Batteries International — issue 93

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Regulating the regulatorsLove ‘em or leave ‘em, we can’t

ship batteries without ‘em

Shades of battery veteranExploring the lives of Boris

Monahov, Allan Cooper

ALABC the roadmap Challenges and opportunities for the lead battery business

Energy storage, why bother?Global implications fromthe latest UK TSO report

Bringing the industry togetherwww.batteriesinternational.com

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ALABC the roadmaphallenges and opportunities

or the lead battery business

nergy storage, why bother?lobal implications from

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THE LAST W

ORD: TALES

FROM THE DARK SIDE

Issue 93 Fall 2014

Dilemmas of direction as critical power embraces latest technology advances

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CONTENTS

www.batteriesinternational.com Batteries International • Fall 2014 • 1

ALABC maps the road ahead, converting theory into strat 16

Saft’s John Searle: fondly missed driver of European snergy storage scene 8

Boris Monahov: profile of the ALABC prgram manager 21

l

COVER STORY: THE CHANGING FACE OF UPS 49

The relentless pursuit of greater productivity and lower cost continues

to be the driving force behind making uninterruptible power in data

centres ever more sophisticated. It’s also leading to a rapidly growing

sophistication in its use that is providing the possibility of maximizing of

doing more than critical power. Most is still theory but others are trying

to convert ideas into something more bankable.

Effi ciency defi nes next generation of UPS systems 49

UPS and battery demand trends 56

The next big thing: UPS fi nds an extra purpose — challenges, opportunities 58

Big is beautiful too 64

EDITORIAL 4

It’s time to change the image of lead. But how?

PEOPLE NEWS 8

Sadly departed, John Searle, 1954-2014 • EnerSys reshuffles as Shaffer promoted

• Ovan becomes president of Navitas • Energizer names new job titles as battery

business spin-off proceeds • Ballard appoints former Solar Integrated president

MacEwen as new chief exec • A123 Systems makes Hurley new CTO • • EnerDel names

Michael Canada as chief executive officer • • International Lead Award given to Dick

Amistadi and Michael Mayer

NEWS 20

Exide Chapter 11 runs on but aims for resolution by spring • Advanced lead-carbon Axion

wins solar storage and frequency contract • Panasonic signs JV with Uno Minda to make

lead acid batteries in India • Cost of lithium ion batteries unlikely to fall below 200MWh-

300MWh • Imergy cuts costs of flow battery power to $300 per kWh • Hitachi Maxell

makes lithium ion cull • Energy storage to the fore as large scale electricity generation set

to fade, claims bank report to investors • Further moves afoot to shutdown Exide battery

recycling plant • Lead prices to fall near term with strengthening probable in 2015 • EPRI

tests integration of plug-in vehicles to utilities’ power needs

INDUSTRY VIEWPOINT: ALABC MAPS THE ROAD AHEAD 20

Tim Ellis, chairman of the ALABC and Boris Monahov, its program manager, outline their

plans for the lead acid battery research organization.

INTERVIEW: THE ENERGY ATTORNEY 25

David Robert, the former CEO of EnerDel talks about restructuring the firm and how new

business models could recharge the industry.

ANALYSIS 30

Unpicking the true cost of batteries on the grid. Surprising data from the UK’s National

Grid that should resonate worldwide with battery manufacturers and TSOs alike.

CONTENTS

2 • Batteries International • Fall 2014 www.batteriesinternational.com

OPINION 45

Terry Murphy from Hammond argues that the way ahead for the industry

is collaboration not competition

PRODUCT NEWS 46

EnerSys launches Ironclad range into Europe • New Vyon materials safeguard from

battery explosions • Maxwell reveals new supercap • Exide releases new range of stop-

start batteries • Dreamweaver International launches line of nanofiber separators for

supercapacitors • Mastervolt launches new marine battery

SPECIAL REPORT: PACKING AND TRANSPORT REGULATION 68

The tangled joys of compliance 68

It’s been a long time coming but the new ruling by the PHMSA will finally solve

some of the regulations that have plagued battery packaging and transportation.

Why compliant packaging matters 72

What the battery industry needs to know about HM-224 F 75

Bob Richard, a long-time US government expert discusses what the industry

needs to know to package and transport batteries safely.

How to manage the hazards of managing the hazardous 81

Interview with US firm CL Smith which has adapted their hazardous

materials business to packaging and shipping for batteries.

The long and sometimes heavy arm of the law 83

The basic rules for air shipment 86

An overview of the regulations for shipping lithium-based batteries by air and the latest

changes to the procedures.

CONFERENCE IN PRINT 93

Welding embraces new generation of techniques 94

EVENT REVIEWS & EVENT SECTION

Our comprehensive listing of the must-attend conferences and exhibitions (and others)

around the world • The thrills and spills of ELBC recalled • 6th China Battery Fair • The

Battery Show, Detroit

ADVERTISING DIRECTORY 120

BATTERY HEROES 121

In 2008 Allan Cooper was awarded the International Lead Medal for his exceptional

contributions to the lead industry in the fields of metallurgy, production, and battery

development, particularly in electric and hybrid electric vehicles. But the best is yet to come.

THE LAST WORD 126Are you me mate Mate (what’s in a name?) • Hole in one at the Battery Show

• ELBC and sporrans • Fine dining with Abertax in Edinburgh

• Romeo, Romeo wheerfore art thou and 2 feet tall too?

ELBC Edinburgh: heavy disguises couldn’t mask these eminences 126

Allan Cooper: still battling for better batteries in better cars 121

Meet the Energy Attorney! David Roberts, former head of EnerDel 25

The tangled joys of compliance with transport regulation and packaging 49

NT

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Have You Made the Connection?

EDITORIAL


Thomas Midgley Junior isn’t so well known now. But, until his death in 1944, he was reckoned to be one of the most brilliant men of his day.

Midgley’s fame rests on his two great contribu-tions to mankind — dichlorodifl uoromethane (better known to us as a CFC, the chemical that destroys the ozone layer) and tetra-ethyl-lead, the anti-knocking additive to petrol that was univer-sally accepted as poisonous some 50 years after its discovery.

To be fair, Midgley’s immediate contribution to the planet was, at fi rst, a benefi cent one.

The fi rst CFCs were a boon to air cooling systems and saved many lives. The alternatives, such as propane or chloromethane were toxic, explosive or highly fl ammable. Oddly enough in the 1920s and 30s every year people died at the hands of their fridges.

And tetra-ethyllead provided the automotive in-dustry the push that made the internal combustion engine the workhorse of the planet and the trou-bled dream of an entire nation.

But — 70 years after his death — with CFCs phased out and TEL only found in the poorest na-tions of the world, Midgley’s legacy lingers on.

And in a totally unexpected way.

By putting TEL into our cars, he put lead into the air. Or rather General Motors did (which to its shame knew early on that it was dangerous fol-loing cases of madness and hallucinations in its workforce).

Rather like the anti-smoking campaign, public awareness of TEL took a long time to build up.

The trigger for it becoming an issue came from an unexpected direction. Cheap paint and tim-

ber frame houses in the US. For the very poor in America, their cheap wood-built houses could be spruced up nicely with the judicious use of paint — whose principal pigment within it was lead ox-ide. And the mix of cheap wood and cheap paint?

The result: fl akes of peeling lead which entered people’s lungs.

The resulting US (and then later worldwide) leg-islation turned attention to fi nding lead anywhere and everywhere else.

So in the 1960s and early 1970s a seemingly powerful case for getting rid of the lead in petrol emerged. News that the high levels of lead in US and European inner city children caused by petrol fumes created a ripple effect — from the world of the tabloid to seats of government. In the event, legislation to enforce a ban of lead in petrol was inevitable.

At this point, Robert Merton’s Law of Unforeseen Consequences kicked in.

In the public mind by the end of the 1970s lead had now become as dangerous as, say, arsenic or strychnine. Probably even looking at the metal would make you blind or send you into fi ts.

The fact that it was not just fi t for purpose — and maybe the only thing that would easily and cheap-ly work within a car, or a UPS system — was left by the door neatly sitting next to the open-toed sandals.

Even congressmen and MPs are human and jump with the lemmings. The result? We now have a generation of misinformed politicians who, with admirable thoroughness, are trying to legislate lead out of existence.

The lead community have been fi ghting back for a generation and more. But with little impact on a

Time to change the image of lead

Mike Halls • [email protected]

EDITORIAL


media that doesn’t want to hear a good news story.

So, for example, arguments about the recyclability of lead continue to have little impact on a general public that believes recycling of, say, tins or wine bottles is worthwhile but not inherently interest-ing.

But the recycling story is an important one to remember — even if the arguments aren’t compel-ling. It shows a responsible,mature industry that can point with ample justifi cation to a defence that it’s core product is safe. And can be proven so.

The trouble is that changing public perceptions only seems to work best when sensationalism oc-curs.

In Europe, for example, a thoroughly worthwhile book ‘E’ is for Additives, written in 1987, persuad-ed an entire continent of people who didn’t read the book that an ‘E’ number (the European food code for food additives) was not just a bad thing but a terrible one. (Forgetting of course that E948, for example, is the code for oxygen or that herbs such as oregano would nowadays be coded as too dangerous to be assigned an ‘E’ number.)

Organizations such as the International Lead Association, EUROBAT, BCI and various others continue to try and fi ght back. But they have an enormous challenge on their hands. And, being respectable bodies rightly enough would not stoop to underhand media trickery.

Events such as this year’s ELBC are important meetings of the great and the good of the lead acid battery community to meet and discuss their

future. High on the agenda, once again, was look-ing at ways to promote a sensible conversation — outside the industry — of the merits and safety of lead.

“It’s hard to get political people, let alone ordinary ones, to understand what an inconsistent view they have on lead. They want to ban it from the European Union but still drive cars,” one battery veteran told Batteries International recently.

“They worry about infi nitesimal levels of lead in the blood while the battery itself powers the most remorseless killing machine on the planet.”

But there are sensational stories afoot which while they are not positive about lead, are distinctly dis-missive about lithium. The raising of recent fears of cabin fi res in passenger aircraft — caused by short-circuiting laptops and mobile phones — is a story that is about to run and run.

The Dreamliner scare of a year and a half ago might soon become a sideline given that some people are suggesting that there could be as many as one laptop fi re in a plane each month.

If that’s the case it’ll be another unexpected conse-quence of the kind poor Tom Midgley suffered.

In his instance, he was unlucky to the end — “the man who had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth’s history” according to one historian — met a sorry fate. Crippled by polio in his 50s he invented an elabo-rate system of pulleys to make himself mobile. He died from strangulation in his own network of strings.

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PEOPLE NEWS

It is with sadness that Batteries International has to report that John Searle, chairman of Saft’s management board, died suddenly of a heart attack on September 24. For the past decade John had been the charismatic and much respected face of SAFT. He was also one of the masterminds behind the successful management buy-out of the company from Alcatel in 2003 and responsible for the fi rm’s steady growth since then.

Alfons Westgeest, secretary general of EUROBAT, the Association of European Automotive and Industrial Battery Manufacturers, told Batteries International: “all our board members recognize his commitment to the company, his employees as well as EUROBAT where he served many years as vice president. His eloquence, insight and wit shown at board meetings, dinners and in chairing our forum will be very much missed by all.”

