South African firm Elektron Energy has launched a lead-acid battery-leasing initiative targeting the country’s commercial and industrial sectors.
The system can be paid for monthly and used to generate revenue by offering back-up storage services, as well as delivering peak-load shifting services for customers generating power with solar panels.
The company will initially target the business, school and industrial sectors before moving into the traditional stationary and motive lead-acid battery (LAB) markets.
The system uses patent-pending technologies on license from UK firm Mega Amps.
The first is the semi-permanent lead-acid Perma-bat technology, which has removable anodes/cathodes for utility-scale applications that require a project life of more than 10 years.
The second is the firm’s carbon-additive-free Eqlyte enhanced flooded battery that can complete up to four, full C/3 discharge and 3-hour recharge cycles within a 24-hour period. The industrial cells resemble conventional traction cells with tubular and flat-plate positives.
When designing the appropriate battery renting/leasing financial model the levelised cost of electricity (LCoE) of enhanced lead-acid batteries offered the best value, Neill Human, director of Elektron Energy South Africa, told BEST Battery Briefing.
“Especially considering the availability of LABs in large volumes for deployment, especially where we ourselves own the life cycle risk, the residual value of LABs also adds great end-of-life value in such financial models,” he added.
“Many of these applications see infrequent cycles and even then they are at varying ranges of depth of discharge, this works for rental models when you understand LAB’s and how to best manage them and again especially if you have an enhanced performance and life cycle expectancy.”
The solutions are scalable to multi-MW in modular units, especially the Perma-bat technology, Human said.
The company chose the Eqlyte technology because of its rapid recharge capabilities and the need to recharge the cells within 3-4-hours in some applications without excessive gassing.
Human said: “We have completed tests on representative cells at the South African Bureau of Standards that demonstrates these batteries can be consecutively discharged and recharged within 3-hours maintaining a coulombic efficiency of 98%. This is ground breaking for industrial type lead-acid batteries.”
