The Energy Storage Journal Summer 2014: issue 6

When the Wind bloWs How energy storage is balancing more wind on Northern Ireland’s grid

A hArd sell?Germany’s solar and storage incentivisation scheme, one year on

loW-doWn on lithium ionTrends and advances in lithium battery cell production

www.energystoragejournal.com

Issue 6: Summer 2014

When the money runs out Germany explores modified consumption regime

Building the grid of the future Lithium cell manufacture pushes out the limits

Small PV gets beautiful The new economic logistics behind solar farming

The next gold rushUS industry pioneers new PV storage model

Based on long-term experience in the fundamental technologies of automation, laser processes, vacuum coating, printing, metrology and wet chemical processes, the Manz Group provides innovative system solutions for high-tech growth markets worldwide.

In the field of battery production, Manz has designed, developed and installed equipment for high volume production of lithium-ion batteries. Our services in this segment range from battery cell manufacturing to assembling the individual cells into a battery system.

www.manz.com

Passion enhances innoVaTion adVanced Li-ion baTTery ProducTion soLuTions For e-MobiLiTy and energy sTorage

Our core competencies in cell assembly:

• Manufacturing automation • Prototype to production • Cells to EV packs • Single stations to full lines

Our core competencies in pack assembly:

• Complex system integration & final test • Specialized automation • Semi automated to fully automated

2014-01_Manz_Energy-Storage-Journal_A4.indd 1 28.01.2014 14:41:18

ISSUE 6, SUMMER 2014 | ENERGYSTORAGEJOURNAL

1EDITOR’s mEssagE

A poWerful combinAtion

With the über solar expo Intersolar just around the corner next month, this issue shines a light on the mutually beneficial relationship between the solar photovoltaic and battery industries.

One example concerns the UK’s largest PV farm developer and operator, Lightsource. The company is soon to deploy lithium ion batteries to develop large-scale solar farms that overcome grid network constraints and turn a healthy profit for the company and its investors.

This issue’s cover story explores how an energy storage services industry in the US is evolving to serve the commercial and industrial market. In principal, the concept allows companies and other users to lease energy storage to avoid paying demand rates and other fees that are applied by utilities to discourage the commercial and industrial sector from drawing off electricity at peak demand times.

The leasing model is familiar to the solar PV industry, where in the US companies such as Solarcity have achieved wide-scale deployment of the technology in the residential and commercial segments using third-party leasing.

In this issue, the first year of Germany’s programme to incentivise PV plus storage to increase self-consumption is explored.

Also in this issue, suppliers of production equipment to the PV industry discuss how investment in automation is driving down costs in lithium ion battery manufacturing.

This issue also includes a review and presentation highlights from the 7th Energy Storage World Forum, held in April in London, which brings together utilities and the energy storage sector.

sArA Ver-bruggen EDITOR

EnERgySToraGeJournAl Business and market strategies for energy storage and smart grid technologies

EnERgySToraGeJournAl is a quarterly publication

www.energystoragejournal.com

Views expressed in EnERgySToraGeJournAl are the authors’ and not necessarily those of IPVEA

Published byHHA Limited10 Temple Bar Business ParkStrettington, PO18 0TUUnited KingdomTel: +44 (0) 243 75 22 78 and International PV EquipmentAssociation (IPVEA)P.O. Box 1610, D-63406, Hanau, GermanyRegistration Number: Court Hanau VR 31714Tel: +1 407 856 9100www.ipvea.org

PublisherKaren HamptonIncoming Publisher, HHA [email protected] andBryan EkusOutgoing Publisher,Managing Director – International PV Equipment [email protected]

EditorSara [email protected]

[email protected]

DesignDoubletake Design Ltd. (UK)[email protected]

© 2014 International Photovoltaic Equipment Association (IPVEA)

Every effort has been to ensure that all the information in this publication is correct, the publisher will accept no responsibility for any errors, or opinion expressed, or omissions, for any loss or damage, cosequential or otherwise, suffered as a result of any material published.

Any warranty to the correctness and actuality can not be assumed. IPVEA reserves the right to make changes or additions to the information made available at any time without notice. © 2012 International Photovoltaic Equipment Association. All rights reserved. Contents may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or part, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Based on long-term experience in the fundamental technologies of automation, laser processes, vacuum coating, printing, metrology and wet chemical processes, the Manz Group provides innovative system solutions for high-tech growth markets worldwide.

In the field of battery production, Manz has designed, developed and installed equipment for high volume production of lithium-ion batteries. Our services in this segment range from battery cell manufacturing to assembling the individual cells into a battery system.

www.manz.com

Passion enhances innoVaTion adVanced Li-ion baTTery ProducTion soLuTions For e-MobiLiTy and energy sTorage

Our core competencies in cell assembly:

• Manufacturing automation • Prototype to production • Cells to EV packs • Single stations to full lines

Our core competencies in pack assembly:

• Complex system integration & final test • Specialized automation • Semi automated to fully automated

2014-01_Manz_Energy-Storage-Journal_A4.indd 1 28.01.2014 14:41:18


INSIde4 neWs

Latest deals, projects and announcements from the global energy storage industry

14 AnAlYsis A 100MW energy storage plant being built in Northern Ireland by AES will help to balance more wind on the grid

20 coVer storYAcross the US electricity is the lifeblood businesses, manufacturers and other enterprises need to provide their goods and services. But rising rates and outages are

switching the commercial and industrial sector on to energy storage.

26 A hArd sell? During 2013 in Germany more energy storage systems were sold without a subsidy than with one. ESJ examines the progress of the first solar and storage scheme one year on

32 the loW-doWn on lithium ion Advances in cell and system manufacturing can play a critical role in helping to reduce production costs in lithium ion battery production for the energy storage industry.

35 the AutomAtion gAme Suppliers of production facilities and machinery are using their experience to bring the manufacture of lithium ion batteries for both electric vehicles and energy storage into the 21st century.

38 eVent reVieW: The 7th Energy Storage World Forum, organised by Dufresne, London in April.

44 exhibition oVerVieW: EES/Intersolar 2014, Munich, Germany 20

14

35

Greensmith to provide frequency regulation for the PJM

Maryland-headquartered Greensmith is to supply 20MW of energy storage for providing frequency regulation services.

The system will use lithium ion bat-teries, based on manganese oxide sub-chemistry. Greensmith’s client for the project is for a major US-based renew-ables power developer and involves an engineering, procurement and con-struction (EPC) partner to handle site preparation and interconnection work.

The customer is seeking to supply an-cillary grid services to the PJM, which operates one of the largest wholesale electricity markets in the world. The system should be up and running in late 2014.

For Greensmith the project is impor-tant as it will give the company the op-portunity to demonstrate its proprie-tary control system and optimisation al-gorithms for maximising performance scoring and remuneration, by respond-ing to PJM’s signals.

The PJM is the largest user of grid-

scale energy storage services in the US, possibly globally.

Sourcing batteries, power conversion devices and other components from third party suppliers, Greensmith pro-duces energy storage systems and de-velops grid services that these systems provide on behalf of customers.

The company’s core focus is the de-velopment of software controls and al-gorithms for different types of applica-tions for energy storage.

In 2014 Greensmith will integrate an additional four new battery types, bringing the total that are compatible with its battery-agnostic technology platform to 12.

In addition, Greensmith is deploying 6MWh of energy storage for a south-ern Californian utility in support of grid stability and deferral objectives, as penetration of solar continues to rise in California to meet renewable portfolio standards targets of 33% by 2020.

This grid-scale project will also use advanced lithium ion batteries, but from a different supplier to that which is providing batteries for the PJM proj-ect, and will have a more varied work-load that includes power quality.

energY storAge neWs

round-up of KeY deAls, proJects And Announcements in the globAl energY storAge mArKet

Flow batteries to be used in NYC energy storage project

American Vanadium and Gildemeis-ter are partnering with New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to demon-strate the Cellcube vanadium redox flow energy storage system.

The demonstration will be located at the Metropolitan Transportation Au-thority (MTA) headquarters in down-town Manhattan. ConEdison and the Advanced Energy Research Technol-ogy Center (AERTC) at Stony Brook will also support the project, which comprises a 400kWh Cellcube battery array.

German industrial firm Gildemeis-ter holds a majority stake in Cellstrom, the Austria-based maker of the Cell-cube system. Gildemeister, which has a strategic partnership with Japan’s DMG Mori Seiki and recently took that company’s name, has sold more than 60 Cellcube containers across Eu-

rope, Africa and Asia. Canadian min-ing company American Vanadium has been Gildemeister’s North American distribution partner since 2013.

The NYC project marks the first commercial Cellcube installation in the US. At the Department of Energy (DoE) the technology is also being put through its paces as a multi-hour en-ergy storage resource to help balance wind and solar power.

The Cellcube system is modular and can serve loads from 10kW to multi-MWs. As a flow battery, the system ex-cels at providing multiple hours of en-ergy for long-duration requirements.

William Acker, executive director of the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology consortium (NY-BEST), said, ‘New York State is active-ly pursuing commercially ready tech-nologies that will help grow a clean energy economy and improve the re-liability, efficiency and overall perfor-mance of our electric power delivery system.

‘This project will demonstrate the important role energy storage can play

in helping consumers save money, re-duce peak load demands and provide the grid serving New York with stored energy during times of shortage or disruption.’

AES launches Advancion, a complete battery-based grid resource

AES has launched its Advancion plat-form, a technology based on six years’ worth of energy storage deployments on the grid.

The fourth generation grid battery platform delivers reliable and cost-competitive energy storage for utilities and renewable developers in select markets including the PJM Intercon-nection wholesale electricity market in the US, as well as California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the UK and the Philip-pines.

The system is designed to provide services expected from peaking plants;


News 5

power plants that generally run only when demand is high and are typical-ly gas fired. The company has quoted pricing of $1,000/kW (€722/kW) and $250/kWh. An installed system will cost around $1 million/MW with a 4MWh discharge capability.

Advancion acts as both a generation and load resource, enabling more than twice the flexible range of a peaker plant on the same size interconnection.

The system is available without burning fuel and was designed with the ability to tap into existing unused capacity from efficient natural gas combined cycle power plants, solar and wind facilities.

Unlike traditional power plants, Advancion arrays can scale over time with the ability to match required load growth.

The batteries used by AES are based on lithium chemistries as the technolo-gy is reliable, efficient and is produced at scale.

The battery arrays are made of several units and can be delivered in sizes ranging from tens to hundreds

of megawatts with durations of thirty minutes to four hours or more.

AES has also established a technol-ogy centre, in Indianapolis, for evalu-ating advanced battery and power conversion technologies for use in the Advancion platform. The centre will ensure that battery technology and power conversion equipment works with the company’s control architec-ture.

AES certified LG Chem’s battery sub-system and Parker Hannifin’s power conversion system into Advan-cion in 2013.

These components are currently running as part of an Advancion bat-tery array at an AES site in Indianapo-lis, in a utility environment.

In addition to the battery testing centre, AES has also set up a storage applications centre, at PJM Intercon-nection in Audubon, in Pennsylvania, to test and validate the next generation of storage applications in a real world environment.

AES operates 100MW of energy storage resources within PJM.

NEC buys A123 Systems grid energy storage from Wanxiang

Japan’s NEC Corporation has acquired the A123 Energy Solutions business unit of A123 Systems from Wanxiang.

The deal, worth in the region of €72 million, strengthens the energy stor-age capability of NEC’s smart energy business.

A123 Energy Solutions will be in-tegrated into the NEC Group of com-panies and operated globally as new subsidiary, called NEC Energy Solu-tions, from June 2014. A123’s existing cell manufacturing and sales, research and development, and automotive op-erations will remain the core focus of A123 Systems.

The acquisition makes NEC the world’s leading supplier of lithium ion grid energy storage systems. A123 Energy Solutions has deployed over 110MW of its Grid Storage Solutions (GSS) worldwide, with most of this ca-pacity already in revenue service. The company will continue to supply sys-tems using A123 Systems’ nanophos-phate lithium ion cells and support all existing installations.

In addition to A123 Energy Solu-tions’ system integrations expertise, NEC Energy Solutions will also have access to NEC Corporation’s infor-mation communications technology (ICT).

In addition, NEC’s high quality, cost-effective lithium ion technology adds to the portfolio of energy storage technologies available for future use in A123 Energy Solutions’ GSS platform. At the same time, NEC will leverage A123 Energy Solutions’ experience in commercial batteries in order to serve NEC’s telecoms carrier, enterprise and government customer base, to expand NEC’s smart energy business.

NEC and Wanxiang also have plans to form a joint venture company in China, with NEC providing the bat-tery and energy storage system tech-nology and Wanxiang managing the distribution and sales locally.

energy storage news

ENERGY STORAGEUNLEASHED

(800) 423–6569, +1 (562) 236–3000 W W W . T R O J A N B A T T E R Y R E . C O M

Renewable Energy & Hybrid Systems / Backup Power

Rely on Trojan Battery to unleash your storage needs. As a global company with local expertise, Trojan’s wide range of deep-cycle �ooded, AGM and Gel batteries for renewable energy, hybrid and backup power systems are backed by more than 85 years of battery innovation.

concept_v5a_embed_SmartCarbon.pdf 1 2/7/14 11:13 AM

RE_IPVEAFP_0214.indd 1 2/13/14 10:08 AM

energy storage news

GE and Highview Power collaborate on energy storage

General Electric Oil & Gas (GE) has licensed UK-based Highview Power’s liquid air energy storage (LAES) tech-nology.

The agreement enables the compa-nies to expand their respective foot-holds in the growing energy storage sector, by combining Highview’s LAES system with GE’s gas turbines and engines used in peaking power plants. These provide electricity at times of high demand.

The LAES technology will help to increase the efficiency of ‘peakers’, as

well as improve grid reliability and the distribution of renewable energy.

Highview’s LAES technology uses liquid air, or nitrogen, as the storage medium to provide long-duration en-ergy storage without the geographical restrictions found with other equiva-lent energy storage methods. The technology also can convert low-grade waste heat into power, increasing the overall efficiency of a host power plant.

Since 2011, Highview’s LAES tech-nology has been operating at a grid-connected 350kW/2.5MWh pilot plant hosted by SSE (Scottish & Southern Energy), adjacent to SSE’s 80MW heat and power biomass plant in Slough, on the outskirts of London.

In February 2014, the UK Depart-ment of Energy & Climate Change

(DECC) awarded Highview and Viri-dor, a UK recycling, renewable energy and waste management company, more than €9 million to build a new 5MW/15MWh LAES demonstration plant at a Viridor landfill gas-to-ener-gy plant in the UK.

The LAES facility will be powered by a GE Oil & Gas turbo-generator and will demonstrate the technology at commercial scale for the first time when it begins operating in the spring of 2015.

Sony in JV to develop large-scale energy storage for power grids

Canadian utility Hydro-Québec and Japan’s Sony Corporation have agreed to establish a joint venture (JV) to re-search and develop a large-scale en-ergy storage system for power grids.

The new company, to be established in June 2014, will be headquartered in Varenne, Québec.

Forecasts indicate that demand for large-scale energy storage systems will increase in the future, to meet high level demand for electric power dur-ing peak times, stabilise fluctuations in electricity generated by renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power that are gaining traction, and secure a stable power supply in case of outages or disasters.

Furthermore, the energy storage system for such power supplies must be highly safe and reliable due to the need for an efficient and stable source of high capacity power.

The new company will combine Hydro-Québec’s operation and con-trol technologies for electric power supplies, as well as its lithium ion bat-tery material technology, with Sony’s control technologies for safe, reliable, olivine-type lithium ion iron phos-phate batteries.