Yann Duchesne, president of the supervisory board, said: “John Searle transformed Saft and made it into an undisputed leader in its markets. He was both a visionary and a great industry leader. Throughout his career within the group, John constantly shared his passion, his professionalism, and his values with the teams at Saft.”

However, the tributes to John from his staff were more personal. “He was not just a decent man but a fair and kind man who retained both those qualities

while still energetically leading Saft through some diffi cult times,” said one senior manager.

Another said: “His French was fl uent. Easily enough to be persuasive — or amusing — in both languages but always with a strong, and to my ears charming, English accent.”

After graduating with an engineering degree from Cambridge University, John traded his technical abilities to making things happen. John joined SAFT in 1990 as a commercial director, fi rst in the UK and then later he steadily rose through the ranks as he moved to France.

In 1999 he was appointed head of the SBG division and in 2002 became in charge of SAFT group’s operational activities. He became president and chief executive offi ce of Saft in March 2005 and also chairman of the management board of Saft Groupe.

“Under his management, the group made signifi cant developments, notably becoming a listed company, accelerating its international expansion, and by successfully developing and deploying lithium-ion technology,” said the fi rm.

Perhaps his most successful moment was his role in the management buy-out of SAFT Batteries in 2003 when the Alcatel subsidiary was bought by private equity fi rm Doughty Hanson.

Andy Lynch, head of Schroders European Dynamic Growth Fund, later said that he had admired the way that SAFT had coped with the post-buy out environment. “Saft faced enormous challenges after fl oating. It had a contract for night goggles with the US military, which suddenly turned the taps off. Then the price of nickel for SAFT’s batteries went from $10,000 per tonne to $50,000 per tonne; Yet the management throughout delivered good results and gave investors clear guidance on the impact of the cost of the raw material changes.”

His successor is Bruno Dathis who has been chief fi nancial offi cer of the group since 2008. Dathis becomes interim chairman of the management board.

He leaves behind his wife of many years Jane, and two daughters.

He was just 60.

John Edward Searle 1954-2014

Bernes new Faradion chief executiveFor the record, Faradion the sodium-ion battery company appointed Lawrence Bernes as its new chief executive in June. Bernes was most recently the chief executive of Axeon, a European lithium-ion battery system company. He took the business from receivership to its sale to Johnson Matthey, the specialty chemicals company, in 2012.

Cadex Electronics appoints new COOFor the record, Cadex Electronics appointed Markus Pauli as chief operating offi cer in August. Pauli has 20 years of experience in managing international technology companies in the fi elds of electrical systems, medical equipment, telecommunication and fl eet management.

He was previously chief operations offi cer at Advanced Cyclotron Systems and he has also held senior positions with Digital Wireless, Coe Newnes/McGehee, Romaco AG and Alcatel.

New CEO at LAP

For the record, Uwe Bernhard Wache took over as chief executive of LAP Laser Applikationen in June. This follows the retirement of its previous head, Guido Jung.

“Wache is an internationally experienced manager with over 20 years of expertise in consulting as well as managing mid-tier enterprises,” the fi rm announced.


PEOPLE NEWS

Two lead acid battery vet-erans — Dick Amistadi and Michael Mayer — were honoured at the European Lead Battery Conference conference in September with the International Lead Award for a lifetime of ser-vice to the lead industry.

This was the fi rst time there were two winners for the award. Both Amistadi and Mayer are popular and well known members of the lead acid battery commu-nity.

Each year the award is presented to someone who has made a signifi cant con-tribution to science and practice in areas such as lead production and recy-cling, lead alloy develop-ment, or battery design and performance.

Dick Amistadi is the prin-cipal of Amistadi Associ-ates, a battery and materials consultancy fi rm and has spent more than 36 years in sales, marketing and strate-gic planning at Doe Run.

He was chairman of the Advanced Lead Acid Bat-tery Consortium from 1992 until 2005, where he was a passionate advocate of its work and continues to follow all types of battery development as it relates to hybrid and electric vehi-cles. Since 2012 he has been chairman and president of the Association of Battery

Recyclers in the US.Michael Mayer has

worked for the lead acid battery industry for most of his workilife. In 1988, he launched the European Lead Battery Conference which has grown from small beginnings to a regu-

lar attendance of the order of 700 delegates, together with 100 exhibitors. He spent many years with bat-tery companies in the UK and the US and joined the Lead Development Associa-tion (now the International Lead Association) in 1979.

He formed the Electric Boat Association in 1985.

Accepting the award Mayer said: I am very hap-py to accept this award and I would like to thank all of the good friends I have made in the industry over the years.

International Lead Award given to Dick Amistadi and Michael Mayer

EnerDel names Michael Canada as chief executive offi cer

Dick Amistadi (in the middle of left hand picture) and Michael Mayer were jointly honoured with the International Lead Award for a lifetime of service to the lead industry.

EnerDel, the lithium ion battery fi rm formally appointed Michael Canada as its chief executive offi cer in September. Canada joined as chief operating offi cer in January and has worked as interim CEO since April when David Roberts — see interview elsewhere in the magazine — stepped down. Canada has over 15 years’ experience in engineering, operations and project management and strategic planning across the automotive, aerospace and clean en-ergy industries, according to an EnerDel statement. He has held roles of increasing responsibility with global companies such as DaimlerChrysler, Goodrich Aerospace, Harman/Becker Automotive Systems and Praxair.

Before EnerDel, Canada was global vice president of engineering and operations and general manager of Altairnano. There he was involved in commercialization initiatives delivering multiple large-scale grid and micro-grid systems for renewable integration.

Canada launched expansion initiatives in Asia, establishing more than one mil-lion square feet of manufacturing space

to serve the transportation and stationary markets, said EnerDel.

At Praxair, he was in charge of the glob-al engineering group with project P&L responsibilities for 38 facilities worldwide. He oversaw $70 million of capital assets for an equipment fl eet serving aerospace, automotive, and industrial industries.

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PEOPLE NEWS

A123 Systems, the lithium-ion battery manufacturer, has appointed Patrick Hurley as its new chief technology of-fi cer. Hurley also becomes in charge of A123 Venture Technologies, the company’s research and development unit which focuses on a col-laborative business model for innovation in lithium-ion battery technology.

Hurley brings to A123 both academic and industry experience in transportation applications of advanced batteries, according to the company.

Hurley earned his doctor-ate in inorganic chemistry from Purdue University in Indiana and then did 2-1/2

years of post-doctoral re-search at the California Insti-tute of Technology. While at CalTech he focused on mul-tiple cleantech innovations including projects on energy storage materials.

Hurley left academia in 2006 and then worked at Air Products and Chemicals as a senior research chemist.

In 2011 he joined Johnson Controls as a senior strategic technology planner where he was responsible for the iden-tifi cation of new business op-portunities for energy stor-age systems. The following year he was made a director of research and development and xEV segment lead.

In 2013 he won two in-house Johnson Merit awards for micro-hybrid vehicle platform development team and for a lab project at the University of Wisconsin known as the Energy Ad-vancement Centre.

The centre provides an R&D environment in which scientists, students and fac-ulty have a dedicated space to conduct research, as well

as helping Johnson Controls’ exploration and develop-ment of new chemistry and technologies for energy stor-age. Later that year he won a Gold Edison Award for the same project.

Most recently he was exec-utive director of global core engineering in the power so-lutions division at Johnson Controls.

While at Johnson Con-trols, Hurley developed a solid network of relation-ships with academia and

government research organi-zations, says A123. The fi rm says his role as the industrial liaison for the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research helped him form collabora-tive relationships with the US Department of Energy.

“As A123 builds upon its R&D work in Massachu-setts under Hurley’s lead-ership, the company will continue to strengthen its standing as one of the in-dustry’s most accomplished researchers of battery tech-nology,” says A123.

Hurley will have to inte-grate the company’s battery development activities in Hangzhou, China. The de-velopment organization in China was originally part of the Wanxiang Group’s bat-tery investments before its acquisition of A123 Systems in early 2013. Through this initiative A123 says it is also further expanding the bat-tery chemistry alternatives in its global portfolio by com-plementing the established nanophosphate product family.

Randall MacEwen took over as chief executive and president of fuel cell fi rm, Ballard Power Systems, on October 6.

MacEwen has spent most of his career in and around clean energy — and particu-larly the solar sector — as well as an extensive experi-

ence in high-end corporate fi nance.

Before setting up his con-sultancy NextClean Tech in 2010, he spent fi ve years at Solar Integrated Technolo-gies, lastly, from December 2006, as president and chief executive. Solar Integrated is a manufacturer and in-

staller of commercial pho-tovoltaic systems.

MacEwen was made com-pany secretary and general counsel of the Los Angeles based fi rm in September 2005.

Before that he was execu-tive vice president corpo-rate development and gen-eral counsel of Stuart Energy Systems Corporation.

Solar Integrated Technol-ogies, was bought by En-ergy Conversion Devices in 2009 but was sold off by its parent following the PV in-dustry down-turn in 2012.

MacEwen replaces John Sheridan at Ballard who is retiring. Sheridan will ad-vise MacEwen during the transition before leaving the board of directors on De-cember 31.

Ballard appoints former Solar Integrated president MacEwen as new chief exec

New A123 CTO Hurley: has explored collaborative business models

Corvus, Scandlines win awards for effi ciencyCorvus Energy and Scandlines were declared award winners in this year’s Ship Effi ciency Awards for the retrofi t of Scandlines’ M/V Prinsesse Benedikte to hybrid propulsion.

The ferry has the world’s largest ever hybrid propulsion marine battery pack can propel the 6,600 tonne lightweight ferry for about 30 minutes without diesel fuel and at a speed of 14 knots.

M/V Prinsesse Benedikte, the fi rst of four hybrid ferries in the Scandlines fl eet, demonstrated that large scale battery hybrid ferries are possible.

MacEwen: from solar to fuel cells

A123 Systems makes Hurley new CTO


PEOPLE NEWS

John Craig — the face of EnerSys and its predeces-sor Yuasa for almost two decades — stepped down as president of the company in November but remains as chairman and chief execu-tive offi cer.

David Shaffer, who was president of EnerSys’ EMEA and Asia opera-tions has been appointed to the newly created position of president and chief op-erating offi cer at the parent. Shaffer is widely known

and respected in the Euro-pean energy storage scene and is an active member of EUROBAT.

Shaffer, who has over 24 years’ experience in the bat-tery industry, joined Ener-Sys in 2005.

Craig said the reshuffl e was a further element in the company’s goal of reach-ing $4 billion in revenue by 2018. “This new position is one more element that will help ensure we achieve this objective,” he said.

Navitas, the US energy stor-age and electronics fi rm, has appointed Mil Ovan as president. Ovan has over 30 years of experience in bringing new products to global markets, with the most recent 12 years as a founder and CEO of energy storage and renewable en-ergy companies.

“Over the past three years, Ovan has been in-strumental in the formation and growth of our compa-ny” said Navitas Systems’ founder Alan ElShafei. “His leadership in the last 18 months as chief market-ing offi cer has continued to positively impact all areas of our products, business

divisions, and served mar-kets.

Ovan becomes responsi-ble for overseeing all func-tional areas of the company.

