Superfast charging LFP batteries for EVs

A 10 minute charge providing a driving range of 400km and a full charge delivering 700km?

That would satisfy most EV drivers and eliminate range anxiety – and it is claimed to be coming with Chinese battery manufacturing company CATL’s new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery named ‘Shenxing’.

CATL reports leveraging the super-electronic network cathode technology and fully nano-crystallized LFP cathode material to create a super-electronic network, which facilitates the extraction of lithium ions and the rapid response to charging signals.

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Its latest second-generation fast ion ring technology is used to modify the properties of graphite surface, which increases intercalation channels and shortens the intercalation distance for lithium ions, creating an expressway for current conduction.

A new superconducting electrolyte formula, which effectively reduces the viscosity of the electrolyte, resulting in improved conductivity, also has been developed.

Other improvements include reduced resistance of lithium-ion movement, while cell temperature control technology ensures that cells heat up to the optimal operating temperature range rapidly, allowing a 0-80% charge in just 30 minutes in temperature as low as -10°C.

CATL anticipates that mass production of Shenxing will be achieved before year-end and the first vehicles with the battery will be available on the market in the first quarter of next year.

Improving Bitcoin mining efficiency

With Bitcoin mining notoriously energy intensive and miners rushing to adopt greener and more sustainable operations, another alternative, which is being pursued by the London-based Quantum Blockchain Technologies, is to improve the efficiency of the mining itself and thus in turn its energy consumption.

The company’s ‘Method A’, unlike the standard approach of running as many hashes as possible within the available period, decides at the beginning of each block hashing whether to hash using a traditional search or a spaced confined search, with testing demonstrating an approximately 10% in mining speed.

But its ‘Method B’, for which a patent application was recently filed, is even more efficient, based on partial pre-computation on upcoming blocks prior to the current one being closed and guiding the search by deciding where the most promising winning hashes are likely to be found.

With this approach, the number of logic gates on the chip is reduced and the processing of a large number of hashes is avoided to obtain the results in less time.

In this case, there should be a 2.6x improvement in the ability to find a winning hash, compared to standard search, while saving up to 4.3% of energy.

However, its implementation requires a new architecture and the design of a new mining chip.

Setting sail with ‘Windwings’

Mitsubishi Corporation’s ‘Pyxis Ocean’, a 229m long bulk carrier vessel on charter to the global food giant Cargill, has become the first to be fitted with a novel wind propulsion system that could be key for the decarbonisation of shipping.

The two ‘Windwings’, which were designed by BAR Technologies in the EU Horizon 2020 supported initiative, are large wing sails measuring up to 37,5m in height with a 10m wide central component and front and rear 5m wide flaps that can be fitted to the deck of cargo ships, both new and as a retrofit, to harness the power of the wind.

The windwings can rotate and also pivot, right down to deck level, to allow for the differing wind angles and speeds.

With this wind assist, the windwings are expected to deliver average fuel savings of up to 30%.

The ‘Pyxis Ocean’ is currently on its maiden voyage with the windwings from Shanghai, where they were fitted, to Paranagua in Brazil with their performance being closely monitored to further improve their design and operation.

Hundreds of wings are planned to be built over the next few years and BAR Technologies is also researching new builds with improved hydrodynamic hull forms.

This was one of the key messages from Alan Winde, Premier of the Western Cape province of South Africa, who hosted an Energy Digicon under the theme What role will Artificial Intelligence play in the future of energy generation?

Keynote speaker Martin Svensson, co-director of AI Sweden, said looking ahead, AI will impose greater challenges on the energy sector.

Citing the conversion of the automotive sector to a fully electric-based one, Svensson said the question is how to build the new system by harnessing AI.

Svensson said that in the future, individuals would also be able to produce their own energy, largely from solar power and AI applications would be integrated into this.

“Imagine a future where we are our own energy producers and what we produce we will be able to trade and have a system that optimises that from a financial perspective.” 

Forging a new energy system

Referencing think-tank RethinkX’s research – Rethinking Energy 2020-2030 – which says that we are on “the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century”, Svensson said the current system will be disrupted by a new one.

RethinkX says that with most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies whose costs and capabilities have been improving on consistent and predictable trajectories.

These are solar photovoltaic power, wind power and lithium-ion battery energy storage. 

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“Our analysis shows that 100% clean electricity from the combination of solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) is both physically possible and economically affordable across the entire continental United States as well as the overwhelming majority of other populated regions of the world by 2030,” said RethinkX.

“Adoption of SWB is growing exponentially worldwide and disruption is now inevitable because by 2030 they will offer the cheapest electricity option for most regions. Coal, gas, and nuclear power assets will become stranded during the 2020s, and no new investment in these technologies is rational from this point forward.”

