.” He’s also had stints consulting to VC firms such as Kleiner Perkins and to hedge funds.

“I feel very much aligned with Younicos’ half mercenary-half missionary approach,” he says.

Younicos’ association with top-tier battery producers is well publicized.

Samsung’s lithium ion batteries are used in a number of the company’s installations in Europe and in the US, and Younicos spent several years finetuning its energy management system and software controls to coax the best performance from Samsung’s batteries in grid storage applications.

“Samsung is a key partner, they have

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a broader battery storage offering than any other partner and they are extremely proactive in terms of taking on board and responding to the needs of this industry. But there are others too that are expanding in this market, such as LG Chem, which also has a good offering and is proactive and the Japanese companies are ramping up.”

In April Younicos announced a new partner, Leclanché.

The Swiss battery maker has been developing advanced lithium chemistries and developing battery energy storage system technology.

“We had been intrigued for some time about what the company was doing, though the technology was still in the development stage so we could not use it. When Anil [Srivastava] joined Leclanché as chief executive he helped persuade us and so we took a closer look at it and wanted to try it.”

Leclanché is to supply its first MWscale battery energy storage system to a project on Graciosa being developed by Younicos. The 2.8MW bat-

Younicos has just announced plans to double in size, adding 150 jobs by 2017 to deploy energy storage projects in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

The company has more than 120MW of projects under negotiation, which, when complete, will more than double the nearly 100MW of battery storage systems installed to date.

The company also has more than 4GW of qualified orders over the next four years.

The bulk of the new hires will be at its US and European headquarters, in Austin, Texas and Berlin, in Germany. Up to 50 people will be hired by the end of the year, with the remaining 100 hired in 2016.

The bulk of the new hires will be involved in software and systems development and engineering.

Younicos is also moving to a renovated facility in Austin which will offer more than twice the space of its current location.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 13

THE CEO INTERVIEW: YOUNICOS

Robert Manasse, head of Younicos’ consultancy arm. McDougall describes the consultancy as a accelerator in markets that lack the framework and legislation that recognizes energy storage as an asset class.

tery park will be a core component in the island’s grid, integrated into the energy management system developed

by Younicos. “Graciosa will be a reference project with the view to working with Leclanché again on similar installations in future.”

The collaboration between the two suggests how advanced energy storage systems are as much about the software and controls — the ‘intelligence’ — as much as they are about batteries; the hardware.

Leclanché’s software platform will be able to manage the two different profiles of solar PV and wind resources connected to the system, while Younicos is providing the intelligence for the entire microgrid system on Graciosa of which the batteries, the thermal generators, inverters, as well as wind and solar resources, all have

to be managed at the same time.

“Leclanché is providing the best technical solution for this type of project and it’s now at the point where it is commercially ready.”

The system will incorporate 4.5MW of wind and 1MW of solar, as well as intelligent inverters to boost the island’s annual share of renewable energy generation, from 15% to 65%.

“Our approach to battery technologies is how a tradesman uses his tools in his toolbox. Batteries are the buttress that sits under the whole system, so when we are going in to win a bid or an IRR, we have about 20 qualified technologies to select from.”

The Graciosa project should be delivered by the end of 2015.

Another project with specific challenges is the Notrees energy storage installation. Younicos has been awarded the contract to retrofit the plant with lithium ion batteries supplied by Samsung SDI. The first phase of the repowered facility should go online in early 2016.

“Because it is two-phase, not all the lead-acid batteries are being swapped out, so we needed to come up with a hybrid storage control platform to work with both the new lithium ion batteries as well as the old advanced lead acid batteries remaining in the system.”

The repowering will be the first use of lithium-ion technology in ERCOT’s new FRRS (Fast-Responding Regulation Service) market.

The lithium ion batteries will enable the system to expand service delivery in the FRRS market and will also give the plant the capability to provide additional fast-responding services that ERCOT is still developing as part of its ancillary service market redesign.

YOUNICOS SETS SIGHTS ON COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL WORK Younicos is also entering the commercial and industrial market. In the US, for instance, this segment has been one of the fastest growing for energy storage, as customers seek to avoid high peak demand charges. But it is also growing in some parts of Europe, such as Germany, where commercial and industrial electricity customers have to pay high rates.

In the US a variety of energy storage or solar-and-storage leasing models are being taken

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up as businesses, manufacturers and institutions try to control their expenditure on electricity as well as buy themselves energy security should the main grid go down.

“The whole notion of energystorage-as-service depends on being able to meet the unique needs of the customer. We want to retain that flexibility to be able to go in and deploy energy storage against these different opportunities that arise,” says McDougall.

As Younicos has been able to show, by its participation in a 6MW/10MWh energy storage project in Leighton Buzzard in the UK, expensive batteries for the grid will achieve the best returns if they are designed to provide a number of services and functions.

Through the year the system’s workload changes, providing more peak shaving in the winter months, for example. But over the project’s 10 year time-frame the system will also be expected to perform multiple grid services to maximize revenue streams. A main reason why the project’s lead developer S&C Electric brought Younicos on-board was because the system required additional control modes that S&C did not have in-house.

McDougall acknowledges the opportunity afforded by S&C. “The company has recognized energy storage as an enabler and not a threat to its traditional business model.”

One to watch Whether traditional power equipment providers or even battery manufacturers like to admit it, by focusing on software, from algorithms that interpret grid signals to those that preserve the life of the battery under various operating states demanded of it, Younicos has emerged in recent years as one of the industry’s most exciting integrators to watch.

Through acquiring Xtreme, which had a widely commercialized controls system designed to marry different types of hardware together, and had accumulated experience of integrating many megawatts of batteries on the grid and supply chain partnerships in place, the company is an a strong position now that competition is heating up.

Acknowledging the hype around Tesla as well as the fanfare preceding Alevo, he is welcoming. “We see these as exciting developments. Tesla has generated noise for the whole industry not only itself. Younicos is not going to supply the entire market. We’re definitely open to partnerships with other technology providers.”

Without doubt, Tesla’s announcement has dialled up the attention on energy storage. But increasingly the focus will turn to the value proposition of energy storage. With its software platform backed up by operating installations, including 77MW of storage built by Xtreme Power, and knowledge gained in pulling together all of the various hardware and software components, Younicos may well have the edge.

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NEWS

Parker Hannifin supplies 1MW battery storage system in Germany Parker Hannifin’s energy grid tie division has supplied an energy storage system in north-west Germany to RWE’s distribution system operator (DSO) company, Westnetz.

The system comprises Parker’s 890PX grid-facing inverter integrated with LG Chem’s lithium ion batteries.

The battery system will allow Westnetz to feed more solar PV electricity into the grid. Solar PV electricity generated in a farmer’s field in part of north-west Germany generates so much power, especially during peak summer months, that it risks pushing the transformers and cables beyond their rating.

Rather than build more cables and transformers to overcome the issue, Westnetz

opted for a 250kW/1MWh battery system.

The system, housed in a 40ft shipping container, which was delivered on August 11, will be commissioned by September 2015.

The battery bank will be able to absorb up to four hours of solar electricity to release into the grid later in the day.

Parker led the project, which will not only test the system in critical grid situations, but also act as a pilot for a further development of the future market design and regulatory framework.

In addition to integrating the batteries with its gridfacing inverter, Parker also wrote the controls for the system. “To enable the system to absorb and provide power to

ensure that the transmission infrastructure is not overloaded,” says David Blood, market manager, Parker Energy Grid-Tie EMEA. “We are seeing these 1-5MW range projects, for things such as grid infrastructure deferral, frequency regulation type applications, cropping up all over Europe, not just Germany. We have recently worked with AES Corporation — an energy storage partner — on a 10MW system on the grid in Zeeland in southern Holland.”

Westnetz, which is Germany’s largest DSO, faces huge challenges in rural grids due to the increasing levels of solar PV generation on its network, particularly in the peak summer months. Combining

VizN to supply largest commissioned flow battery installation in North America, Europe ViZn Energy Systems, a provider of energy storage systems for microgrid and utility applications, announced in August that it had won a contract with Hecate En-

ergy, a US-based developer of power projects, to supply a 2MW zinc-iron redox flow battery system for the provision of ancillary services to the Ontario grid operated by

Bosch buys into lithium polymer with Seeo acquisition Bosch, the German industrial conglomerate has bought Seeo, a Californiabased company that has developed next-generation lithium-ion batteries that could double the range of electric cars. Although the move by Bosch, already a major supplier to the automotive industry, is primarily a bid to move into the electric vehicle business, mass manufacture of the batteries has wider implications for the larger scale energy storage business.

Seeo has an exclusive license to core patents from Lawrence Berkeley

National Laboratory that could help Bosch produce lightweight batteries on an industrial scale.

Seeo’s advanced lithium polymer cells have an energy density of 350Wh/kg twice that used in today’s electric vehicles.

According to a filing with the state of California, Seeo’s battery technology may help to increase energy density by 50%-100%, which could increase the operating range of an electric vehicle.

Bosch would not reveal the financial details of the acquisition.

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the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO).

ViZn Energy’s 2MW/6 MWh flow battery, which is scheduled to be commissioned in 2016, is on target to be the largest commissioned flow battery installation in North America and Europe to date.

Chris Bullinger, chief executive of Hecate Energy said: “ViZn’s system possesses the necessary capabilities for both power and energy services that this project requires. We also believe that, over the life of the battery, it will provide a very favorable payback.”

“Utility-scale projects like this one will be increasingly important for the energy storage industry in the future. Utilities are now working to figure out how to maximize the potential of their existing generation capacity,” Ron Van Dell, chief executive of ViZn said. “ We expect it to serve as a model for utilities that wish to de

the inverter, controls and battery in one container offers Westnetz the potential to relocate the system to a different area of the power grid in the future as required.

Aquion Energy and Eguana partner after field testing ends Aquion Energy, the developer and manufacturer of aqueous hybrid ion batteries and Eguana Technologies a supplier of power conversion and control systems for stationary energy storage systems, announced in August that they had successfully completed field trials of Eguana’s Bi-Direx inverter with Aquion’s AHI high performance batteries.

The two now propose to form a partnership where the companies will jointly market and support the combined solution to system integrators, OEMs, and other companies deploying energy storage systems.

The testing undertaken

by Aquion successfully demonstrated the technologies of both companies working together as an integrated energy storage module, said the companies.

Both companies’ components are certified to UL standards and are in production and widely available for purchase.

Eguana’s Bi-Direx inverter is a high efficiency, bi-directional, grid-interactive inverter, specifically designed to connect distributed low voltage generation and storage systems to smart grids and micro-grids.

Aquion’s AHI batteries contain no heavy metals

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NEWS

Milestone reached in next iteration of solar air battery Researchers at the Ohio State University in the US say they have now reached a new milestone in the development of a solar air battery.

In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report that their design — which combines a solar cell and a battery into a single device — achieves a 20% energy savings over traditional lithium-iodine batteries. The 20% comes from sunlight, which is captured by a solar panel on top of the battery.

In the new iteration, the solar panel is now a solid sheet, rather than a titanium mesh as in the previous design. Another key difference comes from the use of a water-based electrolyte inside the battery.

Because water circulates inside it, the new design

belongs to an emerging class of batteries called aqueous flow batteries.

“The truly important innovation here is that we’ve successfully demonstrated aqueous flow inside our solar battery,” says Yiying Wu, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the university.

As such, it is the first aqueous flow battery with solar capability. “It’s totally compatible with current battery technology, very easy to integrate with existing technology, environmentally friendly and easy to maintain,” says Wu. Researchers are working to develop aqueous flow batteries because they could theoretically provide affordable power gridlevel energy storage in the longer term.

“This solar flow battery

design can potentially be applied for grid-scale solar energy conversion and storage, as well as producing ‘electrolyte fuels’ that might be used to power future electric vehicles,” said Mingzhe Yu, lead author of the paper and a doctoral student at Ohio State.

Previously, Yu designed the solar panel out of titanium mesh, so that air could pass through to the battery.

But the new aqueous flow battery doesn’t need air to function, so the solar panel is now a solid sheet.

The solar panel is called a dye-sensitized solar cell, because the researchers use a red dye to tune the wavelength of light it captures and converts to electrons.

Those electrons then supplement the voltage stored in the lithium-anode portion of the solar battery.

A liquid electrolyte is typically part salt, part solvent; previously, the researchers used the salt lithium perchlorate mixed with the organic solvent dimethyl sulfoxide. Now they are using lithium iodide as the salt, and water as the solvent.

In tests, the researchers compared the solar flow battery’s performance to that of a typical lithium-iodine battery. They charged and discharged the batteries 25 times. Each time, both batteries discharged around 3.3V. The difference was that the solar flow battery could produce the same output with less charging.

The typical battery had to be charged to 3.6V to discharge 3.3V. The solar flow battery was charged to only 2.9V, because the solar panel made up the difference.

This research was funded by the US Department of Energy.

Stem gets investor thumbs up for series C investment Stem, a provider of what it calls intelligent energy storage, has announced the close of its Series C funding round at $45 million in total. “This is a substantial sum and suggests, given also the pedigree of the investing firms, that its products are poised for large scale take-up,” said one commentator. “Its leasing model could be the standard for the future. It’s one

to watch in 2016.”

The second tranche in the round was led by RWE Supply & Trading, the energy trading arm of Germany-based RWE Group, one of Europe’s largest electricity and gas companies. RWE Supply & Trading will also take a seat on Stem’s board of directors.

Stem’s energy storage system combines three technologies integrated

with renewables. Its software, called PowerScope, combines historical energy use, weather forecasts and rates to learn and then predict a company’s energy patterns. Its energy storage system known as PowerStore draws energy from lithium ion batteries when costs are low and deploys when high, saving customers the most on their electric bills. This is controlled

Powerstorm ESS receives first commercial order for telecoms in Tanzania Powerstorm ESS, the California-based energy storage developer, announced in August that it had received its first commercial purchase order for $150,000 from a major integrator of telecommunications

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infrastructure in eastern Africa. The system will be used to supply power to multiple wireless communications base stations in Tanzania.

Anamaria Pruteanu, president of Powerstorm ESS, said, “While small

compared to some of the opportunities in our pipeline, this purchase order is a milestone for Powerstorm ESS — it represents our first commercial order for our hybrid energy solutions.”

by PowerMonitor a submetering device installed on-site to track energy use in real-time.

In particular Stem searches for spikes/peaks in energy use and brings them down. These spikes trigger demand charges — the fee based on the highest point of electrical usage in addition to the energy that is used. Demand charges can account for a huge chunks of a business electricity bill. They are assessed by the utility as the cost of providing the infrastructure providing transmission to the customer.

Stem’s Series C round opened earlier this year with a $12 million tranche led by Japan-based Mitsui & Co. Existing investors also contributed to the fund raising which was oversubscribed by 50% said the firm.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 17

NEWS IPL launches energy storage facility Indianapolis Power & Light Company, launched an advanced battery-based energy storage facility in July.

Its Advancion Energy Storage Array, which will be the first gridscale storage system in the 15-state Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) grid system, will provide 20 MW of interconnected energy storage, equivalent to 40 MW of flexible resource.

Construction has already begun, with the facility set to come online in the first half of 2016.

Voltabox launches lithium-ion battery plant Voltabox of Texas, the US subsidiary of German firm Paragon, launched a lithium-ion battery production plant in Texas in July. Since 2014, Voltabox has temporarily manufactured its products in leased premises. The company will operate its first fully automated assembly line for lithium-ion battery packs.

Saft wins €20m plus contract In July, battery manufacturer Saft received a €20 million order for lithium-ion battery systems from Reliance Jio Infocomm, the only Pan-Indian 4G/long term evolution operator.

To support India’s ongoing 4G/LTE roll-out programme, Saft will supply Evolion lithiumion battery systems to Reliance Jio Infocomm base transceiver stations.

The battery systems, are being rolled out to over 16,000 4G/LTE BTS sites across India.

BIC & MESA partner to launch testing centre The Battery Innovation Centre, a US not-for-profit organization, partnered with the Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA) Standards Alliance in July to launch the first MESA compatibility and interoperability testing centre.

“The venture is hugely important to the advanced battery community in developing common communication standards — it’s as important as the USB was to the computer industry,” a BIC official told Energy Storage Journal.

Companies using the centre will be able to verify the compatibility of their products with a variety of standards and test how they perform when linked together.

The MESA Standards Alliance is an industry group formed to help accelerate the growth of the energy storage industry through the development of an open, non-proprietary set of specifications and stand-

ards for energy storage systems.

The alliance has a number of goals, including standardizing communications, reducing project-specific engineering costs and reducing training costs.

The BIC facility has a full suite of electrical test and evaluation capabilities including wind and solar generation, 1MWh of energy storage, and a 1MW inverter onsite, along with a 6.4MW net metering capability onto the adjacent MISO node.

It will also establish a microgrid test lab that will include AC grid simulation capabilities, multiple energy storage systems, and standards-based software to control and evaluate performance of various microgrid components under multiple operating profiles.

Craig Collar, board chair of the MESA Alliance said: “We’ve had a productive first year as an alliance.

Our specifications are taking shape and we need a location and an organisation that is vendor-independent where our industry and utility members can come to verify that things work as designed.”

David Roberts, president of BIC, sa`id: “Establishing a strategic partnership with MESA is an honour for the BIC. The opportunity to serve the industry in this capacity validates BIC’s position as a trusted resource to market participants.

“We see this sector of the energy storage market increasing dramatically as the number of vendors with commercially viable smart grid products increases and as vital entities like MESA help to define and standardize communication protocol between the various products.

“We are confident our partnership will catalyse the MESA standardization efforts.”

Venture capital funding in battery industry falls in first half of 2015 Venture capital investments in the battery and energy storage industry fell by nearly $100 million in the first half of 2015, compared with the first half of 2014, according to consulting firm Mercom Energy Group.

The firm’s report on funding and mergers and acquisitions activity for the smart grid, battery and storage and energy efficiency sectors, showed that in the first half of 2015, companies in the battery and storage space received $194 million in venture capital funding compared with $282 million in the first half of 2014.

Things were picking up in the second quarter, however, when companies

18 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

received $126 million of funding via 13 deals compared with $69 million and seven deals in the first quarter of the year.

One of the biggest deals was the $58.1 million raised by VionX Energy, a vanadium redox flow battery manufacturer.

Another big deal was completed by Cnano Technology, a manufacturer and developer of multi-wall carbon nanotube products for the energy storage, structural and electronics industries, which raised $15 million.

Additionally, Stem, a provider of behind-themeter energy storage systems, raised $12 million; Skeleton Technologies, a

developer and manufacturer of ultra-capacitors, raised $10.7 million; and Advanced MicroGrid Solutions, an advanced energy storage solutions designer received $8.8 million.

Some 24 investors participated in the funding rounds in the second quarter with flow battery companies raising the most money.

Seven debt and public market financing deals were completed in the second quarter with $69 million. One acquisition was completed: lithium-ion cell manufacturer Evonik Litarion was bought by portable lithium-ion battery power solutions manufacturer Electrovaya.

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NEWS

Panasonic sets new bar for energy conversion efficiency in boost to energy storage sector Panasonic has developed a solar panel with an industryleading energy-conversion efficiency of 22.5% and plans to have a commercial version ready for homes in 2016.

“The steady increase in energy conversion efficiencies is one of the key drivers behind the energy storage market,” an industry commentator said. “Greater efficiencies at lower cost are the key drivers behind the recent rapid growth in mega-solar plants and now this looks to to spill over further into the residential market. Already some 85% of panels sold are into homes.

Panels have lower efficiency than individual cells — last year Panasonic developed a solar cell with a record conversion efficiency of 25.6% — because energy is lost when harvesting the electricity from the cells. To boost the efficiency of its new solar panel, Panasonic modified the connection components and electrode materials for the cells and adopted a new structure that reduces reflection of sunlight.

Other firms are snapping at Panasonic’s heels. SunPower, based in San Jose, California, has developed a panel with an efficiency of 22.4% but this has yet to

go into commercial production.

Panasonic manufactures solar cells at four main factories worldwide. The company plans to invest nearly 10 billion yen ($80 million) to boost its domestic production capacity by around 10% to more than 1 million kilowatts by fiscal 2016. It will move quickly into mass production of the new panels.

Panasonic’s overall solarcell business generated an estimated 150 billion yen in sales in the financial year ended March 31, up more than 20% over the previous year.

Green Charge Networks partners ChargePoint in new energy storage EV charging mix Green Charge Networks, the largest provider of commercial energy storage in the US, announced on July 21 its partnership with ChargePoint, the electric vehicle charging network.

“Combining energy storage with EV charging eliminates the high cost of demand charges caused by spikes in power usage, often a barrier to installing EV charging stations,” said

a Green Charge official. In the US so-called demand charges are part of every commercial electricity bill and are determined by the highest 15 minutes of use during a billing cycle.

Vic Shao, CEO at Green Charge Networks said.

“The combination of energy storage with EV charging is important and necessary, especially in California where demand charges are

some of the highest in the whole of the country.

“Having EV charging readily available at public locations, especially along highly travelled corridors, will enable further electrification and accelerate adoption of electric vehicles.: Redwood City, located in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, will be the first joint customer to install the combined package.

Czech Republic, Australia get Gildemeister flow storage This year’s rising wave of flow battery project awards continued with the announcement in August that storage provider Gildemeister had completed two CellCube storage systems, based on vanadium redox flow technology in the Czech Republic.

In July the firm announced that it had installed a furterhCellCube FB 30-130, at the University of New South Wales — coincidentally the birthplace of the vanadium redox battery where 30 years ago almost to the month it was developed by professor Skyllas-

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Kazacos and her team at the university, The CellCube FB 30-130, with a power output of 30 kW and a storage capacity of 130 kWh. In the univeristy it is able to take up surplus energy from a 150 kWp photovoltaic system.

