A small-scale renewable energy sodium-ion battery has been installed for the first time on UK shores by English energy storage firm Wattstor.
Wattstor, who specialise in the design and supply of energy storage systems, was asked to put together a bespoke stationary energy storage system for the 25kWh battery, which was manufactured by US Company Aquion.
Due to the chemistry still being in its infancy, in terms of real world applications, Michael Danes, Wattstor Director said they were approached after the customer failed to find a company that could build a system to incorporate the new battery chemistry.
Danes told BBB: “We were approached because the customer had bought a battery but couldn’t find a solution to integrate it with his renewable energy generation, so we worked with them to design an energy storage system to use with the chemistry.
“We had to liaise with Aquion to understand how the battery performed, look at charge and discharge rates and get a overall profile of the battery’s configuration to identify an appropriate invertor/charger and then design the switchgear to give the whole system the functionality the customer required.”
He added: “The battery unit is quite large, and so they are only really suitable for large domestic or small commercial and agricultural applications.”
Aquion’s sodium-ion batteries are 100% recyclable, have a 100% depth of discharge, a wide operating temperature and contains no heavy metals, are non-flammable and non-acidic.
The installation was completed in Upperlands, County Derry, Northern Ireland.