Before Navitas, Ovan was a principal of Nova Associ-ates, providing marketing and business development consulting to renewable en-ergy and advanced materi-als companies.

Ovan was previously sen-ior vice president and co-founder of Firefl y Energy, an advanced lead acid bat-tery start-up.

Separately, David VanAss-che is joining the company as a vice president of op-erations and strategic pro-grams.

Energizer Holdings intends to spin off by summer 2015 its household products busi-ness, which includes Ener-gizer and Eveready batteries. Energizer continues to re-lease details of what it calls its “leadership transition plan”.

Upon completion of the split next year — probably by the end of June — Ward Klein, Energizer CEO will become as executive chair-man of the stand-alone per-sonal care company, while president and CEO of En-ergizer Personal Care David Hatfi eld becomes CEO of the new stand-alone person-al care company.

Energizer chairman Pat-rick Mulcahy becomes exec-utive chairman of the stand-alone household products

company, while Alan Hoskins, president and CEO of Energizer Household Products, is likely to become CEO of the separate house-hold products company.

Dan Sescleifer, who has been Energizer’s chief fi -nancial offi cer since 2001, intends to leave following completion of the separa-tion. However, Sescleifer will continue as Energizer’s CFO through the completion of the split, which is expected to occur by July 1, 2015.

Sandy Sheldon, the compa-ny’s vice president, fi nance, has been named chief fi nan-cial offi cer of the Personal Care business. Brian Hamm, who is the company’s con-troller and chief account-ing offi cer, has been named chief fi nancial offi cer of the

Household Products busi-ness. These appointments become effective upon com-pletion of the planned sepa-ration.

Sheldon has been the vice president, fi nance of the company since 2006 and in positions of increasing responsibility within Ener-gizer before date. He was previously manager, Inter-nal Audit of Ralston Purina from 1986 to 1993 and as an auditor with PriceWater-houseCoopers.

Hamm has been the chief accounting offi cer, vice president and controller of the company since 2013. He was previously a vice president for global business transformation from 2012 to 2013. He joined Energiz-er in 2008.

Ovan becomes president of Navitas

Energizer names new job titles as battery business spin-off proceeds

Ador Digatron hire Singha for Pune offi ceAdor Powertron and Digatron Power Electronics has hired Somnath Singha as director of their joint venture, Ador Digatron Private Limited, based in Pune, India.

He has over 20 years’ experience in increasingly responsible roles, ranging from strategy formulation, change management to product management and fi nance management in the power electronics industry, says the fi rm.

He was most recently head of Adino Telecom and was instrumental in restructuring the organization and pushing the fi rm into profi t.

Singha will report to the chairman of APL, Ravin Mirchandani.

East Penn launches new mobile website For the record, East Penn Manufacturing has launched a new mobile version of its online application guide at dekacatalog.com. “This new mobile site will place the same high quality information from the desktop at the user’s fi ngertips, freshly formatted to fi t a mobile device,” said a statement from the fi rm.

EnerSys reshuffl es as Shaffer promoted

INDUSTRY VIEWPOINT: ALABC


The success of the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) program over the years is evidenced by the fact that most of the results from its R&D projects are used today by lead-acid battery manufacturers all over the world.

The performance of advanced lead-acid batteries and its major compo-

nents have been improved so much over this period that today’s advanced products match well to the require-ments in virtually all main energy storage market segments.

But despite its continued success in bringing the technology to this point, a lot of work still needs to be done to ensure that lead-acid batteries remain

a viable choice for both current and future energy storage applications.

Today’s market demands batter-ies with more and more energy and longer life. In addition, the hegemony of lead-acid batteries in automotive, energy storage and emergency systems no longer exists — advanced batteries of various chemistries can now match the higher requirements. The emer-gence of these newer batteries, which are moving faster than ever from the research stage to the market, is not only challenging to the lead-acid in-dustry, but also stimulating it to be highly innovative.

Details of the current opportunities and threats to the lead-acid battery in-dustry are shown in the SWOT fi gure 1 (left).

It is clear that the industry must continue to innovate and do so with a clear strategic roadmap of how to get where the market wants the technol-ogy to be.

ALABC leadership is beginning to position the consortium for a new direction for continued research and

Tim Ellis, chairman of the ALABC and Boris Monahov, its program manager, outline their plans for the lead acid battery research organization. It goes beyond a statement of purpose, to a roadmap for an entire industry.

ALABC maps the road ahead

SWOT fi gure 1: Details of the current opportunities and threats to the lead-acid battery industry



development, and the fi rst glimpses of this plan were displayed recently at the group’s Members & Contractors Conference at ELBC in Edinburgh in September.

The following is a brief overview and discussion of this proposed tech-nological roadmap and its prospects for continuation of the ALABC pro-gram over the next 20-25 years.

Setting the technology stageAfter the major issues observed dur-ing high-rate cycling at partial state of charge in new applications like hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), renewable energy storage systems, grid quality support storage and smart storage sys-tems, ALABC members and sponsors agree advanced lead-acid batteries need further enhancement and opti-mization to keep their strong market positions and well-established infra-structure in the coming decades.

To defi ne the values for the ALABC roadmap we need to compare the pre-sent battery technology to forecasted market requirements, e.g. power, en-ergy, weight, service life, etc.

The roadmap is based upon three major assumptions for the future: • Advanced lead-acid batteries — and

especially the new generation of lead-carbon batteries — are clearly able to support start/stop, micro and mild hybrid electric vehicles, and possibly some in the range between mild and full hybrids.

• The technology will proceed un-der the strong competition from and fi rst-mover advantage of other chemistries such as NiMH and Li-ion batteries

• Continuous data updates are needed for a robust technical roadmap.The technical roadmap shown here

is designed using the format suggested recently by the USABC. From the AL-ABC view, this is a living document and is regularly updated to refl ect the current state of affairs in the industry and its drivers.

The table compares the USABC bat-tery requirements for 12V and 48V start/stop vehicles to historical, cur-rent and future ALABC targeted val-ues.

Due to differences in test proce-dures, not all the values are directly comparable. However, it is clear that lead-acid batteries are fully capable of powering start/stop vehicles, and will match closer to the requirements in the future.

(It should be mentioned that al-though industry is working diligently

to increase the specifi c energy and the energy density of the batteries, the limit of 50% of the theoretical value is still a reality. However, in HEVs powered by 1kWh-5 kWh batteries, the weight difference and especially the extra weight to car weight ratio is moderate, given the substantial bat-tery cost benefi t makes the weight fac-tor even less important. See fi gure 2 above.)

The updated Ragone plotOne way to compare the technical parameters of different battery chem-istries is to compare their specifi c en-ergy and power. A general idea about this is provided by the Ragone plot where log (Esp in W/kg) will be plot versus (Esp in Wh/kg). At high rate discharge when the battery provides

more power, only a fraction of the available energy can be discharged from the battery.

This is why the plots have their spe-cifi c curved shape. The data in these plots are rather general. Usually, one battery design doesn’t cover the entire range of its chemistry — high power and high energy designs match better to the application, each with its own spot on the plot. (That is why batter-ies of same chemistry but different de-signs will have a stripe on the Ragone plot.)

Battery age, prehistory, temperature, even battery producer name are other factors for these plots. The low and high temperature plots for different chemistries show signifi cant differ-ences. The specifi c energy and specifi c power of a cell are higher than of an

Figure 2: Cost benefi t and related comparisons: USABC, ALABC

Figure 3. Lead-acid batteries are advancing rapidly and are getting closer to the other widely-used chemistries



assembled and fully equipped with controllers and coolers battery.

The difference depends fi rst of all on battery chemistry. This is why only cells-to-cells or battery-to-battery comparisons can be made.

The Ragone plot shown in the En-cyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources offers two stripes for lead-acid batteries placed in the low energy and low power areas. The values used for this plot describe relatively old battery designs.

A look at the performance of the best battery designs developed by AL-ABC members shows that lead-acid batteries are advancing rapidly and are getting closer to the other widely-used chemistries (see fi gure 3 on previ-ous page).

Future technical areas for ALABCTo meet HEV requirements and main-tain a position as the battery of choice, lead-acid batteries need to achieve higher values of their parameters, and the ALABC program is designed to support and accelerate this advance-ment. The key target parameters are:• Increasing charge acceptance and

dynamic charge acceptance. Achiev-ing this requires fundamental stud-ies of crystal growth and mass trans-port within the active material;

• Lowering cost and weight. This can be achieved by increasing the utiliza-tion effi ciency of the active materi-als (lead, lead dioxide and sulfuric acid);

• Migrating advanced HEV battery

Technology to industrial/storage/non-automotive. These are high growth areas for rechargeable en-ergy storage; and,

• Rationalizing the demonstration projects. This means, joint develop-ment programs, trimming the fl eet and moving to non-automotive

Major technical advancement targets: DCA and cycle lifeThe electric energy used (discharge) in hybrids increases from 1 kWh in start-stops to 10 and more kWh in plug-ins (average size vehicles). More brake energy needs to be used for recharge in more electrifi ed vehicles, accord-ingly. The amount of energy fl owing through the battery is also higher. (see fi gure 4).

Advanced lead-acid batteries need to reach higher values of the DCA (up to 10 Ah/A and TET (up to 9,000 times Cn) till 2030 when start-stops and strong micro hybrids (full hy-brids) will still have strong or domi-nating market positions until EVs and PHEVs take over.

If the above values are not reached soon, lead-acid batteries could be pushed out by other chemistries. Once this happens, it will be very diffi cult to come back to this position.

If lead-acid batteries reach these val-ues, they will be able to minimize to-day’s performance gaps with compet-ing chemistries (see plot below).

In recent years, the ALABC program has shown that: • The UltraBattery can meet the needs

of mild HEV duty (Civic Hybrid) for more than 150,000 miles.

• Lead-carbon batteries are more than adequate for the 48V/12V operation in the LC SuperHybrid projects.

• Further improvements to lead-carbon batteries may allow for use in full HEVs (the next targets may be in a Prius or possibly a low-end plug-in).

• Based upon today’s DCA stability values of about 0.5 A/Ah (we already have members with up to 1.2 A/Ah, and we consider the limit of 1 A/Ah as a mass production possible value) and once the theory is ready and sup-ported by matured technology, it will be possible to target 5 A/Ah by 2020 and 10 A/Ah by 2030.

• The enhanced parameters will pro-vide durable and lighter-weight bat-teries to the consumer.

Cost: What is the product designer trading-off?Lead-acid batteries have four major

Figure 4. Battery DCA, life and energy throughput in HEVs

Figure 5. Energy throughtput and dynamic charge acceptance



benefi ts to other chemistries. They are safe, they are environmentally friendly because they are fully recyclable, and they have an established and effi cient national and international infrastruc-ture.

The fourth benefi t is cost. At the moment, they have the lowest cost among energy storage technolo-gies — by several times compared to NiMH and lithium ion. It is possible that the cost of lithium ion batteries may decrease if they move to mass production, but even then they still cannot match the level of cost-effec-tiveness of advanced lead-acid and lead-carbon batteries (see fi gure 6).

By contrast, lead-acid technology has space for adopting innovations that can increase production costs.

Maintaining this benefi t requires managing the costs of production, lifecycle, adoption, opportunity and the system.

