Tag: Salt battery

The case for decentralised power proven after storm power outages

Posted on by Linda

Windy winter weather tends to bring trees down on power lines, cutting off your power supply as many people in Victoria have discovered recently. During the storm that crossed Victoria on 13th February 2024 over 500,000 people lost power and a week later many people in Gippsland and the Dandenong’s are still without power and some have been told it may be some time before their power is restored.

One of the main advantages of decentralised power supplies is that you are not so reliant on things that are happening in the main power grid and can keep a power supply when other areas no longer have one.

There are many flow-on effects when the power grid fails, other than the lack of electricity to power your house or business that may not be immediately obvious if you haven’t experienced extended grid failures before.

When there is no power for many people that also means no water as pumps no longer work.

Now we live in a mainly cashless society when there is no power there is no money flow as ATM’s and electronic transactions are no longer possible. In our area, nearly all the shops had to close for this reason as they couldn’t do any transactions.

In our area also, as there was no power the local petrol station couldn’t operate which meant there was no fuel available for the generators that many people were surviving on, even if they had had the cash to make payments.

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Recycling costs to be added to purchase cost of renewable energy storage batteries – new Australian legislation coming.

Posted on by Linda

When looking at the cost of a battery system, either domestically or commercially or as an electric vehicle it is important to look at “total cost of ownership” of TCO.

This means not only considering the initial cost of the battery but;
the costs of all the components of a battery system that are needed for an installation including inverters, MPPT’s, communications etc.,
the length of time to install a complete system,
The running costs associated with the system, including maintenance,
The expected lifetime of the battery installation
End of life disposal costs.

Up until now, in Australia, end of life costs for batteries have not been considered. This is becoming increasingly problematic for lithium-ion batteries. Multiple lithium-ion chemistries need to have multiple processes for dismantling, recycling and recovery processing, meaning there is not a standard recycling process that can be put in place.

In fact, lithium phosphate batteries (LFP), which are a safer lithium-ion battery technology, due to it being less likely to catch fire, actually have less value when recycling, meaning LFP batteries have a higher upfront cost but will also have a higher recycling cost, although they are inherently safer than Li-NMC batteries.

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Protect yourself and prepare for power outages in coming bushfire season

Posted on by Linda

As the current summer season approaches in Australia, we are receiving more warnings of a possibly severe bushfire season. With memories of the disasters of 2019 – 2020 many people still remember being without power for days and weeks due to power lines being brought down and the dangers of reconnecting the power grid.

This threat of bushfire is becoming an increasing and more serious and long-lasting reality every year, both in Australia and overseas.

Power supply companies are turning off power earlier, particularly in areas with above ground powerlines, when there is a threat of bushfires, to prevent their infrastructure causing more fires.

Particularly in rural areas, loss of power also affects access to water, as electric water pumps no longer work. This can be devasting to livestock as well as humans and often means there is no longer access to water to fight fires.

With the interconnectedness of our current power supply this also means that a problem in one area can affect power supply in multiple other areas that may have not been affected by the original bushfire.

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SoNick – the Cradle to Grave certified battery

Posted on by Linda

A crucial part of our new energy transition is the usage of batteries to store energy, either as backup power for when the grid goes down or to reduce energy costs, to stabilize the grid or in EV’s. This transition will involve trade-offs and by adhering to ESG principles companies can make sure their governance covers factors that make sure that the net result of this transition is positive from the environment and social angles.

Many battery manufacturing companies claim their batteries will be good for the environment, however they fail many of the ESG markers.

One way to ensure batteries or indeed any other product will be good for the environment overall is to make sure that all parts of a products life from a cradle to grave or life cycle assessment perspective are taken into account.

This includes taking into account;

  • Raw Material Extraction
  • Manufacturing
  • Internal and external production processes
  • Transportation
  • Life usage
  • End-of-Life disposal
  • System Boundary to ensure all relevant stages of the lifecycle are included
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Issues with electrical wiring when retrofitting a battery energy storage system

Posted on by Linda

Most people that are looking at installing an energy storage system (battery and battery inverter) don’t realise that every installation is different and there is no one size fits all. Installations are very dependent on whether there is already solar PV in place and the current electrical wiring situation at the premises.

