Latest Battery Energy Storage News - Global - May'21

Latest Battery Energy Storage News from around the World

1. All-solid-state battery: Murata Manufacturing will begin mass-producing all-solid-state batteries in the months ahead and supply the ultrasafe, next-generation power packs to makers of earphones and other wearables
2. Battery Gigafactories: Battery production is currently scaled up rapidly. We are moving from battery plants with a capacity of 4-10 gigawatt-hours (GWh) to maybe 40 and even 80 GWh. Producing many more batteries in each plant automatically results in a much higher efficiency.
3. Advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES): The first of Hydrostor’s two plants is set to open in 2026, and the company says its system will last for about 50 years—making it a lot longer-lived than almost any energy storage of its kind.
4. World’s largest solar hybrid project at an off-grid mine: German developer Juwi through its South African subsidiary has signed an agreement with Sukari Gold Mines for 36MW solar array and a 7.5MW battery energy storage system
5. South Korean trio in EV battery: In Jan-Mar 2021, LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and SK Innovation together produced a total of 47.8 GWh of battery capacity globally into newly sold EVs, an increase of 127 percent year-over-year.
6. GW Battery storage projects: Talen Energy Corporation has announced that it is developing a one gigawatt stand-alone battery storage projects ( 20-300 MW ) across its U.S. footprint.
7. Challengers to Li-ion batteries: Redox flow, high temperature sodium systems, Sodium ion, Zinc batteries and hydrogen
8. Vanadium Redox Flow battery: AUD 20.3 million ($15.9 million) Yadlamalka Energy – vanadium flow battery near Hawker, South Australia, is now moving toward completion.
9. Vanadium battery manufacturing: Toronto based vanadium battery maker, Largo Resources Ltd. has announced the development of its clean energy divisions by securing the plant site for its 1.4 GWh battery manufacturing facility and product development center in Massachusetts, U.S.
10. Li-O2 battery: Researchers at the University of Liverpool, in partnership with Johnson Matthey PLC and Loughborough University, are working on developing stable and practical electrolytes for lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) batteries
11. Storing Energy in stones: The technology, which stores electrical energy as heat in stones, is called GridScale, and could become a cheap and efficient alternative to storing power from solar and wind in lithium-based batteries.
12. Cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries: LFP batteries are typically less expensive to produce, but they also are less energy-dense than the nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cells used by Tesla in its electric vehicles. Tesla is planning to shift to LFP batteries.
13. Battery swapping: Is it a good or a bad idea ?
14. US Power Market: S&P Global Ratings expects total capital investment in North American battery storage to exceed $3 billion annually
15. Different types of energy storage: A range of solutions is needed. Energy storage systems can range from fast responsive options for near real-time and daily management of the networks to longer duration options for the unpredictable week to week variations and more predictable seasonal variations in supply and demand.
16. Biden’s climate plan: Rystad Energy has modeled what it considers the most achievable recipe to meet the tough targets set, a formula that includes generous reductions in fossil fuel use and spending $2.5 trillion in renewable energy projects this decade, a transition that will be facilitated by a coming reduction in battery costs.
17. Graphene aluminium-ion batteries can charge up to 60 times faster than lithium-ion batteries that are currently considered the best solution to electric mobility
18. Location of storage compared to source: Separating generation from storage usually delivers higher value, but it may also lead to higher costs, the report said. That’s because a project developer will need multiple sites and grid interconnections, and may lose construction cost savings. A rough estimate found about $15/MWh in cost savings could be realized from using a single location.
19. Paper Batteries: Nippon Paper Industries Co. is targeting new breakthroughs in the use of cellulose nanofibers — materials produced by refining wood pulp to the size of hundredths of a micron or smaller with the aim of creating supercapacitors that could store and release energy with vastly improved performance, and less environmental impact, than existing batteries.
20. Pipeline of over 16GW of projects in UK: 80% of the capacity is being built in the south of the UK. All sites are stand-alone, except for one 25MW project co-located with solar and wind. Four of these sites are large (49.9MW) stand-alone projects. One site will provide power for ultra-rapid electric vehicle charging. Nine of these sites will consist of lithium-ion batteries, while one will be a hybrid lithium ion-vanadium flow battery.
21. Royal Dutch Shell in batteries: Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) state said on Tuesday it has awarded a A$3.2 billion ($2.5 billion) contract to Royal Dutch Shell and renewable energy firm Edify to build a 100-megawatt battery to boost its energy supplies.
22. Cement based batteries: The concept, published in the scientific journal Buildings, includes a cement-based mixture with small amounts of short carbon fibers added to increase the conductivity and flexural toughness. The researchers then included metal-coated carbon fiber mesh in the cement-based mixture. In this mesh they picked iron and zinc as anodes, and nickel-based oxides as cathodes. The conductivity of cement-based electrolytes was modified by adding short carbon fibers.
23. Intelligent management of distributed energy resources (DERs): Smarter Grid Solutions and AVANGRID Inc. subsidiary Rochester Gas & Electric (RG&E) conducted a pilot project that simulated using reactive power dispatch from DERs to manage voltage and reactive power, with the goal of delivering power to customers in the most efficient way.