With regard to power/energy/weight parameters, advanced lead acid cells need rapid improvement. New designs can cost signifi cantly more. To keep the cost benefi t, lead-acid batteries can afford only limited extra costs.

Only lithium ion batteries are shown here; however, other chemis-tries abound — such as NiMH, NaS, NiZn) that have higher costs but are steadily advancing.

Besides increases in active mass uti-lization, there is another way to re-duce weight: reducing heavy battery components with lighter ones. Let us fi rst see an example of the weight contribution of battery components to the weight of the entire battery.

The analysis in fi gure 7 is based on the description of a regular, aver-age advanced SLI battery shown in Detchko Pavlov’s 2011 book (Lead-Acid Batteries. Science and Technol-ogy, Elsevier, 2011, p. 106): • The maximum specifi c energy of

lead-acid batteries is: 172 Wh/kg theoretically, SLI and HEV: 34Wh/kg-40Wh/kg, deep cycling (EV): 28Wh/kg-34Wh/kg (more massive current paths to resist corrosion)

• Higher Wh/kg values can be achieved by component weight re-duction of (see graph) in active ma-terials: PAM /NAM: 34.8%, elec-trolyte: 32.4% as well as metallic Pb (grids, top lead): 24%; and inert materials (box, lid, separator): 9%Clearly such an approach can pro-

vide only limited weight benefi ts. Op-timizing active mass utilization offers much more.

Increase partnerships with other industries which means looking at alternative fuels, joint development programs, ride other wavesIncrease membership from non-

traditional sources such as other industries, traders, venture capital/private equity, extension of PAM funding to other inputs to extend reach.

ALABC NEW TARGET INITIATIVES

The ALABC program is based on pre-competitive research performed by member companies or established partnering institutions. The basic principles of this form of collaboration are:• Transferability to others —

documentation of the recipes and technology and dull disclosure not just data reports

• Use of the ALABC demonstration

HEVs fl eet or lose it — combining programs on to our chassis and a survey group for the additional use of fl eet

• Build consortia of those looking for funding — meaning a sharing of capability, a sharing of techniques, building larger interaction groups and to leverage resources developed for other chemistries (Li-ion)

ALABC PRECOMPETITIVE RESEARCH

Figure 6. Present and forecast battery pack costSources: Christophe Pillot, AABC, Atlanta, February 2014; and ALABC data bank

Figure 7. SLI battery components in terms of weight

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PROFILE: BORIS MONAHOV



The scene. A packed auditorium this June. The event: an award ceremony at the internationally famous LABAT conference held every three years in Albena, Bulgaria. As the two winners of the Gaston Planté medal — perhaps the most respected accolade in the lead acid battery industry — are announced, the joint winners, the ALABC’s Boris Monahov and Eberhard Meissner from JCI head to the stage as the auditorium bursts into applause.

For the 60-year-old Monahov, his life had come full circle. He had been born literally a handful of miles down the road in the cosmopolitan

New summits yet to climbWhether one believes that the life scientifi c is a pilgrimage or just a journey, it is rarely a clearly marked out route with a fi xed start and set destination. As such, so has been the life of Boris Monahov, now fi nding further acclaim for his work at the ALABC, writes Kevin Desmond.

“I would like to enable more ALABC customers and partners to fi nd out about the benefi ts of modern lead-acid batteries and the potential they bring to us to a brighter and better future.”




seaport of Varna, nestled tight to the Black Sea coast.

But this is more than the story of a local boy making good.

Rather it was one of a journey that began on March 24, 1954 and a fi nal destination, as he himself will candidly confess, which is as yet not known.

Boris Ivanov Monahov will also be the fi rst to admit that he had a lucky childhood in terms of preparing him for a career in electrochemistry — both his parents were highly respected scientists.

Indeed for half a century, Boris’s fa-ther Ivan was one of Bulgaria’s most active research geologists, and one of the founders of the country’s oil and gas industry. He was involved in fi eld work and academic research at the Institute of minerals of the Council of Ministers and in teaching as an associ-ate professor at the State University of Sofi a known as St Kliment Ohridski. His contributions were published in over 130 articles, three monographs and couple of general reviews.

Boris’s mother Liljana was an asso-ciate professor in geochemistry at the Institute of Minerals of the Council of Ministers and managed a special-ized lab for studying the composition of underground waters as an indica-tor of the probability of fi nding oil or gas in the drilling where the samples come from. She had over 50 articles published.

If his home background was a sci-entifi c one, his school friends were also interested in these things — in the 1970s, in Bulgaria, physics and physicists were considered for the elite of the educated. “Attending the high school, I had three friends who shared my love of mathematics and phys-ics,” says Monahov. “Now they are all prominent physicists, two of them in Bulgaria and one in Florida.

“In the upper high school I attended physics seminars, organized by the University of Sofi a for interested high school students. There we had lectures presented by leading professors and were made familiar with the base of the mathematical methods used in theoretical physics.”

Between 1975 and 1980, Mona-hov read solid state physics at the St Kliment Ohridski university in Sofi a eventually obtaining a masters.

Towards the end of his studies he had an internship at the Institute of Metal Science of the Bulgarian Acad-emy of Sciences.

It was fortuitous moment for the young Monahov and a turning point

Monahov interests: of mountains and mysteries. Stepping on the ruins of the ancient fortuneteller place Perperikon at the feet of Rhodopa mountain to the south-east of the city of Plovdiv (ancient name Phillipopolis — the capital of Phillip II, the father of Alexander the Great), Bulgaria.

Studying the microstructure of lead-carbon foam negative plates at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials, the Frederick Seitz Materials research Lab of the University of Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, using a scanning/trans-mission electron microscope with EDS microprobe.



in his life. It was then he met his life-time mentor, friend — and eventual colleague — professor Detchko Pav-lov, even then regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on lead acid battery chemistry.

“Meeting professor Pavlov proved to be a critical stage in my education,” he says. “He and his team were conduct-ing electrochemical studies on lead electrodes. It was all highly interesting but importantly I regard the 25 years I spent with the professor and his team as key to improving my understanding of how research should be tackled.”

MarriageMeanwhile, other things were brew-ing. His courtship of his neighbour, a mechanical engineer and scientist called Natasha Arsova, resulted in their marriage in 1981.

From 1980 until 2004, Monahov carried out fundamental and applied electrochemical research on model lead electrodes, model lead-acid cells and advanced lead-acid batteries. He also specialized in lead-acid battery electrochemistry with professors Mar-garet Maya and Paolo Spinelli at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy in 1982, and with professor ZA Rotenberg at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow from 1986 to 1987.

His linguistic skills — Monahov is a polyglot speaking Bulgarian, German, Russian and English and has smatter-ings of other languages — have ena-bled him to move seamlessly among the scientifi c community.

In 1994, he obtained his PhD in electrochemistry and electrochemi-cal power sources from the Bulgar-ian Academy of Sciences in Sofi a. He became an associate professor at the academy in 1996.

During this last decade in Bulgaria his academic researches and contri-butions were intensive. These include exploring what we know about the electrochemical models and under-standing about the infl uence alloy additives of antimony, tin, silver and calcium on the properties of the cor-rosion layer and of the positive active mass.

He equally helped to demonstrate the importance of the microstructure, phase composition and hydration of the corrosion layer and the layers formed between it and the positive ac-tive mass for the performance of the positive plate.

As well as this, he researched the processes of oxygen evolution in the positive plate and their dependence on

potential, temperature and alloy addi-tives; about the effects of the concen-tration of the sulphuric acid solution (the electrolyte) on the properties of the corrosion layer and the positive active material, about the way oxy-gen recombines at the negative plate, about the way thermal runaway devel-ops in lead-acid batteries and how can it be suppressed and avoided.

Published papersOf the 60 papers Monahov has pub-lished, he says these three are the most important for him. • D Pavlov, B Monahov, M Maja and

N Penazzi, Mechanism of Action of Sn on the Passivation Phenomena in the Lead-Acid Battery Positive Plate (the Sn-free Effect), Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 136, (1989).

• D Pavlov and B Monahov, Mecha-

nism of the Elementary Electro-chemical Processes Taking Place During Oxygen Evolution on the Lead Dioxide Electrode, Journal of the Electrochemical Society. 143 (1996).

• B Monahov, D Pavlov, A Kirchev and S Vasilev, Infl uence of the pH of the H2SO4 solution on the phase composition of the PbO2 active mass and of the PbO2 anodic layer formed during cycling of lead elec-trodes, Journal of Power Sources, 113/2, (2003).What is perhaps less well known af-

ter any catalogue of his research con-tributions is his modest approach to quite formidable achievements. If you ask him what breakthroughs he has made since the 1980s in the improve-ment of lead-acid battery technology, he’ll be disparaging. “I didn’t make any breakthroughs,” he says. “If you

Boris and son Alex in the Rhodopa mountains, Bulgaria

Three distinguished Monahovs — Boris with parents Liljana and Ivan



want to read about that kind of thing — and those who make them— you’d be better off reading the Nobel com-mittee press releases, or Forbes maga-zine!

“That said under the scientifi c guid-ance of professor Pavlov I was able to contribute to the new and deeper understanding of some important processes involved in the operation of lead-acid batteries.”

Monahov might well have stayed on in Sofi a — Bulgaria then, as now, re-mains a world centre for lead acid bat-tery research. But after the Monahov’s son Alex, a high school junior, was diagnosed with diabetes, they sought better medical care.

Since, arguably, one of the best plac-es in the world for medical treatment is the US, they started to see what was available.

And here good fortune stepped in. The US runs a government lottery

that allows those that want to live and work in America to win a US green card. The aim is to inject diversity into the immigrant population. Natasha, undaunted by the odds stacked against them, applied for the right to enter the lottery. Random selection by the com-puter did the rest. By the fall of 2004 the family had obtained a green card.

They emigrated to Peoria, Illinois — full US citizenship came six years later. That November Monahov began as a senior electrochemist in the start-up fi rm, Firefl y Energy.

Research at Firefl yWorking with Kurtis Kelley, the found-er of the fi rm, he became involved in helping design the negative and posi-tive carbon-graphite foam based plates of Firefl y’s 3D and 3D2 battery plates; creating new cell designs and paste recipes; developing new formation, charge and test profi les; as well as in research on the properties of lead, car-bon and lead dioxide electrodes in sul-phuric acid solution. Monahov holds three patents related to this work.

In one of them, the Firefl y research-ers wrote with the keen technical fer-vour that enthused their mission: “We, the authors of this patent believe, that one day this method will help battery producers to get higher capacity and longer cycle life of their products in a very inexpensive way, and without changing much the elaborated produc-tion technology.”

Unfortunately it was not to happen. Or not then, although the technology may happen in the future.

In March 2010, Firefl y Energy fi led

for bankruptcy. The multi-million dollar funding required to perfect the technology in the start-up company was extensive. And although a small assembly line — and battery sales to a local bus company — proved that the company had made the leap from the laboratory bench to the factory fl oor, this was unable to provide the rev-enues needed to sustain it.

The fi rm’s cash crunch came on the heels of the global fi nancial crisis which fi nally pushed the fi rm over.

Although a phoenix company emerged that October, called Firefl y International Energy, and took over some of the assets and the bankruptcy estate, it was too late.

