POWER December 2015 - 15

" The sweet spot for this technology
from a price standpoint is 6 to 10 hours of
runtime, " he said. " You can make one that
will run one hour, and you can make one
that will run 24 hours, " but the middle
range is where the primary market is likely
to be. Vieau said one advantage of flow
batteries is the long lifetime-a system
can operate reliably without significant
power loss for 20 years.
With so many companies developing
flow batteries, differentiation is becoming
an issue. Portland, Ore.-based Energy Storage
Systems (ESS) believes its advantage
is in its low-cost, non-toxic, iron-based
electrolyte. The company recently closed
$3.2 million in financing that will help
enhance its production capacity. ESS Vice
President of Business Development Bill
Sprouli told POWER its first deployment, as
part of a microgrid in Northern California,
would be coming online in early November.
ESS is focusing on longer-duration applications,
he said.
Lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries are seeing
technological improvements as well. Ojai,
Calif.-based Simpliphi Power has introduced
a li-ion battery that does away with two of
the biggest challenges confronting the technology:
its environmental impact and its risk
of thermal runaway-a phenomenon that
results when a failing li-ion battery cell generates
enough heat to cause other nearby
cells to fail and thereby generate more heat
in a rapidly expanding cycle. Batteries that
suffer thermal runaway can generate intense
heat and even start fires.
Simpliphi CEO Catherine Von Burg explained
to POWER that its batteries use
a lithium-ferro-phosphate chemistry that
offers the same performance as more conventional
li-ion batteries, but without the
use of cobalt. The company uses a proprietary
battery architecture and management
system that delivers 98% efficiency
yet prevents thermal runaway. Simpliphi's
batteries are also expected to last substantially
longer than conventional li-ion
batteries, around 15 to 20 years, Von Burg
said (Figure 4).
Finally, the humble lead-acid battery may
be poised for a comeback thanks to new
technologies that have addressed its traditional
disadvantages of poor performance at
a partial state of charge (PSOC). Advanced
lead-acid battery company Ecoult said its
hybrid battery/ultracapacitor design can
maintain 90% to 95% efficiency at a PSOC
at a lower cost than li-ion batteries.
Going forward, University of California,
San Diego Associate Professor of Nanoengineering
Shirley Meng told POWER that
flow batteries and sodium-ion batteries are
December 2015 | POWER
likely to be strong future competitors on a
cost-per-kilowatt-hour basis. Meng noted
that because grid-scale battery applications
normally have little in the way of space constraints,
the larger footprint of these technologies
compared to li-ion is not as much
of a consideration as it would be in residential
and commercial applications.
Still, li-ion technology has a lot of
potential left to exploit. Meng said she's
confident that increases of at least 20% to
30% in energy density are feasible for the
next generation of li-ion batteries. " The
energy density for lithium-ion batteries at
the molecular level we can at least double, "
she said.
-Thomas W. Overton, associate editor
Biomass-Fed Organic
Rankine Cycle Units Make
It Big
One of the world's largest biomass-fed organic
rankine cycle (ORC) plants is getting
ready to begin operations. Italian firm
Turboden is preparing to put online an
8-MW power unit in Athens, Maine, that
will help Maine Woods Pellet Co. power a
pellet production facility. The project is
expected to start up by March 2016.
According to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
(MHI), which has put 255 similar plants
online in 32 countries, ORC is a technology
for the combined generation of heat and
electric power (CHP) from various renewable
sources. Because it offers solutions in
the range of 300 kW to 15 MW, it is particularly
suitable for distributed generation. It
can use a range of biomass fuels, including
wood, dried sewage sludge, green cuttings,
and other organic waste material.
Turboden, which was in 2009 acquired
by UTC Pratt & Whitney Power Systems-a
company that was, in turn, acquired by MHI
in 2013-says that ORC offers significant
advantages over steam turbines. One of
the key points in the success of ORC technology
is the capability to adapt to load
variation easily and quickly. ORC units also
show smaller enthalpy drops compared to
traditional steam rankine cycle units, they
do not need to superheat, and there is no
risk of blade erosion. Operation and maintenance
costs, too, are lower because ORC
units use a non-oxidizing working fluid and
are completely automatic.
The Maine ORC system uses wood residues
from debarking and chipping activities.
The turbogenerator uses the heat
carrier-in this case, thermal oil-to
New challenges - we are
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CIRCLE 9 ON READER SERVICE CARD
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(right) Trevis Nall - Draftsman,
(left) Jason Schumacher - Draftsman
Kalenborn Abresist
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POWER December 2015

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