Battery Power - May/June 2013 - (Page 26)

Industry News Boeing Provides Details on 787 Battery Improvements Enstorage Goes Live with A 50 KW, Grid Connected HBr Flow Battery EnStorage, Inc., a developer of large scale electricity storage solutions, has produced the first ever grid connected HydrogenBromine (HBr) flow battery. The 50 KW battery was connected at the company’s test site in southern Israel and provides up to 100 KWh of energy. “This is a major milestone and a step forward towards larger capacity products,” says Dr. Arnon Blum, president of EnStorage, Inc. “With the 50 KW system we have refined our ability to manage multiple battery stacks, which is key to providing a modular and cost effective storage system for our customers.” EnStorage, Inc. grew out of a need to provide utilities and large-scale industrial clients a cost effective and reliable way to store energy. The company has scaled from a one watt lab proof of concept single cell system, to the recently operational multistack full system. During this period, the system’s components have been put through extensive testing that proved stable operations over 10,000 cycles. EnStorage flow batteries utilize HBr and H2 as storage chemicals. Abundance of these materials reduces the chemical cost by 95 percent compared to other batteries, making it an affordable flow battery. Moreover, the battery’s proprietary conversion stacks has demonstrated more than three times the power densities compared to other batteries, making it smaller and lower in cost. “We believe that by making energy storage simple and affordable we can tackle the major issues facing the energy sector,” said Dr. Blum “EnStorage batteries can firm up renewable energy by eliminating intermittency, align energy availability with demand for load leveling and peak shaving, defer transmission and distribution upgrades, and provide instant congestion relief, solving immediate grid constraints.” Following the recent success of the 50 KW unit, EnStorage is now moving forward with the next milestone of a 150 KW, six hours of storage, commercial unit. 26 Battery Power • May/June 2013 Boeing has released a comprehensive set of improvements that will add several layers of additional safety features to the lithium-ion batteries on 787 commercial jetliners are in production and could be ready for initial installation within the next few weeks. New enclosures for 787 batteries also are being built and will be installed in airplanes in the weeks ahead. These improvements, which continue to undergo extensive certification testing, will allow operators to resume commercial flights with their 787s as soon as testing is complete and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other international regulators grant their final approval. The improvements include enhanced production and operating processes, improved battery design features and a new battery enclosure. “As soon as our testing is complete and we obtain regulatory approvals, we will be positioned to help our customers implement these changes and begin the process of getting their 787s back in the air,” said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Ray Conner. “Passengers can be assured that we have completed a thorough review of the battery system and made numerous improvements that we believe will make it a safer, more reliable battery system.” Battery system changes include changes to the battery itself, the battery charging unit and the battery installation. The enhancements to the battery system address causal factors identified by the Boeing technical team as possible causes of battery failure. The technical team’s findings also were verified by an independent group of lithium-ion battery experts from a number of industries, universities and national laboratories. The first layer of improvements is taking place during the manufacture of the batteries in Japan. Boeing teamed with Thales, the provider of the integrated power conversion system, and battery maker GS Yuasa to develop and institute enhanced production standards and tests to further reduce any possibility for variation in the production of the individual cells as well as the overall battery. Four new or revised tests have been added to screen cell production, which now includes 10 distinct tests. Each cell will go through more rigorous testing in the month following its manufacture including a 14-day test during which readings of discharge rates are being taken every hour. This new procedure started in early February and the first cells through the process are already complete. There are more than a dozen production acceptance tests that must be completed for each battery. Boeing, Thales and GS Yuasa have also decided to narrow the acceptable level of charge for the battery, both by lowering the highest charge allowed and raising the lower level allowed for discharge. Two pieces of equipment in the battery system, the battery monitoring unit and the charger are being redesigned to the narrower definition. The battery charger will also be adapted to soften the charging cycle to put less stress on the battery during charging. To better insulate each of the cells in the battery from one another and from the battery box, two kinds of insulation will www.BatteryPowerOnline.com http://www.BatteryPowerOnline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Battery Power - May/June 2013

Polaris Battery Labs and Carestream Tollcoating Form Alliance
Intelligent Enumerating Battery Charger Provides Safe and Fast Charge for Mobile Equipment
Shippers of Lithium Batteries and Equipment Experience Delays as New Air Transport Requirements Take Effect
A New Method for Maintaining the Charge of VRLA Batteries in Telecommunications Standby Systems
Battery Power 2013 Conference Preview
Batteries
ICs & Semiconductors
Charging & Testing
Components & Materials
Industry News
Research & Development
Marketplace

Battery Power - May/June 2013