Energy systems run completely on renewable energy sources

Svensson said the new energy system will look completely different to the current one. He said, for a province like the Western Cape, the future system could be one without loadshedding. This would be achieved through a system that would be 100% solar, wind and battery based. 

“This is not driven by the current issues you face or by climate activism, but economical forces. That’s why I’m confident this will happen. There is a lot of positive opportunities.”

Svensson said solar and wind are already the cheapest new-generation options. It also costs less than existing coal, gas and nuclear power plants. The cost of SWB systems will fall another 70% by 2030, making disruption “inevitable”.

In terms of the Western Cape, Svensson said the region could have a “future of energy abundance.”

Based on modelling from California in the US, which has a similar solar and wind profile to the Western Cape, Svensson said in the next 10 years, the province could generate 14GW of solar, 1.7GW of wind and 80GWh of energy storage.

“This ‘super power’ will be enough to electrify the entire transportation sector and more,” said Svensson. He said the province had already started on this journey.

“This is within reach… The opportunity is here to accelerate this. This will solve the current situation,” said Svensson.

In terms of scepticism around AI, Svensson said it was important to learn and understand AI to help mitigate any possible risks it may pose. 

“We need to learn how to use it, but we do need to learn how to manage risks over time.”

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AI to play a huge role in the energy space

Special Advisor to the Premier on Energy, Alwie Lester, said AI will start to play a lot more of a critical role in the energy space.

“With the advent of AI, you could have a dynamic system that is managed by information and data that’s readily available and processed quite quickly,” Lester said.

“Typically, you could have a system operator that responds to things very differently based on AI as opposed to the conventional way we are responding to the system at the moment.”

“In the general energy space, I think we will start to see AI play a lot more of a critical role because you’re sitting with millions and millions of terabytes of information, especially the energy information but also economic and consumer information,” Lester added.

“And if you have the ability to sort of link these, your decisions around what energy at what point and at what price becomes rather easier when you have a system that can do this for you. The opportunity for AI to play a bigger role, particularly in the energy space is huge.

“We need to encourage the industry to look at this more holistically and not just try and solve one problem with it.

“But also look at it as part of the industry going forward.” 

Originally published by Yunus Kemp on ESI.

The project taking place at NTU’s testbed on the Semakau landfill comprises solar photovoltaic panels and a wind turbine that are interconnected in a microgrid.

The research led by NTU’s Energy Research Institute is investigating how different renewable sources can be integrated with energy storage systems including batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.

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The aim is to generate new knowledge that can help engineers design smarter and more resilient energy grids for urban populations of the future, with flexibility for deployment in islanded grids and off-grid communities.

“Essentially, this is a demonstration of how an offshore renewable grid will look like in many other countries in the region, where renewables are being integrated with conventional power grids to supplement their power supply, or in remote communities, where the grid has to be a standalone,” says the Institute’s executive director, Professor Madhavi Srinivasan.

The research forms part of the Renewable Energy Integration Demonstrator – Singapore (REIDS), one of the largest in southeast Asia, which is situated on the island of Semakau to the south of Singapore.

The facility, which provides power for the islanded, is intended to provide a real-world testing environment for new technologies, with waivers for the standard regulatory conditions.

Grid test scenarios available include dynamic system optimisation, smart grid clusters network management, energy trading, interoperability and cybersecurity.

Research, development and demonstration of clean energies is common across countries and regions. However, with the limited availability of metrics, only a partial view of the outputs and outcomes are likely.

In a new study, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has aimed to address this issue, gathering data on the costs and performance of selected renewable technologies as well as on patents and standards with the goal to provide a quantitative measure of innovation progress.

Applied in a case study on offshore wind technologies, more than 50 indicators are identified in three ‘impact categories’ that innovation support seeks to deliver, i.e. the ecosystem, technology progress and the market.

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Innovation ecosystem indicators encompass the state of knowledge development, codification and dissemination and the state of awareness and collaboration among the various actors, public and private and national and international.

Technology progress is reflected in cost reduction, diversity of project characteristics and technology performance improvements, while the market formation is determined by the scale of technology deployment and the commercialisation of the technology.

Renewables snapshot

Key insights from the study on the current status of selected renewables are as follows:

Solar PV: The dramatic decline of solar PV costs in the last decade have been driven down significantly by technology innovation, which has also helped to enhance the performance of products. After a decline of 85% in the levelised cost of electricity between 2010 and 2020, the technology continues to adapt into new markets.

Concentrating solar power: Despite its modest deployment the competitiveness of CSP has improved consistently over the last decade. The LCOE of newly commissioned CSP plants fell by 68% between 2010 and 2020, as installed costs fell, O&M costs declined and capacity factors increased.