Laid off, Boris and Natasha Mona-hov moved from Peoria to Durham, North Carolina where he took up the post of program manager of the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consor-tium, part of the International Lead Zinc Research Organization (ILZRO).

And here his tireless work for the ALABC has helped push the consor-tium’s already considerable achieve-ments, particularly its involvement in the development of the UltraBattery, into a wider sphere of operations.

The ALABC is a non-profi t interna-tional organization with 75 members worldwide from lead metal and lead-acid battery producing companies and industry suppliers.

It is the only large international R&D institution whose studies are focused specifi cally on enhancing the performance of lead-acid batteries in potentially new markets such as hybrid electric vehicles, energy stor-age and grid support systems, where the requirements of the batteries are

high and regular batteries have issues with performance and durability.

The ALABC program aims for the enhancement and design optimiza-tion of lead-carbon batteries and so increase their market position in tradi-tional and new markets.

When asked about his plans for the future, Monahov, just turned 60, char-acteristically remains focused on his work. “I would like to enable more ALABC customers and partners to fi nd out about the benefi ts of modern lead-acid batteries and the potential they bring to us to a brighter and bet-ter future.”

For relaxation, his early passion for Europe’s mountains remains. “I like to visit and spend time on them, and par-ticularly to take photos of the highest peaks of Europe,” he says.

TributePerhaps the last words should come from his long-term colleague, friend and guide Detchko Pavlov who paid tribute to Monahov for the Batteries International article. “Boris is talented and a highly intelligent person. He’s an open-minded, hard-working research-er who always maintains a mature and responsible approach to his tasks and manages and carries out in-depth in-vestigations at a variety of levels.

“His friendly manner and contagious enthusiasm belies his leadership skills which are based on the unique combi-nation of fl exibility, consistency in the pursuit of goals and natural empathy.”

With an extensive program of re-search and development ahead of Monahov and the ALABC, the fi nal achievements — the peaks in his ca-reer — are still in front of him.

Professor Detchko Pavlov, long-time friend, colleague and mentor

INTERVIEW: THE ENERGY ATTORNEY


David Roberts joined EnerDel early in 2011, just months before parent com-pany Ener1 — recipient of a $118.5 million grant from the US government in 2009 — fi led for bankruptcy. After joining the battery maker to work as in-house intellectual property counsel, he was perhaps as surprised as anyone to fi nd himself appointed chief ex-ecutive 15 months later, charged with leading the troubled company through some very diffi cult times.

That the company survived restruc-turing, new investors, and reposition-ing for new business opportunities was due in no small part to his understand-ing — backed by a leadership team that he helped assemble — of the com-pany’s strengths.

Having pulled off what some regard-ed as a minor miracle in a dire situa-tion, Roberts surprised the industry this April when he left EnerDel to join

Gutwein Law, a fi rm specializing in strategic business counsel.

You started with a degree in engineering but after a few years in business, you went back to school. Why did you switch to law? My parents were not college gradu-ates, so there were no strong personali-ties in my early life that could give me much guidance in the matter of career choices. So I made a simple calculation about what degree would generate the greatest return on investment after four years of study. I was intrigued by the automotive industry, so an engineering degree seemed just the ticket.

After graduation, I was able to work for Lockheed Martin in its controls division, a business unit later sold to BAE. While I enjoyed my time there and gained invaluable experience, I

also began to realize how limited en-gineers are in their ability to affect the larger strategy of a business.

I wanted to do something that would have more impact on a business, and possibly even an industry, and law seemed a great way to parlay both my interests and technical knowledge into new opportunities.

What drew you, as an engineer, to intellectual property law?My fi rst job after law school was with Senniger Powers, a boutique intellec-tual property law fi rm in St Louis, Mis-souri where I worked with companies dealing in things like special metals, mining and manufacturing.

It was a great learning experience with some very skilled professionals, but as with engineering, it seemed as if most outside counsel were limited in the scope and depth of infl uence they could provide to their clients.

A little over four years later I moved to an in-house position for Caterpillar, where I was drawn to practical busi-ness applications of the law. A great benefi t of going in-house is the ability to fully understand the vision behind the company’s decisions.

Former EnerDel CEO recalls recovery strategy and how industry focus is changing

David Roberts, the ex-chief executive of EnerDel, spoke to Batteries In-ternational about his time at the once troubled fi rm and his switch back to his fi rst love — corporate law. But corporate law with a difference.

“The board asked me to lead the company to rebuild strategic relation-ships and execute a re-sponsible business plan, rather than going out and trying to fi nd some highly touted outside executive unfamiliar with the com-pany’s culture and chal-lenges.”



Given the opportunity to become a trusted counselor and colleague, you can bring an aerial view of the issues that others on the team cannot always provide.

So how does a patent attorney become a CEO?Well, that scenario wasn’t necessarily part of any script you can write! Actu-ally, I joined EnerDel at a particularly euphoric time, when the stock was at a several-year high.

The company had contracts with car manufacturers Think and Volvo. We had a contract to provide station-ary backup power for the Sochi Win-ter Olympics, and just after I arrived, we announced a substantial joint ven-ture with Wanxiang. However, three months later, Think announced bank-ruptcy and the entire publicly traded storyline began to unravel.

Ultimately, regulatory and associ-ated funding issues forced EnerDel to initiate a pre-packaged restructuring in January of 2012.

The investors who came together to take the company private wanted to return the corporate strategy to core business fundamentals — like mak-ing sure we’re bringing in more mon-ey than we’re spending — that had been too easily obscured by grand but fl awed plans for growth.

With that imperative, the board asked me to lead the company to rebuild

strategic relation-ships and execute a responsible business plan, rather than go-ing out and trying to fi nd some highly touted outside executive unfamiliar with the company’s culture and challenges.

Moreover, the board understood that a key to saving the company was re-turning leadership to long time internal leaders who, having earned the trust of their coworkers, helped create a cohe-sive, effective local management team.

Immediately after assuming the po-sition of CEO in April 2012, we were working by just those fundamentals. Essentially, we were executing the sort of strategic plan a small business would execute every week to rebuild important customer, vendor, and em-ployee relationships.

In the end, we were able to create a team that could achieve things the in-dustry thought were impossible. But the statistic I am most proud of from my time with EnerDel was that our an-nualized voluntary attrition went from over 60% — that was in November 2011 — to under 3% after our team took over.

Does the battery industry need more shopkeepers and fewer MBAs?What you’re asking is whether we need more leaders who exercise basic

What new kinds of business

models do you see evolving

as the energy revolution goes

forward, particularly as utilities

begin to incorporate energy

storage?

A key business model will hinge on

sharing intellectual property rights

and patents. What’s happening

in energy storage is that

companies are not

enforcing their

patents because

they know the

cost of litigation

to do so is

prohibitive.

The result is

almost a cold

war, with mutual

destruction

the outcome if

someone decides

to push the litigation

button. I strongly advocate

for setting up structures, such as

a patent pool, where the major

players can come together and

negotiate an ecosystem that is

benefi cial to all the participants.

What such a pool might do

is increase the speed at which

we achieve the broader goals

that have been set out, like

higher energy density ratios or a

particular cost target. That sort

of collaborative, as opposed to

insular or combative approach,

would reduce legal costs to the

industry overall while increasing

the pace of innovation.

This is one reason you’ve

seen Tesla open up their patent

portfolio recently; Elon Musk

understands the necessity to

innovate more quickly and not be

hampered by exceedingly high

costs of something as ineffi cient as

traditional legal strategies.

I predict that we will see more

collaborative strategic alliances in

energy storage than you typically

see in other industries. We are

approaching the point where the

companies that have made it

through the recent restructuring

and consolidation phase are not

only here to stay, but here to thrive.

-find utsidewith the

e e gy sto a

companie

enforc

pate

the

co

t

p

a

w

de

the

someo

to push th

button I strong

MIRACLE INGREDIENT ‘X’: IP SHARING

A key business model will hinge on sharing intellectual property rights and patents

There is a pervasive assumption that everything is going to turn out okay despite the decade of evidence that we are facing serious technical and fi nancial challenges.

Meet the team

Claire Ronnie,

offi ce manager

and subscriptions

Claire’s our unfl appable person — she’s the go-to girl for subscriptions or account enquiries. Go ahead and challenge her!

Antony Parselle,

page designer

Better known in the offi ce as ‘Ant’ he’s been working in magazine design and layout since the early 1990s. Not so good on showing his best side however

June Moutrie,

business

development

manager

She’s our accounting Wunderkind who deals with all things fi nancial — a kind of mini Warren Buffett.

Jan Darasz,

cartoonist

Jan has an international reputation as a cartoonist able to making anything — including an electrolyte! — funny. And as for LiCFePO4 ...

Kevin Desmond,

batteries historian

Actually more than just a historian on batteries as he’s written about many things. He’s the inspiration behind our Batteries Hero section.

Mike Halls,

editor

Mike, a former journalist with the UK newspaper the Financial Times, has been involved in journalism, publishing and print for three decades. “I’m particularly fond of writing about the batteries industry,” he says. “It’s an unusual mixture of being fast-paced but slow to change — and friendly too. What’s more there’s always something more to learn.”

Karen Hampton,

publisher

In her recent years of working within the battery business Karen has become a well known fi gure at conferences — not least as our social butterfl y. “My job,” she says, “is to get the maximum benefi t for our advertisers to make sure their name and brand is out there, while maintaining the integrity, fairness and excellence our publication is renowned for.”

THE BIG DIRECTORY ADVERTISING EDITORIAL & EVENT GUIDES Karen Hampton Mike Halls Advertising

Tel: +44 (0) 1787 329 722 +44 (0) 1787 329 721 +44 (0) 1787 329 720

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Reception: +44 (0) 1 787 329 720 • www.batteriesinternational.com • Fax +44 1 787 329 730

Mustard Seed Publishing Ltd, 10 Temple Bar Business Park, Strettington Lane, Strettington PO18 0TU, UK • Registered in England 5976361

Bringing the industry together www.batteriesinternational.com

John Petersen,

columnist John, a securities lawyer with over 30 years’ commercial experience, is not a cynic by nature — more a realist who sees the absurdity in many of our endeavours — especially some of our more corporate ones!

Wyn Jenkins,

Supplements editor

Don’t let the boyish charm deceive, Wyn’s been a journalist and respected editor on leading fi nancial titles for some 20 years. When not heading his own publications fi rm, Seren Global Media, he looks after our supplements.



common sense business principles, and avoid falling into a trap of complicated fi nancial gymnastics with a fl ashy PR sheen.

This is a sensitive topic for leaders in the industry, in part fuelled by the pres-sure to show results in the face of ex-tremely slow consumer adoption. But the short and simple answer is “Yes, I do.”

I also think it’s somewhat natural for leadership in our industry to become defi ned by a sense of entitlement and overconfi dence born of some of our experiences in large corporate settings with bottomless budgets.

Maybe it’s time to consider that some of the industry’s problems derive at least in part from hubris that is encour-aged by publicity and reliance on best-case projections. There is a pervasive and uncomfortable assumption that everything is going to turn out okay despite the past decade of evidence that the industry is facing serious technical and fi nancial challenges.

Toward that point, the leaders in this industry need to get back to business basics and key leadership traits, chiefl y integrity, commitment, energy, and trust.