These will be incorporated into scal-able module systems.

The JV will target large-scale ap-plications, as well as battery mate-rial technology suitable for use within

electric power systems, and explore their use in a wide variety of applica-tions, such as meeting excess demand during peak times at electric power substations, and integrating renew-able energy sources into power grids.

Élie Saheb, executive vice president of technology, at Hydro-Québec, said: ‘By combining Hydro-Québec’s ex-perience in electricity systems and its R&D in energy storage with Sony’s expertise in lithium ion battery pro-duction, we are creating a world-class JV with the necessary expertise to manage the R&D of batteries for re-newable energy storage and the smart grid.’

Japan introduces energy storage subsidy

Like Germany, Japan has introduced a subsidy to trigger the market for ener-gy storage, to alleviate grid challenges posed by increased renewable energy generation.

On 17 March, the Japanese Minis-try of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced that it will accept applications for a subsidy aimed at consumers who install lithium ion bat-tery storage systems, along with solar panels, at their homes or businesses.

The subsidy is expected to spark nearly 100MW of energy storage ca-pacity to be installed in 2014, accord-ing to the market analyst firm IHS.

METI will subsidise no more than two-thirds of the upfront costs of lithium ion energy storage systems of 1kWh in size upwards. The maximum subsidy is set at €7,000 for consumers and €700,000 for commercial organisa-tions.

In total, METI has set aside about €70 million for the programme, which is expected by industry observers to run for at least two years.

Since Japan closed some of its nu-clear plants in the wake of Fukushima and encouraged the adoption of re-newable energy generation, with some of the most generous feed-in tariff (FIT) rates of any market in the world,

the country has witnessed a rush of in-stallations. PV uptake, specifically, has been so successful that it is beginning to affect grid stability.

Demand-side energy storage can help alleviate problems caused by overloading of voltages on the grid that happen on the sunniest days. Consumers and businesses will be able to use more electricity generated on site with their installed batteries rather than send it to the grid.

After Japan introduced its FIT scheme in July 2012 total combined capacity of all renewable energy gen-eration installed by the end of 2013 reached 7GW, according to the Agen-cy for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE).

Over 5GW of this amount has been attributed to solar PV, for residential, commercial and utility-scale.

Findings in a new report, titled En-ergy Storage World Markets: 2014–2020, published by Azure International, a Beijing-based consultancy, and ener-gy storage event producer Dufresne, estimate that Japan will install in the region of 2GW of residential energy storage by 2020.

Energy self-sufficiency highly de-sired by Japanese consumers follow-ing the impacts of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 is driving the demand.

Hawaiian Electric seeks energy storage to support renewables for OahuTo meet its goal of adding more renew-able energy generation to the Oahu grid, Hawaiian Electric Company has issued a tender for one or more large-scale energy storage systems.

The systems have to be able to store 60–200MW for up to 30 minutes. Re-quests for proposals from potential bidders have to include engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), testing, commissioning, start-up and performance verification.

With the continuing dramatic growth on Oahu of utility-scale wind

and solar projects and rooftop solar now in use by more than 11% of Ha-waiian Electric customers, energy storage is needed to help ride through sudden changes in availability of these variable resources.

When power supplied by these re-sources drops suddenly, energy stor-age systems could help maintain reli-able service and avoid customer out-ages as fast-starting firm generation units are brought online.

‘Energy storage is one of the key missing elements in integrating high levels of renewable energy from vari-able sources like solar and wind,’ ac-cording to Colton Ching, Hawaiian Electric vice president for energy de-livery.

Energy storage can provide both electricity and so-called ‘auxiliary services’ to operate the grid, such as sub-second frequency response (near-instantaneous changes to keep power quality at 60-hertz) and minute-to-minute load following, in other words power output adjustments as demand for electricity fluctuates throughout the day.

Potential contractors will be evalu-ated on the overall cost of their pro-posals and non-price factors such as design concept and feasibility, imple-mentation and operational viability and operating flexibility.

Bidders are invited to propose the best available technologies, including batteries, flywheels, capacitors, com-pressed gas systems, pumped hydro storage or a combination of such tech-nologies.

Any project selected with a cost of $2.5 million (€1.8 million) or more must be reviewed and approved by the Hawai’i Public Utilities Commis-sion with input from the Consumer Advocate.

The target is to complete and file en-ergy storage agreements with the com-mission by the end of 2014. Bidders must provide a schedule with the goal of having the energy storage system in service in Q1 2017.

The deadline for proposals is 21 July 2014.

KEMET acquired by ManzManz has acquired the mechanical engineering division of KEMET (for-merly Arcotronics) in Bologna, in Italy, expanding its lithium ion battery busi-ness division.

With the consent of the Italian trades union and the supervisory bodies of both companies, Manz and KEMET have agreed on the acquisition of the engineering division in KEMET’s bat-teries segment as part of an asset deal. This gives Manz access to patents and property rights as well as the expertise of Arcotronics, which was acquired by KEMET in 2007.

Manz, which supplies production tools and engineering expertise to the photovoltaic (PV), flat panel display (FPD) and battery industries, antici-pates new business from consumer electronics, e-mobility and stationary energy storage.

Arcotronics has engineering exper-tise in battery manufacturing. The division has long-standing business relationships with the leading battery producers worldwide. As a result of the deal, 83 employees will be trans-ferred to Manz, based in Reutlingen.

The acquisition enables Manz to add proven expertise in winding technol-ogy to its portfolio in the battery busi-ness unit, which accounts for around 5% of Manz’ overall turnover. Besides the technology for stacking of elec-trodes, which is already established at Manz, winding is seen as an impor-tant technology in the manufacture of lithium ion batteries for e-mobility, stationary energy storage and in the consumer electronics sectors. Within the Manz group, the subsidiary is ex-pected to contribute around €15 mil-lion to the company’s annual revenues with positive effect on net profit in the current 2014 fiscal year. The acquisi-tion is being financed by funds from a capital increase, which was carried out in November 2013.

Dieter Manz, CEO and founder of Manz, summarises: ‘We are currently observing globally increasing mar-ket growth in these areas, which will


News 9

continue to intensify over the next few years. The successful addition to our technology portfolio in the battery division now puts us in an excellent position to benefit from these oppor-tunities and to further strengthen our market position as the leading high-tech engineering company in the west-ern world.’

In addition to the fields of e-mobility and stationary power storage, Manz also develops and produces, in its display division, equipment for man-ufacturing lithium ion batteries for consumer electronics, such as smart-phones and tablet computers.

Eguana’s inverters make Sonnenbatterie a global proposition

Inverter maker Eguana Technologies and its customer-partner Sonnenbat-terie have agreed to changes to their supply and license agreements.

The changes will help to ensure that Sonnenbatterie’s intelligent energy storage system can be used beyond Germany.

Under the new supply agreement, Eguana will manufacture, for Sonnen-batterie, a fully integrated electronics enclosure that meets smart grid stan-dards for residential energy storage markets around the world, including the US.

In addition to its Bi-Direx power inverter, Eguana will integrate other functionality that is currently sourced by Sonnenbatterie from other suppli-ers to enable a less complex platform that can be more easily assembled close to local demand.

The agreement will also amend the supply and license agreements to in-clude US residential applications, in addition to European markets current-ly served by Sonnenbatterie. Eguana has already shipped more than 1000 Bi-Direx units to its customer since en-tering into the first supply agreement in May 2013.

Sonnenbatterie (previously called Prosol) decided to partner with Can-ada’s Eguana (previously called Sus-tainable Energy Technologies) because

it saw the company as having the best smart grid-ready energy storage in-verter in the market. Eguana’s patent-ed technology connects all low voltage batteries to the power grid in a single, bidirectional conversion step with some of the power industry’s highest round trip (battery charging and dis-charging) efficiencies.

Sonnenbatterie scores distribution deal in USGerman producer of intelligent resi-dential and commercial energy storage systems Sonnenbatterie, announced its first distribution deal in the US market in March.

The deal, with solar installer and distributor SK Solar USA, will enable Sonnenbattterie to supply its systems in the southern Californian market though a new centre that it has opened in Los Angeles.

The first Sonnenbatterie units to ar-rive in North America are currently being installed and tested at various locations throughout Southern Cali-fornia. Sales operations will begin later this year.

‘Sonnenbatterie has integrated smart meter technology into every unit, allowing our customers to switch to battery power automatically when they are reaching their demand charge limits,’ said Boris von Bormann, coun-try manager of Sonnenbatterie North America.

The company expects uptake of its smart energy storage systems among small and large commercial buildings that are looking to save on their energy costs.

Since 2011, Sonnenbatterie has sold more than 2,500 energy storage units in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ita-ly and Spain.

Sonnenbatterie’s energy storage sys-tems incorporate next-generation lith-ium-iron-phosphate cells with a user-friendly interface that allows users to manage their storage system through their smart phones. Sonnenbatteries also allow users to track their energy

use and avoid peak demand charges.

Moixa rolls out smart DC-storage system across 300 sites in UK demonstration

Moixa Technology, which last year won share of a £5 million (€6 million) grant from the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), is install-ing its energy storage technology across 300 sites.

The objective of the pilot is to es-tablish many different user cases for Moixa’s distributed energy storage system.

The pilot will involve homes and housing associations, with deploy-ment in London, north-east England, covered by consortium partner North-ern Power Grid, the south-west, Sou-thend-on-Sea, in Essex, and in com-munity pilots.

On Moixa’s stand at this year’s Ecobuild exhibition in east London in March, Graeme Hodgson, senior systems engineer, said: ‘For the trials we are encompassing different homes with various different electricity tariffs so that we can enable consumers to save money.

‘One interesting example, with a particular tariff, uses the Maslow bat-tery system to store electricity that is free on a Saturday and then uses the stored energy to power direct current (DC) electronics during the week.’

As well as homes with different en-ergy tariffs, some will have PV roof installations, and some flats in the pi-lot will use small PV panels that can be hung from a window or balcony, in conjunction with the Maslow system.

The concept behind Maslow is to put a small amount of affordable energy storage into people’s homes, where the batteries store cheaper night-time energy, or solar energy, and use this to power growing peak demand, from DC loads, such as smart phones, tab-lets, laptops, printers, light-emitting diode (LED) lighting and even some types of white goods appliances.

The Maslow kit includes energy storage as well as DC-DC power sock-ets. Coupling storage with DC loads improves energy efficiency as there

energY storAge neWs

are no losses between changing from alternative current (AC) to DC. Aggre-gating these distributed storage units will help to balance the grid.

To roll out its pilot Moixa Technol-ogy is leading a consortium, includ-ing Kiwi Power, a UK-based smart grid and energy demand management

company, Good Energy, which sources electricity from UK-only renewable sources and supports innovation in the development of tariffs and servic-es, and AVC Next Gen, which is one of the UK’s largest domestic installers of digital, media and energy efficiency systems.

The project will also integrate vari-ous lighting and battery technologies, including various deep-cycle battery chemistries, re-used electric vehicle units, with G&P Batteries, new chem-istries, with Aquion Energy Inc, and DC lighting from PhotonstarLED.

UK government urged to recognise energy storage needs new market mechanisms The UK’s decarbonisation ambitions cannot be met without more energy storage, yet the government must rec-ognise the technology requires differ-ent market mechanisms, according to a new report.

These are some of the key findings in Energy Storage: The missing link in the UK’s energy commitments, a re-port published by the Institute of Me-chanical Engineers (IMechE) in April.

The UK, on the one hand, is focusing heavily on intermittent renewables, such as offshore wind and solar pho-tovoltaic (PV) technology, to meet 15% of its overall energy demand from re-newable sources by 2020.

But, demand often does not match times when the wind blows or the sun shines.

This issue of so-called ‘wrong time’ electricity generation leads to techni-cal challenges in balancing supply and demand across the power trans-mission and distribution (T&D) sys-tem. When this happens the response is to switch renewable generators off. Under existing market arrangements, an energy company unable to supply its electricity output to the grid is en-titled to ‘constraint payments’.

Even at present levels of renew-ables deployment, these constraint payments are becoming a major concern to consumers, who are ef-fectively funding the non-supply of electricity. National Grid constraint payments to wind farm operators were about £34 million (€41 million) between 2011 and 2012. The cost of constraint payments are likely to rise


News 11

Building show features more energy storage During this year’s Ecobuild exhibition, held in London, energy storage raised its profile.

In addition to Moixa, companies

promoting energy storage and related

products at this year’s Ecobuild

exhibition, in London, included Sharp.

The Japanese electronics company

exhibited a lead acid battery-based

energy storage system aimed at the

residential market.

Swiss inverter supplier Solarmax

showcased a prototype upgrade kit for

its single-phase inverters. With an output

of up to 5kW the upgrade kit for the P

series future proofs home PV installations

for integration with energy storage by

managing the charge and discharge

cycles of the battery.

Chinese inverter supplier Omnik, which

has been supplying the UK residential PV

market for two years, has also developed

an energy storage inverter product.

ABB-owned inverter maker Power-One

promoted its battery-based energy

storage system, Renewable Energy

Accumulator and Conversion Technology

(REACT), which is already available in

Germany and Italy. The system consists

of a 4.6kW single-phase inverter coupled

with a lithium ion battery. In addition,

Israeli inverter supplier Solaredge

revealed that it plans to launch an energy

storage product sometime soon.

While storage might not make

economic sense in the UK right now,

these companies are preparing for the

next phase in the PV market, where

consumers will look to invest in solar and

storage to save money by reducing the

amount of grid electricity they consume

in favour of using more of their on-site

generated electricity.

As an alternative option to saving PV

electricity in batteries, consumers also

have the option of using their excess PV

electricity to provide free hot water. At

Ecobuild, one supplier of such a system

was London-based Energeno.

Chris Poulton, Energeno’s chairman,

expects to ship 30,000 units of the

company’s Optimmersion device in the

UK in 2014.

www.energeno.com www.sharp.eu www.power-one.com www.omnik-solar.com www.solarmax.com www.solaredge.com

energy storage news

• IntegratedPlantDesignandConstruction

• CompetitiveFast-TrackTurnkeyManagement

• AdvancedProductionEnvironments(Cleanrooms,Dryrooms)

• MaximizedResourceEfficiencyincludingCAPEXandOPEXSavings

• World-classEnvironmental,Health&SafetyRecordsandAwards

• “TurnkeyCompanyoftheYear”in2010,2011and2013

• GlobalMarketLeaderinPVManufacturingFacilities–

ExceedingaTotalCapacityof11GWp

M+W Group Lotterbergstr. 30, 70499 Stuttgart, GermanyBatteries: Photovoltaics:Phone +49 711 8804-1101 Phone +49 711 [email protected] [email protected] www.mwgroup.net

Consulting | Design | Construction | Services

Battery Factories Photovoltaic Factories

GER-SM-AM-140206-EnergyStorageJournal_IPVEA_PVSEC-ERT.indd 1 07.02.2014 14:55:50

and become of increasing concern as more wind as well as solar PV comes online.

The report argues for a holistic take on the challenge facing the UK, where-by the government must appreciate that as well as having sufficient elec-tricity to ’keep the lights on’, it is in the national interest to use freely available indigenous renewable resources for heat and transportation as well.

To address the ‘wrong time’ elec-tricity generation problem and en-sure that renewables are fully ex-ploited to meet the UK’s broader en-ergy needs, energy storage is going to be needed in significant amounts, in all shapes and forms.

It will have to come from long-term storage to meet high demand for heating and electricity in winter, as well as from various other tech-nologies for short term demand pat-terns.

However, the report states: ‘Yet there are no plans in the UK for significant levels of energy storage. To date very little public investment has been made in research, development and demon-strator activity and, as yet, there is no existing or proposed incentivisation scheme for energy storage deploy-ment.’

