Toshiba to supply Lithium-titanate battery for 2MW energy storage system project in UK; 1MWh SCiB
24 June 2014
Toshiba Corporation will supply the battery for the United Kingdom’s first 2MW scale lithium-titanate battery based Energy Storage System (ESS) to support grid management. The company’s 1MWh SCiB battery will be installed in a primary substation in central England in September.
Large-scale ESS are seen as a versatile solution in managing electricity supply. Installed in wind and photovoltaic generation systems, ESS can help to overcome intermittent output and frequency fluctuations, as well as performing peak power buffering, and when connected to the grid they can support grid stability and reinforcement. This role in grid management will be investigated in the UK, in the Grid Connected Energy Storage Research Demonstrator project, led by the University of Sheffield, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), with support from both industrial and academic partners.
The ESS will be connected to the 11kV grid at Western Power Distribution’s Willenhall primary substation, near Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. When the project starts operation in November this year, it will allow testing at realistic levels, and allow assessment of both the technical and economic potential of ESS in the grid.
Toshiba’s SCiB lithium-titanate-based secondary battery is distinguished by its long-life and performance: fast charging and discharging in a wide range of temperature conditions; capability to withstand over 10,000 charge-discharge cycles; and high level reliability and operational safety, particularly in terms of low risk of fire, a danger associated with other lithium-ion batteries.
Toshiba is promoting battery-based ESS globally as a support for stable power networks, supplying several projects in Japan and around the world, and has already received orders for commercial systems in Italy and Japan, where it has supplied batteries for a 40MW ESS, among the world’s largest.
I wonder if they can project what the calendar life of these batteries will be cause 10,000 cycles at 1 cycle per day amounts to over 27 years. There seems to be a lot of potential uses for these batteries if the price is right.
Posted by: Calgarygary | 24 June 2014 at 08:12 AM
Toshiba's SCiB long lasting batteries are well suited for large energy fixed storage. A few dozen orders like this one could lower to mass production price.
How would those SCiBs performed in large pack (300+ kWh) for city e-buses?
Posted by: HarveyD | 24 June 2014 at 11:14 AM
Harvey:
From memory the SCiB have a great cycle life, good power density but only okay energy density. Characteristics better suited to HEV rather than rather than BEV applications though they are used in the Mitsubishi MiEV.
The 2MW and 1MWh scaling gives a nominal cycle time of 1 hour and so life of a bit over 1 year. Overly simplistic and hopefully overly pessimistic. Wonder if they deliberately unbalance the modules so they can measure the trade off between depth of discharge and life time.
Posted by: DavidJ | 24 June 2014 at 05:15 PM
The basic chemistry of "SCiB" already exists in an urban bus application. Altairnano provides the Lithium Titanate battery for Proterra. As DavidJ correctly points out, it does not have sufficient energy density for the type of usage you describe. A 300kWh version would weigh over 4000kg.
However a much smaller version (54 to 72 kWh, the last I knew) fits the Proterra energy strategy very well, charging from 10 to 90% in about 10 minutes. In an urban bus this can be made to work within a typical route schedule.
As for grid storage, maybe it would work beautifully but it is currently WAY too costly.
Posted by: Herman | 24 June 2014 at 07:17 PM