It will also be used for research at the Australian Energy Research Institute. One research purpose is hardware in-the-loop testing to be built by using the vanadium redox flow battery and the real time digital system.

This will allow an experimental evaluation of various power management algo-

rithms for the V battery support of photovoltaic plants in the Australian national electricity market.

Additionally, the CellCube will work as part of the power demand management system of the Tyree Energy Technology building, and provide energy to emergency lights and the telecommunication infrastructure in case of power breakdowns.

The integration of the storage system was made possible by the investment of AGL Energy and First Solar which received a government grant under the Solar Flagship Programme in 2012.

Oxis & Anesco to develop storage units Lithium sulphur battery technology developer Oxis Energy partnered with energy efficiency products company Anesco in mid-July to develop lithium sulphur storage units for the growing renewables market in the UK. The units will be available from 2016.

EnerSys closes ICS take-over Battery manufacturer EnerSys completed its acquisition of Australiabased ICS Industries on July 23. ICS is a shelter designer, manufacturer, installation and maintenance services company serving the telecommunications, utilities, datacenter, natural resources and transport industries operating in Australia and serving customers in the Asia Pacific region.

It specialises in turn-key solutions for equipment facilities.

EnerSys said the acquisition will provide it with local capabilities in research and development, civil, mechanical and electrical engineering services, building construction, structural design and site certification, tower installations, project management and maintenance support services as well as local warehousing and manufacturing facilities to offer complete solutions for its customers.

John Craig, chairman and chief executive officer of EnerSys, said: “This acquisition is part of our strategy of geographic expansion into rapidly growing markets such as the Asia Pacific region.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 19

NEWS

ALABC publishes results of three-year programme The Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) has published a factsheet on the benefits to the lead-acid industry of a three-year research programme the body carried out.

This says its programme, which ran between 2013 and 2015, has produced groundbreaking results related to advanced lead-acid battery technology demonstrating that the batteries can be made suitable for grid-level storage and hybrid EV use.

The ALABC is set for a change in direction in the

next 2016 to 2018 programme of research where the emphasis will move away from high-profile demonstration projects and to further research on improving the performance of lead acid batteries.

The organization itself is about to be restructured and further details will be announced at the ABC meetings in Bangkok in September..

Within the factsheet, the ALABC discussed the three most important achievements of the programme.

The first was the develop-

Its third achievement has been the improvement and life extension of batteries for photovoltaic systems used in renewable energy, it said.

ment of a new understanding of carbon additives for lead batteries.

“The information is highly valuable for researchers and engineers developing advanced lead batteries and alleviates the need for further studies in this area,” said the consortium.

Second, the programme has introduced cost-effective hybrid electric vehicle solutions for car manufacturers, with the most efficient automotive battery demonstration project of the ALABC being the development of a 48V micro/mild hybrid vehicle with downsized engine with optimised performance using lead-carbon batteries.

Its third achievement has been the improvement and life extension of batteries for photovoltaic systems used in

renewable energy, it said.

Separately ALABC announced that the recent additions of Chinese battery producers Chaowei Power and Tianneng Power and US carbon nanomaterial producer Black Diamond Structures have given the ALABC its largest membership in its 23 years of operation.

Chaowei (which produces the brand name Chilwee Batteries) and Tianneng are two of China’s leading producers of lead-acid batteries for electric vehicles (including e-bikes) and motive power applications.

Black Diamond Structures specializes in the production of a breakthrough form of modified carbon nanotubes (CNTs), called Molecular Rebar.

Project Helios launched by Oxis Solar Centre Oxis Solar Centre for Autonomous Research (OSCAR) launched Project Helios to demonstrate its lithium-sulphur batterybased solar energy technology in June.

Project Helios, described by the company as a launchpad for cheaper commercial solar energy across the world, will be demonstrated in collaboration with photovoltaic integrator Proinso.

The demonstration comprises a 3.8kWp solar PV power generation system

which is fully integrated with a 3kWh Oxis lithium sulphur battery.

It has 16 PV panels connected in series to produce 600V DC. This feeds into the SMA Sunny Boy Inverter to generate a 240V, 50Hz mains ready output.

The inverter includes Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) to ensure that the panels operate at maximum efficiency under all conditions of sunlight and temperature.

The mains output from

Leclanché to supply world’s largest battery operated ferryboat Swiss battery manufacturer Leclanché has been chosen to supply the world’s largest battery operated ferryboat. The ferry built by Danish shipbuilder Søby Shipyard will begin service in June 2017 using a 4.2MWh battery system.

The ferry, which will be the world’s largest in

terms of battery capacity.

Anil Srivastava, chief executive officer of Leclanché, said: “This new contract, following the confirmation of the large order for the Project Graciosa, gives also further validation of Leclanché’s strong execution of its business plan and growth strategy.”

20 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

the Sunny Boy inverter powers the charger for a driverless vehicle, the Meridian Navya, and the SMA Sunny Island Battery inverter which in turn charges the Oxis lithium sulphur battery, storing the unused excess energy generated during daylight for use after dark.

The Sunny Island and Sunny Boy inverters are configured to off-grid mode.

When power is unavailable from either the PV panels or the battery, the system switches to mains operation and takes energy from the grid to ensure the loads remain powered.

“This configuration allows us to manage the loads connected to the system so that we can evaluate the performance of the Oxis battery under controlled conditions,” said Oxis. “The system can easily be reconfigured for grid-connected operation where the battery is used to increase self-consumption.”

The single lithium sulphur

battery can be expanded to a total of four batteries, which is suitable for most domestic installations in Europe.

Huw Hampson-Jones, chief executive officer of Oxis, said: “The significance of this technology is at this stage understated. In the continent of Africa for example, this is a breakthrough as profound as the introduction of the mobile phone, allowing for the rapid commercialization of their economies, using solar energy storage systems.

“For Europe, this technology brings a safe, cheap source of electricity for its citizens in a manner that allows its economies to reduce their dependency on oil and gas.”

Stuart Macfarlane, Proinso head of Asia-Pacific and storage, said: “The realization of the Oxis storage solution is perfectly timed as we continue to move into emerging markets that have a high demand for safe, reliable and cost-effective energy storage solutions.”

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NEWS

Beacon to supply flywheels to Alaska, announces collaboration in Europe’s first hybrid storage plant Energy storage systems manufacturer Beacon Power announced in May it will supply flywheels for hybrid energy storage in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition the firm announced details of its March contract win in Ireland to provide the first hybrid-flywheel energy storage facility in Europe.

As part of its agreement with Alaska’s Chugach Electric Association, the systems will be installed at a substation next to Chugach headquarters and should go into operation later this year.

Beacon’s flywheel technology will be used with an existing lower duty-cycle conventional electro-chemical battery when additional energy is needed.

This is the third utility installation of Beacon’s modular 160kW flywheel energy storage system, which is the next generation of the 100kW flywheels in commercial operation at 20 MW plants in New York and Pennsylvania.

The companies will test the 320kW system to determine if there is a possibility of scaling up in the future.

This would enable increasing amounts of renewables to interconnect with remote system utilities along the Alaskan region known as the Railbelt.

Chugach has received funding support for this new project from the Alaska Energy Authority’s Emerging Energy Technology Fund.

Beacon is also collaborating on this project with Spirae, which is providing the overall control system to manage output, both of flywheels and batteries. It will also manage each sys-

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tem’s state-of-charge.

Paul Risse, Chugach’s senior vice president for power supply, said this could provide future opportunities for the technology in the region: “This hybrid flywheel-battery project is an opportunity to bring proven next-generation technologies that have strong track records elsewhere to our state — and combine them in an innovative way.”

Barry Brits, Beacon president and chief executive officer, said: “Our new modular system is ideal for hybrid energy storage opportunities, enabling our flywheels to work together with different storage technologies to realise the widest range of power system benefits.

Ireland too For the record Europe’s first grid connected Hybrid flywheel system service facility was officially announced by Ged Nash, Ireland’s minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation on March 26.

Irish company Schwungrad Energie is behind the initiative which will be based in Rhode, in the county of Offaly about 50 miles west of Dublin. It is being developed in collaboration with the Department of Physics & Energy at the University of Limerick.

Beacon Power will provide the flywheel, Schwungrad received the first phase of up to €2.55 million European Commission Horizon 2020 funding to assist the project in December 2014. It aimed at developing a hybrid system security and reliability technology, to overcome technical barriers and enable the

From left to right: Robert Lynch (University of Limerick); Dave Nickerson (Beacon Power); Nigel Reams (RR Projects); Lea Collins (RR Projects); Jake Bracken (Schwungrad Energie); Frank Burke (Schwungrad Energie); Ged Nash (minister of state for business and employment), Colm Staunton (Schwungrad Energie); Peter Duffy (Schwungrad Energie); and Mervyn Keegan (Schwungrad Energie).

establishment of low carbon and efficient energy systems.

Additional investment has been received from RR Projects, a company based in the Irish county of Offaly and the European Commission, to facilitate development of Europe’s first hybrid flywheel system service facility.

The Irish transmission system Operator. EirGrid, selected this project as a potential demonstration project under its Smart Grid Programme.

This initiative promotes and supports the development, trialling and proofing of new concepts, solutions and technologies. It focuses on projects that demonstrate specific smart grid concepts in an Irish power system context, particularly system services.

Schwungrad and EirGrid are investigating possible collaboration on how best to operate the plant to provide rapid frequency re-

sponse and voltage control, which contribute to system stabilization A team at the Department of Physics & Energy at University of Limerick, led

by Noel Buckley, a professor, and Robert Lynch, are looking at electrochemical batteries for large- scale energy storage and grid stabilization. These technologies are becoming critically important as an increasing fraction of electricity is derived from renewable sources such as wind. The work will include research and modelling.

The governments in Ireland and Northern Ireland have set ambitious renewable electricity targets. Driven by a combination of legal and policy requirements to increase energy security, enhance energy sustainability and reduce carbon emissions in the energy sector, Ireland and Northern Ireland have adopted 40% renewable electricity targets to be achieved by 2020.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 21

NEWS

Tabuchi Electric launches all-in-one storage inverter for North America Japanese solar inverter supplier Tabuchi Electric has launched an inverter for residential solar PV- battery coupled systems in the North American market.

The company’s Enetelus Intelligent Battery System (EIBS), unveiled during Intersolar North America in July, is an inverter integrated with a battery system, designed to be easier to install, as opposed to installers having to source separate batteries and inverters. The product is able to deliver energy management functions.

Harumi McClure, general manager of Tabuchi Electric of America, said: “Rather

than creating a patchwork of batteries and inverters, we’ve optimized our technology to include everything in one system.”

Such products typically include the inverter in the battery unit or one enclosure for both inverter and battery.

Tabuchi Electric is not the only solar inverter company that is moving into supplying integrated inverter and battery systems. As subsidies for PV systems begin to tail off in mature markets such as Europe and the US many manufacturers have been turning to developing all-inone products that integrate

inverters with batteries for the solar PV market. This also creates new opportunities where energy storage is in demand — especially in commercial markets — without PV. While several global solar inverter players have made noises about developing inverter-integrated batteries, few have successfully rolled out so-called AC batteries.

In April 2015, Canada’s Eguana Technologies launched an AC Battery, coupling its bi-directional inverter with LG Chem’s batteries, and has already picked up customers in the US including Sunwave and

Rexel’s Gexpro Solutions, via a tie-up with Growing Energy Labs Inc (Geli).

Enphase has been betatesting an AC battery since announcing the product in 2014, with plans to roll-out in markets such as the US and Europe in the second half of 2015.

In Japan, certification requirements by Japan Electrical Safety & Environment Technology Laboratories (JET) are tough by global standards, dictating that inverters for use with low voltage batteries in products like residential energy storage systems must be incorporated with a battery system.

Sonnenbatterie and Eguana fail to extend inverter agreement

In April Sonnenbatterie announced an agreement with solar installer Sungevity to supply its lithium batterybased intelligent energy storage systems.

Sungevity will mainly supply the storage systems into the US residential market, though there are plans to offer Sonnenbatterie’s commercial system and the partnership between the pair also extends to Europe.

In August Eguana Technologies, a supplier of inverters for solar PV and energy storage systems, announced it is supplying Growing Energy Labs Inc (Geli), with its inverter-integrated AC battery.

The partnership will allow Geli to enter the residential energy storage market in North America initially, though the company is also looking at markets abroad.

Gexpro Solutions, part of global electrical distributor Rexel, is the first supplier to offer a battery system based on Geli and Eguana’s tie-up.

In addition to Geli, Sunwave is also introducing residential energy storage systems in North America that use Eguana’s AC battery, based on LG Chem’s cells.

Energy storage systems supplier Sonnenbatterie and Eguana Technologies have failed to reach an agreement to continue their inverter supply deal, which has been in place for two years.

The decision, announced in July by Alberta-based Eguana, emerged soon after both companies had begun respective aggressive pushes into the North American residential energy storage market.

In that announcement, Michael Carten, Eguana’s chief executive (who stepped down in August), said, “While we were aware of competitive concerns with respect to the introduction of our AC Battery, we are disappointed with the outcome of negotiations, but wish Sonnenbatterie well.”

When Eguana launched its bi-directional low voltage inverter in mid-2013 with Sonnenbatterie, the product proved to be a strong contender against inverters aimed at the burgeoning residential energy storage market by big global firms such as

SMA and ABB (Power-One).

Since then Eguana has shipped over 4000 of its inverters, mainly to the German market.

In a solar-coupled battery system, inverters — power electronics — are the main point that manages interconnection between the DC PV panels and batteries, and the AC utility grid and household electricity consumption.

Eguana’s inverter, originally developed over a decade ago for fuel cell systems, achieves minimal efficiency losses by reducing the number of conversion steps, with simplified circuitry.

According to Boris von Bormann, the chief executive of Sonnenbatterie’s US division, competitive concerns are only a minor point as Eguana’s AC battery does not offer the same level of functionality as Sonnenbatterie’s system.

“The key for us is that we offer our customers the best, most reliable, and the product with the most functionality in the market,” he says.

22 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

The company has signed supply agreements with several inverter suppliers. Steca is supplying the inverter for Sonnenbatterie’s European market, with Outback Power supplying the inverter for Sonnenbatterie’s US residential storage systems.

Residential energy storage systems for the US market need higher power inverters since they are expected to provide back-up functions, which is not so important in the European residential energy storage market, where demand is for self-consumption of PV electricity.

Eguana Technologies’ AC battery, launched in April, uses lithium ion batteries from LG Chem. The product is a pre-integrated and certified energy storage system which requires a grid connection and a dispatch signal. It can be used to store solar power in the day for use at night, or it can also be integrated with advanced energy storage management software to provide multiple functions.

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BACK TO BASICS Ever more advanced battery management systems are being developed to match the sophisticated needs of the applications that the batteries serve, writes Isidor Buchmann, chairman of Cadex Electronics and founder of the Battery University.

How to improve the battery fuel gauge Increasingly, batteries are being controlled by a device called a Battery Management System. The BMS assures safety, extends battery life and provides state-of-charge (SoC) readings.

Current systems do this by measuring cell voltage, current and temperature, some also include coulomb counting.

Coulomb counting measures the in-and out-flowing battery current, a theory that goes back 250 years. The accuracy of the SoC is adequate for consumer products and decreases with use and time. By then the user has gotten used to the quirks of the portable device and no one gets hurt.

Military, medical and other critical instruments demand higher accuracies and this article focuses on the intelligence that is responsible to measure battery SoC. The challenge of the so-called “smart battery” is keeping the electrochemical battery and the digital battery together.

The electrochemical battery is known as the actual energy storage vessel and the digital battery is the circuitry that predicts the remaining energy.

Figure 1 illustrates the drifting apart of the digital battery from the electrochemical battery and how periodic calibration corrects the error. The values

are assumed and accentuated.

All batteries have losses and the released energy is always less than what has been fed into the pack. Inefficiencies in charge acceptance, especially towards the end of charge, resistive losses that turn into heat, and storage losses in the form of self-discharge reduce deliverable energy.

A common flaw with BMS design is assuming that the battery will always stays young and energetic. Aging takes on many dimensions and some BMS record user patterns and environmental conditions to generate a “learn” algorithm that corrects the tracking error. Such modelling will help, but tracking the aging process causes limitations.

Device calibration Calibration, also known as capacity re-learning, is a better method to correct the tracking error of a smart battery. Manual calibration occurs by running the battery down on purpose. This can be done in the equipment or externally with a battery analyzer. With most fuel gauge chips, a full discharge resets the discharge flag and the subsequent recharge sets the charge flag. Establishing these two

Electrochemical battery 100

90

Digit al Ba ttery

flags allows SoC calculation by tracking the distance between the flags.

The calibration of a device in constant use should be done once every three months or after 40 partial cycles.

If the device applies a periodic deep discharge on its own accord, no additional calibration is required. Although feasible for a portable device, such a service would not be practical for EV and UPS batteries.

A device that often runs into calibration problems is a defibrillator, a medical instrument that provides shock treatment to a patient suffering from a cardiac arrest. A defibrillator seldom reaches the full discharge needed for self-calibration, and applying a full charge alone is not sufficient. Nor does the SMBus help. SMBus provides communications and the results are only as good as the available data.

Nowhere is the accuracy of the battery fuel gauge more critical than in the electric powertrain. Surveys show that range anxiety is one of the largest concerns among EV buyers. A less known but equally worrisome impediment are inaccuracies in the battery fuel gauge. EV drivers have run out of battery power while the fuel gauge still indicated a comfortable 25% reserve.

Getting stranded because of false readings adds fear and paranoia. Anecdotal comments made by engineers at a SAE Consortium reveal that the SoC error of new EV battery modules can be as high as 15%.

Comparisons Calibration

Calibration

3

6

80 9

Figure 1: Tracking of an electrochemical and digital battery as a function of time. With use and time the electro-chemical and digital battery drift apart; calibration corrects the error. Note: The accumulating error is application related; the values on the chart are accentuated.

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The fuel gauge of the combustion engine does not have this problem. The storage tank stays the same for the life of the vehicle and the fuel dispensing remains accurate. The battery in the electric vehicle, on the other hand, shrinks and technology to measure dispensed energy needs improvement.

People compare the battery with a fuel tank, but estimating storage capabil-

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 23

ity and measuring battery energy from an electrochemical device is far more complex than with a liquid fuel storage system.

The BMS of an electric powertrain should also indicate the total energy a battery can hold at any given time. Accurate capacity measurements are not yet feasible and the losses are mostly hidden to the user. The battery capacity may have dropped to 80%, but the BMS will still show 100% SoC after a full charge.

A lower capacity reduces the runtime and shortens driving range. A weak battery also charges more quickly because there is less to fill.

A BMS should display SoC and SoH. But even if SoH were available, many manufacturers would be hesitant to show a capacity that is less that 100 percent during the warranty period for fear of customer complaint. SoH, if made available, could be shown to service personnel through an access code. To compensate for losses and honor the eight to 10 year warranty, EV manufacturers oversize the battery by 20%. This allows for aging and offers extra driving range, just in case.

Conductivity

BACK TO BASICS

Magnetic field

Ferromagnetic layer Non-conductive magnetic layer Ferromagnetic layer

Figure 2: GMR sensor: The magnetic property of a battery changes with THE SoC. A sensor reads the change when exposed to a magnetic field.

Voltage

Q-Mag

Time

BMS

Current

Improving the BMS Battery voltage, current and temperature alone are not sufficient to provide accurate SoC estimations, much less state-of-health (SoH). Early Li-ion correlated the rising internal resistance with SoH. This no longer works because most modern Li-ion batteries maintain low resistance as the battery ages.

When designing a BMS, one also must consider how the battery serves the host. In an iPhone and most EVs, for example, the battery is married to the host. This enables collecting data for learning. The battery and host cohabitat in a similar way to partners in a good marriage.

Batteries for a two-way radio, on the other hand, are picked from a common charger and returned to a pool for recharging after use. Learning is difficult and a different method must be found to track battery health.

Cadex Electronics is making critical progress in measuring battery SoC by using magnetic susceptibility. Quantum magnetism (Q-Mag) could provide the most accurate battery SoC readings ever achieved. Q-Mag makes use of the magnetic property relating to SoC that can change as much as threefold between empty and full charge on some batteries. A coil generates an AC field and a sensor reads the magnetic susceptibility, which is linear to SoC. There are several choices of sensors

24 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

Coulomb counting

Temperature

Figure 3: Q-Mag serves as primary BMS contributor. Q-Mag simplifies the BMS and allows state-of-health estimations on resident batteries.

and because of availability and low price Cadex conducts the research with a giant magnetoresistance (GMR) sensor. It consists of ferromagnetic alloys that are sandwiched on an ultrathin non-magnetic conducting layer.

Applying a magnetic field lowers the resistance; removing the force increases it. The principle is known as electron scattering, which is also used on hard drive read/write heads.

Figure 2 illustrates the function of a GMR sensor.

Q-Mag has successfully been tested with Li-ion-cobalt, NMC, lithium iron phosphate, as well as several types of lead acid batteries. The system is immune to most outside interference and does not rely on voltage for SoC estimations. This allows reading SoC while the battery is on charge or on a load. Q-Mag works with prismatic and cylindrical cells in aluminium and stainless steel casings, but not with ferrous material.

The accuracy on lithium-based chemistries is ±5%, lead acid is ±7%.

This high accuracy should be retained

as the battery ages. Calibration occurs by applying a full charge.

With voltage and current references added, Q-Mag is able to calculate SoC and SoH estimations. The BMS can also detect micro-shorts by observing the self-discharge of a faulty cell, a feature that enhances battery safety.