The report advises that in order to stimulate the fledgling energy stor-

age industry and ensure that UK has the capability to deliver energy stor-age, as well as exploit emerging export opportunities, new public finance and business models are required to ensure that energy storage can be deployed in the UK’s future energy system.

SMA launches PV inverter with integrated storage

Inverter manufacturer SMA has launched Sunny Boy Smart Energy in Germany, a wall-mountable, mass-produced PV inverter with an inte-grated lithium ion battery.

This new product, which was awarded the Product Innovation Prize at Intersolar 2013, is claimed by SMA to be a simple storage product avail-able for residential PV applications in the German market. Furthermore, the product can also be used as part of SMA’s integrated storage system.

The integrated battery has a capacity of approximately 2kWh, so generated PV electricity that is not needed in the home can be stored for later use. This increases self-consumption, which can enable German households to protect themselves against rising electricity prices. ‘When combined with the Sun-

ny Home Manager, self-sufficiency quotas of 50% are common on an an-nual average basis,’ according to prod-uct manager Thomas Thierschmidt.

The VDE-certified lithium ion bat-tery with 2kWh capacity enables ideal economical operation of the battery. Because the increase in self-consump-tion levels off with increasing storage capacity, the battery utilisation fac-tor decreases. In addition, thanks to the battery, virtually all generated PV energy can be used, even with active power limitation.

The Sunny Boy Smart Energy, which is available in power ranges of 3.6kW and 5kW, is one of the core components of the SMA Integrated Storage System alongside the Sunny Home Manager. The Sunny Boy Smart Energy fosters greater independence in the scope of the intelligent energy management of SMA Smart Home Manager.

Powercell wins award from Swedish Venture Capital Association

Nordic fuel cell technology developer Powercell has been given the Swedish Venture Capital Association (SVCA) award for the most socially beneficial investment 2014.

Powercell’s product offering con-sists of the company’s fuel cell stack, designed to work on reformate gas, based on diesel, LPG or other, as well as pure hydrogen.

The stack, which uses metal bipolar plates, can be supplied as standalone components from 1–6kW while Pow-ercell is also working on larger stacks in the form of the S2 platform, which will have a power range up to 25kW, with the same tolerance towards car-bon dioxide and reformate gas. The S2 uses proton exchange membrane (PEM) technology and is the choice for automotive applications.

The company has also developed an auxiliary power unit, Powerpac, which is a complete electric power-generating unit using low sulphur road diesel.

Sunny Boy Smart Energy

• IntegratedPlantDesignandConstruction

• CompetitiveFast-TrackTurnkeyManagement

• AdvancedProductionEnvironments(Cleanrooms,Dryrooms)

• MaximizedResourceEfficiencyincludingCAPEXandOPEXSavings

• World-classEnvironmental,Health&SafetyRecordsandAwards

• “TurnkeyCompanyoftheYear”in2010,2011and2013

• GlobalMarketLeaderinPVManufacturingFacilities–

ExceedingaTotalCapacityof11GWp

M+W Group Lotterbergstr. 30, 70499 Stuttgart, GermanyBatteries: Photovoltaics:Phone +49 711 8804-1101 Phone +49 711 [email protected] [email protected] www.mwgroup.net

Consulting | Design | Construction | Services

Battery Factories Photovoltaic Factories

GER-SM-AM-140206-EnergyStorageJournal_IPVEA_PVSEC-ERT.indd 1 07.02.2014 14:55:50

neWs 13

ISSUe 6, SUMMer 2014 | EnERgySToraGeJournAl

AnAlYsis

WHeN THe Wind bloWs a 100MW energy storage plant being built in Northern Ireland by aeS will help to balance more wind on the grid

According to the Northern Ireland Renewables Group (NIRG) in De-cember 2013, power generated by turbines regularly contributed up-wards of 40% of the local electricity demand.

Northern Ireland wants alternative energy – especially onshore and off-shore wind, which are in abundance – to generate 40% of electricity by 2020.

But increasing renewables creates new sets of problems for the grid. So AES is planning to install energy storage at Kilroot, on Northern Ire-land’s coastline.

The project will deploy the com-pany’s utility-scale energy storage platform, which is based on six years of piloting and scaling battery-based energy storage and management sys-tems for the grid.

The Advancion platform, modular in its architecture, has been designed to replace peaking power plants, which provide power at times of high demand, as well as provide grid ser-vices.

AES plans to deploy four 25MW units for the 100MW energy storage facility at Kilroot, one of two power stations that the company owns in Northern Ireland. AES bought Kilroot power station in 1992 when Northern Ireland Electricity was privatised.

Based on the shore of Belfast Lough, the plant is a dual coal and oil-fired facility, consisting of two generators, each capable of producing 260MW when firing oil. In addition, the plant has black start capability using two 29MW open cycle gas turbine units, which also provide peaking support for the system.

Shock absorberThe 100MW Kilroot energy storage project will enable more wind power to be fed into the grid. Zero emis-sions energy generators based on wind, and also solar, produce power intermittently, posing the challenge of how to correlate power generated with demand, in real-time.

Energy storage can enable renew-

able energy resources to act more like fossil fuel-based dispatchable reserves. System operators can turn these up or down, depending on de-mand.

As more renewables are fed into the grid, some dispatchable reserves still have to remain operational – al-beit at lower levels – to meet demand at times when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.

‘Like a shock absorber, energy stor-age systems are able to absorb excess electricity generated by renewable energy plants when demand is lower, taking on the jobs that are most tax-ing and creating overall system ef-ficiency,’ says John Zahurancik, vice president at AES Energy Storage.

The energy storage plant will be used to improve the local grid’s flex-ibility and lower costs, by balancing demand for electricity with increas-ing amounts of wind power, helping Northern Ireland to meet its ambi-tious renewable energy targets.

The facility should operational in 2015. AES has submitted a connec-tion application to System Operator Northern Ireland (SONI), which op-erates the electricity grid in Northern Ireland.

‘SONI pays plants for supplying services that support system security and for their assistance during con-strained operations. The AES storage facility will supply these same capa-bilities but without a minimum gen-erating level or associated emissions,’ says Zahurancik.

System support neededAs more non-dispatchable energy – in the form of wind and solar – comes online, the value and total need for system support services will in-crease. By enabling the grid to oper-ate more efficiently, costs associated with running the grid are lowered, by reducing the number of dispatch-able reserves that have to remain in operation.

The Kilroot energy storage facility will also help to eliminate costs asso-ciated with wind curtailment, where

wind plant generators are paid for the electricity they produce even if it cannot be sent to the grid because demand does not match supply. In Northern Ireland on average at least 2% of wind is curtailed.

Following initial pilots, AES has de-veloped several utility-scale energy storage units over the past five years. AES has 200MW of energy storage capacity operational or in construc-tion, in countries that include Chile and the US and 1GW in the pipeline.

Much of the company’s installed capacity operates at very high levels of availability to provide critical op-erating reserves, which are similar to the jobs that will be performed in Northern Ireland.

‘Working with large power system operators, such as PJM Interconnec-tion in the US, AES has tuned the performance and capability of its Advancion storage arrays to meet the demanding reliability jobs needed,’ Zahurancik says.

Lithium preferred but decision not final

To date AES has used batteries made from lithium chemistries in its energy storage installations, worldwide. For Kilroot the energy storage technolo-gy has yet to be finalised, though the characteristics will be similar to those used in other AES systems.

‘We interact with about 150 differ-ent technology providers. Battery technologies deployed are certified to work within our Advancion energy storage platform.

‘Even though there are a number of advanced battery technologies that could be potentially deployed for Kilroot, we look for batteries that can be deployed in scale.

‘That is one advantage of lithium batteries today. At the utility level of deployment dependability is critical. Lithium batteries are also very effi-cient.’

In addition to Kilroot, AES’ pipe-line of 1GW of energy storage in-cludes a further 100MW for the PJM


AnAlYsis

Interconnection, which operates the world’s largest competitive whole-sale electricity market. AES already has 100MW of batteries connected to the grid in West Virginia and Ohio for the PJM Interconnection.

The batteries act as efficient ‘peak-ers’ competing against all other pro-ducers’ generators to provide ancil-lary services in the wholesale power market, for providing frequency con-trol.

Zahurancik says: ‘For frequency regulation batteries compete with peaking units today but as battery prices come down it opens up other jobs that storage can do. Price decline is an accelerator and will help to ex-pand the use of storage.

For transmission system and grid operators energy storage is becoming a real alternative to building another peaking plant and can provide flex-ibility instead of keeping minimum base loads of fossil fuel generation switched on, especially as more re-newable generation capacity is add-ed.’

In addition to the MWs for PJM Interconnection and for Kilroot, the rest of the pipeline includes projects with utilities and system operators in a number of countries on large-scale storage projects.

‘AES completed its pilot projects in 2007 and 2008 and new projects are generally increasing in size to be comparable to what is typically pro-cured for a peaking generator,’ says Zahurancik.

In deploying advanced storage at increasing scale, AES has worked to ensure high reliability and de-pendability at utility scale. For ex-ample, the company’s control sys-tems have can claim several years of operational experience within large arrays.

storing the Wind in northern irelAndIn addition to AES’ 100MW energy storage system, based on advanced batteries, County Antrim in Northern Ireland is also the location for another energy storage project that will use a very different technology.

Wind and energy storage developer Gaelectric, with US-headquartered Dresser-Rand, is developing compressed air energy storage (CAES) projects in Europe. The first of these is being developed by Gaelectric near Larne, north of Belfast.

When completed, the Larne CAES project will comprise a 268MW twin power train storage and electricity generation facility, costing in the region of 366 million euros with a target commissioning date of 2017. The facility is expected to come online in 2017. Design of the plant starts this year. Larne is the only place in Northern Ireland, and one of the few places in the UK, which has salt deposits potentially suitable for storing compressed air.

In times of low demand energy is stored by compressing air within caves, made by salt mining, hundreds of metres underground using compressor technology at ground level. The stored energy can be used, sometimes weeks or months later, in periods of higher energy demand. The energy is released and is applied in generating power.

In a different approach to AES’ system Gaelectric’s CAES facility will also help to optimise the use of the region’s abundant wind resources, while reducing reliance on fossil fuels and imports. The Kilroot battery bank is able to react rapidly within minutes, allowing fossil fuel generators to operate steadily rather than crank up and down to chase intermittent wind generation.

Gaelectric’s CAES facility will act as a flexible bulk energy storage plant, holding onto excess wind energy as compressed air. When electricity demand increases, the air is released from underground and used to run a turbine which produces electricity. To improve the power output of the turbine, natural gas is used in the combustion cycle. In this way electricity can be generated using only one third of the natural gas required to generate the same amount of electricity as a modern gas turbine generates.

AnAlYsis

useful linKs www.aesenergystorage.com

www.gaelectric.ie

Images of AES battery bank in West Virginia and of Kilroot power station, courtesy of AES


ANALYSIS 17anaLysIs

CHARGING THE FUTURE

INTERNATIONAL TRADE FAIR FOR BATTERIES, ENERGY STORAGE AND INNOVATIVE PRODUCTION

JUNE 10–12, 2015MESSE MÜNCHEN

Be there when the exhibition of choice for the whole range of energy storage

technologies meets the world’s largest solar industry platform.

Network with leading manufacturers and suppliers in the field of energy storage.

Visit the accompanying conference for innovative topics and trends within this

growth industry.

www.ees-europe.com

AZees2014_Energy Storage Journal_210x297.qxp:V1 28.04.14 10:22 Seite 1

Since it was set up four years ago Lightsource has rapidly grown into the UK’s largest solar photovoltaic energy generator. Despite cuts to in-centives by the UK government, a move that threatened to derail the UK PV industry a few years ago, Lightsource has emerged as one of the industry’s success stories.

It pays landowners and farmers rental income in exchange for build-ing large solar farms that leverage economies of scale to realise the best returns. Today Lightsource operates 600MW of solar farms and rooftop plants across 120 sites.

Lightsource is backed by retail fund management company Octopus Investments. Octopus’ renewable energy funds have attracted many small-scale investors who see gov-ernment-backed renewables incen-tives as a relatively low-risk prospect.

However, the grid itself is present-ing Lightsource with challenges. Most PV plants in the UK average in size at a range that is between 7MW and 10MW. The grid connections for these plants, are typically 33kV (and

66kV), and able to take up to 25MW, are becoming scarcer. The alternative is to use 132kV connections, which can include more capacity, upwards of 50MW. But there are even fewer of these.

In addition, 132kV connections en-tail more infrastructure work, such as building a new substation and would take on average 15 months as op-posed to six months.

The cost is increased by a factor of 10 for a 132kV connection, says Chris Buckland, technical director at Light-source. To offset this cost it is better to build more solar farms that can con-nect to the 132kV connection, which involves drawing a radius around the connection on a map and seeing how many fields might be suitable and available to rent. This is not al-ways feasible.

Solar generation plant oversizing presents issues as overall perfor-mance, in terms of energy generated (kWh) versus power output (kW), starts to drop off, also leading to loss-es in revenue.

A 3MW plant on a 3MW connection

achieves around 988kWh/kW, while building a 4MW solar plant on a 3MW connection achieves 983kWh/KW. Building a 6MW plant on a 3MW connection achieves 890kWh/kW.

The performance ratio of a 6MW PV plant on a 3MW connection is in the region of 75.20%, a marked reduc-tion on 83.60% for a 3MW plant on a 3MW connection.

This is due to clipping. During cer-tain periods of the year, when solar irradiance is high, solar panels gener-ate electrical power that exceeds the inverter’s power rating.

Inverters, which change DC volt-age generated by the panels to AC voltage, for the grid, regulate power to its maximum limits, ‘clipping’ or reducing the maximum potential of the PV system.

In addition to modelling different solar plants on a 3MW connection to establish how oversizing impacts kWh/kW performance,

Lightsource has conducted various different modelling to see what size battery would be able to absorb the power that would otherwise be lost to clipping. Building a 6MW solar farm on a 3MW connection with a 1MWh battery would achieve an efficiency of in the region of 78%, while with a 2MWh battery this would be further increased to just over 79%. With a

mAximising roi SoLar FarMING GoeS SMaLL

lightsource wants to install energy storage with its solar farms to put more power on existing connections in the uK grid

AnAlYsis

3MWh battery this increases to 80.5%.‘The clipping of peak power dur-

ing summer day-time generation is stored in the battery bank for short periods and overall yield loss (kWh generation) otherwise due to clipping is reduced to a commercially accept-able level,’ according to Buckland.

The potential energy storage capac-ity for the oversized 3MW solar farm that Lightsource is developing will be based on the current prices of bat-teries, but realistically the size could be in the region of 1MWh-1.5MWh.

The company has looked at several options and has made financial calcu-lations.

Investment returnsThe budget for the storage system is in the region of £1.2 million (€1.45 million). According to Buckland the company is encouraged by the re-duction in the cost of lithium batter-ies. ‘Sooner, rather than later, pricing on energy storage will reach return on investment (ROI) requirements,’ he says.

Batteries are generic, according to Buckland, who has been in talks with a number of manufacturers of lithium batteries. The company is working with a Spanish supplier of power conversion electronics, which manufactures a controller that can take power from the solar array to the batteries and from the batteries to the grid.

The system is modular, supplied in blocks of 100kW, and is, therefore, suitable for Lightsource as opposed to equivalent systems, which are de-signed for large utility-scale applica-tions and tend to be more costly.