When you decide to connect a battery energy storage system to your already installed solar panels there are things that need to be considered that may not become apparent until the actual installation is to take place. These may make installing the battery system much more difficult, costly and time consuming but actually has nothing to do with the actual battery system itself.

When a house is built an electrician will have wired the house and hopefully the wiring meets current electrical standards at the time. However, electrical standards change over time and older houses may not have electrical wiring that meets current standards. Also, particularly with older houses wiring may become damaged or wear out over time.

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Domestic Case Study using SoNick batteries – SA

Posted on by Linda

This domestic installation in rural South Australia was designed to run as a grid minimisation installation. Although the grid remains connected it is rarely used to power the house, although excess power is exported to take advantage of the feed in tariff available.

Before the battery installation this household had a 5 kW solar PV system installed with a Fronius solar inverter.

The battery installation was done in stages as requirements changed.

The original battery installation had one 9.6 kWh SoNick battery with 2 Victron 3 KVa Multigrid inverters and a Victron colour controller for communication.

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MIGROS gets the largest salt battery storage facility in Switzerland

Posted on by Linda

It’s great to see the newest installation of the #SoNick batteries in Switzerland by Innovenergy.

This installation is a 540 kWh salt battery storage system and now stands in the basement of MIGROS Schlieren/ZH. The molten salt batteries are 620V SoNick batteries supplied by FZSoNick and inverters by Indrivetec.

The SoNick batteries are charged with a large 806 KW solar PV system.

The purpose of the large-scale project is to save energy costs by optimising self-consumption. The other benefit is to maximise peak shaving which ensures the supermarket doesn’t have a lot of intermittent high energy draws which would increase energy bills substantially.

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Recyclable batteries that do not require maintenance – FZSonick

Posted on by Linda

A chat with Giovanni Zola, General Manager of FZSonick SA of Stabio: the only company in the world that manufactures and markets accumulators (batteries) with the innovative sodium-chloride technology. The same have various fields of application. Let’s find out which ones.

FZSONICK was born from the historical passion of the Dolcetta family for the world of energy which, since the early 2000s, began to take an interest in green batteries. In 2010, following the agreement signed with the Swiss company Mes-Dea, manufacturer of the same type of batteries known as “Zebra”, the current company was born that markets accumulators with the innovative Nickel Sodium Chloride technology commonly also called “Salt Batteries”. For the moment FZSONICK is the only company in the world to produce batteries with this technology. The company is present in Stabio, Switzerland, with a production plant and a research center; in Italy (in the province of Vicenza), it has a sales office as well as in North America (in Elgin, Illinois) for worldwide distribution. With its product lines, FZSONICK currently serves 3 reference markets:

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Battery Drawdown Capabilities

Posted on by Linda

 

Energy storage batteries come in a variety of different sizes and weights and each have different characteristics.  Here is a comparison of some different battery technologies currently available in Australia with an indication of the amount of power that can be drawn down.

You can see from this image that size is not necessarily a good indication of the power that is available to be used from a battery. Some batteries have much better energy density than others.

Another thing to consider is how much power you can actually draw from the battery at any point in time. Our SoNick battery can draw 150 amps for 4 hours continuously but some other batteries are very limited in the amount of power that can be used, maybe only with enough to boil a kettle and little more. Continue reading “Battery Drawdown Capabilities” →

Comparing battery technologies

Posted on by Linda

Until recently lead acid batteries have been the major player in the energy storage industry, particularly for off grid installations but they have serious limitations in terms of requiring customer maintenance and of course they are made from toxic materials.

Recently, Tesla’s lithium ion batteries have received a lot of attention due to their advertised low price and excellent marketing, however the lithium ion batteries are now receiving attention due to their fire risk on the release of embodied energy. Lithium ion batteries have a smaller operating range than most other batteries and won’t operate efficiently above 35 – 40°C. Also, lithium is a toxic material and is in limited supply and at this stage can’t be recycled effectively.

There are some new technologies coming onto the market, such as Redflow’s zinc bromide, Aquion’s sodium ion salt water batteries, improved lead acid and many variations of lithium battery. These each have advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of performance and size.
Depth of Discharge (DOD)

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