Furthermore, Q-Mag can be used for load levelling. This eliminates the rubber-band effect that complicates SoC estimations through voltage.

Figure 3 shows Q-Mag as key contributor to BMS. Q-Mag can be made small and sandwiched between the cells. A multi-cell battery may have one sensor for an overall assessment or several to enable diagnostics to cell level.

An ASIC containing Q-Mag could also include temperature sensing and digital processing. A high volume, low price product would make this technology available for big and small batteries, including consumer products.

Displaying precise energy reserve, as is possible with a liquid fuel system, may be closer than we think.

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH

Ones to watch:

Batteries, hardware, software, and integration. That’s energy storage in a nutshell. But it’s about something else, harder to define — going the extra mile, thinking a few steps ahead or seeing a gap in the supply chain.

ESJ picks a few firms that are shaping the energy storage industry as it goes mainstream.

26 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH

Playing the long game — the winners in the years ahead

W

hen Elon Musk unveiled the PowerWall in May, Tesla’s Apple-esque battery storage offering, the energy storage industry had reached a point of no return.

The stakes suddenly became higher, the rewards bigger.

So too, is the pressure to get it right.

So who are that companies that are helping to define the new industry landscape? And where will they go to next?

The range of these next-generation leaders is diverse.

Some have a made a business based on software, providing the market with future-proof systems, able to switch on new functionality and control modes as the demand for these arise.

But algorithms only get you so far. Being able to draw on megawatts in size may show that energy storage is reliable and robust. But it also shows the power in partnering up.

The energy storage supply chain is a complex one, with no one single entity capable of providing the entire solution.

Battery makers have discovered the hard way that they are not best placed to act as an integrator. Meanwhile the new breed of integrator — companies that have developed advanced software, designed to communicate with the grid and

“

decide how best to deploy the batteries to meet these commands — does not underestimate the importance of strong supply chain partnerships.

In different ways, these businesses are driving down the cost of energy storage and are making it a more widely accessible resource, whether among consumers, commercial enterprises or utilities and power producers.

The future is still uncharted.

It may be through the introduction of energy-storage-asservice models that utilities and other end-users will be able to access to services without paying outright for a containerload of expensive batteries.

Or it may be by developing new software that pushes batteries to work harder and longer, or through expertise in integrating different components. Or yet again it could be a final push to re-engineer battery technology to yield high performance at low cost.

But whatever may happen — there’s one certainty that will underpin the days ahead. The journey may be long. It may be tortuous and chaotic. But the world will never go back to an energy system that doesn’t use renewables in a meaningful way.

The journey may be long. It may be tortuous and chaotic.

But the world will never go back to an energy system that doesn’t use renewables in a meaningful way.

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”

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 27

COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH Greensmith, a provider of software, systems and services for the energy storage industry has never been shackled with ideological hang-ups on one particular hardware. The agnosticism is paying off.

Greensmith, match-maker extraordinaire Since its founding in 2008, Greensmith Energy, based in the US state of Maryland, has pursued an agnostic approach to energy storage hardware, sourcing best-in-class batteries and inverters and integrating these with its advanced energy storage management software platform.

The company has qualified more than 10 different batteries, including a variety of different lithium batteries, from Samsung SDI, LG Chem and others, as well as flow and aqueous ion chemistries. The company also works with some of the biggest names in inverters and power control systems, including ABB. Greensmith has built and delivered

over 40 systems to 20 customers, many of them North American utilities, including Duke Energy as well as several in California. The company’s founder and chief executive, John Jung estimates that between 2013 and the end of 2015, Greensmith’s software controls will be operating well in excess of 50MW of installed batteries and possibly closer to 100MW, depending on project timeframes.

This is all the more impressive as the company has developed these projects off its own steam, without acquiring a big chunk of legacy installations or gaining a mega-order from a customer-investor.

In 2014, over a third of energy stor-

age installations that came online in North America were run on the company’s GEMS IV platform.

In addition to utilities Greensmith’s customers also include some of North America’s biggest independent power producers and renewable energy plant developers, as well as engineering, procurement and construction firms, many of which are expanding their portfolios or services to include energy storage.

“Unlike utilities, which have to operate assets within more heavily regulated frameworks, IPPs and these other types of companies pursue a more commercial model, and if the business case for energy storage works then they will do it,” says Jung.

The company’s other growing group of customers are a mix of businesses, but ones that are quickly cottoning on to how energy storage can improve the services that they provide.

Greensmith recently signed a deal with a buildings energy efficiency management services firm. The first two projects with the company include two 1MW storage installations, one in the US state of Ohio and the other in Puerto Rico. Greensmith is also work-

107 WITH A BULLET

“But, as well as being a single neck to choke, we’re a turnkey provider that also does à la carte integration if that is what the customer wants. We are also an advanced software company, able to do data analytics, fleet management and more.”

— John Jung, Greensmith Energy 28 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

Inc magazine recently rated Greensmith, 107th in its annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the US. 107 may not sound so impressive but the Inc list includes 5000 names.

Putting the ranking in context, Greensmith’s three-year sales growth of 3,209% enabled it to secure: • The No. 1 spot among energy storage-focused companies • A No. 7 ranking among energy companies • The No. 1 ranking among Maryland-based companies John Jung, CEO of Greensmith said. “After delivering over a third of all energy storage installed in the United States in 2014, all of which featured our GEMS software platform, this latest honour represents the commercial traction and growth we are having as a business.”

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH ing with an aerospace and defence firm moving into microgrid construction.

As well as building turnkey energy storage systems — spanning design, modelling, procurement of components, building, testing and deployment — Greensmith also licenses out its software controls.

“We have developed the core platform to operate on both sides of the meter and have built multiple applications. This coupled with our diversified customer base puts us in a good position to go wherever the market is heading,” says Jung.

Greensmith began licensing its software as a response to customers that had operational energy storage assets but were failing to optimize the functionality — and thus revenue streams — of these costly investments. “The batteries and the inverters are not the problem, but in some cases the system needs more advanced software controls to be retrofitted to get the best out of it.”

In some projects the company will work with utilities or IPPs, which opt to do the system themselves. “They design the system and we procure the battery and inverter,” says Jung.

“One of the reasons for our success is that we don’t have a bias for a piece of hardware.”

Before signing a deal with a major US power producer, Jung refers to the palpable relief of executives at this approach. “They told us we were the first company that did not show up with a plastic model of a battery!

Evidently they’d had a bad experience in the past, where the investment decision was based upon only one battery solution on offer.”

Greensmith recently launched an energy storage audit service, which Jung says is again, in response to repeated issues the company was coming across.

“Independent, knowledgeable advice on how to extract the most from energy storage investments is something the market is in need of,” he says. “It could be where a utility or company wants to ensure that they are deploying their asset properly, so we assess the possibility of adding another revenue stream on top, such as frequency regulation.

“We have software diagnostic tools that can measure performance of the system’s various components. We can identify, in a variety of ways, where the system might be operating below par. Many failures are preventable and caused by sub-optimal system design.”

Such an approach by an integrator

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can only be done based upon extensive knowledge and experience of working with different components.

“We are an integrator in one sense but we are also offering something more.

We can do turnkey work and have been able to reduce the timeframe for executing multi-MW projects down to just a few months.

“But, as well as being a single neck to choke, we’re a turnkey provider that also does à la carte integration if that is what the customer wants. We are also an advanced software company, able to do data analytics, fleet management and more.

“The market sees us as more of a technology provider and partner. We discuss the issues and the need for storage and embark on a process that entails a tremendous amount of modelling, before we even get to the stage of system design.”

The grid uses software extensively and companies such as Greensmith are as much about ensuring that energy storage systems integrate smoothly into existing operation and control rooms.

“You have to offer something substantially more than a few guys in a Palo Alto with a fridge full of Red Bull. Every market has fear and greed and at the moment there is not enough fear. The wind and solar industries went through their teething issues to get to the point they are at today.

“Energy storage is much earlier on

the curve and these systems are often connected to vulnerable points on the grid. If you get the software right, you can achieve a great return on investment. But if you get the software wrong, even with good batteries and inverters, it will be a very bad day.”

Seven years after the firm’s creation and Greensmith’s hardware-agnostic approach still resonates across the industry.

“We’ve gone up against big battery and inverter companies to compete for contracts and when we’ve won a project, we’ll often go back to them and use their products and their expertise. Likewise, they will refer us on the software side.”

In the next 12 months, Greensmith Energy is going to become more widely known across the Atlantic, with Jung recently meeting renewables producers in western Europe interested in how energy storage can benefit them.

But, like any successful softwarebased business in any industry, integrators like Greensmith live and die by their software.

And in the energy storage industry software that optimizes battery performance and improves operational lifetime of the batteries is always going to be prized.

“One area that we are working on is developing and testing algorithms that coax the same performance on less battery capacity. We’re very excited about that,” says Jung.

GREENSMITH’S PARTNERS Lithium technologies account for the majority of batteries that Greensmith has qualified to work with its energy storage platform, with key vendors including Samsung SDI and also LG Chem.

“Lithium is such a sensitive technology, that even from the same vendor we use multiple cell types,” says Jung. “No single battery technology is going to address all applications.”

The company has also qualified other battery technologies, including flow technology. ViZn is the vendor and aqueous ion cells provided by Aquion.

For inverters, Greensmith uses hardware from vendors that include ABB and Parker Hannifin.

In all, the company has experience of integrating over a dozen different battery and power control system/ inverter combinations.

“You have to offer something substantially more than a few guys in a Palo Alto with a fridge full of Red Bull. Every market has fear and greed and at the moment there is not enough fear … If you get the software right, you can achieve a great return on investment. But if you get it wrong, even with good batteries and inverters, it will be a very bad day.” John Jung — Greensmith Energy Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 29

COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH In a market where lithium ion storage is being evangelistically touted as the new standard it’s good to remember that blanket rules rarely hold true. Clearly flow batteries will play a role in the energy storage arsenals of the future.

Imergy proves there’s room for flow batteries in energy storage Flow battery chemistry until recently has never quite hit its commercial stride. That is changing as several companies, including Gildemeister, ViZn and Redflow, have been developing the technology for stationary energy storage applications.

Leading the charge is Imergy, with its claim of a secret technique that drives down the cost of the flow batteries by turning waste vanadium into high performance cells.

In just over a year and half the company has developed its core technology to address commercial and utility-scale markets, in addition to small-scale telecoms back-up. The change in strategy occurred when Bill Watkins took over in late 2013. He and his executive team have come from a high-tech background in fields such as semiconductors and data storage.

“Rechargeable batteries have traditionally been treated as disposable items. However, we’ve approached the challenge in terms of the battery generating energy, not just storing it.

You can charge and discharge our battery and it will never run out. We’re changing the cost parameters because we can compete on kWh because our battery will last for 40 years,” says Bill Watkins, chief executive at Imergy.

“That means we can compete in the telecom market or at the grid-level, for storing solar or wind power at night.”

SunEdison, one of the world’s largest solar developers, sees Imergy as a vital partner for microgrids, with India a key market. Under an agreement between the two companies, announced in February, SunEdison agreed to buy one thousand of Imergy’s vanadium flow batteries, over 100MWh, in total. In India there is demand for bat-

“Lead acid batteries are not designed to be cycled hard. Our flow battery likes being cycled and used every day.” — Bill Watkins, Imergy 30 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

teries that can provide long duration storage and that can perform well in extremely high temperatures.

The size of the deal — the largest single order for any flow battery technology — comes at a time when the lithium ion market is getting ever more crowded with new entrants, which risks, or so some say, over-heating the entire energy storage market to dangerous levels.

SunEdison’s confidence in Imergy’s technology helps dispel the idea that energy storage and lithium battery technology are one and the same.

The turnkey 30kW/120kWh storage systems will be used to store PV-generated electricity for SunEdison’s rural electrification and solar powered minigrid projects in India, a market where SunEdison is investing heavily, thanks to an ambitious solar programme by the government.

The first two systems in the rollout have been installed. One of these is part of a microgrid at the Global Academy of Technology College in Bangalore.

In the US SunEdison is using a 30kW/120/kWh vanadium flow battery from Imergy as part of a behindthe-meter solar-storage system at a performing arts centre. Imergy is also supplying its battery for other similar projects — including installations at several colleges — in the US, mainly in California. Imergy is a key partner of SunEdison as it continues to go after microgrid opportunities in the US market, as well as in India.

But it is telecoms — a traditional domain of lead-acid batteries — where Imergy is also seeing more traction.

Some of Imergy’s first projects using its batteries have been for telecoms masts in India, which have been important for showing how well the

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH company’s batteries work, even in hot temperatures. When Watkins took over as chief executive the decision was made to target alternative stationary storage markets, such as renewables integration, in addition to telecoms back-up.

However, the telecoms market in South Africa is warming to Imergy’s flow batteries, with plans to ship several dozen of its 5kW cabinets, its smallest off-the-shelf battery, in the next several months.

Though cheap, the operational expenditure of changing lead acid batteries, over say 10 years, eats into savings made by reducing diesel fuel or grid electricity usage for telecom base stations. “Lead acid batteries are not designed to be cycled hard. Our flow battery likes being cycled and used every day,” says Watkins.

South Africa could also provide further opportunities for the company for its latest product; a 250kW/1MWh container designed for renewables integration and utility scale applications.

A few years ago South Africa launched a renewables programme, and has been holding bidding rounds for multiple megawatts for new wind and solar PV capacity. These have been successful in driving down the cost of renewables, however the country’s grid infrastructure is under-equipped and delays to projects coming online have often been down to lack of a transmission connection.

“Five years ago South Africa was generating more electricity than it was using. Now the situation is the opposite,” says Watkins. “Supply cannot keep up, because the investment in infrastructure has failed to keep pace with growth in electricity demand.

“Energy storage — especially long duration — lets you capture surplus renewables, like wind, for instance, at night time and feed it into the grid when the demand is there.”

Watkins says launching three turnkey products — for small-scale, commercial/microgrid and utility markets, allows the company to scale up or down for a host of markets for energy storage that are opening up worldwide. He was recently in China discussing potential projects and partnerships there. “We’re also seeing demand for our 250kW system in Europe too, for applications such as renewables integration.”

Meeting demand should not be an issue. “We have the ability to ramp up by increasing our contract with Fox-

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semicon, and there are plans in place to do so to meet anticipated demand,” says Watkins. The company is also working on a next generation product that it says will incorporate more energy management controls and enduse applications. the

The company also expects to reach agreements with strategic partners to support its expansion. To accommodate its growth the company is moving to larger headquarters in Fremont, California at the end of this year.

IMERGY’S FIRST MICROGRID PROJECT IN INDIA

As part of an agreement with SunEdison to supply 1000 of its battery systems for rural electrification and microgrid projects in India earlier this year one of Imergy’s batteries was installed at the Global Academy of Technology College in Bangalore.

The 30kW/120kWh four hour duration battery, commissioned in May, is connected to SunEdison’s 50kW PV array, will reduce the college’s use of diesel generators when there are power outages at night. Last year, the college got through nearly 3000 litres of diesel fuel to keep the lights on.

But the battery’s performance, in the context of rural solar-based microgrids, will also be studied by engineering students within a facility at the Bangalore campus that has been set up to study solar water pumps, storage, hybrid systems,

solar power plant monitoring and mounting structures.

Unlike many other battery technologies, Imergy’s system will be able to handle Bangalore’s extreme temperatures without any impact on its performance. Installed outside, the college the storage system can operate in temperatures ranging from -20-55°C. The company has been able to prove this level of performance thanks to installations of its batteries in the field, in telecom sites in India and also Africa.

However, the faculty and students of the Global Academy of Technology College will study how rural microgrids can use energy storage to optimize PV solar power system production, and how a PV-vanadium flow battery system performs under grid outage conditions.

“Five years ago South Africa was generating more electricity than it was using. Now the situation is the opposite and supply cannot keep up, because the investment in infrastructure has failed to keep pace with growth in electricity demand. Energy storage — especially long duration — lets you capture surplus renewables at night time and feed it into the grid when the demand is there.”

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 31

COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH Sonnenbatterie has taken the cost of energy storage down further for residential users with its latest Eco battery /storage system. It is now in the middle of a concerted push into North America and has plans to be in active in Australia soon.

Sonnenbatterie sets sights on global markets For those recently switched on to energy storage, due to the hype generated by Tesla’s latest product launch, you might be forgiven for thinking Sonnen-who?

But Sonnenbatterie, the market leader in Germany is taking its smart storage technology global, starting with the US. Sonnenbatterie has developed its technology from the ground up, as opposed to repurposing batteries and management systems originally designed for electric cars.

The lithium battery used by Sonnenbatterie is supplied by Sony, a first mover in the technology, which developed its Fortelion range, using lithium ion phosphate cells, specifically for

32 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

stationary applications.

In its domestic market, Sonnenbatterie has sold in the region of 8000 residential energy storage systems, equivalent to 80MWh, and is shipping about 500 units a month. It started providing them in 2010.

The company has continued to adapt and improve its core technology.

The Sonnenbatterie Eco product, launched this April, is capable of 10,000 charge cycles (100% depth of discharge), reducing the cost per stored kWh, which is about €0.24kWh and reduces to €0.17/kWh, as the Eco’s battery capacity is increased.

But the real advantage of the Eco,

with its beefed up battery, is the system’s ability to do more than simply store power generated by rooftop PV systems for self-consumption.

“While self-consumption of solar has been the primary driver for residential storage in Germany, the US market is more complex, with a variety of use cases beginning to emerge, depending on location and utilities and other factors,” says Boris von Bormann, chief executive of Sonnenbatterie Inc, the company’s North American division.

“These include self-consumption with zero export to the utility grid, back-up power, time-of-use rate arbitrage, off-grid power and grid ser-

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH vices, like demand response and frequency regulation.

“As net metering models gradually phase out, self-consumption will make more sense in the US. Then, it could also follow in places such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii, for provision of grid services. To do this a battery with a high cycling lifetime is the perfect fit,” he says.

The Eco may be expected to cycle as much as four times a day, hence requiring a high cycling battery.

Back-up, in particular, is an important selling point of behind-the-meter energy storage systems in the US market.

For both markets the residential system has a 4kWh base system that can be expanded to 16kWh in 2kWh increments. The difference is that the base cabinet without the expansion cabinet goes up to 8kWh in the US, as opposed to 6kWh to accommodate capacity needed for outages. The US product also has a more powerful inverter.

In May, Sonnenbatterie announced a partnership with Sungevity, the third largest solar installer in the US. Volume shipping of the residential system started in September. In addition, Sonnenbatterie has also developed a larger energy storage system, for the commercial and industrial segment, which is available in Germany and the US, with shipping to start in December.

By the end of this year the company says it expects to ship an additional 400-500 units a month, based on expanding demand in its domestic market, as well as US demand, and anticipates shipping between 5,000 and 8,000 systems in 2016. The company’s factory in Germany has the potential to triple production volumes, by additional shifts.

“In the US we are contract manufacturing in California, providing us basically with unlimited capacity,” says von Bormann.

Next year the company has its sights set on Australia, once it has a partnership in place. The country is primed for storage, in the residential/small commercial sector, because some states have high charges during peak demand, which solar and storage can help customers avoid.

“The partnership will be similar to other markets by partnering up with the larger installation companies in the market. These companies are close to the customer and can provide the level of service and quality installation

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“As net metering models gradually phase out, selfconsumption will make more sense in the US. Then, it could also follow in places such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii, for provision of grid services. To do this a battery with a high cycling lifetime is the perfect fit” — Boris von Bormann, chief executive of Sonnenbatterie Inc that we require and desire from Sonnenbatterie.

“There is also an off-grid and backup power market in Australia that we would like to provide a product for,” says von Bormann.

In Germany because of the changes that increasing amounts of solar PV have made to the grid, not to mention demand among consumers to generate and use their own energy, future-

proof intelligent energy storage systems such as Sonnenbatterie’s look set to win out, say some commentators.

The Eco is equipped to connect to different sources of microgeneration, including micro combined heat and power plants and heat pumps, for customers looking to minimize their reliance on utilities for heating as well as electricity.

Sonnenbatterie’s individual system

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 33

COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH INVERTER PARTNERSHIPS FOR SONNENBATTERIE’S ECO • Steca supplies the inverter for the German/European market • Outback Power supplies the inverter for the US residential product • Ideal Power suppliers the inverter for the US commercial product

The company’s factory in Germany has the potential to triple production volumes. It is already making systems under contract in California.

installations can also be aggregated into one large virtual power plant.

This allows customers to trade surplus electricity with each other as part of a community, a model that is heavily dependent on advanced software that can enable each individual storage system to carry out multiple functions. These are of providing storage for the individual household, to trade storage with others in the network and also provide grid services, when called upon by the utility.

Lichtblick — see Analysis section — has developed the Schwarmdirigent IT platform, which links decentralized producers and energy storage systems and connects them to the energy markets.

The company operates a digital power plant in Germany with over a thousand decentralized units linked together.

Both Sonnenbatterie and Varta energy storage systems have been early participants in the cluster, while Tesla’s Powerwall system is the latest smart energy storage system to participate.

Other companies that have recently introduced home energy storage systems, including Daimler Group, are also interested in joining it.

MORE THAN JUST A BOX WITH A BATTERY Sonnenbatterie says it provides: • Self learning algorithms that can predict generation and usage based on date and weather data • Smart home integration to drive different appliances in the home for back-up power and for optimizing self-consumption • Demand charge and peak shaving algorithms to optimize peak shaving applications and cost savings in commercial environments • Self-consumption control optimized based on market parameters, which can range from 60% feed-in, to grid zero, and so on • Virtual power plant and aggregated storage interface to control a swarm network of batteries on the grid

The Eco is equipped to connect to different sources of microgeneration, including micro combined heat and power plants and heat pumps, for customers looking to minimize their reliance on utilities for heating as well as electricity.