The Spanish company has designed the controller initially for the South American PV market as the grid is less stable, and so electricity generat-ed by fast-ramping solar plants must

be buffered so that it ramps over a period of minutes as opposed to sec-onds. The company is also an existing supplier of power conversion devices for Lightsource’s solar farms.

Buckland is confident about the role of storage for Lightsource’s solar PV generation business. ‘We can put more power on new connections or we can go back to existing connections and install batteries.’ He thinks it plausible at least 20% of the company’s installed PV capacity might benefit from the ret-roactive addition of energy storage.

Lightsource www.lightsource-re.co.uk

Octopus Investments www.octopusinvestments.com

Some Spain-based suppliers of power conversion electronics Atersa www.atersa.com Eshia www.eshia.es Ingeteam www.ingeteam.com Lightsource is the UK’s largest generator of solar PV energy, with 600MW of installed capacity, mainly in the

form of large-scale solar farms, such as these pictured. By March 2015 the company expects to have doubled this capacity and to have energy storage installed at a couple of its solar farms.

uK pV instAllAtion boom creAtes need for storAge In March 2014 the UK PV industry ended a record quarter, installing just under 1.1GW of new capacity.

Large-scale ground-mounted solar farms accounted for most of this share. Even with a new strategy unveiled by the UK government that favours large-scale commercial rooftop installations at the expense of acres of solar farms, the latest installation figures suggest an industry that is going full-steam ahead, which arguably makes the need for energy storage more pressing.

Lightsource’s proposed deployment of energy storage will enable the company to utilise existing grid connection capacity by oversizing PV plants while keeping KWh losses, from inverter clipping, to a minimum. But, if the UK is to achieve its ambitious solar PV targets of 20GW this means that the deployment potential of solar PV is greater than UK’s grid storage capacity. Without large-scale energy storage solutions, the UK government’s ambition to reach this figure will continue to present a challenge for National Grid, which has already warned that building more than 10GW will make it difficult to manage the network in its current form.

The UK Electricity Storage Network (ESN) has outlined a strategy for 2GW of storage on the grid by 2020, ranging from a few MWs per installation, in the form of batteries, up to bulk scale levels in the hundreds of MWs, such as compressed air energy storage (CAES). This amount would enable the UK to effectively continue to decarbonise its electricity supply while ensuring that the grid infrastructure can operate effectively with increased amounts of renewables such as wind and solar.


Images, including cover image, courtesy of Solarcity

Us InDUsTRIEs TaP energY storAge

coVer storY: business embrAces reneWAbles

in the us, rising electricity rates and persistent power outages are switching the commercial and industrial sector on to energy storage. fixing the grid is less of an answer than incorporating solar pV into a mainstream energy reseource

According to IHS Research, between 2012 and 2017 the US will account for 43%, in terms of installed MWs, of global grid-connected energy storage systems. The two drivers shaping demand are avoiding peak demand charges in commercial electricity tariffs and use of fast-response energy stor-

age systems to provide frequency regula-tion services.

Avoiding fees Utilities in the US are increasingly impos-ing both peak demand charges and time-of-use fees on their commercial customers as a way to relieve pressure on limited elec-tricity grids during times of high energy demand. These costs can be minimised by using energy storage, often in combination with photovoltaic panels. The battery shifts PV energy from when it is generated for on-site use during periods when these charges apply, reducing the amount of energy im-ported from the electricity grid during high demand to avoid high charges.

Helping businesses to take control of their electricity costs in this way is Solar-city, based in California. The San Mateo-headquartered company installs and also provides leasing and financing options for solar and electric vehicle services.

In December 2013 the company launched Demandlogic, an intelligent energy stor-age system designed to reduce businesses’ peak demand and provide power during outages. The system is able to automate the discharge of stored energy to increase sav-ings on utility charges for customers.

Customers lease the system, based on monthly payments, and Solarcity guaran-tees them a minimum demand reduction. The system does not require companies to alter their energy usage, known as load shifting, which has typically been the ap-proach that the C&I sector has had to take to try to avoid fees and charges.

According to Eric Carlson, Solarcity’s se-nior director of grid system integration, the company is in talks to rollout the system with commercial customers in southern California as well as parts of the north-east US, including Massachusetts. ‘We chose these markets due to the high costs of de-mand charges in those areas, where De-mandlogic could help customers save the most money, and hope to expand to new markets where the product can provide the greatest benefits to commercial customers and businesses.’

As part of a PV installation Demandlogic can charge up the battery to store any ex-


cOveR stORy 21

commerciAl segment driVes pV And storAge demAnd in next feW YeArsGlobal installations of PV storage systems

for commercial use are set to rise to 2.3GW

in 2017, up from 3MW in 2012, according

to IHS Research. This will increase the

commercial segment’s share of PV

installations to 40% in 2017, up from 5% in

2012, as shown.

Concerns about energy rates and grid

reliability are prevalent in the North American

commercial market, according to the

findings. Consequently, North America is

expected to lead the world in commercial

PV storage, accounting for more than 40%

of installations in 2017.

cess solar-generated electricity that is not being used. As solar production decreases later in the day, the battery is intelligently discharged to reduce peak demand charges. The system also lets the user draw power from the utility company at night, at lower off-peak demand rates.

‘sOLaRcITy Is In TaLks TO ROLLOUT ThE sysTEm wITh cOmmERcIaL cUsTOmERs In sOUThERn caLIfORnIa as wELL as PaRTs Of ThE nORTh-EasT Us, IncLUDIng massachUsETTs.’

Similarly, Green Charge Networks, in California’s Silicon Valley, also re-cently unveiled a storage-as-service model aimed at the C&I segment to reduce demand charges.

Businesses benefit because they do not having to finance the cost of the storage system upfront, but pay for storage as a service via long-term con-tracts, hedging their exposure to elec-tricity charges and factoring backup, in case of outages, into the bargain. Green Charge Networks has lined up a $10 million (€7.2 million) fund from TIP Capital to finance projects for its retail, municipal and industrial cus-tomers.

Pace picks upDevelopments are beginning to move at an unprecedented rate for energy storage in the C&I sector. A pioneer in the emerging storage-as-service field is Stem, which combines energy stor-age, predictive analytics, such as data mining, forecasting and algorithms, to reduce electricity costs for businesses. Last year the company launched a $5 million fund, backed by Clean Feet In-vestors, to remove barriers to adoption of energy storage. Stem and Clean Feet observed the dramatic growth trajec-tory of solar enabled by third party ownership models, or ‘solar leasing’, particularly within the residential rooftop segment, pioneered by compa-

nies such as Solarcity and Sunedison, the latter founded by Clean Feet prin-cipal Jigar Shah.

Stem, Solarcity and others in the US are not the only ones targeting south-ern California’s C&I segment with their service-based business models and smart energy storage systems. German supplier Sonnenbatterie, which has been working closely with Canadian inverter producer Eguana Technologies to make its energy stor-age system applicable in global export markets, recently opened a subsidiary in Los Angeles.

Sonnenbatterie has a distribution partnership with SK Solar, which is helping with test installations and re-lated matters. ‘We have about 30 more partners in the pipeline, among them some big players,’ says Sonnenbatte-rie’s chief executive officer, Christoph Ostermann. Following test installa-tions, the company’s commercial ac-tivities, stateside, will start towards the end of 2014.

Ostermann discusses the drivers for the C&I segment to adopt storage in more detail. ‘In California, for exam-ple, the issue is peak shaving which leads to a very interesting payback time of about two to three years. Like Germany’s solar and storage self-con-sumption incentive programme intel-ligent systems are required.’

Varta Microbattery, another Ger-man supplier of smart energy storage systems is also looking for leads into the US market, exhibiting its Engion system at this year’s Intersolar North America.

Within the C&I segment there is growing emphasis on how to iden-tify and generate multiple revenue streams from energy storage systems. One company working on this is Greensmith Energy. The Maryland-headquartered firm, from the outset, has remained battery-agnostic, sourc-ing lithium ion batteries from repu-table suppliers that include companies such as Samsung. The company is also expanding the types of chemistries for use with its energy storage systems.

One opportunity Greensmith is ex-

ploring concerns the Los Angeles ba-sin, where building operators, or man-agement companies, are looking at providing capacity payments through locating energy storage in offices and other facilities.

Collectively the installations will amount to total storage in the MW-scale and may end up using a number of different battery technologies.

CaliforniaThe Los Angeles basin is a coastal re-gion that includes the city’s centre and its southern suburbs. Utility Southern California Edison (SCE) is tendering for at least 50MW of new storage ca-pacity over the next eight years, to re-place the phase out of nuclear genera-tion and is also obliged, along with the state’s other large utilities, to procure 1.3GW under a mandate issued by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last year.

The energy storage systems can also offset demand charges for the build-ing’s owners and occupants. ‘The op-portunity in the Los Angeles basin area is already expected to be in the hundreds of MWh and introduces the opportunity to aggregate and share with stakeholders and building own-ers/operators value streams such as capacity payments, demand charges and other forms of monetising energy storage as a service,’ says Greensmith CEO John Jung.

The company is also working on an electric vehicle charging project on a corporate campus in San Diego, about 100kWh in size. ‘Greensmith’s control system technology platform, known as GEMS, is able to identify the cheap-est source of electrons, whether from solar panels, from the grid or from the energy storage system, to charge the EVs.

‘We think that the return on invest-ment is more than just about how you efficiently take power from direct cur-rent to alternating current and from AC to DC,’ says Jung. This project draws from Greensmith’s involve-ment in an urban microgrid that locat-

COVER STORY: BUSINESS EMBRACES RENEWABLES


cOveR stORy 23

ed energy storage for EV charging and PV smoothing adjacent to a retailing site in Brooklyn, New York.

The company’s behind-the-meter projects in 2014 leverage a fourth generation technology platform for multi-application deployments and will also use two alternative batter-ies, in the form of zinc bromine redox flow and aqueous-ion chemistries. These projects benefit from prior mi-crogrid deployments that Greensmith has worked on. One of these was a 75kW/150kWh energy storage system located with a concentrating photo-voltaic (CPV) installation on the cam-pus of CalPoly in Pomona, California, which has been running since 2012. The system matches the energy gener-ation from the CPV modules with the needs of the university campus and re-duced the power quality effects of by tracking the intermittency signals of the concentrating PV technology.

Dumb to smartToday the PJM Interconnection, the largest wholesale power market in the US, has also become a major market for grid-scale energy storage servic-es, since the Federal Energy Regula-tory Commission (FERC) introduced a pay-for-performance requirement that rewards fast-response resources for provision of frequency regulation. One business model emerging is how commercial users of energy storage, in the form of batteries for uninterrupt-ible power supply (UPS), can also use these systems to generate revenues by providing grid ancillary services.

Axion Power International, a de-veloper of advanced lead acid (lead carbon) batteries and a containerised energy storage system, Powercube, supplies frequency regulation services to the PJM.

More recently the company worked with New Jersey solar installer BySo-lar whose customer is a food industry business. Axion has adapted its Pow-ercube protocols to enable the cus-tomer to reduce demand charges by consuming more of its solar-generated electricity, provide backup in event of a power failure and be paid for pro-viding frequency regulation services to the PJM.

Axion Power is working with other renewable energy companies to estab-lish projects in the commercial mar-kets. ‘Businesses, such as datacentres and factories install solar panels and energy storage systems to store elec-tricity for backup and also establish an additional income stream. Both the so-lar and storage equipment are subject to tax breaks, so the return on invest-ment can occur fairly quickly,’ says Axion CEO Tom Granville.

The advantage of ‘dual purposing’

energy storage to generate revenues in addition to providing critical UPS and backup is that the batteries are never compromised in terms of either func-tion.

When there is an outage there is no grid to provide services to, says John Wood, CEO of Ecoult, a subsidiary of lead acid battery company East Penn Manufacturing, also commercialising advanced lead acid batteries.

Reportedly, US startup 10Six is in talks with UPS manufacturers about modifying their technology, which would involve switching from a valve-regulated lead acid battery to an advanced lead acid or lithium ion battery.

On the system side, modification of controls would be required to en-able the batteries to respond to signals from the frequency regulation market. Energy storage systems designed for dual purpose roles, or modified UPS systems proposed by 10Six, will cost more.

Joys of lead tooFor example Ultrabattery, developed by Ecoult, is a lead acid with essen-tially the same size, voltage, safety and recyclability as a UPS battery, but its partial state of charge capability makes the UPS bank of batteries an ac-tive, rather than a passive store. ‘That is, Ultrabattery technology can do work on grid ancillary services 24/7 but still be available for the sudden UPS event. This may require a slightly larger bank of batteries but this is well compensated for, economically, due to the ability for the entire bank to earn revenue, at least in grids with a robust ancillary services market,’ says Robert

‘BUsInEssEs, sUch as DaTacEnTREs anD facTORIEs InsTaLL sOLaR PanELs anD EnERgy sTORagE sysTEms TO sTORE ELEcTRIcITy fOR BackUP anD aLsO EsTaBLIsh an aDDITIOnaL IncOmE sTREam. BOTh ThE sOLaR anD sTORagE EqUIPmEnT aRE sUBjEcT TO Tax BREaks, sO ThE RETURn On InvEsTmEnT can OccUR faIRLy qUIckLy,’ (TOm gRanvILLE, axIOn POwER)

Below: A 20 foot energy storage container installed by Greensmith

COVER STORY: BUSINESS EMBRACES RENEWABLES

Stevenson, Ecoult’s engineering commu-nications manager. System jolt

While the combination of solar and energy storage has the potential to enable users, such as homes and businesses to effective-ly defect from the grid, Solarcity, more re-cently, has sought to play down any ideas that the company’s expansion into energy storage poses a threat to utilities.

The company had previously accused California’s three largest energy incum-bents for overcharging on connecting its systems to the grid. In April Solarcity announced it had set up a department, ‘tasked with solving the challenges pre-venting the shift from the grid that we cur-rently have, to the grid that we need,’ ac-cording to a statement from the company.

‘Storage provides backup power to homes and businesses, or can cut peak demand charges, like our Demandlogic product. Energy storage can also be used in addition to renewable generators like solar to provide firm peak capacity to the grid. If a grid operator is looking at an area where it might need to replace or increase the capacity of equipment, it could put a battery or batteries in place to meet the de-mand instead of the traditional infrastruc-ture. Energy storage can also provide fre-quency regulation and other services that provide value to the grid,’ says Carlson.

In a recent blog, Solarcity’s co-founder and CTO Peter Rive clarified that utilities and grid operators are best-positioned to direct where battery storage, be it bulk units or lots of aggregated assets in the residential and C&I segment, can be de-ployed to discharge clean energy to meet peak demand, or use storage to provide grid services.

But even as more utilities across North American issue request for proposals (RFPs) for on-grid energy storage, they are still largely going through the process of figuring out the technology. Meanwhile, in the commercial market, end customers are seeking to benefit from reduced energy bills, electricity backup, and even the pos-sibility of new revenue streams. Offering these benefits as services makes energy storage accessible, paving the way for rap-id uptake in the next few years.


cOveR stORy 25

mtA in neW YorK reduces peAK demAnd chArges through 400KWh cellcube, A VAnAdium floW bAtterYA flow battery storage system being located at Metropolitan Transportation

Authority (MTA) headquarters in New York, will support existing facility

energy management measures at the MTA’s 1.6 million sq ft office building in

downtown Manhattan.

The 400kWh Cellcube battery array will be used in conjunction with

an automated demand response system developed for the building by

Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and previously funded by New York

State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

NYSERDA, along with Gildemeister, which owns Cellstrom the Austrian

developer of the Cellcube system and American Vanadium, which licenses

Cellcube in the US, are developing the pilot.

