Storage & Smart Power

By now, everyone’s heard of Northvolt, the Sweden-headquartered startup founded by former Tesla exec Peter Carlsson, building 150GWh of lithium-ion battery factories in Europe. But while investments and off-take deals from the automotive industry have rightly been a major focus of attention, its stationary energy storage division Northvolt Systems has a story to tell too. By Emad Zand, president, Northvolt Systems.

Insurance is a cornerstone of de-risking financing and investment into energy storage. Data and analytics-driven decision making is not only for the operation and optimisation of batteries, it’s also vital for peace of mind and cementing the long-term success of the industry, Charley Grimston, co-founder of specialist insurer Altelium writes.

Battery energy storage systems are placed in increasingly demanding market conditions, providing a wide range of applications. Christoph Birkl, Damien Frost and Adrien Bizeray of Brill Power discuss how to build a battery management system (BMS) that ensures long lifetimes, versatility and availability.

Sometimes called ‘community batteries,’ energy storage systems are being installed at neighbourhood level in Australia. Experts from the Australian National University explain how this type of battery storage can benefit a very wide range of stakeholders.

With over 25 years’ experience as a firefighter and now part of a group that specialises in battery storage safety, Paul Rogers at Energy Safety Response Group knows all about fire safety from both sides of the fence. He tells Andy Colthorpe about some of the pressing issues that need attention.

Crucial to clean power generation, battery energy storage systems need advanced fire protection. Steve Kenny, general manager for Advanced Fire Detection at Honeywell Building Technologies talks about why the detection of off-gases is an important line of defence.

The phrase ‘game changer’ is used often, sometimes in hope rather than expectation. Lithium batteries have definitely changed the game for the energy transition, but require smart technologies and strategies to optimise them — which can be equally important — writes Sebastian Becker of TWAICE, a predictive analytics software provider.

In the US, there is a growing trend for battery storage systems to be directly paired with onsite wind and solar generation, creating hybrid resources. Will Gorman from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looks at when and where this configuration makes sense — and why sometimes it doesn’t.

Andy Colthorpe speaks to Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, one of the original inventors of the vanadium redox flow battery, about the origins of the technology and its progression.

Commissioned at the start of this year, the Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System in California is a landmark project for the industry in having competed against natural gas to provide peaking capacity for the grid. Andy Colthorpe finds out the project’s backstory from Fluence’s Ray Hohenstein and AES’ Mark Miller.