34 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH The turbulent and rapidly changing energy storage picture is throwing up various commercial models. Younicos has helped develop a powerful position pioneering an energy-storage-as-service model which quite probably will be the template for the industry in years to come.

Younicos reduces barriers to energy storage Taking a leaf out of the US solar industry’s book, companies like Stem and Greencharge Networks have known a market for energy storage in the commercial and industrial segment can be carved out more rapidly by offering services provided by batteries rather than trying to sell units outright.

Earlier this year Younicos — a Berlin-based software business focused on energy storage — launched its own energy-storage-as-service model, but aimed at utilities and power producers.

Since acquiring the assets of bankrupt Xtreme Power in April 2014, Younicos now controls one of the biggest portfolios of grid-scale energy storage assets in the industry, close to 100MW and has a 4GW pipeline, much of it in North America and Europe, with a few hundred megawatts in emerging markets.

Company chief executive James McDougall estimates that about half of the company’s pipeline will be built under energy-storage-as-service agreements, where the customer, such as a utility, signs up to a long-term power purchase agreement with his company.

In the long-term Younicos is positioning itself to dominate a large share of emerging market opportunities for grid-scale energy storage. From its discussions with grid operators and utilities in regions such as south-east Asia the company sees a more productbased and standardized turnkey type of offering being more appropriate.

In recent years, governments in a growing number of developing countries across sun-belt regions in southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East and Latin America have been introducing renewable energy programmes.

Many are looking to reduce dependence on fossil fuel imports while meeting growing electricity demand. One advantage of renewable energy technology such as solar PV enables new megawatts of capacity to be built in a matter of months, unlike traditional power plants, which take years to build

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GRACIOSA: A STORAGE BLUEPRINT A ground-breaking energy storage project taking place on Graciosa, an island in the Azores could prove to be a cost-effective template for remote communities and similar projects have already been kick-started for other islands in the Atlantic as well as in the Mediterranean.

The project, being delivered

by Swiss battery manufacturer Leclanché and Younicos, will provide a complete Battery Energy Storage Solution (BESS) using lithium-ion batteries combined with Younicos Energy Management software.

It is being financed by an affiliate of Recharge, one of Leclanché’s largest shareholders, which has provided €3.5 million in convertible debt financing to the project’s operating company Graciolica, a wholly owned subsidiary of Younicos.

Described by the companies as the world’s first megawatt-scale renewable energy plus storage system, the system will stabilise the grid without the rotating mass of a conventional thermal engine, allowing it to be fully powered by wind and solar energy.

The centrepiece of the system is a fully automated, intelligently managed 2.8MW battery park integrated into the intelligent energy management system developed by Younicos. In addition, the system will incorporate wind (4.5MW) and solar (1MW) power resources, and intelligent inverters. The renewable energy-powered grid will boost the island’s annual share of renewable energies, from a previous 15% to up to 65% and thus allow the island to reduce its dependence on fuel imports

Renewable energy technology such as solar PV enables new megawatts of capacity to be built in a matter of months, unlike traditional power plants, which take years to build and have an environmental impact.

But the downside is that many grids in developing countries cannot tolerate high levels of unpredictable or intermittent renewables.

Energy storage can be deployed to stabilize the grid as more renewables are added. Systems do not have to be built to execute a stack of revenue streams, just a handful of control modes in an off-the-shelf containerized product will suffice.

“With the energy-storage-as-service model, we do not have to wait for governments to come up with tender programmes, or deal with issues around getting the project financing in place to

cover the capex costs with this model,” says McDougall.

The company has developed a number of microgrid projects showing how energy storage, can increase the share of renewables in a small or remote utility grid’s by more than half. The company has also developed software controls to manage and operate the entire grid and all of its components, not just batteries and converters, but renewable and fossil fuel generation plants.

Such an approach could help to serve Younicos equally well as it takes its energy-storage-as-service model full circle, setting its sights on the C&I market in the months ahead.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 35

COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH Joining up the dots is probably the best way to describe the way that Parker Hannifin ties projects together. That ability to provide collaborative support is one of the defining characteristics of the newly developing energy storage business.

Why Parker is the inverter partner for big grid storage The global supply chain for grid storage systems is far from complete. So Parker Hannifin says it makes a virtue out of its ability to fill in the gaps, supporting the integration of energy storage systems within grids using its industrial-scale power conversion system technology.

At first glance, talking to David Blood, who is market manager for Parker’s energy grid-tie division for Europe and the Middle East region, it seems like a confession of weakness. “So where do we sit in the value chain?,” he says. “We don’t make batteries or battery racks — but we do provide containerized integrated systems, with batteries and inverter.

“We don’t do high-level energy management systems, where the system needs to do multiple applications or grid services. We don’t do EPC work.

Rather we decided that as this industry evolves what will help enable its growth is partnerships, the need to join the dots.

That is where we are effective.”

A recent project with Germany utility RWE illustrates the point.

Westnetz, the distribution system operator business of RWE recently contracted Parker to build a 250kW/1MWh system, connecting lithium ion batteries from LG Chem with Parker’s PCS equipment. The containerized system, sited near a solar PV field in north-west Germany, will allow peak solar production to be stored so that the local transmission lines do not exceed their rated capacity.

“To do this the system needs to provide power limit control but also help control the voltage on the grid by injecting reactive power when required,” says Blood.

“For this project we decided we could write the software. It would have been

36 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

overkill, to bring in an energy storage management software company to do this,” he says.

Parker’s customers for its grid-tie storage solutions include utilities, independent power producers as well as a variety of providers and integrators of energy storage, including Alevo, Greensmith Energy and Siemens. The

company began manufacturing inverters for battery energy storage in 2008 and has deployed over 150MW, mainly in North America and Europe.

As part of a 200MW grid storage rollout by Alevo, Parker is supplying the inverters.

The contract, announced this June, follows an agreement between Alevo

GRID STORAGE PROJECTS, 2015 August Westnetz, the DSO arm of German utility RWE, contracts Parker to provide a 250kW/1MWH energy storage system for a solar PV integration project in Germany, to be fully operational by September. As well as integrating the LG Chem batteries with its inverter in a containerized system, Parker is also providing the software controls and grid integration.

July Primus Power announces it has selected Parker to supply the inverter for a 250kW Energypod, a zinc flow battery-based energy storage system Primus shipped in July 2015 to the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.

June Alevo Group announces it has chosen Parker Hannifin’s grid tie division in Charlotte, in the US state of North Carolina to supply PCS technology for the rollout of its Gridbank batteries to utility grids in conjunction with Alevo’s January 2015 agreement with Customized Energy Systems to provide 200MW of energy storage to wholesale energy markets in North America.

May Duke Energy announces plans to build a 2MW fast-response energy

storage system in the US state of Ohio on the site of its retired Beckjord coal-fired plant in New Richmond, to provide frequency response services to the PJM Interconnection.

Parker will provide the 2MW power conversion inverter for the system being built by lithium ion battery maker LG Chem and Greensmith, which is providing the control and analytics software and system integration. The system should be operational by the end of the year.

April AES, one of Parker’s biggest energy storage customers, announces plans to build 10MW of battery-based energy storage in the Netherlands, which will provide 20MW of flexible resource to the electric grid. The project, in Zeeland, will provide primary control reserve, supporting the European transmission grid via regional DSO Delta Netwerkgroep and TSO, Tennet. (AES’ other projects in Europe include a 100MW interconnected storage array, of which 10MW is under construction, at the Kilroot power station in Northern Ireland. Parker is the certified supplier of inverter hardware for AES battery storage systems.)

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COVER STORY: ONES TO WATCH and Customized Energy Solutions.

Since the late 1990s, within the deregulated power market in the US, CES has emerged as a leading supplier of energy services, working with power producers, utilities and regional grid operators. Its services include running market operations centres on behalf of grid operators to management of different types of power generators, from fossil fuels to renewables and consulting.

Under its contract with Alevo, Parker will provide PCS, battery container control, and thermal management systems to independent systems operators across North America, which CES is working with. The energy storage systems will enable the operators to improve the efficiencies in their electricity distribution networks — by providing various grid services in wholesale markets, such as frequency regulation.

“Alevo has the battery technology and developed the analytics capable of analysing the grid to find weak spots and see where storage needs to be sited to extract the best value from this type of investment,” says Blood.

Parker’s approach means it can offer a customized or off-the-shelf product PCS product. “It is about deciding where storage is best located, where it can bring the maximum benefit.

There is opportunity for both behindthe-meter, for self-consumption, but also for larger-scale storage. Tesla’s announcement has created a lot of excitement, especially around the residential PowerWall product, but the company is also moving into largerscale energy storage because this is also where the market is heading.”

The company’s high power PCS — from 100kW up to 2.2MW — in a single unit, uses a modular power converter. “These are like shelves or lego in that they can be stacked up to achieve the right power sizing. We can build the PCS based on this modular approach, which lets the customer specify exactly what they want,” says Blood.

“This is what we have done for Westnetz, building air-cooled power 890PX inverter modules in a cabinet to its specification. Our 890GTB product, is a fully enclosed modular inverter that sits in a metal enclosure and that is what Alevo has chosen.”

Parker’s experience continues to win over new customers and energy storage integrators, including Primus Power, a Californian company commercializing energy storage systems using zinc flow battery technology.

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Lithium ion batteries have been the sexy side to energy storage for almost decade. Unfortunately this has been to the industry’s detriment when advanced lead acid batteries could provide the commercial scope that lithium still often lacks.

Ecoult breathes new life for lead acid with UltraBattery 2.0 Only a few companies have spent recent years developing advanced lead acid batteries that are equipped for the rigours of grid work. One of the most promised — and most advanced in its development — is Ecoult, which has had several pilot projects underway in North America and in Australia to demonstrate the high-power and fast-cycling ability of its technology for grid services.

The company is gearing up to commercialize its energy storage systems using its advanced lead acid chemistry.

“One of our most interesting largescale projects that is being implemented is a dual-purposing MW-scale plant in the US, which puts storage into the grid to be used by the own as a standby power source and as a frequency regulation revenue source,” says John Wood, Ecoult’s chief executive.

The company is also developing projects in Europe, where its battery is being used as part of a smart grid project, and is opening up in-roads into India and south-east Asia.

East Penn Manufacturing, the US battery giant that bought Ecoult, produces the UltraBattery at a factory that has an annual lead acid battery production capacity that is a little larger than Tesla’s giga-factory and the company is near the end of building a new factory at Lyon Station in Pennsylvania, which will expand its manufacturing floor space and production capacity. In addition, advanced production processes that supplement standard lead acid processes

at East Penn should allow the company to rapidly ramp to meet demand.

The company is also exploring licensing opportunities for other regions including China, South America, Europe and Africa.

“We’ve made progress toward reducing $/kW by increasing peak Crate and in $/kWh by increasing available range of charge used for cycling.

We’ve roughly doubled the power rating for our newest UltraBattery models applied to variability applications like regulation services,” says Wood.

Ecoult recently launched the 12UB700 12V monoblock UltraBattery and implementing this product into a regulation services facility operating at 1.4C, which means providing the same service using roughly half the amount of lead.

Next up — what might be called the second generation of the UltraBattery — is a system that combines the high rate capability with ride-through for power continuity, enabling it to provide grid services as well as reserve power for behind the meter.

In early 2016 a further enhanced 2V UltraBattery 2UB700 will be released that has been designed for higher peak power ratings and, in particular, for use in very large systems.

Ecoult has been growing rapidly in 2015, hiring several engineers in areas such as application, hardware and software design as well as product management. It is also expanding its team in the US.

Next up — what might be called the second generation of the UltraBattery — is a system that combines the high rate capability with ride-through for power continuity, enabling the battery to provide grid services as well as reserve power for behind the meter.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 37

COVER STORY: THREE MORE TO WATCH An integrator, an inverter maker and a battery firm are clearly firms to keep close tabs on from 2016 onwards.

Blue skies ahead WIN INERTIA While it may not have the experience of integrating or supplying multiple megawatts of grid storage capacity, yet, Win Inertia is making rapid progress since it was set up by Eugenio Domínguez in 2007. His plan was to commercialize a storage hardwareagnostic smart grid platform, based on R&D originating within Spain’s Seville University.

In mid-2015 the company completed construction of an 8.8MW advanced grid lab to demonstrate its core hardware- and software-based platform that integrates different storage technologies.

Most grid events are below 10kWh. Win Inertia is showing how ultracapacitors — still relatively under-used

in the grid storage market — can adequately handle the majority of these events while preserving the life and performance of other storage hardware.

The company’s Hybrid Storage Solution Platform (SHAD) is based on the combination of high power ultracapacitors and Win Inertia’s own power electronics and energy management algorithms. The SHAD platform is flexible so that it also integrates with various other storage technologies, under a unique DC bus developed by Win Inertia, to provide an extensive portfolio of energy services.

“The platform can carry out various types of grid services, maximizing revenues, reducing capex costs by avoiding oversizing, and reducing opex costs by only directing the bat-

teries in the system at energy events, and minimizing the high power demand on them and their degradation,” says Domínguez.

The company is building a similar advanced grid lab for a utility on the US east coast, for solar smoothing as well as other applications. There are also plans to develop a second demonstration platform on the west coast by 2016.

The company’s close partner is Maxwell Ultracapacitors.

Using Maxwell’s devices Win Inertia has developed a proprietary ultracapacitor management system, which it will license to Maxwell, which is focusing on securing more projects in the stationary storage market, building on both companies’ earlier collaborations in the area of wayside storage for electric rail in the US and Spain.

Domínguez has big ambitions for his company. While most of Win Inertia’s 15,000 sq ft facility close to Seville airport is filled with cabinets and racks of various storage and power conversion hardware, all connected up by thousands of metres of cabling, a substantial room, behind a floor to ceiling wall of glass is being equipped for the company’s expanding team of software engineers.

“It’s a Google-like approach that we are taking. You need to have to have software, based on analytics and algorithms, able to address a multitude of grid tasks and services and also that can best leverage the different storage components that are configured to work within the platform.”

FREQCON

“The platform can carry out various types of grid services, maximizing revenues, reducing capex costs by avoiding oversizing, and reducing opex costs by only directing the batteries in the system at energy events, and minimizing the high power demand on them and their degradation.” Eugenio Domínguez — Win Inertia 38 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

German company Freqcon, has entered the energy storage market by adapting its power converter technology originally developed for wind turbines and wind farms.

The company’s energy storage product offering has been developed to work with a range of battery and storage technologies, including various lithium chemistries, sodium nickel as well as ultracapacitors.

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COVER STORY: THREE MORE TO WATCH

The company’s partners include Maxwell for ultracapacitors as well as Samsung SDI, for batteries. According to Frank Baumann, Samsung SDI Europe’s sales director for energy storage, while large customers, such as Siemens and Younicos, are important sales channels for the company, Freqcon and other smaller players are beneficial to work with because they offer greater flexibility.

Earlier in 2015, Freqcon deployed an energy storage system for the Tallaght Smart Grid Testbed in Ireland that uses Maxwell ultracapacitors and lithium ion batteries to support grid stability in both residential and industrial settings.

The company is targeting Ireland’s wind market, where increasing amounts of the intermittent and unpredictable renewable energy are creating problems for the grid and threaten to hinder the country from reaching its target of 40% of renewable generation by 2020.

Freqcon’s expertise in power conversion technology and its ability to integrate different types of storage technology within its core Microgrid Stabilizer product, have great potential and the company has projects underway, which includes a wind integration/smoothing project in southwest Ireland.

ENERGY POWER SYSTEMS Energy Power Systems, in the US state of Michigan, is run by an executive team with expertise across other types of advanced batteries, albeit none in lead acid chemistry, its core product!

It’s a deliberate approach that has allowed it to rip up the rulebook when

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it comes to rejuvenating the technology for the 21st century.

Calculated on a cost/kWh, per number of cycles, per life expectancy, EPS’ batteries come in at about $0.05/kWh, per cycle. “When you do the same math for Tesla’s Powerwall, the cost is at least twice that,” says Subhash Dhar, EPS’ chief executive.

The company’s strategy includes targeting existing markets that are familiar with lead acid batteries, including automotive start-stop/idle hybrid applications and for stationary storage, such as telecoms, where the grid is poor — regions such as Africa and India — but where lithium ion technology is too costly.

“Ours is a familiar technology — the same chemistry in fact — but with three or four times the performance characteristics of lead acid.

In doing so our batteries also benefit from the existing recycling infrastructure that has been in place for lead acid, where over 99% of the material is recycled back into batteries. No other chemistry can claim that,” Dhar says.

In the telecoms industry, deficiencies in traditional lead acid technology have meant that operators have become increasingly receptive to alternatives. “Compared with automotive, the pain point is much higher,” he says.

The telecoms industry is losing out here. Simultaneously EPS is also targeting grid storage and behind the meter applications, which requires setting up partnerships. “We do batteries, battery management systems, racks and rack management. We do not go beyond that so we are looking for partnerships with systems integrators.”

The company is in the process of

“Ours is a familiar technology — the same chemistry in fact — but with three or four times the performance characteristics of lead acid. In doing so our batteries will also benefit from the existing recycling infrastructure that has been in place for lead acid, where over 99% of the material is recycled back into batteries. No other chemistry can claim that.” Subhash Dhar — Energy Power Systems completing third party accreditation, which takes about six to nine months.

“The process takes longer when you have a longer cycling technology.”

Next year is critical for EPS as the company transfers its pilot production activities to a full-scale production line. About 75% of the process is identical to traditional lead acid.

“The remaining 25% that we’ve introduced is used in other industries, so it’s not like we are inventing it, but it deploys automation found in these other industries.

“We want to incorporate new processing ideas into our assembly line.

The automation we are introducing also lets us be flexible so we can handle different model productions as we scale up,” says Dhar.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 39

LEGAL: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Tying the knot to keep all parties happy How to tie intellectual property in with strategic alliances and joint ventures is a complicated business— moreover mistakes can be expensive as Eversheds’ Selina Hinchliffe points out.

O

ver recent years, strategic alliances in the renewable energy sector have proven to be the secret to success. When two or more partners join forces the limits of what they can achieve grow dramatically. Joint ventures undoubtedly offer greater returns over a shorter time frame and as a by-product, reduce competition in the market.

Few organizations are capable of undertaking every aspect of invention, research, development, evaluation and exploitation on its own and joint ventures are a credible and more efficient alternative to outsourcing these services.

JVs are of particular interest in the renewable energy sector due to the capital-intensive nature of the projects coupled with the large-scale deployment of new technologies. Using a joint venture structure can expedite the successful implementation of technology and serve as a buffer against project-specific underperformance or failure.

Principally in the renewable energy sector JVs are entered into for the following reasons: • to bring different skill sets together such as asset development with EPC and O&M expertise; • to enable financial investors to participate and fund the project for development and/or construction; • to allow partners to hedge their risk particularly on larger projects with significant capital demand; and, • to allow developers to partner with those with local knowledge in emerging renewable energy markets.

Intellectual property rights in joint ventures Joint ventures are governed entirely by the legal agreements that bring them into existence. A well structured agreement will allow partners to align their aims and minimize disputes. A key consideration in such agreement will be the intellectual property rights of each party.

IPR encompasses inventions, drawings, branding, logos, trademarks, software code, user manuals, databases, trade secrets, confidential information and importantly includes know-how. This can extend generally to how a party manages the project lifecycle and can even extend, for example, to how one party approaches and negotiates key contracts such as turbine supply.

Technology and innovation breed

40 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

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LEGAL: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The JV agreement should consider new technology coming into the possession of a venturer during the term of the JV and whether this technology should be licensed or assigned to the JV and on what terms. A mechanism should be included to deal with these situations which is flexible enough to cover technology not yet in existence.

IPR. Safe-guarding these rights is paramount and should begin before the JV commences and continue after the JV has expired. IPR should be monitored and protected throughout the entire project lifecycle from development through to construction, financing and operation, including during and after decommissioning.

Protecting your IPR during negotiations During negotiations partners will need to share information, some of which will be confidential. Both parties have an interest in keeping it that way so entering into an NDA —a non-disclosure agreement — before negotiations start is essential.

Once negotiations are in full swing, the partners should consider how best to protect their existing IPR. An IPR audit may assist in this process and an action plan should be drawn up to address any additional protection required.

Due diligence is another important task carried out by a prudent venturer who wishes to ascertain the technology that their partner owns and if they have the rights to share it unencumbered with the JV. This will also be backed up by representations, warranties and indemnities within the agreement.

Protecting your IPR in the agreement IPR in existence before the date of the agreement and used by the JV is commonly known as the background IPR. The party who generates this IPR is likely to retain ownership of it, including, if drafted correctly, any improvements and modifications therein, but they will need to grant the JV a right

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to use this IPR during the project, or for the purposes of the JV. Technology transfer is also common. At this stage it will be necessary for the owner of the technology to separate the element being transferred from the core technology and prevent disclosures of it to third parties. The transfer will also need to come to an end when the JV does — determining who will own the IPR on expiry or earlier termination is key.

Defining background IPR is frequently missed in the JV agreement and this can be problematic if subsequently the owner of that IPR seeks finance or sells it and cannot prove ownership.

To avoid such problems, the parties should clearly describe background IPR in the agreement, undertake periodic reviews of the new IPR created by the JV and obtain assignments from inventors at the time any inventions are made.

Foreground IPR is the term usually used to describe any IPR created during the course of the JV. IPR created could include: the JV name or logo, website, inventions and new tools, device or technology, better methods of undertaking activities or new processes, guides or recordings.

