LG Chem and Eguana partner on Li-ion residential energy storage system for North America
23 April 2015
Eguana Technologies, a supplier of power control and conversion solutions for distributed energy storage systems and Li-ion manufacturer LG Chem have combined their technologies under a multi-year agreement to deliver a certified, fully integrated energy storage system (ESS) Eguana calls “AC Battery”. The modular system is targeted as a residential product, but also has the potential to be aggregated for small commercial and industrial (C&I) end-users.
Basic product capacity is 6.4 kWh. Eguana designed the package around LG Chem’s battery modules and supplies its Bi-Direx inverter and controls subassembly. The low voltage design enables high-capacity batteries to operate in lower power ratings needed for decentralized systems (i.e. residential rooftop solar). Eguana has also worked with Germany-based Sonnenbatterie on a similar ESS solution.
The Eguana power control system manages system power flow and handles the core power conversion functions—AC→DC and DC→AC—as well as connectivity with power grid. It also hosts the consumer gateway and battery management system.
The AC Battery is pre-integrated and fully certified, and requires only a grid connection and a dispatch signal to provide a fully functional and durable energy storage installation to the consumer. The AC Battery provides flexibility for system aggregators which want to deploy it as part of new solar storage installations or as a retrofit to solar PV installations already in place.
The AC Battery can be paired with any of the Energy Storage Management Systems currently coming to market for a broad range of applications.
The AC Battery can be used to store electricity from solar and use it during evening hours, or can be used by fleet aggregators to provide utility grid management services including voltage control, frequency regulation, demand response and load balancing.
The engineering teams at LG Chem and Eguana have been working closely to integrate controls for the AC Battery which is expected to be available for commercial shipping early this summer.
Eguana Technologies is the market leading supplier for grid tied storage inverters in Europe with more than 4,000 units shipped within the last 18 months. Their technology leadership and product platform is proven with thousands of units deployed in the global market. This is why we chose Eguana as our system partner. We are going to strengthen the partnership with Eguana and put our best effort to stand up as the Nº1 battery maker in the North American ESS market.
—Sunghoon Jang, Senior Vice President for LG Chem
LG Chem supplies the Li-ion cells for a number of automotive applications, with customers including Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai, Renault, Audi, Chevrolet, Kia, Daimler and GM.
Tesla is now expected to announce a grid-scale battery pack as well as a home battery to come from its GigaFactory capacity.
A household in areas with a large delta between peak and off peak could potentially use this or Tesla's unit to save a lot of money. In southern California, the gap is $0.34 per kW. Assuming that the unit state of charge was kept between 20-80%, that would give you about 4 kW per day that you could offset from peak to off-peak rates.
4 kWh x $0.34 x 365 = $496.4 per year. They don't mention the price, but if it's in the neighborhood of $3k, six years later you start earning ~$500 per year every year. Could be a nice little annuity from your UPS.
Posted by: electric-car-insider.com | 23 April 2015 at 08:36 AM