LG Electronics has chosen an energy management system (EMS) developed by Texas company Fractal EMS for commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage systems in the US market.
LG said on Friday that it has also invested an undisclosed amount into Fractal EMS, which it considers a strategic investment.
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The electronics subsidiary of South Korea’s LG Group holding company also makes and markets battery storage systems through another division, LG Energy Solution, as well as battery cells through LG Chem.
Its products for C&I users currently enable three major applications: peak shaving (reducing draw of power from the grid at peak times to lower electricity costs), increasing onsite consumption of renewable energy and back up power.
At an event last year hosted by our publisher Solar Media, the US C&I market was described as being “extremely lucrative” by a panel of industry experts and participants.
However, in most parts of the US, the business case for distributed energy resources (DERs), which include C&I as well as home battery storage systems, looks set to be further and greatly boosted by the introduction of FERC Order 841 and Order 2222.
Through these, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has instructed regional transmission organisations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) to reconfigure their wholesale markets to enable full participation of energy storage (Order 841) and DERs (Order 2222).
Efforts to create and integrate these rules are ongoing and at different pace in different RTO and ISO jurisdictions that are covered by FERC.
Fractal EMS meanwhile describes its EMS as a turnkey control system for energy storage as well as for other DERs. The package includes hardware, software, integration, monitoring and servicing and can be used to command, control, manage and monitor systems at individual or fleet level.
A separate line of the business, Fractal Energy Storage Consultants, assists clients with everything from project design and due diligence to witnessing and verification of site acceptance testing to operations, maintenance and monitoring and many other stages of their project.
Energy-Storage.news enquired as to whether LG will be also working with the consultancy, but had not received a reply at time of publication.
Fractal EMS has been used at 3GWh of energy storage projects worldwide already and the company claims a pipeline of a further 8GWh of awarded energy storage system (ESS) and hybrid projects using ESS.
LG Electronics also offers a full suite of other buildings electrification technologies, including heat pumps and HVAC. The company’s North America president and CEO Thomas Yoon said Fractal EMS’ tech and LG’s ESS can be part of an “energy ecosystem for high-performance buildings”.
LG pointed out that it is also set to launch a new range of home energy storage systems this year.
“LG’s investment advances our mission to combine modern architecture and competitive pricing to create the industry’s best energy storage and hybrid controls,” Fractal EMS CEO Daniel Crotzer said, adding that the integration of the two companies’ products “will contribute significantly to the industry’s efforts related to maximising safety and profitability of storage and hybrid systems”.