Identifying and deciding how to protect this IPR is not an easy task and it should be reviewed on a regular basis to avoid disputes. The agreement will therefore need to include a mechanism by which either party can periodically initiate a process for agreeing how such IPR should be protected.

The JV agreement should consider new technology coming into the possession of a venturer during the term of the JV and whether this technology should be licensed or assigned to the

JV and on what terms. A mechanism should be included to deal with these situations which is flexible enough to cover technology not yet in existence.

Other important provisions in the agreement will protect confidential information and its disclosure to third parties and consider the ability to take enforcement action in respect of IPR owned by the JV or the parties.

When drafting JV agreements consideration should be given to national, EU and international competition law to avoid breaches of those requirements. This will happen if the agreement has as its object or effect of preventing, restricting or distorting competition within the market.

Protecting your IPR after expiry or termination Only about 40% of joint ventures are successful within the first five years. If we exclude JVs in emerging markets, however, and assume that partners have been chosen after appropriate due diligence, then this figure rises somewhere closer to 80%.

Even successful JVs however will ultimately expire and this is why there needs to be a well thought-out exit strategy. This strategy should address how IPR is to be owned and whether any of the joint venture parties need to effect a licence or transfer to achieve this.

Termination trigger events will need to be considered. Events such as deadlock, failing to meet sales targets or quality certificates are common trigger events and the IPR may vest differently depending on what that event is and the contributions of the parties at the date of termination.

Selina Hinchliffe is a principal associate at Eversheds LLP specialising in IP rights and working with Jason Lovell on renewable sector joint ventures.

SelinaHinchliffe@eversheds.com www.linkedin.com/in/selinahinchliffe

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 41

SOLARUNITED MEMBER NEWS

Meyer Burger concludes key Sfr29 million contract with EcoSolifer Meyer Burger Technology announced in August it had received a Sfr29 million ($30 million) order for the delivery of a fully integrated heterojunction cell line to European PV manufacturer EcoSolifer. “This is the beginning of important joint development in the European and global markets,” said Peter Pauli, the chief executive of Meyer Burger.

EcoSolifer plans to reach a half gigawatt of cell production capacity in the short term to leverage its scale of production and be competitive with its European manufacturing facility.

The total contractual volume contains an option for the future delivery of advanced SmartWire Connection Technology. It also includes customer training and support services as well as joint development activities with an option for the later delivery of SmartWire Connection Technology.

Delivery and installation of the heterojunction cell line technology to EcoSolifer’s European manufacturing site in Csorna, Hungary is scheduled for late 2015. EcoSolifer plans to begin

industrial manufacturing in the first quarter 2016. The initial production line has an annual capacity of 90-100 MW. “Following a six-month technical evaluation process, EcoSolifer selected the innovative, industrialized PV technologies from Meyer Burger with the goal of achieving a clear cost and performance differentiation in comparison to existing manufacturers in the PV market,” said an official statement. Ákos Haidegger, the chief executive of EcoSolifer said he saw mutual benefits in the cooperation: “the combination of Meyer Burger’s high efficiency bifacial heterojunction cell technology with EcoSolifer’s broad know-how in PV development and industrial scale production capability could trigger an extraordinarily dynamic impulse and influence the entire solar market.”

Meyer Burger is ideally positioned to support EcoSolifer in combating the shortage of high efficiency solar modules in the photovoltaic market, said Pauli. ■

Manz new major orders underpin positive energy storage market Manz, the European high-tech equipment manufacturer with a technology portfolio covering electronics, solar and energy storage, said mid-July it had received follow-up orders with a total volume of around €50 million ($56 million). The firm said sme of the orders will be included in the revenues and earnings in the current fiscal year of 2015 and some in the first half of 2016.

The new orders follow others totalling €40 million received at the beginning of 2015. The orders relate to lithium-ion batteries for electronic devices from the consumer electronics segment. In this part of the market, service life and size of the batteries are becoming more and more important.

The latest production systems from Manz enable a longer battery life and reduced size and weight.

“This has a positive effect on the properties of the end devices, thereby giving Manz clients competitive advantages. With our globally unique

42 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

technology portfolio for the production of all current battery cell concepts — from wound button cells to stacked pouch cells — our firm plays a decisive role in the continued development of lithium-ion battery technology,” said an official statement.

“The order situation is again moving forward, especially since we had already expected some of the orders that have now been received for the first half year,” said Dieter Manz, chief executive and founder of Manz. “With these orders and those we are still expecting, I feel optimistic about the further development of the company.

“I continue to see high potential for us as a leading high-tech equipment manufacturer. Along with the consumer electronics industry we are seeing increasing customer activity specifically in the e-mobility industry. I am convinced that in the intermediate term, we can expect something more in this segment.” ■

Shoals Technologies Group announces 1500V SlimLine Combiner Box Shoals Technologies Group announced in June it had introduced the 1500V SlimLine Combiner Box. Shoals first introduced the concept of 1500V PV products over four years ago. PV fields across the world are adopting the 1500V standard, and Shoals’ SL Combiner Box will be the first commercially available product. Shoals says it continues to be the standard bearer for both technology and value across the balance of systems ecosystem.

The 1500V SL Combiner Box features 100% load break UL98B rated disconnects, surge suppression, and NEMA4X fiberglass enclosures.

Further, the bussbars utilized are C1100 oxygen free that are precision milled to ensure optimum contact and long term reliability. Multiple off the rack and custom options are available up to 400A and 32 strings. ■

Schmid sells texturing and edge isolation systems to JA Solar JA Solar, a Chinese tier-one manufacturer of solar cells, placed an order with the German tool manufacturer, Schmid Group in June for the construction of several texturing and edge isolation systems and the related automation equipment, to expand its already existing photovoltaic production in southeast Asia by about 400MW. Delivery was scheduled for July.

SCHMID’s in-line system combines the edge isolation with the phosphorus silicate glass removal.

The emitter layer on the wafer back generated during the diffusion process is unilaterally isolated from the front side of the wafer in order to prevent malfunction of the solar cell. In the subsequent machine-integrated process the phosphorous glass is then removed from the wafer surface.

Further key benefits of the systems for patent protected processes for edge isolation and acidic texturing of the SCHMID Group are the significantly lower chemistry consumption compared to competitors and the automatic and controlled dosing, which ensures extremely stable and reproducible process values. \The gentle roll transport minimizes the breakage rate thanks to a small contact area. The SCHMID systems enable a throughput of up to 7,600 wafers per hour. ■

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Linking the Solar Power Generation and Energy Storage Technology Value Chain Are you ready to be connected?

www.solar-united.org

SOLARUNITED MEMBER NEWS

Singulus’ Stefan Rinck to chair EU PVSEC 2015 The 31st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition — better known by its acronym EU PVSEC 2015 — taking place between September 14-18 in Hamburge will be chaired by Stefan Rinck, chief executive of Singulus Technologies.

At the event there will be 1,300 presentations from 6,500 authors and co-authors from 86 countries, with 40% of these presentations being contributed by international specialists non-European . “The comprehensive conference programme will provide a full range of photovoltaic knowledge and technologies and is promising a week of excellence. With these presentations and conference sessions, the EU PVSEC 2015 underlines its own worldwide importance while once again setting the benchmark for this year’s global PV events,” says the event’s organizers.

Rinck, speaking at conference general chairman, says: “In Europe the good news is that we’ve now already passed the 88 GW that the member

states originally committed to reach by 2020. The question is how much more can we bring into the system, looking not just at 2020 but 2030 and beyond.

“R&D has a big role to play in this and we expect during the EU PVSEC 2015 many presentations addressing the science and technology developments are needed to further increase competiveness.” According to Energy Trend’s gold member data research, global PV installations will reach 52 GW in 2015, of which China, Japan and the US account for 63%. Based on Energy Trend’s statistics, global PV installations surpassed 12GW in the first quarter of 2015 and the full-year goal can be achieved.

Separately EU PVSEC, the world’s largest international photovoltaics conference, will be collocated with Intersolar Europe, in Munich for the June 21-24 meetings in 2016. Both events remain independent but they claim that by working together they will be creating “international solar

Intersolar Europe working with ees Europe is region’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems “EU PVSEC and Intersolar Europe will be strengthening Europe’s position with a strategy and information platform and by providing a showcase for state-of-the-art technologies, products and the latest market developments of the photovoltaics and energy storage industry.

Holding EU PVSEC and Intersolar Europe at the same time and in the same location will provide exhibitors,

conference participants and visitors with an outstandingly wide range of products and information, while turning their stay in Munich into the most efficient and valuable appointment in the global solar power sector’s annual calendar.

Some 4,000 participants and speakers from all over the world are expected to attend the 2016 event, as well as about 40,000 trade visitors. ■

“In Europe the good news is that we’ve now already passed the 88 GW that the member states originally committed to reach by 2020. The question is how much more can we bring into the system, looking not just at 2020 but 2030 and beyond.”

44 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

energy sector’s top event”.

Intersolar Europe —working with ees Europe — is Europe’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems.

“EU PVSEC and Intersolar Europe will be strengthening Europe’s position with a strategy and information platform and by providing a showcase for state-of-the-art technologies, products and the latest market developments of the photovoltaics and energy storage industry.

Holding EU PVSEC and Intersolar Europe at the same time and in the same location will provide exhibitors, conference participants and visitors with an outstandingly wide range of products and information, while turning their stay in Munich into the most efficient and valuable appointment in the global solar power sector’s annual calendar.

Some 4,000 participants and speakers from all over the world are expected to attend the 2016 event, as well as about 40,000 trade visitors. ■

Singulus Technologies’ inline sputtering systems for PV Singulus Technologies announced in June that it had taken its product family of vacuum coating systems for use in solar technology to the next development level and had successfully introduced and installed an inline sputtering system for the requirements in the photovoltaic industry for CIGS and CdTe thin-film solar cell production as well as tasks for the manufacture of heterojunction cells. Sputtering is a technique used to deposit thin films of a material on to a surface “The systems are available with vertical as well as horizontal substrate transport and can be configured for various substrate sizes and are ideally suited for challenging layer stacks and flexible product mixes,” said the firm.

“Typical applications include, for example, anti-reflection and barrier coatings, buffer and precursor layers such as copper-gallium, indium, and i-ZnO, but also different metallic layers like Mo, Al, Cu, Ag, and NiV etc. as well as

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SOLARUNITED MEMBER NEWS

JinkoSolar closes series of financing agreements JinkoSolar Holding has concluded a variety of credit agreements with finance domestic Chinese and international financial institutions over the past three months.

In August JinkoSolar Holding signed a US$62 million plus RMB50 million ($7.8 million) loan agreement with The Export-Import Bank of China The$62 million loan will be used to support long-term fixed assets and midterm working capital for JinkoSolar’s production facility in Malaysia, while the RMB50 million facility will be used to support near-term working capital for its Malaysian operations. The firm’s new plant in Penang, Malaysia officially started operations at the end of May. The company has already drawn down the $62 million loan.

At the end of July the firm announced that its subsidiary JinkoSolar Power had signed a three-year RMB3 billion line of credit agreement with Ping An Bank.

According to the terms of the agreement, the line of credit is RMB3

billion for three years. The first loan of RMB630 million has been drawn and will be used to support the development of PV solar power plant projects in Inner Mongolia, Guangdong province, and Zhejiang province.

“As the PV power market in China continues to mature, we have seen an increasing number of commercial banks, following policy banks, entered solar downstream. As a leading player in the domestic market, JinkoSolar’s leading position and strength has been recognized by a growing number of financial institutions,” said Xiande Li, chairman of JinkoSolar. “This agreement, following our banking facility agreements with China Development Bank and China Minsheng Bank, is another credit facility that we have signed with a first-tier bank to finance our downstream projects. We believe this agreement once again reflects the vote of confidence from leading financial institutions in our brand as well as our project development potential.

Strong financial support will effectively

transparent conductive oxide layers like ITO, AZO which are necessary for new heterojunction cell technology. The systems use an inline process in which the substrates are transported on a special designed conveyor system on flat carriers through the system.

The carriers can be configured flexibly for different substrate formats and materials. Different automation options for loading and unloading are available.

“The VISTARIS system with vertical substrate transport and the HISTARIS system with horizontal transport had been designed to enhance the efficiency of thin-film solar cells, while cutting production costs by using the stateof-the-art technologies. The machines bring the user the advantage of outstandingly even coating thicknesses and highly homogeneous coatings,” said the statement.

“Cell performance is appreciably improved. Thanks to their modular structure the systems are versatile to use, and are especially noted for their compact design. This significantly reduces the production area taken up and therefore cuts the investment outlay.

High reliability and the easy-to-service design principle boost uptime and slash production costs.” ■

Meyer Burger subsidiary Muegge acquires Gerling Applied Engineering, KLEO

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Muegge, a subsidiary of Meyer Burger Technology and an international manufacturer and supplier of industrial heating microwave and plasma systems, has acquired 100% of the shares of Modesto, California based Gerling Applied Engineering.

Muegge bought the shares from John Gerling, partner and founder of Gerling Applied Engineering, who will continue as company vice president to manage the company’s operational business.

In the 2014 financial year, GAE generated sales of around USD 2 million.

‘The acquisition of GAE enables us to offer a complete standardised product line across the entire field of industrial microwave and plasma systems in the USA,” said Klaus Baumgärtner, chief executive of Muegge. “It therefore provides us with a decisive competitive advantage while extending our footprint and increasing our share of the worldwide market in industrial microwave technology and in the production of complete industrial systems.”

Meyer Burger will include GAE in the scope of the consolidation retrospec-

enhance our sustained development capability, and reinforce our leading position in the domestic PV downstream market.”

And in mid-July, its subsidiary JinkoSolar Power Engineering Group signed a $150 million loan agreement with Credit Suisse and a number of financial institutions. Proceeds will be used to expand Jinko Power’s project portfolio in China and provides funds to expand capacity to GW1.4 Jinko Power will receive an 18-month senior secured term loan totaling $150 million. The lenders will also be granted warrants, which represent no more than approximately 2% of Jinko Power’s equity on a fully distributed basis, subject to their terms and conditions.

“We are delighted to receive this strong vote of confidence from global financial institutions in the future of our fast-growing power generation business and our ability to sustainably develop, finance, construct and operate solar power generation projects,” said Xiande Li at the time.

And at the end of June, JinkoSolar (US) signed amendments to the credit agreement with Wells Fargo Bank, and its credit limit will be raised to $40 million from $20 million. ■ tively as of July 1, 2015. The parties have agreed to maintain confidentiality concerning the purchase price.

Separately Manz acquired KLEO Halbleitertechnik, a ZEISS Group company, on June 1. As part of a share deal, Manz AG acquires patents and copyrights for the technology developed by KLEO for laser direct imaging of printed circuit boards. In addition, all 20 employees at the Tettnang location in southern Germany will also be assumed. “As a fully consolidated company of the Group, the subsidiary will already make a positive contribution to Manz’s year-end result in the current 2015 fiscal year. The acquisition is being financed by funds from the capital increase, which was successfully carried out in April. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

In June Meyer Burger signed a contract with Lerri Solar Technology. Meyer Burger will initially supply MAiA 2.1 equipment with MB PERC technology as well as innovative wafer and module measurement technologies and additional upgrade technologies. The total order volume is around Sfr16.5 million.

Lerri plans to reduce the cost for mono crystalline wafers and modules to the multi crystalline level. ■

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 45

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ANALYSIS Solar-connected batteries enable self-consumption for individual households. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when these individual users are connected by software, join forces and then acting together as a virtual swarm become a valuable grid resource? Sara Verbruggen reports

Riders in the swarm: the new generators of household integration Before Elon Musk whipped back the curtain to reveal the PowerWall, German company Lichtblick was best known for having had some success at installing microgeneration boilers, based on a partnership with Volkswagen.

But it is the company’s clever software that is the reason for the rising market interest in partnering with it.

What many in the German solar industry describe as a fierce determination among the country’s citizens to have as much autonomy where energy is concerned — without actually going off-grid — this may be the latest chapter in the country’s Energiewende (energy transition).

And it is one where batteries need to be included.

Despite the tapering off of subsidies, Germany’s solar electricity selfconsumption market has grown. The number of lithium battery storage units sold in 2016 could potentially double the amount sold since 2012.

But the ability for consumers to use more electricity generated from their own solar panels, fails to exploit the technology’s full potential.

If there is such a thing as a holy grail of the industry then it could be in the ability to take PV batteries installed within thousands of basements and garages, connect them all up, into one virtual power plant, to create a powerful grid resource.

The aggregated batteries maintain the balance in the electricity grid while allowing individual asset own-

“Our project is different because we are charging and discharging. The cars being used are being driven by real users, commercial and individual; we qualify for and are actually participating in a real market and are being paid for providing service, subject to all of the restrictions of that market” — Willett Kempton, University of Delaware www.energystoragejournal.com

ers to be more proactive in how they use energy, including trading it. That’s something that Lichtblick — which translates into English as “ray of hope” — has been doing since 2010 with Volkswagen-made mini-combined heat and power plants installed in Hamburg.

Swarm leader The software platform — Schwarmdirigent (translated roughly as Swarm Leader) — the company has developed to harness them, interacts with the grid to anticipate demand on the network, allowing the utility to generate power when the price for gas is low, compared with electricity.

Lichtblick’s software, which monitors energy usage patterns of individual combined heat and power owners in its network, knows the nearest boiler to switch on to sell power to its neighbour, earning Lichtblick a profit in the process.

Virtual power plant technology and software, which is necessary for transactive energy undertakings, could be a $5.3 billion market by 2023 according to Navigant Research.

And it is drawing global players, such as Toshiba, which in 2013 bought Cybergrid, an Austrian developer of energy management software designed to match electricity consumption with a variety of distributed generation sources.

Siemens and German utility RWE have been working together since 2012 to rollout a virtual power plant, following a pilot project that went live in 2008.

There are efforts also underway to

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 47

ANALYSIS apply such platforms to electric car charging, enabling EV batteries to act as sinks or reserves of power to stabilize the grid, and earning owners some revenues while their cars are parked up.

Following 2012 changes to the EEG (Renewable Energy Sources Act), in Germany, virtual power plants are emerging as an important tool to enable direct marketing of energy from solar, wind, biomass and other renewables.

But they can also perform important grid support functions, such as the provision of controlling power in the minute reserve range, through combining electric power from a large number of generating plants and making this capacity available to the grid operator.

Prosumer power However, while many of these are focused on networking up large utility-scale renewable energy assets Li-

chtblick’s attention is on bringing onboard small-scale prosumers, working with providers of residential energy storage systems, including Sonnenbatterie, Varta and now, Tesla.

Lichtblick began exploring the compatibility of battery storage technology with its VPP platform, Schwarmdirigent recently.

The company was set up in 1998, following deregulation of Germany’s energy market, as the first green energy utility in Europe.

It soon made waves, offering private customers in Germany environmentally friendly gas, containing biogas, and by campaigning for more competition in the energy market and winning a court case in favour of greater transparency in fees for the national grid.

In 2009, Lichtblick struck a partnership with Volkswagen, giving it the rights to sell the carmaker’s CHP microgeneration boilers. By 2014 the company had installed over 1,000

THE SCHWARMDIRIGENT PLATFORM

This infographic by Lichtblick shows the different types of resources, including renewables, CHP boilers, solar and EV batteries, all of which are compatible with the company’s virtual power plant platform. It is one of the only companies to show how such a wide variety of different microgeneration resources can be linked up together to deliver lowcost, on-site generated electricity and heating to consumers, while also performing services for the grid.

48 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

of the plants, all controlled by its Schwarmdirigent software.

But last year, Volkswagen cancelled the agreement.

According to speculation in the German press the carmaker most likely broke off the deal due to Lichtblick’s failure to shift large enough volumes, as the original agreement had pencilled in 100,000 units.

Lichtblick’s official line is that it would have liked the agreement with Volkswagen to continue. Nevertheless since late 2014, Lichtblick has been showing how PV storage systems and even electric vehicle charging, are compatible with its platform.

Solar-storage synergies By working with Lichtblick energy storage, providers can sell systems with enhanced functionality. “We see the future in providing several layers of monetization or several layers of benefits that we want to and will offer to our customers,” says Boris von Bormann, chief executive of Sonnenbatterie’s North American division.

“This is the key or base feature such as self-consumption or backup power. However, then the goal is to layer on-top different applications that the customer can benefit from, such as grid-services, energy trading, balance energy, intra-trading between Sonnenbatterie customers, making our system future-proofed.”

To do this the company’s battery systems have several key software-driven functions, including compatibility with Lichtblick’s Schwarmdirigent software. All of Sonnenbatterie’s 8000 installed units can be retroactively connected up with Lichtblick’s swarm platform.

This autumn, Lichtblick will start selling its partners’ storage systems (though not installing them) and has already taken several hundred preorders of Tesla’s PowerWalls.

According to Lichtblick in May the two companies will initially start their collaboration in Germany and plan to expand their relationship into new markets including other parts of Europe, the US as well as Australia and New Zealand.

The company says it is too early to go into details about this intensifying collaboration with Tesla, but Musk’s magic touch is opening doors. So far Lichtblick has had meetings in New York City. “There are a few deregulated regional power markets in the US, that are interesting for us, such as California and Texas as well as some

www.energystoragejournal.com

ANALYSIS

Projects demonstrating how EV charging can be used as a grid buffering tool have been occurring worldwide. But in most of these no electricity is discharged from the cars’ batteries to the grid. of the east coast,” says Anke Blacha, a Lichtblick official.

Baby, you can charge my car In Germany the company has had a couple of important pilots underway to demonstrate the versatility of its platform. In partnership with Volkswagen, Lichtblick has just finished a year-long field test of 20 electric cars in Berlin.

The R&D project shows it is possible to integrate the cars’ batteries into the grid, aggregating them together.