The battery will charge up with cheap energy taken from grid during the

middle of the night for use during peak times, when utilities impose high

charges. The 4–8 hour duration that is possible with vanadium flow batteries

make the technology suitable for demand charge reduction by commercial

and light industrial users and for time shift solar generation. The Cellcube will

also provide resiliency in times of need. The MTA headquarters went without

power for two weeks after Hurricane Sandy.

ConEdison and the Advanced Energy Research Technology Center (AERTC)

at Stony Brook are also supporting the project.

In Germany and the Netherlands, Cellcube installations provide an affordable

source of electricity for farms and industrial users and are also used for EV

charging.

Vanadium flow batteries have long lifetimes of 20 years or more. The

properties of the metal mean that it can be used for both the battery’s anode

and cathode and does not degrade during each cycle. The duration is

increased with the addition of more vanadium to the battery.

American Vanadium is developing the only vanadium mine in the US, in

Nevada, providing a critical source of the electrolyte for Cellcube energy

storage systems.

Vanadium costs up to 40% of the Cellcube battery.

www.americanvanadium.com

Solarcity www.solarcity.com

Greensmith www.greensmithenergy.com

Sonnenbatterie www.sonnenbatterie.de

Varta Microbattery www.varta-microbattery.com

Axion Power www.axion-power.com

Ecoult www.ecoult.com

a haRD sELL? during 2013 in Germany more energy storage systems were sold without a subsidy than with one. eSJ examines the progress of the first solar and storage scheme one year in

germAn pV subsidY

Source: BSW-Solar www.solarwirtschaft.de


27

The latest chapter in Germany’s en-ergy transformation – ‘energiewende’ – from a dirty fossil fuel-powered economy to one that runs smoothly on indigenous sources of clean wind and solar has pushed energy storage centre stage.

Almost one year ago the German government introduced ‘Renewable Energies Programme supporting the use of stationary battery storage sys-tems in conjunction with a PV system’, an incentive scheme aimed at house-holds and small business enterprises.

With some adaptation of energy consumption habits, solar panels and batteries can allow households and other small-scale investors, with photovoltaic systems up to 30kW in size, to consume a greater portion of electricity generated on site, hedging against rising costs of energy.

In Germany, which has some of the highest electricity rates in Europe, in-vesting in such systems is beginning to make economic sense, now that the PV feed-in tariff (FIT) has been reducing at a rate that has outpaced reductions in system prices and has fallen below electricity prices.

Peak shaving tool The incentive, which is applied to the PV system capacity, measured in kWp, as opposed to the system’s energy pro-duction, which is measured in kWh, is designed to manage the integration of additional amounts of PV capacity on the grid.

To qualify for the incentive, the amount of peak power generated by the PV system that is injected into the grid cannot exceed 60%. For every new PV and storage installation that meets this objective, overall grid capacity for PV systems is increased by two-thirds in the local grid, compared with the same number of sole PV installations, all exporting most of their electricity back up the cable and into the grid.

In Germany, sustained cuts to the FITs combined with anti-dumping charges on cheap Chinese solar panel imports saw PV demand in 2013 drop to levels last seen in 2009, around half

the amount installed in 2012. Self-con-sumption, enabled by storage co-locat-ed with solar panels, is, arguably, criti-cal to the continued long-term growth of Germany’s PV industry.

The idea of self-consumption is well-understood among the public in Ger-man, a nation that pioneered the main-stream adoption of solar, well ahead of other markets like the US, China and Japan, which today dominate global PV demand.

According to the industry group BSW Solar, out of 1000 homeowners surveyed, 63% already know about energy storage and the benefits of self-consumption of onsite electric-ity generation. The organisation also found that, on average, every second investor in a new PV system and every third owner of an existing PV system claimed an interest in storage.

Yet, the extent of awareness contrasts with actual uptake of the incentive programme. As part of the scheme’s launch, the German government made available a funding pot of €25 million to help finance PV and storage instal-lations for self-consumption in 2013. The subsidies are paid by state bank Kreditanstalt fur Wideraufbau (KfW), which also provides financing support for the country’s renewable energy programme.

Around a third of this amount – €9 million – has been accounted for, sub-sidising the installation of some 6,000 energy storage systems. However, the actual market for installed energy stor-age systems in 2013 is roughly double this figure. This trend is supported by suppliers of energy storage systems, some of which claim having sold more of their products without the incen-tive, than with it, during last year.

Christoph Ostermann, CEO of Son-nenbatterie, which is a leading sup-plier of intelligent energy storage systems that use lithium ion battery technol-ogy, describes the incentive programme as a ‘flop’. ‘This gives us, and the en-tire industry, the

germAn pV subsidY

costs of instAlling storAge Sonnenbatterie sells a product range with eight different sizes/models, from 4.5kWh up to 60kWh of storage capacity. On average, the price for a residential installation is 15,000 euros for one of Sonnenbatterie’s systems, which with a maximum subsidy of 4,000 euros, brings the investment down to 11,000 euros per system.

According to E3DC a 5kW PV system with energy storage costs 18,500 euros roughly, which minus a 3000 euros incentive reduces the cost to around 15,000 euros. E3DC and Sonnenbatterie are not reliant on business coming from the incentive, with Sonnenbatterie having sold more than double the number of systems in 2013 without the incentive. E3DC states that 60% of its business is without the incentive.

export mArKetsBoth companies are also enlarging their export markets. Sonnenbatterie sells 10% of its output in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and Luxembourg and recently entered the US market. E3DC also sells some systems in Austria, Switzerland and Spain, but has its eye on China for supplying mobile base stations.

Christoph Ostermann,

Sonnenbatterie

fEaTURE

[email protected] www.thebatteryshow.com

September 16-18, 2014 Detroit | Michigan | USA

The fastest growing exhibition focused on next generation advanced battery technology

35%2014 exhibition & sponsorshipopportunities available

BOOK NOWExhibition space limited

co-located with:

in partnership with:®

ATTENDANCE INCREASE IN 2013


29

opportunity to develop the market without short-term and artificial pro-grammes which may be subject to rap-id changes. This is a harder, but a more sustainable way to build the market,’ he says.

Jörg Mayer, managing director of BSW Solar, attributes the so-so uptake of the scheme to ‘teething problems’, but concedes: ‘People hear about a 60% cut-off or cap and they then as-sume that they are losing 40% of en-ergy. There is a big difference between the kW and kWh. This has certainly confused some in the industry.’

Set up 30 years ago, BSW Solar rep-resents Germany’s solar equipment suppliers, as well as distributors and installers. The association has worked with the government to introduce the PV and storage self-consumption in-centive programme, despite earlier setbacks and delays.

Overall the scheme is guiding the industry down the right path for the future, says Mayer. ‘Those batteries that intelligently comply with peak shaving, interfacing with the grid, will do well in Germany.’

TimingTypically, a PV panel starts generat-ing electricity from the morning as the sun rises, which means that by mid-day, when the panel’s output reaches its maximum peak output, the bat-teries are full, so excess electricity is sent to the grid. Smart energy storage systems, which qualify for the incen-tive, such as those supplied by Son-nenbatterie, charge during periods of high electricity production accord-ing to weather forecasts. Within the larger grid, these systems are able to contribute to voltage control in local low-voltage electricity grid networks and frequency control in the European interconnected network.

The administration of the scheme has also deterred many investors. While KfW oversees the programme and controls the funds, local banks deal with applications and grants.

Even if investors have money saved to afford the upfront costs of the sys-tem, in order to qualify for the subsidy they must take out soft loans. Andreas Piepenbrink, CEO of E3DC, another leading supplier of intelligent lithium ion battery storage systems, says local banks are unhappy with dealing with the extra paperwork that the scheme entails.

The company’s market, which in-cludes Bavaria in the south-east, cov-ers largely rural areas. According to Mayer, it has not been uncommon for banks to turn down loan applica-tions, especially if they are not satis-

fied that guarantees for high quality storage systems and installation have been met.

Since the programme’s launch, BSW Solar has been working on ways smooth out some of these initial issues and in January 2014 launched the ‘PV-storage passport’.

This voluntary instrument, based on a PV passport concept, benefits the in-staller and the customer, by ensuring the system is eligible for the grant, re-placing the required ‘installers decla-ration’, which is not as in-depth as the passport, says Mayer. The PV-Storage passport helps satisfy loan require-ments on quality.

Between October and December 2013 BSW Solar also ran an intensive public relations campaign, with the

support of the Federal Ministry for the

Environment, to promote the PV and storage self-consumption programme. Costing €250,000, the campaign in-cluded a film broadcast on German television, radio coverage, distribu-tion of flyers and brochures for retail consumers, through installers, as well as organising special events and work-shops for installers.

The effort is paying off, according to Mayer, who expects demand in 2014 to increase by 50% with at least 12,000 units installed during 2014. The fund-ing pot for this year is €50 million.

Mayer would like to see the scheme made more accessible by simplify-ing the incentive and loan application process and increasing the support rate to 40%, from 30% of total instal-lation costs. The association has also suggested that the programme be ex-tended to increase the potential retro-fit market, so that PV systems installed from 1 April 2012 can apply, and that the programme be continued beyond next year.

‘By the end of 2015, energy stor-age might not become cheap enough, so that support is not necessary any longer. It may need 2–3 more years. The grant could be decreased un-till then, like the FITs, so that a stor-age system would not receive the amount of support in 2016 as in 2014,’ says Mayer.

Demand without subsidyMeanwhile, energy storage system suppliers are supplying healthy de-mand without any subsidy support. Since 2011, Sonnenbatterie has sold more than 2,500 energy storage sys-tems, mainly in Germany. In 2013 the domestic market accounted for about 1,100 units out of this amount. Oster-mann estimates that out of these units the company supplied last year only 250 were sold with the incentive grant.

‘Unfortunately, the subsidy pro-gramme is not very successful, with only about 20% of the dedicated funds

germAn pV subsidY

ESDC – intelligent lithium ion battery storage unit

[email protected] www.thebatteryshow.com

September 16-18, 2014 Detroit | Michigan | USA

The fastest growing exhibition focused on next generation advanced battery technology

35%2014 exhibition & sponsorshipopportunities available

BOOK NOWExhibition space limited

co-located with:

in partnership with:®

ATTENDANCE INCREASE IN 2013

of €25 million used and paid out in 2013,’ he says.

The total market for energy storage in 2013 was about 5,000–6,000 units. Cleantech consultancy EUPDResearch estimates that lead acid battery-based systems accounted for about 60% of the market share, while lithium ion battery systems shifted about 2,000 units overall.

Ostermann says: ‘We proved that we can grow and develop the market without an incentive programme. Due to volumes that we have sold and pro-duced so far, a decrease in the cost per

system has now begun. Even if higher volumes, due to incentives, can speed this process up, I believe that this is the healthier way. Politicians change their minds quite often.

Two years ago, it was announced that customers would get an incentive for self-consumption, whereas they will now be charged for self-consump-tion from August 2014.’

For every kWh of self-consumed solar power the system owner has to pay a certain amount. Under propos-als to reform the country’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) operators of new PV systems would have to pay 50% of the renewable energy surcharge begin-ning 1 August, translating to a levy of €0.04.4 per kWh of self-consumed so-lar energy.

Renewable energy users were pre-viously exempt from the surcharge, which is used to finance Germany’s green subsidies and clean energy transition. The charge penalises small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), mainly in agriculture and in industry, a segment which accounts for most of the PV and storage demand in Ger-many.

BSW Solar and leading PV industry companies, including inverter sup-plier SMA, have argued against the decision

sOmE PEOPLE DO nOT LIkE TO mEET ThE gRID REqUIREmEnTs Of ThE 60% RULE, anD havE a sysTEm ThaT has an OPEn InTERfacE TO ThE gRID, EvEn If IT mEans fOREgOIng ThE €3000.00, whIch Is ThE IncEnTIvE fOR an 5kw InsTaLLaTIOn.’ (jöRg mayER, Bsw sOLaR)

‘This goes against self-sufficiency and storage as it is spoiling the eco-nomics, which are not that powerful, or compelling, yet,’ says Ostermann. Though Piepenbrink thinks problems do not lie with the incentive pro-

gramme itself, he warns that self-con-sumption charges threaten to destroy the return on investment (ROI) for the end customer.

SalesE3DC has sold 850 intelligent energy storage systems in Germany, and es-timates that 40% of all end customers made use of the incentive. The com-pany’s distribution network includes housebuilders and installers.

According to Piepenbrink, 85 of the company’s installer partners are ac-tively selling the system and 350 in to-tal have been trained to install E3DC’s system.

The company, through its distribu-tion network, has seen greater uptake in northern Germany, such as Lower Saxony, Bremen and Schleswig-Hol-stein, as well as in Bavaria, while Son-nenbatterie reports demand, mainly in southern Germany.

‘We have about 30 so-called Sonnen-batterie-Centers, which are specialised mid-size or large-size installers, pro-viding sales, installation, technical ser-vices and so forth, exclusively for our product range. Furthermore we are selling through the three biggest Ger-man utilities RWE, E.ON and EnBW, Kyocera Solar, Vaillant and Solarwatt,’ says Ostermann.

An anonymous source at another supplier of smart energy storage sys-tems, confirms uptake has been slow, attributing this to the complexity of the self-consumption business mod-el that the scheme promotes versus the fact that the potential savings for many consumers does not make it worthwhile at this stage.

‘Some people do not like to meet the grid requirements of the 60% rule, and have a system that has an open interface to the grid, even if it means foregoing the €3000, which is the in-centive for an 5kW installation,’ says Mayer.

Under the scheme each kW of the PV system is entitled to between €600 and €660, so a 5kW system would qualify for a maximum subsidy of

germAn pV subsidY

pV-storAge pAssport With the launch of the solar and storage incentive many electrical installers in Germany were confronted with battery technology for the first time so lacked practical installation experience.

However the technical support prerequisites of KfW with regards to safety are quite general and have little relation to existing technological rules and standards, in particular regarding lithium ion batteries.

The PV-Storage passport was developed by BSW Solar to secure high standards of installations to avoid damage/liability claims, to protect the parties involved and the support programme, with the aim of building trust among customers in products

and installers.

the pAssport • Applies country-wide, independent

of support programme

• Replaces the specialised company declaration for KfW funding

• Provides grid operators with all necessary information

• Counteracts unclear, or lacking, information on norms and standards

(Source: BSW Solar Association)


31

€3300, equivalent to a 30% grant on the investment costs. In Germany, 5kW systems are most popular under the incentive programme.

Incentivising owners of PV systems to use their electricity builds flexibil-

ity into Germany’s grid. Generally, in large grids renewables penetration can reach 20% before the grid starts to struggle to balance supply and de-mand with large amounts of intermit-tent generation.

In Germany at noontime on a par-ticular day in May during 2012 the in-stalled capacity of 23GW of solar PV accounted for over 40% of demand for electricity. Two years on this fig-ure is regularly rebeaten and this year reached almost 74%.

Distribution system operators (DSOs), which manage cables and wires that transmit electricity to homes and other customers are heav-ily regulated in Germany, as they are elsewhere in Europe, so rules do not permit them to own, operate or use storage to fulfil their future grid stabi-lisation tasks.

Locating energy storage close to generation – even as lots of small-scale distributed installations – could re-solve some costly grid upgrades down the line. If consumers participate in these tasks through their PV and stor-age systems as so-called ‘prosumers’ self-consumption benefits the wider network, in addition to household budgets.

For different drivers and reasons Ja-pan is also taking a similar approach to Germany.

In March, Japan’s powerful Minis-try of Economy, Trade and Industry announced funding that will subsi-dise some 60MW of behind the meter energy storage installations among households and businesses. Distrib-uted storage will help integrate more renewables, such as solar PV.

