Energy-Storage.news editor Andy Colthorpe met Kokam president Ike Hong to discuss the company's high power batteries.
We also asked what it means for the company to now be under SolarEdge's ownership, why effective management and control of batteries may be a more important safety question than just which battery chemistry to choose.
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Hong talks about the regions – and perhaps more importantly the applications – where demand is coming from for Kokam's energy storage today and where Ike says the company expects the wider industry to go in future. One perhaps surprising revelation is that some of the company's biggest customers are oil & gas platforms.
While there's an obvious disconnect from the renewables industry in one sense that this legacy industry of fossil fuels should be using advanced technology perhaps better suited to furthering low carbon energy system development, it should also be noted that lithium batteries and off-grid systems based around them cannot be deployed on an offshore oil platform without provable claims on safety, lifetime and reliability being in place.
Taken at Intersolar / ees Europe 2019 in Munch, Germany.