Introduction: Catherine von Berg, CEO of California Battery Company, discussed why she thinks lithium iron phosphate will be the core chemical in the future.
US analyst Wood Mackenzie estimated last week that by 2030, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) will replace lithium manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) as the dominant stationary energy storage chemical. Although this is an ambitious prediction on its own, Simpliphi is looking to promote this transition more quickly.
Simpliphi CEO Catherine Von Burg said: There is a very critical factor that is also affecting the industry, which may be difficult to quantify or understand. This is related to the ongoing hazards: fires, explosions, etc. continue to occur due to the NMC, cobalt-based lithium ion chemical substances. "
Von Burg believes that the dangerous position of cobalt in battery chemistry is not only recently discovered. In the past ten years, people have taken measures to reduce the use and potential damage of cobalt. In addition to the dangers associated with cobalt as a metal, the way the industry obtains cobalt is usually not ideal.
The owner of the California-based energy storage company said: "The fact is that the earliest innovations in lithium ion revolved around cobalt oxide. With the development of the industry, entering the 2011/12 year, (manufacturers started) adding manganese and nickel And other metals to help offset or mitigate the fundamental risks posed by cobalt."
As for the development of the chemical revolution faster than expected, Simpliphi reported that despite the impact of the epidemic, its sales have increased by 30% year-on-year by 2020. The company attributes this fact to customers wanting safety and Poisonous resilience and safety backup power supply. There are also some sizable customers on the list. Simpliphi announced this year a battery energy storage project with utility companies AEP and Pepco.
AEP and Southwest Electric Power Company established a demonstration of a cobalt-free, smart energy storage + solar system. The demonstration uses Simpliphi 3.8 kWh battery, inverter and Heila controller as battery and energy management system. These resources are controlled by Heila Edge and then aggregated into a distributed intelligent network, which can be used by any central controller.
In the prediction of accelerating the battery revolution, Von Burg showed her company’s latest product, a 3.8 kWh amplifier battery, which features a proprietary management system that calculates and converts indicators to algorithms, protection, monitoring, and reporting. Control, certification and balance performance.
CEO said: "When we enter the market, each of our batteries has a BMS (Battery Management System), and the interface is based on the voltage curve." In other words, this is the intelligent management of internal batteries to optimize performance. As the market develops and engages in utility projects, we need to have more connectivity and intelligence implanted in BMS, so that our batteries can go beyond the inverter voltage curve and set point charge controller with digital information and interconnection Equipment, for example, micro-smart grid" site controller.
At the same time, the CEO said: "The BMS of this amplifier battery is something we have been studying for nearly a year. The battery is automatically synchronized. It is not necessary to tell us whether the battery is No. 1 or No. 100. There is an inverter charging on site. The controller, it has been pre-programmed to speak the language of the inverter and can be synchronized."
Post time: Sep-16-2020