Behind the meter batteries: Policy support for behind-the-meter battery storage has played an important role in increasing the scale of main markets, though significant potential for growth remains. The increased research activity and a growing manufacturing landscape have meant that energy, power and safety characteristics of Li-ion battery energy storage have improved with time.

Onshore wind: With higher hub heights and larger swept areas there was an almost one-third increase in the global weighted-average capacity factor of onshore wind, from just over 27% in 2010 to 36% in 2020. Driven by cost reductions and technology improvements, the global weighted-average LCOE of onshore wind fell 56% between 2010 and 2020.

Offshore wind: With higher hub heights and swept blade areas, offshore wind capacity factors have increased over time due to technology improvements in the turbine, wind farm layout and connections and due to improved O&M practices. Between 2010 and 2020, the global weighted-average LCOE of offshore wind fell 48%.

Hydrogen electrolysers: Alkaline electrolysers showed a 60% increase between 2005 and 2020 while that for proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers was even larger. The R&D effort has seen the likely efficiency of alkaline electrolysers improve by at least 10%, although the efficiency of PEM systems has likely not improved to the same extent.

Large-scale solar thermal: Europe has supported the development of solar heat for industrial process projects over the last decade, albeit in small numbers, with a more than two-thirds decline in installed costs from 2010 to 2019.

Patents and standards

The patents and standards metrics are applied to two emerging technologies, offshore wind and green hydrogen electrolysers.

For offshore wind, invention activity shows two peaks – one around 2012, followed by a decline, and the second in 2018, which due to data lags, may be continuing. European countries are leading in terms of high value inventions and have an international approach to patenting.

For green hydrogen, and water electrolysis in particular, the rapid growth of inventions after 2012 is in line with the widespread implementation of national energy plans based on the diffusion of green hydrogen technology.

Both technologies have benefitted from existing standards on wind and hydrogen, which may have contributed to their deployment.

For offshore wind technology, the first standard published in 2004 applies to the design of both onshore and offshore wind turbines. Since then, 32 standards have been published. As differences between onshore and offshore wind turbines are limited, offshore wind turbines have largely benefitted from onshore wind standards, which has helped the market to mature faster.

Hydrogen standards have followed a similar pathway. Currently, 126 standards on hydrogen and fuel cells cover production, transport, storage and use, along with cross-cutting issues including safety. The only standard for the production of green hydrogen was published in 2019, which is currently being revised and will be separated into several standards covering different aspects in more detail.

The study was supported by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

The study found that the cost declines of the various technologies varied, with concentrated solar power the largest with a 16% decline.

Onshore wind fell by 13%, offshore wind by 9% and utility-scale solar PV by 7%.

These cost declines continue the downward trend of the past decade – for example, that of utility scale solar PV by 85% and onshore wind by 56% since 2010 – driven by improving technologies, economies of scale, competitive supply chains and improving developer experience.

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With costs at these low levels, renewables also are increasingly undercutting existing coal’s operational costs. IRENA says it estimates that 800GW of existing coal-fired capacity now has operating costs higher than new utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind.

These low costs give both developed and developing countries a strong business case to power past coal in pursuit of a net zero economy, according to IRENA. For example, just 2020’s new renewable project additions should save emerging economies up to US$156 billion over their lifespan with two-thirds from onshore wind, followed by hydropower and solar PV.

“We are far beyond the tipping point of coal,” said IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera.

“Today, renewables are the cheapest source of power. Renewables present countries tied to coal with an economically attractive phase-out agenda that ensures they meet growing energy demand, while saving costs, adding jobs, boosting growth and meeting climate ambition.”

IRENA estimates the 534GW of renewable capacity added in emerging countries since 2010 at lower costs than the cheapest coal option are reducing electricity costs by around US$32 billion every year.

Moreover, retiring the over 800GW of existing higher cost coal power would reduce power generation costs by up to US$32.3 billion annually. They also would avoid around 3Gt of CO2 per year, which corresponds to 9% of global energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020 or 20% of the emissions reduction needed by 2030 for IRENA’s 1.5^oC climate pathway.

Renewables outlook

IRENA’s outlook to 2022 sees global renewable power costs falling further, with onshore wind becoming 20-27% lower than the cheapest new coal-fired generation option. Further, three-quarters of all new solar PV projects commissioned over the next two years that have been competitively procured through auctions and tenders will have an award price lower than new coal power.

The organisation says the trend confirms that low cost renewables are not only the backbone of the electricity system, but that they will also enable electrification in end-uses like transport, buildings and industry.

Notably also it opens the way for the production of low cost renewable hydrogen at scale, lowering the two key barriers of the input energy production costs and the electrolyser costs with their high load factor requirement.

