Energy storage consultancy Clean Horizon has signed a deal to license battery performance data from France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA).
In conjunction with INES (Institut National de l’Énergie Solaire), CEA has conducted a five-year study into electrochemical energy storage.
In so doing, INES-CEA has accumulated “extremely vast” field knowledge and modelling of how different batteries and different battery chemistries age in a variety of real-life storage applications, such as frequency regulation, over long periods.
On 16 October Clean Horizon Consulting entered in an agreement with CEA to license the data as part of a service to energy storage project developers to choose the correct battery system.
Clean Horizon CEO Michael Salomon told BEST: “We are licensing their IP to provide a service to project developers who, for example, wish to integrate storage with solar PV.
“Our customers will tell us what they want to do with their project and we will size their battery for any energy storage application.”
Salomon said the database is not merely using “old” data but harnessing a continuously moving database as more research is conducted.
Clean Horizon’s CEO sees such data as vital to assure energy storage investors about the performance of battery systems.
“You need to be sure of how the battery is going to age,” he said. “The key in financing energy storage projects is to be able to independently audit how to size the system and how it will perform so that financiers can trust project developers, and invest.”
At today’s prices a 13-year life lithium-ion battery for frequency regulation application would have a “just about acceptable” IRR (internal rate of return) for investors of 8%, but a nine-year life battery would offer and IRR of only 4%.
“It not perfect, but for the past five years CEA has tested each battery available on the market, so they have peer-reviewed, laboratory-verified models for how cells and batteries systems age.”
Ultimately, said Salomon, Clean Horizon hopes to offer a financial service.
“The energy storage market will really take off when there are independent third-party auditors of battery technology so that bankers can be sure of performance and lifetime.
“This expertise will lead battery suppliers to offer “real” long-term warranties and thus lower financing and overall system costs.”
Clean Horizon is targeting the USA and Europe. The first customer will be in the USA, he said.
Salomon will announce more details at the EESAT (Electrical Energy Storage Applications and Technologies) conference in San Diego on October 21-23.