A key part of the project is to show that even though the priority of each battery is to have enough electricity for the car to be driven, it can also be called upon to inject electricity into the grid.

Forty test drivers put their cars through different use cases and the batteries have been monitored for performance. The results will be made available by the end of 2015.

The project also looked at how participants can be incentivized to take part.

Projects demonstrating how EV charging can be used as a grid buffering tool have been occurring worldwide. But in most of these no electricity is discharged from the cars’ batteries to the grid.

Only one other project, at the University of Delaware, has come close to showing how EVs in future might participate directly in trading electricity in their batteries with the grid, as an aggregated resource.

“Our project is different because we are charging and discharging. The cars being used are being driven by real users, commercial and individual; we qualify for and are actually participating in a real market and are being paid for providing service, subject to all of the restrictions of that market,” says professor Willett Kempton, research director, at the University of Delaware’s Center for Carbon-free Power Integration.

The project began running experimentally in 2007, leading to a joint venture in 2011 between the university and US power company NRG, called EV2G, which began generating revenues from the PJM Interconnec-

www.energystoragejournal.com

tion in early 2013.

Monthly, each of the 20 cars in the initiative are paid in the region of $150 for supplying short bursts of power needed for frequency regulation services. The individual car owner might get somewhere between a half to two thirds of this amount. The driver can schedule in advance and input a minimum level of charge that they want left in the battery. EV2G collects the payments from the grid operator and pays the owners based on the availability of their vehicles.

Projects like Lichtblick’s and the University of Delaware’s also suggest how it might be possible in future for EV owners to reduce the cost of their investment in their car, by earning revenues from providing grid services when it is parked up.

Two way chargers A unique aspect of the EV2G project is the two way chargers allow PJM In-

terconnection to draw off power and also give it back to the vehicle’s battery, to help balance the grid.

In other projects, for example, EV batteries, aggregated, are modulated in terms of how much they charge up depending on the power needs of the grid. Typically, the EV’s load can be reduced following a demand response request or pricing signal. The fleet, together, supports grid balancing while never discharging energy from the vehicle to the grid. To do this, the project, which is really a microgrid, is using chargers, integrated with energy storage and also connected up to solar PV systems.

In addition to Volkswagen, Lichtblick’s partners on its EV project included SMA, which provided a smart charging station that ensures that electricity can flow back and forth between the grid and the battery in the garage.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology have been examining the effects of the interaction between the swarm battery and the electrical grid during the trial. The 40 drivers in the project used a special smartphone app developed by Lichtblick to schedule when they needed the car and how

CREATING VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS

In a project with partners SMA and Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology, using Volkswagen’s e-up! electric cars, green utility and IT business Lichtblick has demonstrated how its swarm platform can network EV batteries to be used as a grid resource.The 40 drivers in the project used a special smartphone app developed by Lichtblick to

schedule when they needed the car and how much battery capacity was required.

If there is such a thing as a holy grail of the industry then it could be in the ability to take PV batteries installed within thousands of basements and garages, connect them all up, into one virtual power plant, to create a powerful grid resource.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 49

November 11-12, 2015 Belle Salle SHIBUYA FIRST

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investments between 2013 until 2023.

On one hand, this cultivates a need in Japan to learn from economies where liberalized energy markets are more advanced. On the other hand, such grid development efforts will lead to the creation of new markets — and new opportunities — that will be open to Japanese and non-Japanese companies alike.

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ANALYSIS much battery capacity was required.

Some participants used the car as their main vehicle while others used it as their second car. The different use cases will provide important data on how batteries perform under various amounts of use.

Both Lichtblick’s project and the University of Delaware’s work are generating information on how EV batteries withstand over their deployment as a grid resource, about which there is little data, though it is dependent on how the batteries are managed and the interplay with the chemistry.

This June the EV2G initiative secured a share of a $6.5 million Department of Energy (DoE) grant to take part in NREL’s Integrated Network Testbed for Energy Grid Research and Technology Experimentation (INTEGRATE) project.

The initiative’s aim is to enable clean energy technologies to increase the hosting capacity of the grid by providing grid services in a holistic way, via a platform that is open source and interoperable.

In this way the work of Kempton and his colleagues, which has already demonstrated on a small-scale the potential for electric cars to act as an aggregated grid battery, is going to be

A unique aspect of the EV2G project is the two way chargers allow PJM Interconnection to draw off power and also give it back to the vehicle’s battery, to help balance the grid. part of a much broader initiative that is demonstrating a more expansive VPP concept.

Other technologies in the project include solar inverters, thermostats, pool pumps, community battery storage as well as bi-directional electric car chargers.

Plug-and-play The platform will allow renewable energy systems and other clean energy technologies to be connected to a smart power grid in a plug-and-play way, just like computers allow users to plug in new devices and connect automatically to the device.

Although this sounds simple, it will require the integration and coordination of a broad mix of technologies, including different types of hardware, advanced software, monitoring, control and communication technologies.

The open platform will need to enable the grid to support large-scale com-

plex operations, interacting with distribution systems at electric utilities.

Mastering Big Data is essential to such projects becoming more mainstream. No wonder big blue chips are circling and Silicon Valley is pumping money into start-ups that are focused on wrangling distributed generation into a grid-friendly resource. In Lichtblick’s favour is the company’s ability to show how a variety of different types of distribution generation and storage technologies can interplay within its VPP platform, because in reality consumers need electricity and they need heat.

As a utility, Lichtblick is unique in that is has made considerable investment in its own software. “Many utilities made the decision to outsource the IT aspects of their businesses. From the outset Lichtblick decided it had to keep this in-house,” says Blacha.

It’s a move that may give the company an edge as the swarm gathers.

MULTIPLE SOURCES OF ENERGY SUPPLY BUILDINGS WITH THEIR OWN GRID

Hamburg from above: a new destination for the swarm

Lichtblick’s EV project is not the only way the company is demonstrating its VPP platform. The company is running this until 2016 and showing how a variety of generation sources in a building — rooftop PV, battery storage, CHP generators, electric cars, can all be combined

52 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

together in a mini-swarm through its Schwarmdirigent platform. Two apartment blocks in Hamburg are participating. The electric car can be charged using electricity from the PV panels or the CHP unit, while appliances also run off locally produced electricity.

By orchestrating all the different power or storage components together the building is almost entirely reliant on locally produced cheap power — thermal as well as electrical — though any rare shortfalls can be bridged by green power, provided by Lichtblick.

www.energystoragejournal.com

CONFERENCE IN PRINT

Welcome to a special section of our magazine, called Conference in Print.

Our aim is a simple one. We want to offer you the readers a section where you can highlight your products, technology and skills to our broader audience — rather like going to a conference or an exhibition without the inconvenience of all the travel!

We’re putting no restrictions on what you’d like to showcase — this is your section not ours — but hope that this will prove an invaluable and cost-effective way to reach our audience of subscribers and readers.

CONFERENCE IN PRINT Testing conclusions Six separators were tested from two suppliers, Dreamweaver International and each at 40, 30 and 25 microns, in supercapacitors assembled of commercial electrodes in a pouch cell.

Separator properties, scanning electron micrographs, and capacitor performance were all measured for each material. These were the conclusions.

SEMS: Scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) revealed that the competitor separators are composed primarily of fibrillated cellulose microfibers with diameters in the range from 1-4 microns.

DWI separators have similar composition, with a much higher population of fibers with diameters in the range of 0.2 – 0.4 microns.

Separator properties: The separators from the different companies had, on average, similar basis weights, thickness, and porosity. The pore size and bubble point for DWI separators was slightly higher, but with the following advantages: • Gurley: a much lower (63%) Gurley air resistance.

• Strength: 21% higher tensile strength • Modulus: 129% higher modulus • Moisture: 25% lower moisture content Capacitor performance: All of the materials showed a similar 24 hour self-discharge. On average, the DWI materials showed 9% higher capacitance, and 27% lower ESR. In the most dramatic comparison, at 30 microns, the DWI Silver AR30 had 13% higher capacitance and 61% lower ESR, as shown in the graph.

High energy applications using ELDCs can experience significant ohmic losses when power levels are high. A better separator — with a lower internal resistance — is part of the solution, writes Brian Morin, president of DreamWeaver International.

A comparison of non-woven separators for supercapacitors Electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs) are energy storage devices capable of providing very high power, up to 100 times that of even high rate lithium-ion batteries. This allows applications that otherwise could not be done, such as high power signal conditioning in the electric grid, regenerative braking in busses and other large transport, and energy recovery in construction where heavy lifting is involved.

EDLCs are finding applications in portable electronics, helping to extend battery life, improve burst communications, and provide rapid charging.

Because the power can be so high, especially in high energy applications of EDLCs such as regenerative braking for large vehicles, the ohmic losses due to internal resistance of the EDLC can cause considerable heating and loss of efficiency.

One driver of the energy loss is the

Competitor’s 40 Micron

Competitor’s 30 Micron

Supercapacitor comparison

Capacity (F/g) or ESR (Ohm)

35 30 25

Competitor’s 25 Micron

20 15 10 5 0 Capacity

ESR

■ Leading competitor 30 micron ■ Dreamweaver Silver AR30

54 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

www.energystoragejournal.com

CONFERENCE IN PRINT Table 1: Separator properties for each of the six separators tested, along with the average for each supplier.

Units

Competitor 40 Micron

Competitor 30 Micron

Competitor 25 Micron

Average Competitor

DWI Silver AR40

DWI Silver AR30

DWI Silver AR25

Average DWI

Basis weight

g/m2

28

20

12

20

21

18

18

19

Thickness (7.3 psi)

microns

43

32

30

35

39

33

28

33

Thickness (12.6 psi)

microns

41

31

28

33

37

32

27

32

Thickness (25 psi)

microns

38

27

22

29

35

30

25

30

Porosity

%

55%

57%

72%

61%

60%

61%

54%

58%

Pore size

microns

0.44

0.6

0.6

0.55

0.96

1.4

1.0

1.1

Bubble point

microns

1.5

1.7

3.4

2.2

2.9

4.3

3.2

3.4

Gurley

seconds

171

80

104

118

37

39

55

44

MD strength

kg/cm2

250

-

99

174.5

210

185

240

212

MD modulus

kg/cm2

9400

-

6200

7800

17500

16000

20000

17833

Moisture content

%

8%

7%

8%

8%

6%

5%

6%

6%

separator. If a separator could be provided with significantly lower internal resistance, it could improve the performance of the EDLC, lowering ohmic losses, reducing operating temperature and increasing energy efficiency.

In this study, commercially available separators from two manufacturers are compared. The first manufacturer is Dreamweaver International (DWI) DWI Silver AR40

and the second is a leading competitor.

All of the testing was done by outside test labs, which are also listed along with the test procedure where there is a standard available. Other procedures are described below.

Visual results The six images below show high magnification scanning electron micro-

scopic images of the various materials.

All of the materials were made primarily from fibrillated cellulose, made into a nonwoven sheet that looks and feels like paper. In addition, all of the materials appeared uniform and homogeneous, especially at low magnification (images not shown).

At high magnification, it can be seen that the competitor’s materials are constituted primarily of fibers that range in diameter from 1-4 microns, with many fibers in the range of 1-2 microns, and very few fibers less than 1 micron in diameter.

The DWI separators, in contrast, have a much higher population of fibers below 1 micron, and a large population of fibers in the 200-500 nanometer diameter range.

Separator properties DWI Silver AR30

DWI Silver AR25

www.energystoragejournal.com

Separator properties are reported in table 1, above, along with the average for each supplier. For the competitor 30 micron test, there was not enough material available for tensile tests.

However, there are several significant results: Compressibility: All of the materials are compressible, changing thickness by 3-8 microns over the pressure range tested. The competitor materials were slightly more compressible, compressing an additional 6 microns compared to 3 for the DWI materials.

Porosity: For 30 and 40 micron materials, the DWI porosity was higher, at ~60% compared to ~56%. However, at 25 microns, the competitor material had significantly higher porosity.

Pore size: Both the bubble point and pore size were higher for the DWI materials, with the bubble points for the DWI materials all very similar to the

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 55

CONFERENCE IN PRINT Table 2: Performance in supercapacitors for each of the six separators tested, along with the average for each supplier.

Units

Competitor 40 Micron

Competitor 30 Micron

Competitor 25 Micron

Average Competitor

DWI Silver AR40

DWI Silver AR30

DWI Silver AR25

Average DWI

24 hr Self Discharge

%

53%

57%

56%

56%

52%

56%

52%

53%

Capacity

Ah/g

0.024

0.023

0.027

0.025

0.025

0.026

0.029

0.027

Capacity

F/g

30.4

29.4

34.5

31.4

32.4

33.2

36.8

34.1

ESR

Ohm

9.5

17.6

8.6

11.9

11.2

6.8

8.1

8.7

Table 3: Separator properties for two commercial one farad supercapacitors tested, to protocols of table 2 Units

Maxwell BCAP0001P270T(0))

Nichicon (1F, 2.7V UM(M) 1205 PET)

24 hr Self Discharge

%

29%

32%

31%

56%

53%

Capacity

Ah/g

0.006

0.005

0.006

0.025

0.027

Capacity

F/g

7.6

6.6

7.1

31.4

34.1

ESR

Ohm

1.65

6.81

4.2

11.9

8.7

competitor 25 micron.

Gurley: The DWI materials had much lower Gurley air resistance than the competitor materials. Normally, this would correspond to lower internal resistance as well. See capacitance testing below.

MD strength & modulus: All of the materials except the competitor 25 micron had MD strength near 200 kg/cm2. The competitor 25 micron was significantly lighter weight and higher porosity than the rest of the field, which resulted in a lower tensile strength and modulus.

Moisture content: The DWI materials has 25% lower moisture content, likely due to the inclusion of PVA microfibers rather than solely cellulosic materials.

Supercapacitor testing The results of the testing of supercapacitors is shown above in table 2.

There are several results: Self-discharge: Very little difference was seen between the materials in 24 hour self-discharge of the cells. That the self-discharge is higher than productions cells is likely due to cell construction.

Capacitance trends: On average the capacitance was higher for thinner materials, with the only exception being the competitor 30 micron separator.

Capacitance comparison: On average, the capacitors made with DWI

56 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

separators had higher capacitance, a total of 9% across the three separator types by each manufacturer, and higher at each thickness.

ESR: As a whole, the ESR was 27% lower for the DWI separators than the competitor materials.

Most notably was the difference at 30 microns, with the competitor 30 micron material having more than 150% higher ESR than DWI Silver AR30.

Lowest ESR: The lowest ESR by far was the DWI Silver AR30, with an ESR of 6.8 Ohm. The closest competitor’s material was the 25 micron, with an ESR of 8.6 Ohm-cm.

Commercial supercapacitor tests Two commercial one farad supercapacitors were also tested under the same protocol as above, and then disassembled to determine electrode weight and area. Both commercial parts show lower ESR and lower capacitance per gram, indicating that a higher surface area, lower electrode thickness strategy was taken in order to reduce ESR to the lowest possible.

The Maxwell part shows much lower ESR than that Nichicon part.

This compares to the parts made with the competitor’s separators and DWI separators, where the capacitance is near the practical limit for carbon electrodes (these were double sided electrodes, but only a single

Average Commercial

Average Competitor

Average DWI

side was measured, which would effectively double the capacitance if a bulk supercapacitors were made using both sides. The practical maximum is around 70 F/g.)

From this comparison with commercial supercapacitors, the following conclusions can be supported (see table 3 above): • The capacity compares well, considering a high energy design.

• The ESR compares as would be expected given the relative capacitances.

• The self-discharge is lower for the commercial supercapacitors, which likely has to do with cell design and formation processes, neither of which were optimized for the DWI and competitor cells.

Procedures All of the testing was done at outside labs, using standard test procedures.

A full list of test procedures, testing laboratories and contacts are available on www.dreamweaverintl.com/ downloads/ Scanning electron microscope: Images were taken at 500x, 1000x, 2000x, 5000x and 10,000x magnification using a Hitachi Analytical Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscope SU6600. Eight sets were taken with each material, for a total of 40 images.

Separator properties: Separator properties were measured at the Herty Advanced Materials Development

www.energystoragejournal.com

CONFERENCE IN PRINT Center, and at Porous Materials.

Capacitance tests: PolyStor built cells using the separator materials specified below and production EDLC electrodes. The cells were around 5cm x 5cm square single cells, but used double sided electrodes (most produc-

tion electrodes are double sided).

The separator materials and electrodes were dried under vacuum at 120°C overnight prior to cell assembly. All cells were dried at 80°C under vacuum overnight after assembly, but prior to electrolyte fill.

Background and context Two separator companies have designed non-woven separators specifically for electrolytic double layer capacitors (EDLC), including supercapacitors, ultracapacitors, and EDLC capacitor — battery hybrids. The leading competitor uses cellulose fibrillated to 1-4 micron fibers in a uniform nonwoven web, and is the leader in the industry.

Dreamweaver International (DWI) uses cellulose fibrillated to approximately 250 nanometer diameter fibers, combined with microfibers of approximately 5 microns diameter, also in a uniform non-woven web. In this paper, three separators are compared from each company.

They are measured for thickness, moisture content, porosity, mean flow pore size, bubble point, tensile strength, and tensile modulus and Gurley air resistance.

Images were taken under a scanning electron microscope. In addition, EDLCs were made using production electrodes and measured for selfdischarge, capacitance and internal resistance.

These measurements are compared to commercial capacitors from two manufacturers. While both companies make materials that are very suitable for use in a wide variety of EDLCs, on average the DWI materials showed 9% higher capacitance, and 27% lower ESR. They are also 21% stronger on average, and have 25% lower moisture content.

Brian Morin Brian Morin is co-founder, president and chief operating officer of Dreamweaver International. He has over 150 international patents and applications on subjects ranging from advanced molecular metals to high performance fibers to plastic additives. He has several hundred million dollars in sales of products based on his inventions, and sees his strength as leading the commercialization of innovative technology.

The cells used acetonitrile with 1M TEATFB salt blended by PolyStor using high purity materials. The cells were slightly overfilled with electrolyte and included extra volume for a gas pocket.

They were clamped using plastic plates with binder clips. The weight included the weight of the doublesided electrode and current collector.

Because only one side of the electrode is used in the test, the capacitance values are low, approximately half of what would be achieved in a production cell.

The capacitors were charged to 2.70V at ~10 mA/F rate and held for 10 minutes at 2.70V. Capacity was measured in Whr/g by immediate discharge from 2.70 to 0.10 V at a discharge current of ~10 mA/F. To measure D.C. ESR (equivalent series resistance), the capacitor was charged to 2.70V, held at 2.70V for 10 minutes and then immediately discharged at ~100 mA/F. The voltage drop at the constant current (Id) was used to calculate the DC ESR:

The reported ESR is normalized for a 1 cm2 square area of capacitor.

The 24 hour self-discharge was measured by charging the capacitors to 2.70V and holding for 10 minutes before removing the charge voltage.

The voltage was then recorded continuously for 24 hours. The capacitors were then charged to 2.70V, held for 10 minutes at 2.70V, and capacitance and D.C. ESR was then measured.

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Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 57

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NINE MOST INNOVATIVE ENERGY STORAGE PROJECTS IN NORTH AMERICA Winners will be awarded at Energy Storage North America 2015 in San Diego, October 13 to 15, 2015.

Energy Storage North America (ESNA), the largest and most inuential gathering of policy, technology and market leaders in energy storage, announced ďŹ nalists for the 2015 ESNA Innovation Awards, recognizing excellence in energy storage project development.

The nine ďŹ nalists represent excellence in installed energy storage projects across three DBUFHPSJFT $FOUSBMJ[FE 4UPSBHF VUJMJUZ TDBMF

Distributed Storage (commercial, industrial or residential) and Mobility (transportation, electric vehicles and enabling infrastructure). “ESNA Award ďŹ nalists highlight the strength and scale of energy storage business models and applications across North America,â€? said Janice Lin, Managing Partner PG 4USBUFHFO $POTVMUJOH BOE &4/" $POGFSFODF $IBJS Ĺ?5IJT ZFBS XFĹ›WF TFF BO FWFO greater level of performance and achievement within each of the categories, proving again that the market is growing and storage deserves the attention it’s getting. We look forward to honoring the winners at this year’s conference.â€?

Innovation Award project submissions were subject to a rigorous review process that considered key industry priorities including customer value proposition, project impact, services supplied to the grid, ďŹ nancing model, ownership model, technology, and safety.

ESNA 2015 Innovation Award Finalists: * Distributed Energy Storage: -The Brooklyn Army Terminal Smart Grid Demonstration project demonstrates the beneďŹ ts of onsite renewable energy generation coupled with energy storage and management systems for reducing peak demand energy use and demand response.

The technologies involved have the potential UP IFMQ /FX :PSL $JUZ SFBDI JUT 1MB/:$ sustainability and resiliency goals, including 30% reduction in citywide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. $" TDIPPMT 6UJMJUJFT 5SVTU 1SPHSBN JT UIF SFTVMU PG (SFFO $IBSHF /FUXPSLTĹ› QBSUOFSTIJQ XJUI $BMJGPSOJB TDIPPMT BOE VUJMJUJFT demonstrates new business opportunities by collaborating across both sides of the

meter and showcasing how energy storage can increase revenues, hedge against site-speciďŹ c building/battery conditions, and increase participation in demand response %3 QSPHSBNT (SFFO $IBSHF JT XPSLJOH XJUI 10 schools/districts and utilities to reduce energy costs and streamline DR programs through a single point of contact.

