At a time when home energy storage systems are popping onto the market every other day – a UK based firm has launched a product that stands out from the rest.
Oxis Energy’s 3kWh lithium-sulfur battery is at the heart of the latest battery energy storage system (BESS) for the residential market – Project Helios.
Made of 150 10ah cells, the battery can be used with PV panels, and through an invertor, store energy at a rated capacity of 3,000W.
Lithium-sulfur chemistry allows the battery to run at -30 to 80 degrees centigrade and be completely discharged while maintaining its 2000 cycle lifetime.
The firm hopes to licence the technology as lithium-sulfur makes inroads into the lithium-ion market – especially the electric vehicle industry.
The batteries have been designed so existing lithium-ion plants can be easily adapted to manufacture lithium-sulfer.
The battery should be available to the market by Q1 of 2016 at a predicted cost of around $249 per kWh (at a production rate of 100,000) in 2016, dropping to $196 in 2018 (at a production rate of one million).
Mark Crittenden, Oxis’s business development manager, suggested the key markets for the product would be south-east Asia, South Africa and South America.