Lebe die revolution!From the perspective of consumers, self-consumption is often described as an emotional decision, motivated by a desire to have a degree of autonomy from rising energy costs, compared with FIT-supported PV adoption, where decisions to invest in solar were more to do with generating an income

from selling electricity to the grid. As electricity rates go up the market

for PV and storage is expected to grow. Economics will improve year-on-year as the FIT programme continues to wind down and costs of energy stor-age systems reduce. Suppliers of sys-tems are responding with new prod-uct developments.

‘LOcaTIng EnERgy sTORagE cLOsE TO gEnERaTIOn – EvEn as LOTs Of smaLL-scaLE DIsTRIBUTED InsTaLLaTIOns – cOULD REsOLvE sOmE cOsTLy gRID UPgRaDEs DOwn ThE LInE.’

E3DC wants to give investors total au-tonomy from the grid.

The company’s S10 ‘power station’ allows up to 100% self-consumption, by functioning as an integrated direct current (DC) energy storage system with three phases, voltage for off-grid operation and current for on-grid op-eration.

The S10 enables the connection of electricity, heat and e-mobility.

In Germany last year roughly every tenth small-scale rooftop PV instal-lation was equipped with a battery. Despite the government’s EEG re-form proposals that would effectively charge early adopters for using self-generated clean electricity there is a growing sentiment among Germans to be more self-sufficient from ‘big en-ergy’.

To turn this desire into a market, the respective solar PV and energy stor-age industries will need to continue to work together.

germAn pV subsidY

BSW Solar Association http://www.solarwirtschaft.de

Sonnenbatterie www.sonnenbatterie.com

E3DC www.e3dc.com

issues concerning the germAn goVernment’s pV And storAge incentiVe progrAmme • Highly complex application

procedures, for both installers (trade and craft) and end customers (consumers)

• Requirements of the support programme cap the amount of electricity injected into the grid to 60%, which in conjunction with support rate acts as a deterrent for investors

• Local banks often turn down loans

• Households and investors are obligated to take out a loan despite existing equity capital

• No steering effect regarding grid-assistive operation

• High quality of storage systems and installation not guaranteed

• Rapid market saturation reached, since the pool of ‘ideal’ investors is relatively limited

proposAl to improVe the progrAmme to increAse uptAKe • Simplified application procedures for

investment grants

• Increase of support rate to 40%, from 30% of system costs

• Allow retroactive energy storage installations for any existing PV systems installed from 1 April 2012

• Continue the incentive programme

beyond 2015

(Source: BSW Solar Association)

Today’s energy storage battery systems are complex operational devices which must provide power and energy upon command based on the application’s demands. We must understand how the requirements are driven from the application to the fundamental build-ing blocks of the system, all the way to the cell chemistry. We’ll start at the system level and drill down to the cell level.

In most battery systems the cells typi-cally carry about 60-80% of the overall costs. The cells are simply an ‘electron fuel tank’ package to fit within the larg-er system to meet application require-ments. While the cells form the core of any battery pack and system, from modules to cabinets to containers, the manufacturing required to assemble battery packs is becoming more so-

phisticated by going more towards au-tomated assembly systems. These sys-tems typically include robotics, parts delivery systems, welding, automated torque drivers and highly advanced tracking systems. Key drivers include traceability, quality improvements and cost reductions.

Traceability is important due to the potential of a quality issue and the large number of parts involved. Track-ing of these parts allows for isolated identification, minimising large recall potential and enabling field replace-ment. Tracking is not only limited to the parts but also the processes used. As an example, for the sophisticated battery packs for the automotive in-dustry the torque values and contact resistance measurements are recorded into a master file for every battery pack built. There are many examples of this type of recorded data.

In terms of quality and maintaining consistency in production, machines are far more reliable than human as-sembly. Typically hand assembly is in the tenths/hundredths of percentage failure rates improving to parts-per-million/billion failure rates for auto-mated assembly.

Automation also affords cost reduc-tion in labour costs due to the large number of parts of assembly. Through-put rates can be significantly more than double those of human assembly pro-cesses. However, there are some parts of the assembly which require human

input for these complicated systems. When examining the requirement

drivers for these battery systems for the stationary energy storage industry this is substantial cross-over with drivers for other markets that use battery tech-nology, such as consumer electronics, transportation and various industrial sectors. A typical requirements hierar-chy can be described in the following pictogram:

The most widely accepted guidance in the transportation market segments comes from the organisation SAE In-ternational. These same guidance prin-ciples can be applied to energy storage which are stated in order of priority:

SafetyRegardless of market, the preservation of human life is of paramount impor-tance. Therefore, safety must be num-ber one on the list of requirements. An enormous amount of worldwide resources have been poured into the

the loW-doWn on lithium ion

Advances in cell manufacturing can play a critical role in helping to reduce costs in lithium ion battery production for the energy storage industry. robert galyen, CTo of Contemporary amperex Technology Limited (CaTL), discusses some of the developments in this area lithium ion battery cell technology and manufacturing.

the neW building blocKs of energY storAge

Containers

Cabinets Modules Cells


33

automotive industry to make battery systems safe. Examples of these are SAE International J2929 and J2964 safe-ty standards for battery systems. Many of the automotive standards can be ap-plied to energy storage systems. The major difference is the large amount of energy in some of the larger energy storage systems, which can be in the range of multiple MWh.

PerformancePerformance in the form of energy den-sity and power density are important to the particular application and must be defined by the engineers creating the requirements of the use case. The performance metrics must consider the environment topics of temperature, altitude, moisture, infestation, seismic activity, flooding, and so forth. The ap-plication engineer may use a chart like the one below to get the correct power to energy ratio of a use case.

Lifetime If it does not last long enough the value proposition of the system is inadequate to provide the return on investment (ROI) necessary for the system. The cycle life expectancy of most station-ary storage systems exceeds 10 years of service. The real difficulty is run-ning the tests to prove such long life. A surrogate method known as Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT), is employed by battery manufacturers to estimate the life expectancy of their

products. Accelerated life testing is used in many industries where it is not feasible to monitor a product’s perfor-mance in real-time. One good example is the PV industry, where it is routine to expect panels to last for 25 years.

CostClearly cost is important, as it is the ba-sis for financial investment and recov-ery. But, if the product is not safe and fails to meet performance/life metrics, then cost is meaningless.

Cell levelDue to concerns over sharing propri-etary information in a highly com-petitive market, some common infor-mation from automotive sector cells will be used as examples. These cells are typically the same as, if not inter-changeable, with energy storage ap-plications.

Within all leading battery manufac-turers, there is ongoing R&D to im-prove anodes and cathodes. The chart below shows a relative juxtaposition of the cathodes and anodes which pro-vide both voltage and energy capacity of these components of the cell. It is the various combinations of these an-odes and cathodes which produce the energy/power ratios for the applica-tions they service. As an example, the combination of the nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) cathode to the car-bon/graphite anodes are used for high energy density automotive applica-

tions (due to volume constraints) even though the cost is higher than lithium iron phosphate. Iron phosphate chem-istries are favoured for most stationary storage applications because volume constraints are not as important.

an EnORmOUs amOUnT Of REsOURcEs havE BEEn POURED InTO ThE aUTOmOTIvE InDUsTRy TO makE BaTTERy sysTEms safE. ExamPLEs Of ThEsE aRE saE InTERnaTIOnaL j2929 anD j2964. many Of ThEsE can BE aPPLIED TO EnERgy sTORagE sysTEms.

There are several formats of cells on the market.

Pouch is a form of a cell container. Typically an aluminium sheet coated with a polymer serves as the electro-chemical contents casing which is flex-ible, sealed by hermetic seals of the polymer around all edges. These con-tainers usually in a rectangular format but can be cylindrical, trapezoidal, or obtuse in shape.

Can is a form of a cell container where an aluminium or steel container houses the electrochemical contents and is welded to complete the enclo-sure. These containers can be cylindri-cal or rectangular in shape and varies in size based on capacity and chemis-try used.

Wound is a method of assembling the internal cell components by wind-ing the cathode, anode and separator around a mandrill, then assembled into the cell container.

Prismatic is a method of assembling the internal cell components, typically made by stacking the anode-separator-cathode-separator in a repeating man-ner to create the cell element, which is then inserted into the cell container.

lithium ion

ABOUT CATL

Contemporary Amperex Technology

Limited (CATL) is headquartered in

Hong Kong, with three sites in China.

Founded in 1999 the company is now

in the top five global lithium ion battery

suppliers and is the world’s largest

supplier of pouch/polymer batteries,

supplying to global top tier brands

across the transportation, energy

storage and industrial markets

At its factory in Ningde, Fujian province,

CATL has one of the largest rooftop

solar PV installations in China, with

nearly 9000 panels generated electricity

that is used to power the company’s

battery manufacturing operations.

CATL’s energy storage projects and

installations include the provision of two

sets of 100KW/120KWh systems for

a smart grid for China’s State Grid as

well as larger battery systems for the

State Grid, for integrating renewables,

such as wind and solar farms. The

company is also working with leading

automotive brands that are looking into

the concept of developing secondary

life batteries, where batteries that come

out of warranty for EVs can be used in

the stationary storage market.

www.catl.com www.atl.com

All electrochemical cells based on lithi-um chemistries share several aspects of design in common.

• All anodes and cathodes use a met-al substrate (known as a grid or current collector) to support the ac-tive materials where electrons are consumed or produced depending if anode or cathode and which di-rection current is flowing during charge or discharge.

• Active materials are created by a mixing process of raw materials to produce a slurry, which is then applied to the metal substrate, in a process known as coating. After coating and drying the slurry the material is compressed to the cor-rect thickness and the electrode

tabs are cut for extracting current from the cell stack.

• After the electrodes are cut to the correct shape and size, the cell ‘el-ement’ is formed by the alternat-ing of anode-separator-cathode. In the ‘wound’ version continuous ‘plates’ of material of anode-sepa-rator-cathode form the element (as shown in the second example). In the ‘prismatic’ version the ‘plates’ are cut to shape then stacked to achieve the cell element (as shown in the first example).

• Once the ‘element’ is created it is then placed into the container, the electrolyte is added before apply-ing the first charge to create a liv-ing cell which is called an active

source. From this point forward the device is capable of supplying current and voltage, as a real cell.

• Once the formation is complete the

container is sealed, checked and is ready to ship.

Value creation for the energy storage industry, using lithium ion batteries, lies within the chemistry and the ability to manufacture cells in a cost-effective, high-quality manner. These are one of the most efficient ways of storing en-ergy directly with least amount of loss compared to other storage methods.

Prismatic pouch cell

Wound can cell

the neW building blocKs of energY storAge

Cell production steps

the AutomAtion gAme


35

While interest in lithium batteries for energy storage and electric vehicles has been growing, both markets are still in a dynamic, early development phase, but with substantial growth po-tential believes Rudolf Simon, technol-ogy manager automotive and batter-ies, at M+W Group.

‘However cost reduction is the key to open a huge market for energy stor-age accordingly. Economy is the driver in this application,’ he says.

Based in Germany, M+W Group de-signs and builds factories for custom-ers in a range of industries, including chemicals, automotive, IT & telecoms, solar photovoltaics (PV) and battery cells.

For lithium ion batteries M+W ini-tially focused on electromobility be-cause of the significantly higher re-quirements of manufacturing quality, working with customers in Europe and also China. Manufacturing prin-ciples have a critical role to play in re-ducing the cost of producing lithium ion batteries. Through designing and

building industrial factories M+W is able to improve resource efficiency across five areas: energy, materials, en-vironmental, labour and investment. ‘It is mandatory to practice integrated or holistic design and construction within the factory’s entire complex,’ says Simon.

EVs and energy storageHowever, there are some different requirements for manufacturing bat-teries for energy storage applications, compared with other applications. The main differences lie mainly in the product specifications and design. ‘The key priorities in electromobility are energy density and safety whereas in energy storage longevity and cost are important. However the factory requirements each industry shares in-clude quality and resource efficiency, says Simon.

‘Requirements for suppliers to the automotive industry are subject to greater scrutiny and data tracking,’ ac-

cording to Lutz Redmann, co-founder of Berlin-based equipment supplier Jo-nas & Redmann.

Quality control To improve lithium ion battery pro-duction, by providing greater scrutiny of production processes M+W, with Siemens, has developed an integrated monitoring, control and management system.

All manufacturing related data is collected, processed and fed back to the machines and up to the factory management system to achieve opti-mum quality and cost ratios. The sys-tem can control in the region of 500 sensors within the process to provide maximum oversight. The technology can be retrofitted into existing lithium ion battery factories, as long as the process equipment provides access to measuring points.

The platform will implemented jointly by both partners in an existing line. There have been plenty of pro-jections for cost reductions in lithium ion batteries over the next five years. If these are to be achieved then there needs to be more investment in mate-rial and process development, accord-ing to Simon.

Compared with other industries that M+W supplies, the batteries business accounts for a minor share but the

technologY

The energy storage industry wants lithium ion batteries but it wants them cheaper, that much is clear. Suppliers of production facilities and machinery are using their experience to bring the manufacture of lithium ion batteries for both electric vehicles and energy storage into the 21st century.

M+W Group www.mwgroup.net Manz www.manz.com Jonas & Redmann www.jonas-redmann.com

technologY

company expects to see significant demand for its services as advanced factories and lines are commissioned.

Manz, a supplier of production lines and tools for the flat panel display (FPD) and solar PV industries, is in-vesting in the growth of its lithium ion battery business too. The company, headquartered in Reutlingen, in Ger-many, has supplied lines for manu-

facturing these batteries for consumer electronics, EVs and also for stationary storage, where customers include Eu-ropean battery company Saft.

Increased demandDemand has increased a lot within the last three years, according to Manz spokesman Axel Bartmann, a devel-opment that the company expects to continue.

‘Progress in cost-cutting on the pro-duction side,’ he says, ‘means that stationary storage with lithium ion batteries is becoming more and more interesting and important, where end-users, in both residential and commer-cial markets, want more autonomy and control over their energy supply. This is also reflected in the growing interest by battery producers serving the EV industry in the energy storage market.’

Redmann agrees that energy storage will become much more interesting, as demand for PV continues to grow and the focus on self-consumption of on-site electricity generation increases. ‘Specialised batteries for storage sys-tems are not common today. Often

batteries for EV applications are used,’ he says.

Like M+W the battery business within Manz is the company’s young-est and smallest unit, contributing to around 5% of turnover. However, with the recent acquisition of the mechani-cal engineering division of KEMET (formerly Arcotronics), in Italy, Manz expects to double this turnover and is now the largest equipment manufac-turer for lithium ion batteries outside of Japan.

A more substantial market for both M+W and Manz is the solar PV indus-try, where M+W’s recent deals include building a PV fab in South America.

While the PV industry is more ma-ture than the energy storage industry, Simon acknowledges some similari-ties. ‘For example in the development of design, materials and processes for batteries, the scope for improvements can occur in the region of 10% annu-ally.

Dramatic changesBut the PV industry had to face dra-matic changes in political and fund-ing conditions, which threatened this part of the business. We hope lessons learned can prevent a similar destiny for the battery industry.’

According to Bartmann the learning curve from the PV industry is compa-rable to an extent, since cost reduction and efficiency increase will lead to sig-nificant growth. ‘However, the level of standardisation is way behind the level of standardisation in the PV in-dustry.

‘To some extent this is logical since the battery cell/pack is always adapt-ed to the surroundings, such as the housing of the product and available space, and not the other way round,’ he says.

According to Bartmann equipment suppliers can have the highest impact on cost reduction and can also influ-ence production costs, quality and lifetime of batteries. The PV industry has benefitted from equivalent ad-vances as machines and automation have replaced processes done by man-ual assembly.