8BM.BSU 4PMBS$JUZ %FNBOE-PHJD 1PSUfolio is a portfolio of up to eight PV + storage projects that provide peak load reduction and critical load back-up power. In the event of a grid outage the battery inverter is controlled CZ B 1SPHSBNNBCMF -PHJD $POUSPMMFS BOE acts as a voltage source and keeps a portion of the PV array online to serve the building critical loads. * Centralized Energy Storage: -The Distribution Energy Storage Integration (DESI) Pilot 1 uses a 2.4MW, 3.9MWh lithiumJPO CBUUFSZ TZTUFN GSPN /&$ &OFSHZ 4PMVUJPOT UP TVQQPSU B MPDBM 4PVUIFSO $BMJGPSOJB &EJTPO 4$& EJTUSJCVUJPO DJSDVJU JO 0SBOHF $BMJGPSOJB -PDBUFE JO B DPNQBDU FBTFNFOU PO a private industrial property, DESI 1 addresses intermittent circuit overloads.

-Invenergy’s Grand Ridge Energy Storage is the second-largest operating lithium ion battery project in the world, based on its power rating. With a 31.5 MW power rating and 12.2 MWh energy rating, it is the largest storage project commissioned in 2015. The project is sited in Illinois at Invenergy’s Grand Ridge &OFSHZ $FOUFS POF PG UIF XPSMEśT MBSHFTU operating projects of its kind, featuring wind and solar power generation and advanced energy storage in one location.

1( &Ĺ›T :FSCB #VFOB .8 .8I Battery Project is a unique collaboration of 1( & &13* $&$ BOE UIF TUPSBHF JOEVTUSZ this long duration sodium-sulfur battery energy storage system is providing valuable independent data about system performance while providing multiple beneďŹ ts at both the distribution and bulk power level. The Vaca-Dixon 2 MW/14 MWh sister system was the ďŹ rst and currently only resource to QBSUJDJQBUF JO $BMJGPSOJBĹ›T $"*40 OFX /PO Generator Resource energy and frequency regulation markets. * Mobility: -Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation "VUIPSJUZ -"$.5" 'MZXIFFM &OFSHZ 4UPSBHF

October 13 - 15, 2015 / San Diego, California Find out more at www.ESNAExpo.com

4ZTUFN VTFT 7:$0/śT HSFFO SFHFOFSBUJWF technology to store energy generated by braking trains and redistributes that energy to rail lines to accelerate trains – vastly improving energy usage that otherwise would be wasted in the form of heat. Thus far, the project has saved 541 megawatt hours (MWh), enough to provide power to 1000 BWFSBHF $BMJGPSOJB IPNFT -BMW Internet of Energy Enabled by Geli is a breakthrough in the re-use of secondlife EV batteries for multiple energy services from networked assets. Located at the BMW Group Technology Office, Geli’s Energy Operating System (Geli EOS) networks energy storage, solar, and EV chargers to provide behind-the-meter and grid support services.

F.PUPS8FSLT &7 $IBSHJOH /FUXPSL provides a network of intelligent SmartGrid EV charging stations, JuiceBox EVSEs, controlled via a cloud-based, self-learning platform, JuiceNet. Already used by over 5,000 consumers and deployed across the 64 F.PUPS8FSLTĹ› OFUXPSL PG 4NBSU(SJE EV chargers provides the beneďŹ ts of other storage and demand curtailment solutions without requiring utilities and grid operators to invest in new storage or DR infrastructure.

Public votes via Twitter will determine the winners.

One tweet per user for each award category $FOUSBMJ[FE 4UPSBHF %JTUSJCVUFE 4UPSBHF and Mobility) will count toward the ďŹ nal results. Tweets must include hashtag #ESNA2015Awards and a clear indication of the name of the selected project. Visit the ESNA awards website to learn more about the projects and cast your vote.

6UJMJUZ BOE QPMJDZ DIBNQJPOT XJMM BMTP receive awards.

In addition to the Innovation Awards, this ZFBSśT &4/" $IBNQJPO "XBSET XJMM IPOPS one individual each from the policy and utility sectors who have shown leadership and dedication in the advancement of energy storage in North America. Both the InnovaUJPO BOE $IBNQJPO "XBSE XJOOFST XJMM CF announced at Energy Storage North America, UBLJOH QMBDF BU UIF 4BO %JFHP $POWFOUJPO $FOUFS GSPN 0DUPCFS 3FHJTUSBUJPO for ESNA 2015 is now open.

Follow us on Twitter: @EnergyStorageNA and #ESNA2015.

REGISTER NOW!

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Hamburg, home to the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference

Solar Power International Anaheim, California, USA September 14-17 Solar Power International (SPI) generates success for solar energy professionals and the global solar industry. SPI is ranked #109 in the Top 250 Largest Trade Shows (by Trade Show News Network), making SPI the largest solar show in North America. In addition, SPI is a Gold 100 trade show (as ranked by Trade Show Executive), making it the only solar show to make both lists.

SPI is North America’s premier business-to-business event for professionals in solar energy and related fields.

• More than 15,000 solar energy industry professionals from 75+ countries attend.

• More than 600 leading manufacturers, service providers, and vendors on the Expo floor.

• Four days of power-packed ROI that will help you grow, learn, connect, and compete.

SPI brings the full range of industry ideas, experts, professionals, and information together in one comprehensive event that delivers • Peer-led educational programming designed to exchange ideas, share lessons learned, and provide solutions for your business.

• Unique networking opportunities that allow you to solidify your current relationships and build new ones.

• Connections with industry vendors and professionals from the US and around the world as they showcase their newest products and services.

• Opportunities to expand in and with the US market.

Contact Tel: +1 703-738-9460 Email: customerservice@sets.solar http://www.solarpowerinternational.com

60 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference Hamburg, Germany September 14-18 The EU PVSEC is the largest international conference for photovoltaic research, technologies and applications, and at the same time a top international PV Industry Exhibitions.

It gathers the global PV community

to conduct business, to network and to present and discuss the latest developments and innovations in photovoltaics.

It is the world renowned science-to-science, business-to-business and scienceto-industry platform with a full and only focus on the global PV Solar sector.

Contact Tel: - +49 89 720 12 735 Email - pv.conference@wip-munich.de www.photovoltaic-conference.com

The Battery Show Novi, Michigan, USA • September 15-17

Taking place September 15-17, in Novi, Detroit, Michigan, The Battery Show 2015 is the premier showcase of the latest advanced battery technology. The exhibition hall offers a platform to launch new products, make new Contacts and maintain existing relationships.

With more qualified buyers and decision makers than any other event in North America, The Battery Show 2015 is the key to unlocking your future business opportunities.

The Battery Show is attended by technical leaders, scientists, engi-

neers, project leaders, buyers and senior executives concerned with advanced energy storage and will host the very latest advanced battery solutions for electric and hybrid vehicles, utility and renewable energy support, portable electronics, medical technology, military and telecommunications.

Contact steve.bryan@smartershows.com mindy.emsley@smartershows.com Europe tel: +44 1273 916300 US toll free: +1 855 436 8683 Fax: +44 1273 774341

www.energystoragejournal.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS 5th Lithium Battery Workshop — Outreach to Enhance Safety Montreal, Canada September 29-30 The event will bring together representatives from lithium battery manufacturers, freight forwarders, ground handling agents, airlines, training schools and regulators to share information and learn how best to apply the regulations for the transport of lithium batteries by air, making this an excellent opportunity to network across the entire supply chain.

• Exclusive access to industry intelligence and latest developments • Unique business, networking and branding opportunities • Interactive approach, opening the floor for challenges and new ideas At the workshop you will meet representatives from airlines, lithium attery manufacturers, shippers, freight forwarders, training providers, test laboratories and regulators Contact lbworkshop@iata.org

66th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry Taipei, Taiwan October 4-9 The 66th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry to be held in Taipei will address batteries in Symposium 3 at this year’s event: Batteries for Tomorrow’s World — sponsored by: Division 3, Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage The performance of current electrical energy storage systems falls well short of requirements for using electrical energy efficiently in transportation, smart grid, commercial, and residential applications.

Fundamental knowledge is needed to uncover the underlying principles that control the basic processes that determine and govern their function, operation, performance limitations and failure.

With this underpinning knowledge, wholly new concepts in cell design and operation can be developed for a new class of electrical energy storage systems.

A new paradigm is required to design new stable anodes, cathodes and electrolytes to provide electrochemical cells with high energy density, high power, long lifetime and adequate safety at a competitive manufacturing cost.

The goal of this symposium is to review recent R&D efforts in this field to elucidate fundamental chemical, transport, electrical, and physical processes that can help improve the existing state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries and stimulate development of next generation rechargeable batteries e.g., Li-S,

www.energystoragejournal.com

Montreal will host the 5th Lithium Battery Workshop in September

Metal-air batteries, Na-ion, redox flow and multi-valent systems etc.

Topics will include: • Advanced materials, electrodes and electrolytes for rechargeable batteries • Novel rechargeable battery systems • Interfacial phenomena • Cell testing, performance evaluation, failure mechanisms • New computational and characterization tools • Safety Contact Robert Kostecki (coordinator), Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, E-mail: r_kostecki@lbl.gov) She-Huang Wu (co-coordinator), Tatung University E-mail: shwu@ttu.edu.tw http://annual66.ise-online.org/index.html

Solar O&M Carlsbad, California, USA October 7-8 Driven by the investment tax credit (ITC) and ‘third-party ownership’ financing models, investors and developers are moving aggressively to expand their portfolios of utility-scale and distributed solar projects.

As the installed base of long-lived solar assets continues to grow and distributed installations becoming a larger piece of the base, operation and maintenance has become even more important in maximizing system performance and long-term asset profitability. Investors, banks and asset owners are increasingly focused on the risks and performance of assets, and requiring detailed O&M data in order to assess project risks, profitability and valuation.

Solar asset owners, investors, lenders and the O&M community will gather at Solar O&M 2015: Maximizing Fleet Performance to explore the latest efforts and developments to meet the challenges of operating and maintaining its expanding asset base.

From the strategic factors shaping the O&M landscape to the latest technologies and O&M best practices that will improve energy output and financial performance, the event will provide the information and insight needed to better manage the industry’s assets and maximize its investments.

Contact Tel: +1 818-888-4444 Fax: + 1 818 888-4440 Email: mail@infocastevents.com

Batteries Event — International Energy and Power Supply Conference and Exhibition Nice, France October 7-9 The Batteries Event remains today one of the world’s most attractive shows and the meeting place, for the past 17 years, of technologies (lead acid, NiMH, Li-ion and more), applications (from micro batteries to large format batteries) and the value chain (chemists OEMs and end users). During three days, the conference will gather 70 speakers and internationally known experts.

Contact Christophe Pillot, chairman c.pillot@avicenne.com Sonia Jouneau, congress director sjouneau@lepublicsysteme.fr Tel : +33 1 41 34 21 75

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 61

FORTHCOMING EVENTS innovative platform to promote your research approaches, products, technologies and applications.

The three exhibition areas are: • BATTERY+STORAGE: Battery and energy-storage technologies • f-cell: Fuel cell and hydrogen technology • Future mobility solutions: Mobility technologies, applications and concepts The World of Energy Solutions conference, which takes place parallel to the trade fair, is not only a basic component of the overall event, but also a who’s who from research and industry.

In over 100 presentations German and international experts will report about current developments in hydrogen and fuel cells, battery and energy storage technology, as well as about future mobility solutions.

Contact www.messe-stuttgart.de/en/wes/ Solar West will be held in Calgary, Canada in October

Solar West

World of Energy Solutions

Calgary, Canada October 7-9

Stuttgart, Germany October 12-14

Now in its 6th year, Solar West 2015 returns to Calgary, Alberta – Canada’s energy capital. Learn about the new market opportunities for the solar industry through the evolving policy and market dynamics in Western Canada.

The World of Energy Solutions is an international trade fair and conference —and thus an important platform for speeding up the change to alternative energy sources. It addresses all players involved in the manufacturing of battery and energy storage systems for mobile and stationary implementation.

All areas are dealt with, from raw materials to turnkey battery systems.

Be a part of our network and use our

Contact Tel: +1 (647) 560-7000 Email registration@solarenergyevent.ca http://www.solarwestconference.ca/

Energy Storage North America San Diego, California • October 13-15

SolarPACES 2015 Cape Town, South Africa October 13-16 SolarPACES is the foremost symposium for the who’s who in concentrating solar power and chemical energy systems. It offers a forum for industry, research, politics and financing stakeholders within the framework of a scientific conference programme with leading world experts. The SolarPACES 2015 will take place from October 1316, 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa.

The conference offers: • Insight into new developments in technology, politics, the market and financing presented by top experts in the field; • A scientific conference programme with leading world experts and particular emphasis on recent research results; • A forum for industry, research, politics and financing stakeholders to discuss the future of concentrating solar energy.

Contact Tel: +49 761-47914-0 Fax: +49 761-47914-44 www.solarpaces2015.solarpaces.org/home. html

This is the largest grid energy storage event in North America. It will provide: • Critical insights into market developments and technology integration • 1500+ leading customers, technology providers, and partners • 40+ conference sessions, hands-on workshops, and site tours in the Silicon Valley

62 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

Our 2014 programme focused on the convergence of transportation, distributed, and utility-scale applications.

Contact Daniela Knoll – director, Messe Düsseldorf North America E-mail: dknoll@mdna.com Tel: +1 312 621-5838

www.energystoragejournal.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS 8th Annual Utility Scale Solar Summit

Interbattery, The Battery Conference

San Diego, California, USA October 20-22

Seoul, South Korea October 20-22

The Utility Scale Solar Summit is the primary business hub where decision– makers come each year to move the utility scale solar sector forward. This networking event is the place where the entire utility scale solar community gathers to get the latest insights into the market and to meet the key players.

The summit focuses on the key trends impacting the utility scale sector and what they mean for the future of the industry.

Leading utility-scale solar project developers, investors, lenders, utilities, equipment suppliers, construction contractors, EPCs and other key industry players will all be on hand to share their perspectives on how to meet the challenges of developing the next wave of utility scale projects, preparing for the post-2016 ITC era, and getting projects financed and completed.

The biggest international meeting in Korea, The Battery Conference, will be held as a concurrent event alongside InterBattery. The Battery Conference will present optimal opportunity for sharing information and technology with global opinion leaders from all over the world.

Get a unique insight into the latest global corporate trends and policies relating to the cell industry, and experience in-depth analysis of technologies, policies and market trends home and abroad.

The battery conference attracts top industry players from countries around the world. Hear from and mingle with secondary cell industry leaders from corporations like Samsung SDI, and international energy policymakers.

Achieve multiple goals at one event – expand business opportunity at InterBattery 2014 while grasping worldwide market trends at The Battery Conference.

Contact Tel: +1 818-888-4444 Email: info@infocastevents.com

2nd Annual PV Operations & Maintenance USA San Francisco, California, USA October 20-21 Establish first-class O&M practices to optimise performance, improve reliability and maximise overall ROI • Asset optimisation: Increase your asset revenue through using system, strategic and performance analysis to identify cost-effective optimisation opportunities • Improve performance: Maximise your asset’s energy output through intelligent monitoring and data analytics, and the experience of the best-performing operators • O&M strategy: Develop a better O&M strategy and make effective budgetary decisions, through understanding the scope of work required and being able to benchmark different O&M providers • Troubleshooting: Ensure a rapid return to full production by pre-empting failure and mitigating the impacts • Inverters and BOS: Understand your options for maintaining the inverter and BOS post-warranty, to ensure maximum productivity from your system.

Contact Tel: +44 207 422 4374 (UK) Tel: +1 800 814 3459 ext. 4374 (US) Email: amy@pv-insider.com

www.energystoragejournal.com

Contact InterBattery Secretariat Office Tel: 82-2-6000-1087/8241 Fax: 82-2-6944-8309 interbattery@coex.co.kr

Battery & Power Storage Shanghai Shanghai, China October 27-30 Battery Shanghai is the official sister show of the China Industrial Battery Fair (CIBF) in Shenzhen, organized by China Industrial Association of Power Sources (CIAPS) and Hannover Milano Fairs Shanghai.

Subjects that will be discussed.

• All kinds of batteries: Li-ion, LiPolymer, lithium primary, Ni-Cd, NiMH, lead-acid, VRLA, Carbon Zinc, alkaline manganese, zinc-air, Ni-Zn, Na-S, fuel cells, solar cells and supply systems, super-capacitors, other new battery types and thermoelectric cooling modules; • All kinds of battery pack: Battery packs for mobile phones, walkietalkies, cordless phones, laptop computers, digital cameras, mobile DVD, emergency lighting, electric toys, UPS, railway locomotives and passenger cars, and ships; • Power batteries and management systems: Power batteries and man-

agement systems for power tools, electric bicycles, electric vehicles, and hybrid vehicles; • EV charging station and related facilities: intelligent network for charging station, EV charging station products, charging station power distribution equipment, charging and replacing batteries and battery management system, parking facilities and intelligent monitoring device, charging station power supply solutions, charging station-smart grid solutions; • All kinds of energy storage batteries: Wind power, solar power, wind and solar systems, solar street light, lawn lamp, landscape and traffic lights, storage batteries and other products • Solar cell, system and applications: Silicon solar cells and materials; thin film solar cells and materials; solar transparent packaging material; solar cell and module production equipment, testing equipment; solar street light, lawn light, traffic lights, etc.; solar chargers; users of photovoltaic power, grid-connected photovoltaic systems, photovoltaic power transmission and distribution equipment; inverter; measurement and control systems; solar system control software • Battery manufacturing equipment, testing instruments, chargers, raw materials and components for all kinds of batteries; • Battery recycle technologies and processing equipment.

Contact China Industrial Association of Power Sources Lu Hui Tel. :+86-22-23959049 Fax: +86-22-23380938 E-mail: luhui@ciaps.org.cn

Hannover Milano Fairs Shanghai Kelly Sun Tel: +86-21-5045 6700 *314 Fax: +86-21-5045 9355 Email: kelly.sun@hmf-china.com

US Solar Market Insight San Diego, California, USA November 2-4 Returning for its fifth year, the US Solar Market Insight Conference is essential for anyone involved, or looking to get involved, in the US solar industry.

Based on over five years of analysis of installation data, the event dissects cost trends, discusses the future of project finance and business models, and examines the potential of individual states and market segments Contact Tel: +1 617-500-7870 Email: gtmevents@greentechmedia.com

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 63

FORTHCOMING EVENTS European Utility Week

PV Operations & Maintenance Forum Europe

Vienna, Austria • November 3-5

Hamburg, Germany November 9-10 At PV O&M Europe, you will hear from the investors, owners, operators, asset managers and O&M providers of the biggest solar PV portfolios in Europe. By learning from their expertise and insight, you will be able to create and develop O&M strategies that maximise the performance of your plant, and evolve your PV O&M techniques for an advanced and cost-effective service provision.

Contact Tel: +44 207 422 4374 Email: amy@pv-insider.com

European Utility Week will be divided into various themes — see bullets below.

• Energy Storage — The role and commercial viability of energy storage in Europe 2014 was a breakout year for global grid energy storage. In Europe, with the increase of variable renewables on the grid, the need for electricity storage is growing tremendously.

The value of grid scale energy storage is often calculated by deferring the cost of grid investment needed or from providing various different additional services to increase smooth grid operation. Prices for lithium-ion batteries keep falling and new technologies are filling the gaps.

The industry seems to have moved past the pilot phase and is making a play for full-scale commercialization.

With the introduction of Tesla Energy, Tesla is amplifying its efforts to accelerate the move away from fossil fuels to a sustainable energy future with energy storage enabling homes, businesses and utilities to store sustainable and renewable energy to manage power demand, provide backup power and increase grid resilience.

Will other firms follow suit? Will Apple and Google or other consumer giants also make a play for the sector?

Distributed storage is one of the fastest-growing markets for energy storage. In the coming years the capacity of distributed energy storage worldwide is expected to increase 10-fold.

The market growth is being fuelled by the development of advanced battery chemistries and at the same time the spread of solar photovoltaics, electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging and home energy networks

64 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

are all creating new applications and new demand for storage.

• Grid & Renewables Integration — DSO and TSO changing roles and responsibilities A new energy system, reliant on more distributed and variable energy resources with the consumer at its center is resulting in changing roles and responsibilities for the TSOs and the DSOs. Renewable energy sources are being connected to distribution grids at an extraordinary speed, consumers are installing solar panels on their roofs, new market players are starting to sell flexibility services, and there is an increase in electric vehicles appearing on the roads.

The one-size-fits all model no longer works and new business models are needed to integrate higher levels of distributed energy resources, new technologies, environmental goals and the new customer needs.

• Grid Optimization, Intelligent Networks and Communication — The power system of tomorrow: innovation in grid optimization • Big Data & Analytics — Utility analytics and the big data revolution: moving forward towards the digital utility of the future • Smart Homes and End User Engagement Business • Smart Metering— Getting the meter economics and incentives right • Smart Cities—The impacts of EU policies on utilities, cooperation with the cities Contact Paddy Young Tel: +31 346 290 807 Email: paddy@synergy-events.com

Distributed Solar Summit 2015 San Diego, California, USA November 16-18 The distributed solar sector has continued to gather steam thanks to innovative financial structures, new partnership alliances, sales channels, and evolving business models. Assisted by the popularity of financing like loanto-own in 2014, 32% of all new electric generating capacity in the US came from solar.

Forecasts have put solar installations up 31% over 2014 in 2015, with the majority of growth coming from distributed solar. On the financial front: PACE financing, securitizations, and yieldcos (especially) rose to prominence helping distributed solar developers access lower cost financing, while continuing to facilitate the sector’s above noted growth. Still, industry players face significant difficulties as tax equity remains challenging to attain the impending ITC step down threatening project pipeline growth. How will the industry maintain its access to low cost financing to continue its sustained growth after the ITC step down?