When you are driven by those four core characteristics, it becomes much easier to run an organization, for ex-ample, managing teams, and nurturing talent and new ideas. Doing that leads to an actively engaged team, and when you have that, you’re well on your way to what everyone really wants from a results-oriented perspective: healthy cashfl ow and profi ts.

Why did you decide to leave EnerDel in particular and corporate management in general? There were many reasons, both per-sonal and professional, but what be-came clear to me was that it was time for someone else to take the helm and see things with fresh eyes. When you lead a company for a few years, espe-cially through the challenging years EnerDel experienced, you need to real-ize when it’s time to step away.

The decision to leave was also rooted, in part, in my fi rm belief in this indus-try’s capacity to have a huge economic and social impact on our world.

I felt strongly that I could have more impact as a business consultant and legal counsel serving multiple compa-nies within the broader industry, than I could as an executive working inside a single company.

I’ve also seen a lot of stagnation

across the industrial spectrum, from OEMs to research to governments, utilities and venture capitalists.

I began to realize that if people are unwilling to act, it may be because traditional models of both business and legal counsel are no longer rel-evant to the way global business in the 21st century needs to be done, which is through partnerships and collabo-rative ventures. I want to help make those happen.

What attracted you to Gutwein Law?I joined Gutwein primarily because I trusted them. The fi rm is also expand-ing into new industrial segments, such as high tech manufacturing and energy. I have the skill set and experiences they wanted, and the fi rm has the vision I was looking for.

Our team is entrepreneurial at heart. Because the partners all have other in-terests outside of the law, they’re not afraid to approach an industry differ-ently than is considered usual for a law practice. Specifi cally, the legal industry is ripe for a fresh perspective.

We believe clients want lawyers to be their business partners, not just expensive mercenaries. While the tra-ditional legal approach is adversarial

and transactional, ours is a collabora-tive, relational approach. And that fun-damentally changes the kind of advice and encouragement you provide the client.

Business and IP counsel,

Gutwein Law 2014 –

CEO, EnerDel 2012 – 2014

President, general

counsel, Ener1 2012 – 2014

Director, observer, Zhejiang

Wanxiang Ener1

Power Systems 2012 – 2013

Deputy general counsel;

chief IP counsel, Ener1 2011– 2012

Corporate counsel. patent

attorney, Caterpillar 2007 – 2010

Associate, Senniger Powers 2002 – 2007

Indiana University

School of Law 2000 – 2003

Failure analyst,

Lockheed Martin

Control Systems (BAE) 1998 – 2000

Failure Analyst, Lucent

Technologies 1997 – 1998

Lehigh University, BS

Materials Science & Eng 1994 – 1998

THE CV: IN BRIEF

I joined EnerDel at a particularly euphoric time, when the stock was at a several-year high. The company had contracts with Think and Volvo. We had a con-tract to provide stationary backup power for the Sochi Winter Olympics. However, three months later, Think announced bankruptcy and the entire publicly traded storyline began to unravel.

ANALYSIS: ENERGY STORAGE FOR THE GRID


It may seems a basic question — but it’s a good one all the same. (And ar-guably has more relevance than ever. )Is an energy storage system value for money, particularly one that uses ad-vanced batteries such as lithium ion?

In the past 18 months — from Janu-ary 2013 to September 2014 — out of an estimated 363MW of grid storage projects being built around the world lithium ion batteries are supplying 169MW of this, according to Navi-gant Research. This is equivalent to a market share of 46%, followed by sodium sulphur batteries with 35%.

But, according to the National Grid, the UK’s transmission system opera-tor (TSO), an electrochemical energy storage system based on either of these

battery technologies does not pay for itself over its lifetime, when used to supply an ancillary grid service.

The grid operator conducted a case study, published in its 2014 future en-ergy scenarios report, to investigate the potential for electricity storage to become a viable, cost competitive tool, by taking four different grid stor-age technologies; lithium ion batter-ies, sodium sulphur batteries, pumped hydro and compressed air energy stor-age (CAES).

All the technologies are relatively mature and they are all deployed in the UK, mainly in trials. Lifetimes of 15 years for sodium sulphur and lithium ion batteries, 60 years for pumped hy-dro and 40 years for both above- and

below-ground CAES were assumed.The analysis investigated the num-

ber of years that it would take to recover the cost of these electricity storage technologies through revenue from individual reserve services alone — either short term operating reserve (STOR) of say 3MW or fast reserve, 50MW — and the decrease in total plant costs that would be necessary in order to recover costs.

For fast reserve, which emphasises the value of the fast response times of electricity storage, CAES was the only technology expected to recover costs within the asset’s lifetime for both small and large capacity cases.

For pumped hydro, only the small capacity asset recovers its cost within its lifetime.

In their 15 year lifetimes neither so-dium sulphur or lithium ion batter-ies recover their costs from providing either reserve service. For lithium ion batteries cost reduction for fast reserve and for STOR would have to be in ex-cess of 99% while for sodium sulphur cost reduction would have to be 85% for STOR and 58% for fast reserve.

The cost of lithium ion batteries, which make up about half of the cost of an energy storage system, is already falling and more investment in large-scale manufacturing will keep driving down costs, by around 30% many are predicting.

But, it is not enough.

Batteries for other purposes The other way to make expensive battery storage value for money is to exploit the technology’s ability to be fl exible, in other words devise ways and means for a block of batteries on the grid to provide as many dif-ferent services and functions as possi-ble, some of which generate revenues or which reduce costs in other ways, such as saving money on network up-grades.

There is a lot of information from

Unpicking the true cost of batteries on the grid

According to a recent study by the UK’s National Grid, most electro-chemical energy storage systems don’t pay for themselves over their lifetime. So why all the interest? Sara Verbruggen reports.

In their 15 year lifetimes neither sodium sulphur or lithium ion batteries recover their costs from provid-ing either reserve service. For lithium ion batteries, the cost reduction for fast reserve and for STOR would have to be in excess of 99% while for sodium sulphur cost the reduction would have to be 85% for STOR and 58% for fast reserve.

STOR

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NaS battery: comparison of total costs against revenue over 15-year lifetime Source:UK Future Energy Scenarios 2014



storage pilots, around the world, about how well battery storage sys-tems on the grid perform in terms of different tasks or services, but com-paratively little on business cases for these types of assets. (See chart for conventional and once proven suc-cessful calculations.)

A 6MW/10MWh lithium battery storage system in the town of Leight-on Buzzard, about 70km outside of London, is trying to prove the value of storage over a 10 year period.

Primarily the battery system, oper-ated by distribution network opera-tor (DNO) UK Power Networks, will defer conventional network reinforce-ments. Like many urban areas outside of big cities like London, Leighton Buz-zard’s energy demand among the local homes, services and businesses are ris-ing, albeit gradually and steadily.

Costing projectsBefore the storage project began, there were plans for the construction of a 20km cable to ensure the network could handle local peak demand in the coming winters. Works would have had to have started about 18 months from now. The cost of doing the cable work is about £6 million ($10 mil-lion), though the analysis used by the DNO is based on net present value pricing — what it would be if works had begun in 2016 — so this cost is calculated at £5.1 million.

Again, based on net value pricing, the energy storage project cost is £16.8 million. Over two thirds of the fund-ing has come from Ofgem through its Low Carbon Network Fund scheme.

The project is a fi rst of its kind. If the system were to be built as a real, com-mercial grid investment, in 18 months from now, with all the necessary soft-ware and other development work completed and without the various associated research and dissemination aspects UK Power Networks estimates the project cost to be £11.5 million.

However the analysis also factors in further cost reductions of £3 mil-lion related to technology that are ex-pected to occur between doing the in-stallation in 2014, versus carrying out the installation in at the latest point in time when intervention would be needed.

Still, building the storage system sole-ly for works deferral is a more costly alternative to building a 20km cable.

To help pay for itself the asset has to be able to generate revenues from grid services. Over the course of a typical year, in the winter months more of

the battery bank’s capacity is used for peak shaving. However, during other parts of the year more of the batteries’ capacity is freed up for providing grid services.

These are primarily frequency con-trol demand management, fast re-sponse and STOR. UK Power Net-works has compared costs of doing these different services and also fast reserve only, where revenues are ex-pected to be higher, in the region of £3.6 million for the 10 year period.

For providing the mix of services equally the revenues are calculated at £2 million. The risk of providing one type of service is the likelihood of missing contracts. Part of the pro-ject is to understand how the batter-ies have to be operated to be able to move between supplying these differ-ent services.

Estimates of the revenues are con-servative and they may well be higher over the next decade. Over the course of the project, which ends in 2016, it is expected that the value of different services will change, which can give

a more accurate sense of what they will be over the 10 year period. These changes will be refl ected in progress reports published every six months, with the next one due in December.

If the system can be used to play a part in supporting transmission sys-tem-related activities such as helping to manage frequency stability with voltage control, further system cost savings in the region of £2.5 million are also possible.

The system can also provide other services, collectively known as toll-ing, where the energy supplier in the project, Smartest Energy, provides UK Power Networks, the storage system operator, with an operating profi le over a time period and the storage as-set follows the profi le for a fi xed fee.

The tolling package can include, for instance, arbitrage and triad – de-mand — charges by the National Grid to customers. These are not as sig-nifi cant as the revenues from ancillary grid services so are not included in the analysis but further show how stor-age systems can have multiple revenue

STOR

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100

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250

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Large

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Large

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Small

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Large

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Li-ion battery: comparison of total costs against revenue over 15-year lifetime • Source:UK Future Energy Scenarios 2014

PHES: comparison of total costs against revenue over 60-year lifetime Source:UK Future Energy Scenarios 2014



streams and customers or benefi ciar-ies of the services they provide.

UK Power Networks’ project man-ager Nick Heyward, is careful to avoid making any big proclamations at this stage in the project about how much the system can save and believes there is still scope for cost reduction by the energy storage industry.

How to extract valueAccording to Andrew Jones, at the project’s contractor S&C Electric, the National Grid’s analysis, while not in-accurate, fails to acknowledge the full potential of battery storage systems, or acknowledge that prices for market services fl uctuate and change and that the cost of battery storage is coming down.

Depending on the demand require-ments of Leighton Buzzard, by 2017 a decision will be made on whether to extend the storage system. If lithium ion technology was to be selected, battery costs will likely be a third of what they were when the system was procured. He says: “A year ago,

lithium ion cost £1100 per kWh, to-day, the cost is £600 per kWh and by 2017 they could be £400 per kWh. These batteries also come with a per-formance guarantee of 20 years. The technology is more proven so the in-dustry can provide more assurances in this respect and that means that sys-tem payback terms are longer.”

There are also intangible benefi ts to consider too. Storage increases the options available to utilities. “Any potential intervention in the network depends on how quickly demand evolves locally and we’ll know by 2017 if more storage is required for covering that peak or if conventional works are needed. We have that op-tion,” says Heyward.

Also, if the storage project had not have happened and the only option was to install a 20km cable, this would have crossed many boundaries requir-ing several years of planning and in-volving various different departments and agencies even before construc-tion. In comparison storage systems can be developed and installed in less

time and entail less disruption. But, to extract maximum value from

storage the different business cases and revenue streams have to be con-sidered. “A very simplistic analogy is a timeshare. One person builds a holi-day home that they only intend to use for the summer months and another person builds a holiday home that they only want to use over Christmas. This is an expensive way to go about it, when building one property and having a timeshare agreement would halve the cost.”