‘The process of production for PV

and lithium ion batteries share simi-larities. This is the reason why you will find a lot of PV companies in this business,’ says Redmann.

‘But, the market for PV was small and grew thanks to a big market-pull trigger in the form of the EEG (Ger-man Renewable Energy Act). The bat-tery market is well established and is driven by expectations which are slightly behind the forecasts. The mar-ket for lithium ion batteries in 2020 will be shared by only a few big play-ers.’

Investment in advanced produc-tion equipment is necessary to further cut production costs. In a second step economies of scale will contribute sig-nificantly to further cost reduction, believes Bartmann. Redmann agrees that economies of scale has a big role to play and increasing output will lead to significant cost reductions.

In terms of regional demand for lith-ium ion batteries for energy storage as well as electromobility, battery system production will be close to the produc-tion site, whereas cell production will probably move to regions with low energy costs.

‘Proximity to the end-user has sev-eral advantages such as transport cost and time, access to suppliers, collabo-ration in product development as well as political factors. Quality, sourcing reliability and cost are the input of the equation,’ says Simon. According to Bartmann, demand is coming from one place only, China.


Are you a specialist for batteries and energy storage technologies, an expert in the area of fuel cell and hydrogen technology or a pioneer in new mobility solutions? We offer you the right plat-form for presenting your solutions to a broad public.

WORLD OF ENERGY SOLUTIONS is an international trade fair, conference, networking event, marketplace, in-dustry monitor and think tank rolled into one.

Join our network and present your research, products, technologies and applications at WORLD OF ENERGY SOLUTIONS 2014.

www.world-of-energy-solutions.com

00_WES_Az_210x297_EnergyStorageJou.indd 1 23.06.14 16:15

7Th EnERgy sTORagE WorLd ForUM revIeW the 7th energy storage World forum, organised by dufresne, took place in london in April 2014. each year more than 15 of the world’s leading utilities, transmission system operators (tsos) and distribution system operators (dsos) attend the conference, which takes place over four days.

At this year’s forum there were pre-sentations from utilities on various energy storage projects underway. In Europe the number of these types of projects are growing, and are varied in size and scope, with several using energy storage to provide frequency regulation and voltage control.

The projects discussed demonstrate that in technological terms, battery-based energy storage is proven and able to handle these types of applica-tions.

The focus has shifted to how indus-try can work closely with utilities/DSOs/TSOs to deliver the benefits of energy storage to the grid in various ways.

To bring down storage costs, espe-cially that of batteries, standardising

technologies would help enable the growing energy storage industry to achieve economies of scale, and en-sure energy storage companies can supply, competitively, in different po-tential markets.

Among European TSOs/DSOs Ita-ly’s TERNA probably accounts for the largest single end-customer for energy storage in Europe at present.

In Italy, the unprecedented growth in renewables, mainly situated in the south, has resulted in an increase in costs related to dispatching activities and to the management of the electri-cal transmission system as a whole.

TERNA’s presentation included plans to procure multiple MWs of en-ergy-intensive storage to reduce local congestions on the high voltage grid increase primary and tertiary reserve, and also provide voltage support, as well as power intensive energy stor-age for frequency control and other services and applications.

Across Europe increasing levels of grid penetration of intermittent gen-eration, in the form of wind and solar energy, are beginning to create chal-lenges for utilities in the years’ ahead.

eVent spotlight:


eveNt spOtLight 39

EDP, Red Eléctrica, Enel Green Power and EKZ were among some of the oth-er players from Europe’s energy sector on hand to discuss their experiences of deploying energy storage to varying extents.

German utility RWE discussed how the adoption of residential ener-gy storage can provide the grid with more flexibility and outlined require-ments for intelligent energy storage systems that interface with the grid to enable self-consumption and also allow the grid to manage the in-creased penetration of intermittent solar PV.

In a presentation from GDF Suez, residential/distributed energy storage with PV systems is likely prove itself economically sooner, rather than later, compared with utility-scale and mid-scale energy storage.

GE and Fiamm provided insights into utility-scale battery storage systems and deployments. Fiamm discussed how commercial energy storage systems, and services they are designed to provide, reflect a col-laboration between the developer, the customer and the end-user, with each party influencing final system design, resulting in specific and quite custom-ised systems.

This presents both challenges and opportunities for companies with an eye on global markets for storage. De-fining multiple services can help to recoup the cost of the system. Other considerations include how to share responsibility of the system, over its lifetime, among technology partners through warranty and O&M agree-ments.

AES demonstrated how the compa-ny has developed a commercially via-ble business model for its energy stor-age systems, as an alternative to peak-ing power plants, with over 200MW of energy storage in operation, or in con-struction, mainly in the US and South America.

The company recently embarked on a 100MW storage project in Europe, in Northern Ireland.

In excess of 30 presentations were given over the course of the week,

including those by analysts and con-sultants, such as IHS Research, Brattle Group, Natureo Finance and Azure In-ternational to highlight global trends, in addition to panel discussions, poll-ing and collaboration among attend-ees to discuss grid issues and formu-late how energy storage can resolve and alleviate these.

Here are some overviews and sum-maries of some of the presentations given at this year’s event

TWO YEARS’ RESULTS FROM SWISS GRID STORAGE PROJECT

Presentation by: Michael Koller, energy storage specialist, EKZ. www.ekz.ch

Swiss utility EKZ and ABB installed a 1MW energy storage system in the city of Dietikon. The system has been operational since March 2012.

The 1MW battery, using over 10,000 LG Chem lithium ion cells, can store up to 500kWh. The system is connect-ed to EKZ’s low and medium voltage grid and its control includes a photo-voltaic plant, an office building and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, allowing the testing of various differ-ent smart grid applications.

The system uses ABB’s power con-trol system, PCS100, enabling AC/DC conversion in both directions at full nominal power.

The warrantied lifetime of the sys-tem is measured as 3500 cycles, or 2 cycles per day (250kWh). At 2011 pric-es the system cost in the region of €2 million.

The various applications investigat-ed include:

• Frequency regulation • Peak shaving – the benefits for

EKZ include grid expansion de-ferral and safety margin reduction in grid planning. Customers ben-efit from minimising of demand charges.

• Voltage regulation – the benefits for EKZ are integration of decen-tralised generation. Customers benefit in terms of improvement of power quality for critical loads.

• Islanding capability – the benefit for EKZ is the ability to operate an island grid while customers ben-efit from uninterruptible power supply for critical loads.

During the two years of operation the energy storage system yielded ex-cellent efficiency results according to EKZ.

The lithium ion batteries performed a round-trip efficiency in the region of 90%–95% (efficiencies are higher at low power rates). The inverter achieved an efficiency (one way) of 97% (which is lower at low power rates).

At the system level, cycling with 50% depth of discharge (DoD) at 50% rated

event Spotlight

power (± 500 kW, 30 minutes each). Round trip, without auxiliary is 90% and round trip, including auxiliary is 85%. Real life efficiency is strongly dependant on power profile, in other words, the use case.

Minimal capacities are required to bid in primary frequency control markets with smart working point adjustments. Advantages include fast reaction inverters and decoupling of energy and power.

Benefits of using energy storage for providing frequency regulation means no excess energy production in con-ventional power plants to provide this service, no unnecessary shedding of variable renewables and full utilisa-tion of conventional power plant ca-pacity.

SUBSTATION-LEVEL STORAGE PILOT IN SPAIN

Presentation by: Christina Gomez Simon, R&D project manager RED Eléctrica www.ree.es

The Spanish energy mix features a high amount of variable renewables generation. As of the end of December in 2013 wind and solar accounted for 28% of Spain’s installed generating ca-pacity of 102,308MW (4% solar PV, 2% solar thermal, 22% wind).

Challenges for system operation

include managing a daily load shape which presents high ratio peaks ver-sus off-peak demand and high share of intermittent renewables. As a result, sometimes wind production is cur-tailed.

The Almacena energy storage proj-ect, in south-west Spain, comprises a 1MW/3MWh lithium ion battery (1MVA inverter) connected to the transmission grid. A123 Systems sup-plied the batteries. The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The Almacena project’s main aim is to analyse and test challenges and ca-pabilities related to grid storage.

The battery array’s control system is able to perform three simultaneous control modes:

• Load shifting• Power frequency regulation• Voltage control

The storage system, installed at the Carmon 400/220kV substation, which is owned by Red Eléctrica, was com-missioned in December 2013, with evaluation of the system’s perfor-mance starting in Q1 of 2014.

For it to be constantly monitored and controlled, the system is connected to Red Eléctrica’s communication sys-tems. The storage system is in installed in a 16m-long container that houses 30 racks of lithium ion prismatic cells.

The project consists of a first phase

where two functionalities will be test-ed, for the integration of intermittent renewable energy generation and the improvement of operation services, including load curve modulation and power frequency regulation.

In later phases, the installation will serve as a test platform in order to evaluate the possible contribution of this technology to other operation ser-vices, including how storage can in-crease grid flexibility and improve the stability of the system.

Throughout the project, key param-eters of the system will be collected and analysed in order to evaluate, from a technical and economic stand-point, the capacities of the selected technology.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENERGY STORAGE IN RURAL MICROGRIDS IN AFRICA Presentation by: Caroline Nijland, busi-ness development director, FRES www.fres.nl

Foundation Rural Energy Services (FRES) provides electricity to rural, off-grid areas in sub-Saharan Africa, using solar energy. The company sets up small-scale utilities based on a com-mercial, replicable and sustainable ap-proach, focusing on households and small enterprises.

FRES is part of the Association for Rural Electrification (ARE), which is a business association representing the decentralised energy sector. ARE is working towards the integration of renewables into rural electrification markets in developing and emerging countries

The association enables business and market development by targeted advocacy and by facilitating access to international funding

ARE also acts as a global platform for sharing knowledge and best prac-tices to enhance energy access (hydro, wind, solar) and services (training)

FRES operates a fee-for-service business model that is replicable and

ABB


eveNt spOtLight 41

adaptable to the local setting, compris-ing:

• Commercial local FRES companies (small-scale utilities)

• Capital investments financed by FRES and its partners

• Fee-for-service: clients that are connected pat €6–€25 a month for access to solar electricity

• FRES companies/utilities are responsible for installation and maintenance

• Affordable and sustainable tariff structure to cover operational ex-penses and replacements (batter-ies and so on)

FRES’ core product is a solar home system, which is 80W–320W in size, for households and small business in remote areas. As of December 2013, FRES had installed 28,000 of these sys-tems in five African countries.

Next in the range are minigrids, in the range of 50–150kW solar and 100–300 kVA diesel. These systems are for higher energy requirements in densely populated villages. At present nine hybrid and one diesel minigrid are operational in Mali, while overall there were 4000 individual minigrid customers at the end of 2013.

FRES’ battery selection criteria for off-grid power systems:

• Low maintenance• High lifecycle at deep discharge• Able to withstand environmental

extremes (temperature, dust, hu-midity)

• Large amounts of storage capacity

Design considerations for hybrid mini-grids:

• AC coupled system : limited cable losses, flexible and modular

• Initial energy requirement based on real consumption profiles

• Mini-grid design: PV/diesel con-tribution 70% / 30% to support load

• Pre-paid metering• Remote monitoring (data logger:

send data to internet portal)

Battery storage:

• High cycling at deep discharge• One day reserve capacity• Ability to withstand harsh envi-

ronmental conditions (tempera-ture, dust, humidity)

Capital costs of hybrid mini-grid with grid network are in the region of €480,000. The capital cost per installed capacity is roughly €9,600/kW for so-lar PV and €425/kWh for the storage (prices as of 2012).

For mini-grids batteries represent the largest share of costs, followed by the distribution network, inverters, PV modules and then the rest of costs.

The levellised cost of electric-ity (LCOE) of the mini-grid is €0.48/kWh, based on a standardised 50kW/1128kWh hybrid mini-grid, with an average daily demand of 315kWh/day, a discount rate of 8%, diesel cost of €0.96/litre (Mali, 2012), diesel generator fuel efficiency of 0.34

l/kWh, and seven year depreciation rate for batteries and 10 years for in-verters.

Evaluating consumption, FRES found that realistically daily consump-tion is more like 430kWh and on aver-age the growth in demand for electric-ity is 10%–15% annually, with increas-ing consumption in the evening.

Challenges and lessons learnt in-clude managing growth in demand, high network losses and reactive pow-er, optimising use of batteries, remote monitoring and data communication, tariff negotiations with local authori-ties and integration of energy efficient appliances such as fridges and TVs.

ZERO CARBON UK HOME STORES SOLAR ENERGY THROUGH THE WINTERPresentation by: Michael Goddard, director, Caplin Homes www.caplinhomes.co.uk

UK sustainable construction company Caplin Homes has developed an eco-nomical housing concept that gener-ates solar energy and stores the heat in the ground for use during winter.

The company has spent the recent winter monitoring the performance of its first pilot, a five bedroom flat roof ‘exemplar’ home in Leicestershire. De-spite delayed construction in 2013, due to the cold winter, the house proved out the company’s concept.

The zero-carbon solar home devel-oped by Caplin, incorporates a hybrid solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) panel on the roof, solar walls, heat pumps and underfloor heating.

The electricity generated by the PV portion of the hybrid panel runs the system. In the summertime, the excess electricity generated is used to run the hot water, rather than exported to the grid, which saves on running the heat pump.

Heat is stored in the ground beneath the house. Earth is a poor conductor of heat yet has a high thermal capac-ity making it ideal as a heat store. The

Almacena

event Spotlight

storage component – the Earth Energy Bank (EBB) – is constructed by drilling a series of boreholes with a JCB using a standard fence post auger with an extension bar and using polyethylene piping and bentonite for creating good thermal contact.

Newform Energy developed and supplied the hybrid solar panels.

ANALYSING GLOBAL ENERGY STORAGE TRENDS AND PROJECTS

Presentation by: Oliver Vallee, senior analyst, Natureo Finance www.natureofinance.com

Out of a total global energy storage market worth some $60 billion, in-cluding transportation (start-stop, hy-brid, electric vehicle), consumer and portable electronics (laptops, to smart phones, to non-rechargeable general disposable) stationary storage is worth about $10 billion, mostly for backup and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) today.

Natureo breaks down stationary storage into two categories: front-of-meter and behind-the-meter. Front-of-meter includes frequency and voltage regulation, load managing, peak shift-ing and renewables integration, while behind-the-meter includes tariff arbi-trage, demand response, industrial/datacentre backup and residential en-ergy storage.

Typical application for front-of-me-ter projects includes grid support, with utilities as investor. These projects oc-cur in a heavily regulated environ-ment, tend to be large and situated in high voltage parts of the grid network.

A wide variety of applications and new business models can occur with behind-the-meter roll-outs, which are occurring in a few markets, including Germany, California and Japan.

A good example is the self-con-sumption solar and storage trend in the small-scale commercial and resi-dential sector in Germany.

Since 2007 Natureo has maintained a database of announced stationary

storage projects, which are large-scale, typically 500kWh or more and is track-ing 120 projects at present. For each project data includes client, integra-tor and technology supplier, power, energy, project cost and cost per kWh, location as well as application.

Technologies/chemistries tracked include lithium phosphate, lithium titanate, lithium nickel/cobalt/manganese, flywheel, nickel cadmi-um, sodium sulphur, flow batteries and lead acid.

