Although lithium-ion is currently the market leading battery technology in energy storage, this status cannot be guaranteed in perpetuity. Three leading figures from the lithium-ion battery industry give Andy Colthorpe their views on how the technology can continue to prosper.
Wärtsilä Corporation launched its newest modular energy storage system solution at a ‘critical municipal infrastructure’ project performing grid services and reducing peak demand for a city in Virginia, US.
UL has created a database on its website that allows energy storage system manufacturers to list the results of their UL 9540A thermal runaway fire propagation tests.
Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry batteries’ perceived safety advantage over their ‘rival’ nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) may be overstated and claims to that effect stand in the way of “transparent discussion”, Energy-Storage.news has heard.
“Preventing a service event from becoming a catastrophic one,” is how Cadenza Innovation CEO Christina Lampe-Önnerud describes the way her company’s lithium-ion ‘Supercell’ battery architecture reacts to thermal runaway.
More up-to-date training could have prevented severe injuries sustained by four firefighters in the April 2019 fire and explosion at battery storage facility in Arizona, according to a report into the incident from UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute (UL FSRI).
An April 2019 fire and subsequent explosion which caused injuries to firefighters and destruction of a grid-scale battery storage system in Arizona likely started with an internal cell defect that caused the “preventable” incident, analysis has found.
Powin Energy VP Danny Lu has said that attaining what is considered the highest standard in safety means that projects using the company’s Stack 225 battery storage system products can be executed faster and pack more capacity onto a single site.
“The bottom line is that this is a good business decision. We will get back our money in eight to 10 years at the current price of power. As the price of energy goes up, we’ll pay it back even quicker.”
