The way the industry talks about batteries needs to change, SolarEdge founder Lior Handelsman has said, arguing that knowing the number of cycles of charge and discharge a battery can perform in its lifetime is essentially “meaningless”. The company’s frequently outspoken VP of marketing and product strategy spoke with Energy-Storage.news at SolarEdge’s main R&D centre […]
Sungrow adds to +700 ESS system deliveries with 30MW Germany project
Sungrow, best known as a maker of solar inverters, has been awarded a contract to supply complete energy storage systems (ESS) to a 30MW / 30MWh project in Germany, split across three sites. The company is by various metrics a market leader in the global supply of solar inverters for larger-scale applications. In a recent […]
Navigant: ‘Risk of slower than expected price declines’ for lithium batteries but prices will fall
Lithium-ion battery cell costs could fall to as little as US$76 per kWh by 2030, from around US$139 per kWh this year, according to new analysis by Navigant Research. The Colorado-headquartered firm issued its latest market data on ‘Advanced battery and energy storage pricing trends’ this week. Author Alex Eller, a senior research analyst, told […]
Large-scale battery prevents Dutch wind farm’s power from being wasted
A 10MW battery energy storage system (BESS), which will allow a 24MW wind farm to keep generating energy even in times of oversupply, officially went into service today near Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The old stereotype of Holland as a country of windmills holds particularly true in this northerly region, where the old kind of windmills have been […]
Saft Launches Xcelion 56V Li-ion Battery
Saft has recently launched a new product in the Xcelion line, the Xcelion 56V lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, offering customers a variant on the proven technology behind the Xcelion 6T for applications requiring higher voltage. As the third Xcelion product, the Xcelion 56V builds upon the existing technology behind the Xcelion 6T, launched in 2015, and […]
Smart future for renewables: ees Europe lands in Germany this week
An annual highlight of the already-packed renewable energy industry calendar, Intersolar Europe brings tens of thousands of people to Munich each year to do business in the glorious Bavarian sunshine. Yet even there the sun occasionally fails to do its own business, which is a vaguely humorous way of saying that, by logical extension, the […]
The importance of thermal management of stationary lithium-ion energy storage enclosures
An increase in battery energy storage system (BESS) deployments reveal the importance of successful cooling design. Unique challenges of lithium-ion battery systems require careful design. The low prescribed battery operating temperature (20° to 25°C), requires a refrigeration cooling system rather than direct ambient air cooling. The narrow allowable temperature variation, no more than 5°C between […]
Explosions Threatening Lithium-Ion’s Edge in a Battery Race
Battery exploded at plant in Arizona; two others were shut Arizona utility regulator calls for ‘thorough investigation’ Another lithium-ion battery has exploded, this time at an energy-storage complex in the U.S. At least 21 fires had already occurred at battery projects in South Korea, according to BloombergNEF. But this latest one, erupting on Friday at a facility […]
Arizona firefighters’ injuries keep safety top of storage agenda
A fire at a large-scale battery energy storage project late last week left four firefighters injured in Arizona, with two reported to be seriously injured, in an incident now under investigation. On Friday 19 April, firefighters were called to a fire at utility Arizona Public Service’s (APS) energy storage facility in Surprise, West Valley, Arizona. […]
When Lithium-ion became the new normal
In the last few years, lithium-ion batteries have achieved a much lower TCO than traditional lead acid batteries. Users are overcoming their conservatism and looking at the new technology Critical facilities need battery back-up and, until recently, the de facto standard was valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) batteries combined with uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), But […]