Key findings analysed by power include:

• strong subsidized growth in 2011• pause in 2012, weakness in 2013• sodium sulphur batteries, fly-

wheels out; to re-emerge?• big emergence for lithium ion• flow batteries emerge too

Key findings by energy:

• sodium sulphur, largest energy ca-pacity by far, disappears suddenly

• big opportunity for alternattives• lithium and flow batteries to benefit

Key findings by application:

• trend goes from power (frequency regulation) in 2011 to energy (so-lar/wind power storage)

• residential/community market is very small, but showing potential to grow fast in Japan, Germany and California due to subsidies

Key findings by region:

• European storage market small; robust, heavily invested grid struc-ture, renewable energy is focus

• US larger due to antiquated grid, less interconnect, frequency regu-lation is focus

• recently, trend is beginning to shift to frequency regulation in Europe and renewable integration in US

Germany

• renewable goes from 17% in 2010 to 35% in 2025. But in the north

• 3600km of high-voltage lines bud-geted for 2020; expansion of 11-28% of medium and low voltage

network; €10 billion-€27 billion in network upgrades

• transmission not on demand • peaks must be handled by storage

or by other distribution system such as power-to-gas

• Challenge is where to store 60GWh a day of excess energy generated from renewable energy sources

Italy

• Puglia region has an overcapac-ity problem; 3.5GW of renewable generation capacity, but low local electricity demand. A new €30 mil-lion Campagna-Puglia high volt-age line is to be built, but offtake of only 500MW.

• INGRID power-to-gas project:• $29 million project for 39MWh of

hydrogen storage ($744/KWh)• 1.2MW electrolyser (65% efficien-

cy) = 10.5GWh/year• assuming 3-year lifetime and no

opex, financing cost: $0.003/cycle• no distribution cost• add $0.13/KWh for fuel cell

(LCOE, capex included)• SAFT, Samsung SDI have also sold

big batteries

California

• 10GW of wind coming online by 2020, much by 2015

• north-south divide; most of hydro power comes from north

• in South, Son Onofre nuclear plant (2GW supplying 20% of southern California requirements) is prema-turely offline

• Three organizations are active: CPUC (California Public Utility Commission), CEC (California En-ergy Commission) and CAISO.

• resulting in Assembly Bill 2514• requires CPUC to set targets for

energy storage, now a ‘preferred asset class’.

In March 2012, CPUC acted on AB 2514, instructing Southern Califor-nia Edison to procure by 2022 1400-1800MW in generation assets of which 650MW in preferred asset classes and 50MW using storage.


eveNt spOtLight 43

The International Photovoltaic Equipment Association (IPVEA) is an independent organization of manufacturers and suppliers of photovoltaic (PV) fabrication equipment and related raw materials used in PV ingot, wafer, cell (crystalline and thin-film), and panel manufacturing.

IPVEA stands for quality and value to our members. Take advantage of this exciting opportunity to be directly involved in the direction of the renewable energy industry.

By joining IPVEA your company will be directly involved in developing programs and events that broaden and benefit the PV manufacturing industry.

Membership savings: Free membership to the International Battery and Energy Storage Alliance (IBESA) Discount advertising in the Energy Storage Journal Discount Registrations at IPVEA events Reduced Space Rental fees at key partner events

IPVEA membership helps your company build value: Networking opportunities at group meetings and trade shows

Inclusion in the group’s press events and materials

Inclusion on appropriate panels at key industry trade events

Exposure through the website www.ipvea.org

Use of the IPVEA logo to brand your business

Listing in IPVEA PV Matrix and Update newsletters

Free access to information & technology services & products:

Industry Books to Bill Program

Energy Storage Journal

IPVEA PV Matrix

Industry News portal

IPVEA research reports

Consolidated Reasons to Join iPVea

Contact us Europe (Germany)Tel: [email protected]

Europe (UK)Tel: +44 (0) 7981 256 [email protected]

USATel: +1 407 856 [email protected]

Asia (Hong Kong)Tel: [email protected]

ElEctrical EnErgy StoragE

ExhIBITOR OvERvIEw: intersolAr 2014Intersolar, the largest exhibition serving the global solar exhibition, has acquired a new event platform, electrical energy Storage (eeS), which will run alongside the show, held annually in Munich, giving Intersolar’s organiser a strategic foothold in the emerging energy storage exhibition and conferences sector.

The EES exhibition, from June 2–4 will shed light on markets, technologies applications for electrical energy stor-age systems. Some Intersolar/EES ex-hibitors will be introducing new prod-ucts during the event.

Ads-tec is a board and founding member of the Kompetenznetzwerk Lithum-Ionen Batterien KliB e.V. (Competence Network Lithium-ion Batteries), a board member of Storegio and member of the extended board of the Solar Cluster Baden-Wuerttem-berg e.V.

Through engagement in numerous research projects, which are funded by the federal and state governments, Ads-tec collaborates with other com-panies and research institutes within the lithium ion value chain in Germa-ny and Europe.

AEG Power Solutions, a global supplier of power electronics systems for industrial power supplies and re-newable energy plants, has launched a wireless battery cell control system, MoniStore, for energy storage applica-tions in the MW-scale.

Monistore is designed for use with lead acid and also nickel cadmium bat-teries. The battery sensor is connected to the batteries negative pole to contin-uously monitor the functionality of the individual battery cells by measuring cell voltage and temperature.

The wireless sensors transmit all rel-evant parameters via the Zigbee proto-col to a receiver module which trans-fers the data to an evaluation unit.

Wireless communication allows for safe electrical isolation, and moni-toring of large battery systems with more than 300 single cells, connected in series. The system does not require complex cabling as it only needs the measuring clamps and no additional cables. Installation is simple, so even a sensor exchange can be done during full operation.

Each cell provides the power supply for its sensor, demanding extremely low power input. Current/power con-sumption can systematically be influ-enced or increased by the evaluation unit, enabling passive cell balancing.


ELEctRicAL ENERgy StORAgE 4545

Akasol will be exhibiting its Neeo-qube, a modular lithium ion energy storage unit for coupling with PV, wind and hydro-powered systems. The system is easy to install, and can be individually extended in the Neeorack and Neeosystem versions.

The result is the economically opti-mized operation of your supply sys-tem. In addition, excess energy can be fed into the grid at the specifically cor-rect time, precisely when it is needed and receives a correspondingly high compensation.

The system is warrantied for 10 years. The company’s Neeomega product is a scaleable intelligent stor-age solution for large-scale solar and wind parks, targeting operators of these farms. All components of Neeo-mega are designed to ensure a reliable long-term operation in the megawatt range.

Hoppecke Batterien, better known as a manufacturer of battery systems for industrial applications, has also devel-oped products aimed at the solar and storage self-consumption market in Germany. These include the lead acid battery-based Sun Power Pack, which has been installed in German house-holds since 2012, and the more recent version of the system for use with lith-ium ion technology.

For its industrial client base Hoppecke has also developed the turnkey energy storage system con-sisting of fuel cells, batteries and elec-tronics for uninterruptible power sup-ply (UPS). The modular hybrid system stores energy from renewable sources.

Since 2005 UK-based Oxis has been developing next generation battery technology, based on lithium sulphur chemistry, with a patented technology that is lighter, safer and maintenance free. Inherent in the technology are two key mechanisms which protect the cells: a ceramic lithium sulphide passivation layer and a high-flash-point electrolyte. This means the cell can survive a barrage of electrical and physical abuse, including puncture, without any adverse reaction.

Oxis cells have an indefinite shelf-life, with no charging required when left for extended periods. In compari-son, lithium ion batteries require regu-lar recharge to prevent failure and this is often the cause of warranty issues.

Earlier in 2014 the company an-nounced it was working in partner-ship with Proinso, to develop energy storage systems for solar PV systems for off-grid and other markets.

New energy storage start-up Qin-ous, in Germany, is targeting hybrid microgrids with a focus on remote re-gions including islands, as well as iso-lated villages, mining companies and hotel resorts. The company is working with companies such as microgrid de-velopers in regions such as Africa as well as parts of South America. Qinu-ous, founded in September 2013, has built a hybrid microgrid demonstrator next to its office in Berlin, which will have a 100kW/100kWh energy stor-age system, a 100kW diesel generator and solar PV/wind /load simulators.

Vanadis, based in Nuremberg, Ger-many, was founded in 2012 to com-mercialise vanadium flow batteries for integration of renewable energy and other applications in the Europe-an market. The company has supplied a total of 10MW, in excess of 22MWh, of energy storage, mainly comprising projects in China and Tibet, for out-put smoothing of wind farms, power quality for EV charging, integration of PV, as well as off-grid applications.

Netherlands company Victron Ener-gy’s latest product is Easysolar, which

the company claims is an all-in-one so-lar power solution. The system can be used with PV panels and batteries for self-generation. The product combines an ultra-fast charge controller (MPPT), an inverter/charger and AC distribu-tion in one enclosure. With an exten-sive reduction in wiring Easysolar provides ease of use combined with a maximum return on investment.

When using the 24V model, it is possible to use up to 1400W of solar power and with 1600VA continuous inverter power, even peaks of 3000W can be handled without any problems

The MPPT charge controller con-trols the voltage for the consumer and the batteries so efficient energy distri-bution is guaranteed.

The batteries can be charged with solar power and/or with AC power from the utility grid or a diesel genera-tor. Easysolar 12V will become avail-able in June 2014.

California-based Trojan Battery will be exhibiting its new range of lead acid batteries enhanced with carbon for partial state of charge (PSOC) ap-plications, to boost overall battery life in off-grid and unstable grid applica-tions where the batteries are under charged on a regular basis.

Along with increased life in PSOC modes, Trojan’s Smart Carbon propri-etary formula also provides improved charge acceptance and faster recharge in PSOC applications.

For more information on Intersolar 2014 and EES, including a full list of energy storage exhibitors, visit www.intersolar.de and www.ees-europe.com.

MaY 14-15Energy Storage 2014Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

ACI’s 4th Annual Energy Storage event is heading back to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg this May.

The two-day conference as always will bring together key industry stake-holders from the utilities industry, TSOs, DNOs, EES application devel-opers and owners, as well as manu-facturers to discuss the roadmap to monetizing energy storage: creating new business models and platforms for new entrants in the race to accel-erate the technology push of various EES systems.

The conference will have a heavy focus on case study examples of EES projects across the globe, discussing how they overcame challenges such as costs, lifecycle, safety and many other obstacles to development and deploy-ment.www.wplgroup.com/aci/conferences/eu-

ees4.asp

JUNe 2-6Intersolar EU 2014Munich, Germany

This year the Electrical Energy Storage (EES) exhibition, an area dedicated to companies offering products and services in electrical storage and solar power, will take place alongside the Munich Intersolar show.

The EES section is also expected to include a full conference programme.

In addition a new category for

Electrical Energy Storage (EES) sys-tems has been added to the Intersolar Awards, with the prize given at Inter-solar Europe in Munich on 4 June.

According to Intersolar, the EES ex-hibition is the ideal platform for the rapidly growing energy storage sys-tems market, covering the entire sup-ply chain of innovative battery and energy storage system technologies, from components to production to concrete examples of application.

Intersolar Europe takes place an-nually at Messe München. It is the world’s largest exhibition for the so-lar industry and its partners. In 2013, 1,292 international exhibitors and round 50,000 trade visitors attended Intersolar Europe.

The exhibition focuses on the areas of photovoltaics, PV production tech-nologies, energy storage and solar thermal technologies. Since its found-ing, it has become the most important industry platform for manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, service provid-ers and partners of the solar industry.

In 2013, more than 400 speakers and around 2,000 attendees discussed cur-rent industry topics and shed light on the background of technological, mar-ket and political developments that are increasingly relevant.www.intersolar.de/en/intersolar-europe.

html

JUNe 3-5Energy Storage China Beijing, China

China’s electricity network is the larg-

est in the world — not only in terms of the capacity of energy generation installations, but also of the actual amount of energy produced.

China also has the world’s largest wind farms and the biggest capaci-ties for producing photovoltaic mod-ules, with the target to achieve 100GW wind integration in 2015 and reach 50GW PV integration in 2020.

Energy storage has a huge potential to achieve high scale renewable inte-gration.

Energy Storage China 2014 will be the unique energy storage conference and expo in China.

This is not just to motivate and in-fluence policy makers, experts, deci-sion makers and manufacturers in the renewable energy and energy storage industry in China.

But it will also serve as a deal-mak-ing and business development plat-form, which will inherit the success-ful conference experience in 2012 and 2013 that China National Energy Stor-age Alliance has built up, integrated with the concept of global energy stor-age network based on a series of top events staged by Messe Düsseldorf and its premium partners in Germany, North America and India.www.escexpo.cn

SePTeMBer 16-18The Battery Show, Expo for Advanced Batteries Novi, Michigan, USA

Taking place September 16-18 2014, in Novi, Detroit, Michigan, The Battery

energYstorAgeeVents

eVents listings


eVents listings 47

Show 2014 is the premier showcase of the latest advanced battery technol-ogy. The exhibition hall offers a plat-form to launch new products, make new contacts and maintain existing relationships.

With more qualified buyers and de-cision makers than any other event in North America, The Battery Show 2014 is the key to unlocking your fu-ture business opportunities.

The Battery Show is attended by technical leaders, scientists, engineers, project leaders, buyers and senior ex-ecutives concerned with advanced energy storage and will host the very latest advanced battery solutions for electric and hybrid vehicles, utility and renewable energy support, por-table electronics, medical technology, military and telecommunications.www.thebatteryshow.com

SePTeMBer 30-oCToBer 2Energy Storage North AmericaSan Jose Convention Center, California (pictured)

With the implementation of innova-tive policy throughout North Ameri-ca, there has never been a more excit-ing time to be in the energy storage industry.

During this conference and expo, we will hear from leaders at the forefront

of energy storage deployment and planning. Our 2014 program focuses on the convergence of transportation, distributed, and utility-scale applica-tions.

Our concurrent tracks will offer attendees a deep dive into the mar-ket structures, the policies powering them, and the opportunities to inte-grate projects of all sizes on the grid.

Join us to build the ecosystem for grid-connected energy storage in San Jose, California.www.esnaexpo.com

oCToBer 16-18Battery + Storage/World of Energy Solutions Messe Stuttgart, Germany

The World of Energy Solutions is in-ternational 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 en-ergy storage systems for mobile and stationary implementation.

All areas are dealt with, from raw materials to turnkey battery systems. The target groups include trade visi-tors from the storage system manu-facturing industry, service providers, researchers and representatives of the most important user industries, for

example the electric mobility, energy supply and electrical engineering in-dustrieswww.messe-stuttgart.de/en/wes/

NoveMBer 6Energy Storage Summit JapanTokyo, Japan

http://enstor.messe-dus.co.jp/

deCeMBer 3-52nd International Conference & Exhibition on Energy Storage and Microgrids in India Kempinski Ambiance Hotel, New Delhi, India

Over three intensive days, the debut edition of Energy Storage India Con-ference and Exhibition came to a close on December 06, 2013 at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai attracting 306 del-egates from 12 countries throughout the world.

Jointly organized by Messe Düssel-dorf India, Customized Energy Solu-tions and powered by India Energy Storage Alliance, ESI 2013 is the first energy storage conference and exhi-bition in India to focus exclusively on applications, customers and deal mak-ing.


With the help of Oerlikon technologies, our customers are using less energy to produce textiles. The next generation of agricultural equipment will require less fuel thanks to Oerlikon’s improved synchronizers for transmission systems. Adapted from Oerlikon technology, electric cars equipped with a lighter gear shift will be able to travel farther, will provide a smoother ride and will no longer produce CO2 emissions.

These are just a few examples of how we – through our innovative solutions for global growth markets, such as food, energy, clothing, electronics, transportation and infrastructure – are helping protect the environment and conserve resources.

Documents

The Energy Storage Journal Summer 2014: issue 6