Trina Storage launched its new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) utility-scale battery storage cabinet and Sungrow launched its new line of residential battery storage at Intersolar Europe last week.
Trina Storage, the energy storage division of China-headquartered vertically integrated solar PV module manufacturer Trina Solar, provides fully-integrated battery energy storage system (BESS) solutions to the renewable energy and grid storage markets.
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After Trina Storage launched officially in February this year, at last week’s Intersolar Europe / Electrical Energy Storage Europe trade event held in Munich, Germany, the company unveiled Elementa, its LFP battery cabinet.
Elementa is a fully-integrated and modular energy storage solution, designed for plug and play installation with less cabling required and easier logistics than some of its competitors. That standardised design feature helps reduce installation times by up to 70% while the simplification of the process could reduce capital expenditure (CAPEX) on systems by more than 5%, Trina Storage claimed.
A corporate video posted by the company on YouTube shows that minimum capacity of the liquid-cooled cabinet is 1,800kWh and a C-rate of 0.25 -1 C. The cabinet is designed to be able to scale up according to customer requirements. ‘Fully-integrated’ means that it includes batteries and battery management system (BMS), thermal management and safety features.
Trina Storage claimed it also enables easy maintenance and higher availability. The bi-directional flow liquid cooling system provides uniform heat dissipation which means longer battery lifetime and better performance.
Trina Storage unveils 50MW project in UK
While the Elementa modular solution will be available from 2022, the company has also officially announced its first large-scale BESS project, which is in rural Cambridgeshire, England.
Trina Storage supplied the integrated BESS at client SMS Plc’s 50MW Burwell site. SMS is a UK energy infrastructure and services company.
The BESS has been designed “in a very safe way and is effectively fully future-proofed for years to come,” Trina Storage’s technical project coordinator Panagiotis Kamperidis said.
SMS’ managing director for grid-scale energy storage, John Flaherty, said that his company is building a “large fleet” of BESS projects around the UK.
The Burwell site comprises 15 bays of CATL battery cells with power conversion systems (PCS), medium voltage equipment and a large 132kV transformer connecting to the local distribution network operator (DNO). Its connection to the grid enables SMS to access all of the revenue services available, Flaherty said.
SMS engineering and projects director Phil Norrish said that thanks to Trina Storage, the project uses one of the first CATL liquid-cooled products in the UK, housing 157 battery units in total across the 50MW / 56.2MWh site. Norrish said that in addition to full equipment supply, Trina helped oversee project management and deal with any challenges that arose.
Sungrow launched residential BESS configurable up to 25.6kWh
Trina’s Elementa will bring it onto the field of competition supplying modular, integrated and containerised solutions for large-scale applications that also includes the likes of Tesla’s Megapack, Leclanche’s LeBlock, Saft’s Intensium Max and others from Fluence, Wärtsilä and PylonTech.
Chinese solar PV inverter company Sungrow has recently launched its own newest such product. Energy-Storage.news reported recently that US developer Key Capture Energy is buying 390MW of those for its projects, but at Intersolar Europe, Sungrow’s focus included the launch of new residential products.
Along with new residential PV inverters that cover both 1-phase and 3-phase supply and range from 2kW to 20kW and hybrid inverters that range from 3kW to 10kW, Sungrow introduced a high voltage battery system.
Available capacity ranges from 9.6kWh to 25.6kWh. Including both inverter and batteries with extendable capacity, the energy storage system (ESS) is designed for plug and play easy installation. Sungrow said a single installer could set it up in most markets.
The ESS enables self-consumption of renewable energy onsite as well as automatic backup that kicks in seamlessly in the event of power cuts. It can also be instructed to draw power from the grid at cheaper off-peak times and can be retrofitted alongside existing household PV systems. It is also adaptable, with the addition of more inverters, to small and medium commercial applications that require up to 50kW power.
Both inverters and battery systems can be monitored through Sungrow’s iSolarCloud monitoring platform.