The plan, which has been communicated to the Danish utility regulator Forsyningstilsynet, is focussed on areas of the country with wind or solar generation that is excess to local consumption and cannot be absorbed into the grid.

The proposal follows the completion of a pilot on the island of Lolland, the country’s fourth largest island located in the Baltic Sea. Lolland already is able to generate more electricity than is required locally and with the prospect of more renewable generation, congestion in the lines to the rest of the country is a growing concern.

The biggest challenge arises when both the wind and solar production is at a maximum, which occurs infrequently during a relatively small number of hours in a year.

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“Here it is a socio-economically good solution to shut down some of the local production and a local market creates competition to deliver the cheapest bids to do that,” says Thomas Dalgas Fechtenburg, energy engineer in Energinet’s Flexibility and System Services department.

“The alternative would be for Energinet to order electricity producers to switch off without competition to deliver a cheapest bid.”

During the pilot, which also involved the Danish energy association Dansk Energi, network company Cerius, Centrica and Copenhagen utility HOFOR, the local flexibility market was activated 11 times in six months, in most cases for a down-regulation around 50MW.

The largest down-regulation was equivalent to about 10% of the island’s total production during the hour in question, corresponding to 200% of the Lolland municipality’s average consumption.

Individual wind turbines were geotagged so each could submit bids for down-regulation in response to a request from Energinet, from which the TSO then selected the cheapest.

The pilot also highlighted the need for close cooperation with Cerius as the network operator to avoid any drop in the power quality.

Fechtenburg says that paying for local down-regulation can in some situations be cheaper than expanding the electricity grid. However, he adds that such local flexibility markets should generally be seen as a temporary operating solution until the power grid is expanded to be able accommodate all the renewable energy generation.

As it is usually possible to install a new solar park more quickly than expanding the electricity grid, it makes sense to extend the Lolland project to other parts of the country where local electricity production is growing rapidly, Energinet says.

In addition to Lolland, these include the next door island of Falster, west and north Jutland and South Zealand.

For its part following the pilot, Dansk Energi is working on a market design for flexibility in the distribution networks, which is expected to be completed before the end of 2021.

The contract covers 5.9MW of flexibility from four sites, one of wind and three of hydropower on the Isle of Skye to support the Scottish network operator’s system.

This is the first contract to be awarded to a wind generator by SSEN. The four contracts combined provide the operator with an additional 17.7MW of available services.

The flexibility has been secured using Constraint Managed Zone (CMZ) contracts. CMZs are an alternative to traditional generation in the British market, being used when the main electricity distribution network is temporarily disconnected, for example during a prolonged power cut or period of network maintenance.

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Rather than rely on diesel generators or back-up power stations, the use of flexible services including renewables and energy storage is being encouraged to maintain the supply.

The use of the 27.6MW Ben Aketil Wind Farm on Skye will be a demonstrator of the potential for flexible wind energy to support the network.

“We’re delighted to have signed a CMZ contract with SSEN for our Ben Aketil Wind Farm which will ensure local people have a constant supply of clean, renewable energy when other supplies fail,” says Richard Dibley, managing director of Falck Renewables Wind UK, which owns and operates the facility.

CMZ contracts are becoming an increasingly important component in the flexibility toolbox of GB network operators. SSEN’s first was awarded in October 2019 for 6MW of services from hydro on the Isle of Islay and further contracts are anticipated in the coming months.

“These new CMZ contracts allow for renewable and low carbon energy sources to play a larger role in the management and flexibility of the network,” says Alex Howison, “Our 2019 CMZ contracts on Islay helped avoid approximately 2,450 tonnes of CO2 emissions.”

SSEN is one of the four GB network operators collaborating on a common platform for flexibility procurement.

A 5OMW solar energy plant and 21.3 MW wind energy facility will help Enel to contribute to Spain’s renewables goal of producing 74% of its total energy from clean resources by 2030.

The 50MW solar plant being developed in Andalusia is Enel’s second solar facility in the town of Carmona, Seville province.

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The project involves an investment of €28.2m ($30.5m), will be completed by the end of 2020, will comprise 128,520 solar nodules and will produce 100 GWh of energy per annum.

Enel Green Power will build 9 switching stations, an electric substation and an underground cable network spanning 4.5 kilometres to operate the system and enable the transmission and distribution of energy from the plant.

The project is set to avoid the emissions of approximately 67,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

The €20m ($21.6m) 21.3MW wind farm is being constructed in Los Gigantes, will comprise six wind turbines, generate 62 GWh of energy per year and avoid the emission of approximately 41,000 tons of carbon in Spain.

Click here for more information about the projects.

This story first appeared on our sister site,
Power Engineering International.

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