Battery system integrators must navigate a broad array of technologies and varying market drivers when putting systems together. Andy Colthorpe speaks to Powin Energy and Sungrow about the engineering challenges involved in building lithium-ion battery storage.
This article first appeared in Volume 23 of Solar Media’s quarterly journal, PV Tech Power, in ‘Storage & Smart Power’, the section of the journal contributed by Energy-Storage.news.
In the previous edition of PV Tech Power, we spoke to four leading developers of solar-plus-storage and standalone energy storage projects based in North America about what it takes to get projects over the line, their experiences in the field – and what sort of technologies are making their efforts possible.
This time around, we’ve spoken in depth with two of the system integrator/ manufacturers that supply that segment of the energy storage market as well as projects in other key markets including the UK, mainland Europe and Australia.
Danny Lu, vice president at Oregon, USA-headquartered Powin Energy and Dr Zhuang Cai, R&D director at Hefei, China-headquartered Sungrow, share their insights on what it means to build lithium-ion battery storage systems at scale.
A 21st Century industry
Powin Energy is a pure-play battery energy storage system (BESS) manufacturer and system integrator, having pivoted away from its role as a developer in 2017, while Sungrow will be better known to readers as one of the world’s biggest solar inverter makers.
“Sungrow has focused on power electronics for more than 20 years. Our president (Can Renxian) was a university professor and saw a large potential for renewable energy,” Cai says.
Sungrow has to date supplied more than 100GW of PV inverters. Since first announcing a joint venture (JV) with South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI to create and supply energy storage systems in China with an investment of around US$20 million, the storage JV has accelerated its activities rapidly. By 2016, when it went global, investment in the JV stood at a reported US$170 million. According to Sungrow the JV has already installed more than 900 battery systems, at various scales and for varying applications. The company’s background in solar was instrumental in allowing for the move into energy storage, Cai says.
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