The Leighton Buzzard battery bank is a fi rst, because it is putting to rig-orous test the often cited claims that batteries on the grid are fl exible and provide multiple benefi ts and services. “As well as utilities in the UK, we’ve had interest and visits from all over the world, from utilities in Australia, Japan and Europe.

“Lately, the enquiries suggest more concrete plans at some of these are underway because we are being asked about things like how to approach planning,” says Heyward.

Conventional and once proven successful cost assessments • Source:UK Future Energy Scenarios 2014

In order to recover costs during the lifespan of each technology, assuming revenue and cost ofelectricity remains fi xed, this table shows the required reductions in total plant costs.Source:UK Future Energy Scenarios 2014

Device Cost reduction required for STOR Cost reduction required for Fast Reserve

NaS 80%–85% 52%–58%

Li-ion >99% >99%

PHES 15%–17% 0%–41%

CAES below ground 67%–71% No reduction required

CAES above ground 51%–53% No reduction required

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NEWS

Exide Technologies, the US battery giant which fi led for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2013 for its US op-erations, said in November it had entered into a plan support agreement with holders of a majority of the principal amount of Exide’s senior secured notes.

The agreement includes a detailed term sheet which describes a reorganization plan.

Exide says its goal is to emerge from the Chapter 11 restructuring of its US op-erations by March 31, 2015.

The noteholders, who hold a majority of Exide’s estimated $360 million DIP credit facility’s term loan, have agreed to support the plan which would delever-age the company by more than $600 million.

Perhaps most importantly

it would enable Exide to emerge from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy substantially in its current form — operat-ing across all of its existing business segments.

Some of the noteholders have agreed to convert at least $100 million of their DIP facility claims into new second lien convertible debt and roll the balance of their DIP loans into a new exit term loan.

“The plan support agree-ment and related term sheet are conditioned upon the

negotiation of, and agree-ment to, defi nitive docu-ments (including a plan of reorganization, disclosure statement, backstop com-mitment agreement, and other related documents and agreements),” said Ex-ide.

The plan also contem-plates a new $175 million capital commitment to be raised in a rights offering made available to eligible holders of the debtor’s pre-petition 8.625% senior se-cured notes.

Exide said it continues to negotiate the terms of such an agreement with the hopes of fi nalizing it before the end of the year.

Axion Power International, a developer of advanced lead-carbon PbC batteries, was designated at the end of October as the supplier of energy storage and fre-quency regulation for a so-lar farm that, when fi nished, will be the largest in Penn-sylvania in the US.

Axion Power PbC Power-Cube technology has been admitted to connect with the 13-state PJM power grid, and brings that certi-fi cation to the Coatesville

Solar Initiative project.Phase I & II of the mul-

ti-phased project consists of two 2.4MW DC solar facilities, generating ap-proximately kWh6.3 mil-lion from the 48 acre site which CSI has contractually agreed to sell to the Coates-ville Area School District through a 25-year solar power purchase agreement

According to CSI, when completed, the 9.1MW megawatt solar farm will be the largest solar park facility

in Pennsylvania.Axion CEO David DiGi-

acinto said: “The Coates-ville Solar Initiative is a major milestone in industry acceptance. A solar farm that will generate more than 9MW of electricity is an im-portant step for the renewa-ble energy industry in Penn-sylvania. Axion has spent nearly a decade developing PbC batteries and technol-ogy, and we have 13 patents protecting our nearly 100% recyclable batteries.”

Japanese multi-national Pa-nasonic expects to form a joint venture in November with car parts manufac-turer Minda Industries to make lead acid car batter-ies in India. The 60:40 joint venture between the two, which is subject to regula-tory approval, will also be an aftermarket supplier for two-wheeler and passenger vehicles.

“The new joint venture will address the growing market of lead acid stor-age batteries for two and four wheeler vehicles and

UPS in India with leverag-ing know how and technol-ogy owned by Panasonic as well as customer bases of both parties,” said Minda Industries, which is part of the Uno Minda Group.

The new joint venture, requires an investment of Rs1.6 billion ($28 million) and will be located at the Minda Industries’ Pant Na-gar plant. The new venture will also produce lithium ion batteries, according to Minda. “The demand for lithium ion batteries ex-pected to go up with new

electric mobility plan envis-aged by the central govern-ment.”

The Indian car battery is reckoned to be worth around $300 million an-nually, according to ana-lyst fi rm Frost & Sullivan. The overall consumption of automotive batteries could rise to around 6.3 million units with the OE segment comprising around 1.2 to 1.3 million units a year. The replacement automotive battery market is also ex-pected to grow at a healthy rate in the coming years.

Advanced lead-carbon Axion wins solar storage and frequency contract

Panasonic signs JV with Uno Minda to make lead acid batteries in India

Exide Chapter 11 runs on but aims for resolution by spring

Procter & Gamble plan to sell of DuracellProcter & Gamble announced at the end of September that it was planning to sell of its Duracell power business, the battery brand that came with the Gillette acquisition in 2005.

The fi rm said it did not know what form the exit would take — a split off, a divestiture or a spin off are all likely options — but it would notify its shareholders in advance of the event.

Chaowei recycling ready to goChaowei Power announced at the end of September its lead -acid battery recycling project was getting ready to go live, according to local media.

The project, located in the recycling economic park in Xinhe County of Hebei Province, China anticipates recycling 150,000 tonnes of lead from scrap batteries annually.

Chaowei Power built the park in 2012, with a total investment of 2.2 billion yuan ($369 million). A total of 45 million new-energy batteries will be produced once all projects come online.


NEWS

Carnegie Mellon University researchers revealed in Octo-ber that the cost savings as-sociated with manufacturing a high volume of batteries for electric vehicles may be nearly exhausted.

Mass production low-ers cost, say the researchers — but only up to a point. Moreover, government sub-sidies have only disguised the reality behind the pro-duction prices/

“Electric vehicle batteries are expensive,” says Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering and public pol-icy and lead researcher. “Fed-eral and state governments have been subsidizing and mandating electric vehicle sales for years with the idea that increasing production volume will reduce costs and make these vehicles viable for mainstream consumers.

“But we found that bat-tery economies of scale are exhausted quickly, at around MWh200-MWh300 of an-nual production. That’s comparable to the amount of batteries produced for the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt last year,” Michalek said. “Past this point, higher volume alone won’t do much to cut cost.”

The research fi ndings, if true, have huge implications for some of the potential electric vehicle manufac-turers in the years to come — and most particularly Te-sla’s so-called ‘gigafactory’ where the business model is predicated on producing cheaper lithium ion batteries via economies of scale and, as yet, only anticipated ad-vancements in battery chem-istry.

“Our results raise ques-tions about whether increas-ing vehicle sales is the best way to continue to spend limited resources — as op-posed to, say, more research on battery technology,” says Jay Whitacre, researcher and associate professor of engi-

neering and public policy and materials.

But it is not all gloom for the industry’s nascent electric vehicle manufacturers. “For example, we estimate that fi nding a way to make bat-teries with thicker electrodes could lower the cost of long-range electric vehicle batter-ies by as much as 8%,” says Whitacre, “while increasing production beyond current levels may only cut costs by less than 3%.”

Whitacre reckons that oth-er cost-cutting factors could be indirectly aided by higher production volumes, such as

the fi rm’s learning and expe-rience with battery manufac-turing, increased incentives for corporate research on electric vehicle technologies, and potential for increased control over suppliers that provide raw materials.

The study also notes that battery cost varies for differ-ent vehicle applications.

“Vehicle batteries aren’t commodities,” says Apurba Sakti, a postdoctoral re-search associate at MIT and contributor. “Different battery designs are best for different types of vehicles. A battery designed for one

application can cost more than twice as much per unit energy as one designed for another application.”

The researchers’ fi nal con-clusion is basic but blunt. “At the end of the day, econom-ics will determine the degree to which electric vehicles are adopted by mainstream consumers,” says Michalek. “Battery cost is the single largest economic barrier for mainstream adoption of electric vehicles, and large factories alone aren’t likely to solve the battery cost problem.”

Imergy Power Systems, the US fl ow battery fi rm, has introduced the ESP30 series, a new generation of vana-dium fl ow batteries that it claims lowers their cost from the “industry benchmark of $500 per kWh to under $300 per kWh.

The increases the perfor-mance and fl exibility of energy storage systems for utilities, renewable energy projects, microgrids, and commercial and industrial

customers.The ESP30 series has a

power capability of up to 50kW and can store up to 200 kWh of electricity.

It is the fi rst battery from Imergy to use secondary sources of vanadium like mining slag, fl y ash, and oth-er environmental waste.

Customer deliveries of the ESP30 will begin in Novem-ber in the US and India for microgrid applications.

“This new model repre-

sents an exponential step forward in vanadium fl ow battery technology,” says Bill Watkins, CEO of Imergy Power Systems. “The addi-tional power capability and capacity of the new ESP30 series makes this battery one of the lowest cost storage op-tions for solar arrays, wind turbines, and behind-the-meter grid applications.

“In addition, the minimum 20-year cycle life of the elec-trolyte and the residual value of the vanadium deliver a phenomenal value for the customer.”

Panasonic announced in October that it is provid-ing engineering, construc-tion and procurement ser-vices to Powertree Services to build 68 electric vehicle charging stations at multi-unit residential properties

in San Francisco. Con-struction has already be-gun. The units are pow-ered by solar energy and incorporate a battery stor-age component.

When complete, the 68 stations will result in a

total installed capacity of 6.1MW of power and 2.5MW of EV charging ca-pacity. Each station is con-fi gured to support up to 70 amps or 18 kilowatts. This is roughly equivalent to 60 to 70 miles of range for every hour of charging. The exact rate of charging de-pends on vehicle models.

Hitachi Maxell cut its annual operating profi t forecast by 40% to 5.1 billion yen ($48 million) in mid-October and said it would reduce its head-count in its lithium ion bat-tery business after high-end

smartphone sales sagged.The Japanese electronics

maker, which supplies lithi-um ion batteries for Samsung Electronics smartphones, said it would offer voluntary retirement packages to 130

staff over 40-years old at the end of February next year and outsource an increased proportion of batteries after that.

Samsung’s sales are being hurt by Chinese smartphone manufacturers working at the low end of the market and squeezed at the high end by Apple.

Imergy cuts costs of fl ow battery power to $300 per kWh

Panasonic in energy storage/charging station venture

Hitachi Maxell to cull parts of lithium ion battery business

Cost of lithium ion batteries unlikely to fall below 200MWh-300MWh


NEWS IN BRIEF

UBS, the multinational banking giant, reckons that a tipping point in en-ergy storage and genera-tion could arrive as early as 2020. At this point large-scale, centralized power stations could start to be-come a thing of the past.

The bank’s analysts, in a report to their professional investors, say they expect photovoltaic technologies, cheaper energy storage and the rise in electric vehicles to signal the end of power stations with the transition likely to be complete with-in 20 years.

“Solar is at the edge of being a competitive power generation technology,” said the report. “The big-gest drawback has been its intermittency. This is where batteries and electric vehi-cles come into play. Battery costs have declined rapidly, and we expect a further de-cline of more than 50% by 2020.”