• The state of the distributed solar industry and the road ahead • ITC step down — What will be the impact on tax equity investors and developers in 2016 and beyond?

• Debt market outlook 2016 • Residential and commercial PACE for distributed solar • Driving growth in distributed solar for commercial and industrial markets • Yieldcos and their impact on the industry?

• The future of solar+storage business models • International perspectives: hot emerging markets from around the globe Contact Tel: +1 818-888-4444 Email: info@infocastevents.com

www.energystoragejournal.com

INDIA’S LARGEST SOLAR EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS ENERGY STORAGE INNOVATIONS

NOV 18–20, 2015 MUMBAI INDIA

CHARGING THE FUTURE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS

ENERGY STORAGE MEETS NORTH AMERICA'S MOST-ATTENDED SOLAR EVENT!

JUNE 22–24, 2016 MUNICH GERMANY JULY 12–14, 2016 SAN FRANCISCO USA

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION SERIES FOR BATTERIES, ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS AND INNOVATIVE PRODUCTION

www.ees-events.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Western Australia Solar+Energy Storage Creative Drive Conference Perth, Australia November 16-17

Energy efficiency, energy storage Dresden, Germany • November 10-11

Contact Tel: +86 21-3102 1580 E-mail: info@leader-xtet.com

Energy Storage Australia Sydney, Australia November 18-19 Based on the successful ESA2014 and ESSC2015, we organized the ESA2015 to bring together industry experts and operators to share and exchange expertise.

Contact Tel: +86 180 1766 2337 Email: dorisd@cdmc.org.cn

11th Annual Knowledge Foundation, Lithium Battery Power & 6th Battery 2015 Safety Baltimore, USA November 17-19 Significant increases in the global demand for lithium-based batteries have created exciting breakthroughs in nextgeneration Li-ion and beyond lithium battery technologies.

From micro-medical devices to highenergy/high-power automotive applications, these breakthroughs have paved the way for an emerging market with unlimited potential.

The 11th International Conference on Lithium Battery Power focuses on two distinct tracks on materials & commercialization and addresses critical issues facing the industry, presents innovative advancements in research on lithium batteries, and fosters crossindustry discussions on ways to take viable technologies from research to practical application and manufacturing.

One of the greatest challenges to creating higher-performing, lower-cost batteries is moving these emerging technologies from research to market.

• Track 1: Commercialization & Manufacturing guides you through device packaging, integration and manufac-

The 3rd Dresden conference “Energy in Future” will present the latest research results in the fields of electrical energy generation, energy storage and energy efficiency.

Included within the conference on November 11 will be the 4th Workshop Lithium-Sulfur-Batteries Lithium-sulfur batteries are a most promising choice for future energy storage systems.

Novel materials such as nanostructured carbon/sulfur composite cathodes, solid electrolytes and alloybased anodes are expected to significantly turing in a full spectrum of lithiumion batteries applications currently on the market.

Breakthroughs in novel battery chemistries, novel electrode/electrolyte materials, high-capacity cathodes/ anodes and system integration have delivered a vast array of automotive, portable and stationary applications.

• Track 2: Chemistry, Materials & Modeling focuses on significant innovation in research and engineering for energy storage technologies in lithium-ion batteries as well as the significant achievements in safety and reliability.

Intersolar India Mumbai, India November 18-20 Intersolar India is the country’s largest exhibition and conference for the solar industry. It takes place annually at the

enhance the cell’s performance.

Following the great success of our previous Lithium-Sulfur Battery Workshop in 2014, this year’s symposium will again bring together an international audience of scientists and industrial customers.

Renowned experts will present the latest results, new materials, processes and applications in the field of lithium-sulfur batteries. We are looking forward to welcoming you at Dresden.

Contact www.zukunftenergie-dresden.de Bombay Exhibition Centre (BEC) in Mumbai. The event’s exhibition and conference both focus on the areas of photovoltaics, PV production technologies, energy storage systems and solar thermal technologies. S Since being founded, Intersolar has become the most important industry platform for manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, service providers and partners in the global solar industry.

In 2014, 160 international exhibitors and around 9,000 visitors attended Intersolar India. 85 distinguished speakers and 500 attendees discussed current industry topics and shed light on the conditions surrounding technological, market and political developments at the accompanying conference.

At the end of an eventful 2014, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) announced that India’s total grid-connected solar capacity crossed 3GW in December 2014. A total of 886MW was added during the calendar year 2014, which made it another year of less than 1GW installation. India crossed the 1GW mark in July 2012 and the second GW mark in August 2013. The policy and regulatory uncertainties ensured that it took an inordinately long time for the 3rd GW to be completed.

Contact Tel: +49 7231 58598-213 (Germany) Tel: +91 22 4255-4707 (India) Email: info@intersolar.in

66 • Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015

www.energystoragejournal.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS storage systems integrators to examine the opportunities, economics, business cases and technologies in combining storage with grid-connected, commercial and industrial and consumer solar PV systems.

It will explore the application of mobile and stationary battery technologies, software control suites, microgrids, smart inverters and other technologies to deliver economically viable systems.

SOLAR+STORAGE Summit San Diego, California, USA November 18-19 Hear about the opportunities, economics, and business cases being pursued by today’s leader. Learn how storage is being combined with grid-connected, commercial and industrial and residential solar PV installation. Explore the application of battery technologies, software control suites, microgrids, smart inverters and other technologies to deliver economically viable systems.

Get the latest on financing solar + storage projects.

Adding storage to solar is the killer app for the electric industry. Adding energy storage to grid-connected, C&I and residential solar installations could potentially reduce curtailments while opening up new revenue flows from providing grid services and reducing demand charges.

However, storage monetization strategies are still emerging, battery technologies are still evolving and prices are in flux, and their integration and management is much more complex than for a typical solar installation. Only those developers who can identify the best opportunities, monetization and integration strategies and partners will fully maximize their profits from this combination of disruptive technologies.

Solar+Storage will bring together solar developers with battery vendors and

www.energystoragejournal.com

3rd Annual Energy Storage India Conference and Expo December 2015

Contact Tel: +1 818 888 4445 Email: mail@infocastevents.com

Energy Storage Project Roadshow 2015 Shanghai, China December 6-8 Contact chocky@leader-xtet.com

Solar Canada Toronto, Canada December 7-8 Solar Canada is the largest and most influential event for the solar energy industry in Canada. 2015 will bring together attendees from the solar and renewable energy industry and community to share knowledge and experience advancements in the region’s energy policy, markets and industry capacity.

• Network: Meet face-to-face and shake hands with the most important advocates of solar energy from every part of the industry.

• Learn. Today’s energy environment is swiftly and vastly changing. Find out about the key policies that will change Canada and the world forever.

• Discover. The latest and most cutting-edge technology on the forefront of innovation.

Contact Tel: +1 647 560-7000 Email: registration@solarenergyevent.ca

The 2nd annual Energy Storage India Conference and Expo, hosted by the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) from December 3-5, 2014, in New Delhi, was a successful event that brought together 532 industry professionals and 65 speakers from 15+ countries.

It was the largest such gathering ever held in India, and highlighted the many opportunities available in a fast-growing market.

The 3rd such conference and expo should be held again in December.

Contact Visit www.worldenergystorage.com/ for more information about the 2015 event.

Energy Storage Journal • Autumn 2015 • 67

PIONEERS OF ENERGY STORAGE Where would we be without lithium ion batteries? From the mobile phone to the laptop to energy storage and management at the grid level, these batteries are creating our future. John Goodenough is the man who discovered the cathode material of choice and so made the lithium ion battery truly portable and rechargeable. Kevin Desmond reports.

The father of the lithium ion cell In the early 1970s, the first energy crisis alerted the international community to its vulnerability to dependence on foreign oil. Alternatives to fossil fuels as energy sources were nuclear, solar, and wind energy, all of which require electrical energy storage for optimal use; and the rechargeable battery stores electrical energy as chemical energy.

In 1968, scientists at the Ford Motor Co had invented and started development of the sodium-sulfur battery, which uses molten electrodes and a solid electrolyte rather than solid electrodes and a liquid electrolyte.

However, this battery needs an operating temperature of 300°C-350°C, which has — mostly — limited its use to non-mobile applications such as grid energy storage. Nevertheless, this development alerted scientists to the possibility of increasing the energy density of a battery cell by using a non-aqueous electrolyte.

In the early 1970s, chemists in France and Germany were pioneering investigations of room-temperature reversible lithium insertion into layered transition-metal (M) sulfides and selenides MS2 and MSe2, which led to the suggestion that a rechargeable lithium-MS2 battery would be feasible since lithium (Li) non-rechargeable (primary) batteries were known; they have an organic electrolyte for transporting Li+ ions inside the battery.

In 1976, a rechargeable room-temperature Li-TiS2 battery cell was demonstrated; it had an acceptable rate of charge and discharge and offered an energy density higher than can be achieved with conventional batteries that have an aqueous electrolyte transporting H+ ions. However, the Li

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“Don’t you know that anyone who has ever done anything interesting in physics had already done it by the time he was your age; and you want to begin?”

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PIONEERS OF ENERGY STORAGE

“As a young man in search of a calling for my life, I became fascinated by the philosophy of science while struggling to come to terms with a spiritual awakening”

MGSK Thomas, Goodenough continued work at the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, South Parks Road in Oxford to demonstrate that the Li+-ion mobility in Li1-xCoO2 is even higher than that in the sulfide cathode LiTiS2.

This finding meant that a Li1-xCoO2 cathode would provide the needed voltages and rates that would usher in the “wireless revolution”.

Meanwhile, Rachid Yazami in Switzerland, exploring Li insertion into graphite, reported that a discharged graphite anode did not have a problem with dendrites if the carbon/LiCoO2 cells were not charged too rapidly, and Akira Yoshino in Japan then assembled the discharged cell Carbon/ LiCoO2 to demonstrate the Li-ion battery that was licensed to the SONY Corporation, which marketed it with the first cell telephone.

Today, almost everyone from five years upwards has an application of this battery in their pockets.

A call to arms anode was not replated smoothly on recharge but developed dendrites that grew across the flammable organic electrolyte on repeated recharge to give an internal short-circuit with disastrous consequences. This effort was, therefore, abruptly abandoned.

It is at this point that an American physicist in his 50s, by the name of John Goodenough, accepted a position of professor and head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford University, England. He had been contemplating a move to the Ariya Mehr University in Iran to establish an energy institute there when a letter arrived inviting him to apply for the position at Oxford.

Early computers Goodenough had been working as a research scientist at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory where he had been part of an interdisciplinary team that developed the first random-access memory (RHM) for the digital computer.

Goodenough’s contribution was to the development of the ferrimagnetic, ceramic memory element, a contribution that put him in charge of a ceramics laboratory and that gave him a decade in which to explore the magnetic, transport, and structural properties of transition-metal compounds.

After moving to Oxford, Goodenough recognized that the layered sulfides would not give the voltage needed to compete with batteries using a conventional aqueous electro-

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lyte, but that an oxide would provide a significantly higher voltage. From previous work, he knew that layered oxides analogous to the layered sulfides would not be stable, but that discharged LiMO2 oxides could have the same structural architecture as discharged LiTiS2.

Goodenough assigned a visiting physicist from Japan, Koichi Mizushima, the task of working with Goodenough’s postdoc, Philip Wiseman, and a student, Philip Jones, to explore how much Li could be extracted reversibly from layered LiMO2 cathodes, and with M = Co and Ni he found he could extract electrochemically over 50% of the Li at a voltage of around 4.0V versus a lithium anode, nearly double that for the sulfides, before the oxides began to evolve oxygen.

Their groundbreaking findings with Li1-xCoO2 were published in the Materials Research Bulletin 15, 783-789, (1980).

The report concluded with the statement, “Further characteristics of the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of this new system are being made.”

However, when Goodenough went to patent his cathodes, no battery company in England, Europe, or the US was interested in assembling a battery with a discharged cathode, so he gave the patent to the AERE Harwell Laboratory.

Nevertheless, with his postdoc Peter Bruce, now a professor in St Andrews, Scotland, and a new student,

Michael Thackeray was working on the Zebra battery (see Batteries International passim), a modification of the sodium-sulfur battery, in South Africa when he read the article in the Materials Research Bulletin. He immediately applied for a sabbatical to work with Goodenough in Oxford.

He came to South Parks Road with the announcement that he was inserting Li reversibly into magnetite, the ferrimagnetic spinel Fe3O4 used by Greek sailors in an early version of the compass. He wished to replace cobalt (Co), which is expensive and toxic, with iron (Fe), which is abundant and benign. The spinels A[B2]O4 contain a three-dimensional framework of BO6/3 octahedra sharing edges; in the layered LiMO2 oxides they form twodimensional layers.

The A atoms of a spinel occupy interstitial tetrahedral sites that are bridged by empty, face-sharing octahedra, and Goodenough realized from his earlier work on spinel memory elements that the Li inserted into Fe[Fe2]O4 was entering and displacing that interstitial A-site Fe into the bridging interstitial octahedral sites to create a rock-salt structure with the [Fe2]O4 framework remaining intact.

Bill David, now at the Rutherford Laboratory, had just joined Goodenough’s group from the Clarendon with a PhD involving structural analysis, so he and Thackeray demonstrated that Goodenough’s hypothesis was correct.

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PIONEERS OF ENERGY STORAGE “If the people at Oxford have that much imagination, then perhaps that is what I should do”

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for service, but was not called up until January 1943. This gave him time to complete his undergraduate degree in mathematics. He had entered Yale as a freshmen with a background in Latin and Greek and little idea of what he would do after the war was over.

He had taken an introductory course in chemistry during his freshman year as the science requirement for a liberal arts degree, but he had no thought of a career in science. “As a young man in search of a calling for my life, I became fascinated by the philosophy of science while struggling to come to terms with a spiritual awakening,” he says.

“While reading Whitehead one night, I decided that if I were ever to come back from the war and if I were to have the opportunity to go back to graduate school, I should study physics.”

During hostilities, as an Army Air Force meteorologist, Goodenough dispatched tactical aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean.

“In 1946, while I was still stationed on the tiny island of Terceira in the Azores awaiting my turn to go home, a telegram arrived telling me to report back to Washington in 48 hours.

Finding his calling

Goodenough at home in Oxford, the city of the dreaming spires

Meanwhile, Goodenough told Thackeray to investigate the electrochemical reversible insertion of Li into the spinel Li[Mn2]O4; it gave a voltage of 3.0 V versus lithium. Manganese (Mn) is also abundant and benign. On his return to South Africa, Thackeray showed his students that extraction of Li from Li[Mn2]O4 gives a voltage of 4.0 V versus lithium. A modification of the Li1-x[Mn2]O4 spinel cathode is now used by Nissan to power the Leaf electric car.

Goodenough’s own story John Bannister Goodenough was born of US parents in Jena, Germany, on 25 July 1922. At that time, his father, Erwin Goodenough, was at Lincoln College, Oxford, writing a DPhil on the

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Church Fathers. The family returned to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1923 where his father had been appointed assistant professor of the History of Religion at Yale University. John was the second son; he went away to Groton School at the age of 12 The teenage Goodenough enjoyed playing individual and team sports of all kinds, and in the summer of 1939 he kayaked from the lakes of Finland down the Ivalo River in the north to Kirkenes in Norway, where his Finnish companion had to return home to prepare for the Russian invasion. After 10 days walking in the Jotunheimen Mountains of Norway, his six German companions were called home to serve the ambitions of Hitler, who had already moved into Poland.

In Washington I was informed that I had been selected to study physics or mathematics at the University of Chicago or Northwestern University. My spirit recalled my earlier resolve, so from Washington I went immediately to the University of Chicago to register as a graduate student in Physics.

When I arrived, the registration officer, professor Simpson, said to me, “I don’t understand you veterans. Don’t you know that anyone who has ever done anything interesting in physics had already done it by the time he was your age; and you want to begin?”

In 1946, Goodenough married Irene Wiseman, a history graduate, at Chicago. In the decades to come, the couple were to enjoy travel, mountain walking, and meeting scientists and Christians from many countries; invitations every year to lecture abroad would introduce them to western and eastern Europe, Russia, India and Nepal, the Middle East, North Africa, Australia, Mexico, and Argentina.

By 1952, still at the University of Chicago, Goodenough had completed his PhD under the supervision of Clarence Zener. This included taking two

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PIONEERS OF ENERGY STORAGE Above on the blackboard — nullius in verba, “Take nobody’s word for it” — slogan for the UK’s national science academy and wise words to us all. Below, from left to right Goodenough’s colleagues who helped him advance his theories, Phil Wiseman, Koichi Mizushima and Phil Jones

MARKING THE DANCE CARD

In 2001, Goodenough received the Japan Prize for his discoveries of the materials critical to the development of lightweight rechargeable batteries.

Goodenough is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the French Academy of Sciences, and the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales of Spain and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom.

He has written more than 700 articles, 90 book chapters and reviews, and five books, including two seminal works, Magnetism and the Chemical Bond (1963) and Les oxydes des métaux de transition (1973).

Goodenough is co-recipient of the 2009 Enrico Fermi Award. This presidential award is one of the oldest and most prestigious given by the US government and carries an honorarium of $375,000. He shares the honour with Siegfried Hecker, professor at the Management

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of Science and Engineering Department of Stanford University.

The RSC John B Goodenough Award, (previously advertised as the Materials Chemistry Forum Lifetime Award) was established in 2008. The John B Goodenough Award is to recognize exceptional and sustained contributions to the area of materials chemistry.

On November 30, 2010, the latest presentation of a Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) National Chemical Landmark plaque took place in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory of the University of Oxford.

The plaque reads: “Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory where, in 1980, John B Goodenough with Koichi Mizushima, Philip Jones, and Philip Wiseman identified the cathode material that enabled the development of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery. This breakthrough ushered in the age of portable electronic devices.”

At the ceremony greetings were received as a pre-recorded speech from professor Goodenough from his laboratory in the US. Present at the ceremony itself were Mizushima, Wiseman, and Jones.

Now in his early 90s he remains active — and a highly popular figure with both faculty and students — with a full schedule leading graduate students and post docs in continued research on transition-metal oxides and lithium-ion battery design and production.

courses from Enrico Fermi on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics.

In 1952, he joined the group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory charged with the development of a ferrimagnetic ceramic to enable the first randomaccess memory (RAM) for the digital computer.

“The air defence of this country depended on having a large digital computer, and the computer had no memory!” Goodenough says. “The rolled alloy tapes first tried did not switch fast enough. Although the Europeans who had developed ferrimagnetic spinels were convinced that it would be impossible to obtain the required squarish B-H hysteresis loop in a polycrystalline ceramic, the magnetic-core RAM was delivered within three years of my arrival with a read/rewrite cycle time of less than the required six microseconds.”

In the course of this work, Goodenough showed how cooperative orbital ordering gives rise to crystal distortions, and he used this ordering to articulate the rules for the sign of the spin-spin magnetic interactions in solids. These rules have subsequently provided a true guide to the design as well as the interpretation of the magnetic properties of solids; they are known as the Goodenough-Kanamori rules, and inspired the title of Goodenough’s first book, Magnetism and the Chemical Bond (Interscience-Wiley, 1963).

Since his proposals in the early 1970s to work on energy materials were assigned to the National Energy Laboratories because the Three-Mile Island incident had halted development in the USA of nuclear-power plants, Goodenough debated over the invitation to go to Oxford.

“My wife did not hesitate to recommend that I put my name in nomination; and I thought, ‘If the people at Oxford have that much imagination, then perhaps that is what I should do’.

I was duly elected, and in 1976 I took up the post at Oxford,” he said.

Leaping over the Oxford years, by 1986, Goodenough was 64 years old.

“With the approach of mandatory

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PIONEERS OF ENERGY STORAGE retirement in England in 1986, I was delighted with an invitation from the University of Texas at Austin to occupy the Virginia H Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering.”

Since then, as a member of the ME and ECE Departments, he helped to establish the Texas Materials Institute.

With the help of now professor Arumugan Manthiram, who had come with him from England as a postdoc in 1986, and of professor Jianshi Zhou, who came to him in 1987 as a PhD student, Goodenough has been able to establish a laboratory that includes in one group solid state chemistry, structural characterization, electrochemistry, and a variety of physical measurements as a function of temperature and pressure.

Among his many publications is a very personal one: “Witness to Grace in which he describes how his intellectual journey has also included “a religious quest for meaning in what or whom I would choose to serve with my life.”

Still striving This organization has enabled him to return to studies of the unusual physical properties imparted by orbital order, structural transformations, and the lattice instabilities encountered at the crossover from localized to itinerant electronic behaviour.

Some of this is summarized in his volume Localized to Itinerant Electronic Transitions in Perovskite Oxides (Springer-Verlag, 2001). He has also continued to develop solid electrolyte and electrode materials for the Li-ion battery and the solid oxide fuel cell (see his book with K Huang: Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology: Principles, Performance, and Operations (Woodhead Publishing, 2009).

The olivine cathode Li1-xFePO4 he developed in Texas is now being used for power tools and in a large battery being constructed in Quebec for the storage of electrical energy generated by a wind farm there.

Among his many publications is a very personal one: “Witness to Grace” (Publish America, 2008) in which he describes how his intellectual journey has also included “a religious quest for meaning in what or whom I would choose to serve with my life.”

“Witness to Grace” also chronicles a struggle to find a calling to a career in the science of the solid state, a career that brought together physics, chemistry, and engineering. He leaves to the reader the decision as to what was the result of chance and what was the leading of the spirit of love.”

Goodenough nowadays in his office at the University of Texas

(Our thanks to John Goodenough and his assistant Melissa Truitt-Green, and Linda Webb of ICL for their invaluable help in this article.)

The plaque to Goodenough and colleagues in Oxford

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