Gridtential Energy plan to produce 24V and 48V versions of lead batteries using its patented Silicon Joule technology throughout next year, the company told BEST Battery Briefing.
The batteries, which replace the lead-grid and cell connecting lead-strap material with a treated silicon wafer, will be made in increasing volumes during the year to provide further ‘manufacturability valuation’.
Last month the California firm met with Crown Battery at its manufacturing facility in Fremont, Ohio, to complete its largest production run of Silicon Joule™ bipolar batteries to date— one handmade unit every five minutes, although Gridential would not disclose the total production quantity.
Gridtential’s treated silicon wafers are produced through a supply chain. The company anticipates the filling, forming and initial cycling of the batteries will take about two weeks, and plans to sequence these processes in batches. The batteries will be shipped to its investment partners and customers with evaluation agreements.
US equipment supplier Wirtz Manufacturing prepared the active material— positive and negative paste— and substituted a synthetic mesh material to hold the paste in plate form.
The company told BBB the main reasons they had engaged lead-battery equipment companies early in the process was so they could design tools that would be ready for the higher volume commercialisation phase that meet industry standards and customer expectations.
Doug Wilson from Gridential said: “The batteries are helping targeted end users, existing licensees and new manufacturers evaluating Silicon Joule technology to further validate the potential of the technology for their chosen applications and markets.
“We prefer not to publish commercialisation dates by applications for our partners, yet we can confirm we believe they are a lot closer to commercialisation than one year ago.
“And along with our partners we are being challenged to accelerate both development and demonstration of larger sizes, higher voltages and plans for higher speed assembly and automation.”
John Wirtz II, president of Wirtz Manufacturing, said: “The active material was manufactured on one of our advanced technology pasting systems in our development center, providing evidence that by getting creative, we have the opportunity to use current lead-battery infrastructure to support even the most advanced lead-based technologies.”
Sovema Group, TBS Engineering and MAC Engineering were also in attendance and participated during last month’s event.
