Latest Battery Energy Storage News Global Jun'21

Latest Battery Energy Storage News from around the World

1. Energy Storage as a Service: Honeywell has launched its own battery energy storage system (BESS) Platform, and also energy storage-as-a-service offerings to the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector through a new partnership with sustainable infrastructure solutions group Alturus.
2. World’s largest ESS: LG Energy Solution announced that it has supplied batteries to 1.2 gigawatt-hour (GWh) ESS facility in operations in Moss Landing, California. The facility managed by U.S. power generation company Vistra, is the world’s single-largest ESS capable of powering 225,000 households during peak hours.
3. Recurrent Energy: With a pipeline of around 11 GWh of battery storage projects across the United States, of which 2.3 GWh are in late-stage development, Recurrent Energy has been actively developing both PV solar plus energy storage and standalone storage projects since 2014.
4. Increasing Lithium battery energy density: “Most of the efforts are on higher NMCs, layered nickel/manganese/cobalt oxide cathodes. Industry started out at one-third nickel. Some of the cells are now 80% nickel. The goal would get to 90% or higher, so that we get more energy out without charging to higher voltage.” “In 019, the small ones anyway, from companies like LG and Panasonic, were between 200-250 Wh/kg. We’re now getting 400 Wh/kg. That’s not commercial yet, but this shows we can go to higher energy densities.” – Stanley Whittingham Nobel Prize’ 2019
5. Electric Planes: Rolls-Royce is planning an £80 million investment over the next decade into the development of energy storage systems (ESS) that will enable electric aircraft to fly over 100 miles (160 kilometers) on a single charge.
6. Hybrid Supercapacitors: This energy-storage device is uses a unique construction in which the single assembly is both a supercapacitor and a Li-ion battery at the same time. Taiyo Yuden, Eaton, and Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (now part of Tesla) supply this.
7. Oil Storage to Battery Storage: Oil storage company Royal Vopak NV is partnering with battery startup Elestor BV to develop a battery that uses two tanks of hydrogen and dissolved bromine to store energy, both of which are cheap and plentiful compared to the rare metals lithium ion cells rely on. Because it is a flow battery, capacity can be boosted by simply increasing the size of the vessels, making it ideal for mass storage of electricity.
8. “Global energy internet” : A March report from Breakthrough Energy, a group funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, offered scenarios for transcontinental HVDC lines to unite the US’s three, still-separate grids. Now the idea is to connect China and US via  ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission lines.
9. 80 GWh factory: CATL says it has plans to construct a new battery cell manufacturing facility near the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai that will have an annual production capacity of 80 GWh. CATL is reportedly now the world’s largest battery manufacturer.
10. Battery Minerals: Tesla expects to spend more than $1 billion per annum for the next few years on battery raw materials from Australia, mainly lithium and nickel.
11. Increasing Battery Cycle: 4,000 cycles (battery cycle which is defined as one charge and discharge) equates to a life of 10.95 years. The 6,000 cycles from NeoVolta translates to 16.5 years of useful life. NeoVolta’s NV24 add-on battery, which can be used to expand the NV14’s high storage capacity, has also been upgraded to 6,000 cycles.
12. South Africa: Scatec has been awarded Preferred Bidder status for 540MW of solar projects with 225MW / 1,140MWh of battery storage through a government tender in South Africa.
13. Australia: Battery storage has seen a 300% year-on-year increase in the first quarter of 2021, on the other hand there has been a dramatic decline in investments in large-scale renewable projects.
14. Battery Recycling: A new method, involving ultrasonic waves which may solve a critical challenge: how to separate out valuable materials from electrodes so that the materials can be fully recovered from batteries at the end of their life. Current recycling methods for lithium-ion battery recycling typically feed end-of-life batteries into a shredder or high-temperature reactor. A complex set of physical and chemical processes are subsequently needed to produce useable materials. These recycling routes are energy intensive and inefficient.