Centralized power sta-tions, the briefi ng said, are too big and infl exible to continue to service the power needs of future gen-erations. The authors of the report instead suggest that households and busi-nesses will increasingly fi nd it cheaper and easier to generate and store their own.

The report said: “By 2025, everybody will be able to produce and store power. And it will be green and cost-competitive, ie, not more expensive or even cheaper than buying power from utilities.”

The report urged UBS’ fi -nancial clients “to join the revolution”, identifying so-lar as the technology that will be the most disruptive to the status quo. The com-bination of cheaper energy

storage — irrespective of the chemistry used to store that energy — caused by greater PV effi ciencies as well as mass produced elec-tric vehicles suggest that a fi nancial return on a home solar PV system could be as little as six years.

It suggested too that this

return on investment could be made without the need for government subsidies.

Separately, a recent re-port by the International Energy Agency predicts that worldwide renewable power generation will ex-ceed that from gas and be twice that of nuclear by

2016. It will make up al-most a quarter of the glob-al power mix by 2018.

Developing countries, with China at the fore-front, are expected to ac-count for two-thirds of the global increase in renew-able power generation by 2018.

Lead fundamentals, which remain bullish in the medium term thanks to its key industrial uses, are set to continue to im-prove. In the short term, however, the market has returned to a supply sur-plus and is expected to end the year fl at follow-ing its inability to hold price gains, according to Lead Analysis and Forecast for Q4, a report produced by Basemetals.com

It outpaced fundamen-tals, following specula-tion of a supply squeeze next year when several large zinc/lead mines

reach the end of their productive lives. With lower mine production growth expected next year and organic growth likely to continue to fuel consumption, the lead market is seen moving into a defi cit of around 130,000 tonnes in 2015.

“Global demand has continued to fall this year, down 58,000 tonnes on the fi rst seven months of the year, ac-cording to the World Bureau of Metal Statis-tics. This is an interesting trend — with the major economies returning to strength, we would have

expected lead demand to rise.

“The market swung to a surplus of 11,000 tonnes in the fi rst seven months of the year from a 12,000-tonne defi cit in the fi rst quarter. LME lead inventories continue to rise after strong gains in July - they are now around 225,250 tonnes, gaining momentum from the Qingdao probe. But in the context of the total market, stocks are not high, refl ecting the potential for the market to swing into a defi cit in 2015.

Californian governor Jerry Brown signed a bill in Sep-tember that requires the Department of Toxic Sub-stances Control to either is-sue a permanent permit or shut Exide’s recycling plant down by the end of 2015.

The facility has been closed since mid-March while it attempts to upgrade pollution controls and meet the necessary regulatory en-vironmental requirements. When operational the plant

can recycle around 25,000 batteries per day.

In early November Cali-fornian regulators an-nounced an enforcement order that requires Exide to spend $9 million to clean up contamination close to the plant in Vernon on the out-skirts of Los Angeles and set aside some $38 million to cover the cost of a clean-up if the plant is closed.

In July an independ-ent hearing board with

the South Coast Air Qual-ity Management District approved two orders that impose conditions on Exide to control arsenic emissions from smelting and lead-dust emissions from construction work.

Exide will have to install more air pollution control devices designed to reduce arsenic and lead emissions. It will also have to imple-ment dust-control meas-ures.

Energy storage to the fore as largescale electricity generation set to fade, claims bank report to investors

Lead prices to fall near term with strengthening probable in 2015

Further moves afoot to shutdown Exide battery recycling plant

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NEWS

Eight international car man-ufacturing fi rms and 15 US utilities took part in the fi rst demonstration of an open software platform in Octo-ber, to allow the batteries in plug-in electric vehicles to respond to the grid’s supply and demand needs.

The test, which was held in California, is a part of a project, led by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Sumitomo Elec-tric Industries, to develop a central software platform that will allow PEVs to col-lectively respond to requests from utilities to help man-age the high demand on power grids at peak times.

This demonstration rep-resents a major milestone toward implementing a common interface commu-nications architecture that meets the needs of utilities and equipment manufac-turers while simultaneously benefi ting electric vehicle owners and electricity us-ers, says Dan Bowermaster, manager of EPRI’s Electric Transportation Program.

Seven different plug-in ve-hicles — a Ford Focus Elec-tric, a GM Cadillac ELR, a BMW i3, a Mercedes-Benz Smart ED, a Toyota Prius Plug-In, a Honda Fit EV and a Chrysler RAM PHEV — took part in the demo,

which lasted one hour, to show the cars’ ability to accept a grid signal from a single utility for a demand response exercise. Each car simultaneously took a sig-nal from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, to stop and then resume charging.

The vehicles at the demon-stration refl ect the range of communications technolo-gies that can be used to con-nect electric cars with the smart grid, such as wired communications through the charging plug and tele-matics/wireless communica-tions through a cellular mo-dem in the vehicle.

The OEM central server architecture has been de-signed to accommodate the different communications, to allow for the widest par-ticipation between vehicles and the grid.

The ability to integrate charging with the next-generation grid is a key challenge we need to meet, says Doug Kim, director of Advanced Technology at Southern California Edi-son, which was one of the project’s utility participants. The adoption of standard-ized interfaces could pro-vide maximum ease and fl exibility for PEV owners.

Some vehicles required additional software controls for communication, but the hope is, if the pilot is suc-cessful, these controls will be built in to future models.

The secret sauce to the OEM central server is that it is able to act as a single gate-way interface to both the wired and wireless connec-tions to the vehicles. Some of the demo vehicles are in production today, some are near-production prototypes, says Ford’s Dave McCreadie who is leading the car mak-er’s collaboration in the pro-ject.

The successful rollout of the EPRI’s open software EV-to-grid platform de-pends on consumers see-ing the benefi t fi nancially. Many of our PEV custom-ers are environmentally conscious, so the idea of being able to support the grid in a way that will create less waste will be a selling point to some, but others may need a different incen-tive. “Our fi rst challenge is to continue to expand the use of PEVs — we are on a good path with more than 250,000 being driven in the US, “ says McCreadie.

The project was launched in mid-2014. The car mak-ers are: BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Hon-da Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubi-shi and Toyota. The utilities were Austin Energy, Cen-terPoint Energy, Common-wealth Edison, Con Edison, CPS Energy, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, Manitoba Hydro, Northeast Utilities, Pacifi c Gas & Electric, PJM Interconnection, Sacramen-to Municipal, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern Company, Southern Califor-nia Edison, and the Tennes-see Valley Authority.

Scaling up the demonstra-tion will require new ele-ments to be considered that are not part of the initial technical proof-of-concept shown this October. They include geographic diversity of vehicles and the utilities that serve these areas, as not all utilities have the commu-nications capability to inter-face with the OEM central server.

When this is rolled out to electric car customers, there will need to be systems in place for billing, or settle-ments, and exchange of information. Data privacy and security will also be of importance.

For Ford, the next steps

are testing the programme to ensure it is robust and expand the rollout with willing plug-in car owners, while adding more function-ality and capability to the basic platform architecture.

In 2015 other use cases that will potentially be add-ed include real-time pricing, renewable energy signals, aggregation and facility en-ergy management system integration.

The EPRI-led programme, at this stage, is only for the automakers and utilities that have agreed to take part, though all PEV au-tomakers can join. Vehicles from manufacturers that are not participating in the OEM central server project may still have the ability to interact with the smart grid, depending on their com-munication method and the utility territory they are in. Some forms of smart charg-ing can be accomplished through special charging stations.

The process for managing PEV charging will be trans-parent to the vehicle owner. Vehicle owners maintain ultimate control and would have the option to partici-pate in a demand response and load management pro-gramme managed either by the utility or by a third party, or opt out altogether.

In the next development phase, the EPRI team will be integrating the PEV com-munications platform with residential, fl eet, and com-mercial facility energy man-agement systems. This will enable testing of its ability to manage local control sce-narios such as demand man-agement for commercial and industrial consumers. Additionally, it will enable interface communications for charging stations and commercial demand re-sponse facilitators.

EPRI tests integration of plug-in vehicles to utilities’ power needs


NEWS IN BRIEF

Panasonic, Tesla sign-up agreedFor the record, Panasonic Corporation and Tesla Motors signed an agreement at the end of July that lays out their cooperation on the construction of a large-scale battery manufacturing plant in the US, known as the gigafac-tory.

Tesla will provide the land, buildings and utilities. Panasonic will supply cy-lindrical lithium-ion cells and invest in the associated equipment, machinery, and other manufacturing tools based on their mutual approval.

The gigafactory is being created to enable a continuous reduction in the cost of long range battery packs in parallel with manufacturing at the vol-umes required to enable Tesla to meet its goal of advancing mass market electric vehicles, the fi rm said.

The gigafactory will be managed by Tesla with Panasonic joining as the principal partner responsible for lithium-ion battery cells and occupying about half of the planned manufactur-ing space.

LG Chem develops batteries for HyundaiFor the record, LG Chem has devel-oped a 48-volt lithium-ion battery, according to Korean media reports in July and the batteries that will be used for electric vehicles made by Hyundai Motors in its new range of sport utility vehicles due for roll-out in 2017. It will no longer use the existing 12-volt, lead-acid starter/stop-start batteries,

The higher voltage is needed to handle a growing number of electrical systems that save fuel but need more volts, such as stop-start, electric power steering, regenerative breaks and other energy-effi cient electrical systems.

We see a huge demand for 48-volt lithium-ion batteries amid growing demands for budget EVs with en-hancements in energy consumption and lower costs. LG already completed development of the batteries and ship-ments will start from 2016, accord-i9ng to LG Chem chief fi nancial offi cer Cho Seok-jae.

Computer software accelerates design of next generation EV batteriesFor the record, CD-adapco announced at the end of July completion of its development project targeting the automotive and lithium ion battery industries, enabling faster design and development of advanced electric drive vehicle power systems.

This project, which began in August 2011, is co-funded by the Vehicle Technologies Offi ce in the US Depart-ment of Energy and managed by its National Renewable Energy Labo-ratory (NREL). This project is part of the competitive Computer Aided Engineering of electric drive Batteries (CAEBAT) activity launched by DOE in 2010. The project team included CD-adapco, Battery Design, Johnson Controls and A123.

The methods developed within this program provide seamless integration between electrochemists and thermal engineers within the battery design process.

PNNL team develops hybrid Mg-Li batteryFor the record, researchers at Pacifi c Northwest National Laboratory an-nounced at the end of July that they had created workable hybrid batteries using a magnesium metal anode; a Li+ ion intercalation cathode (Mo6S8), and a dual-salt electrolyte containing Mg2+ and Li+ ions. The objective was to combine the advantages of lithium and magnesium electrochemistries.

They reported that such hybrid batteries delivered strong rate perfor-mance (105 mAh g-1 at 15 C) and su-perior cycling stability (B5% capacity drop for 3000 cycles at 10 C), along with reasonable output voltages. The researchers suggested that the inherent safety and stability features of such de-vices make them promising for many applications, especially for large-scale static energy storage.

UL battery safety standards are now FDA recognizedUnderwriters Laboratories offi cials announced in August that the US Food and Drug Administration has recog-nized two UL battery safety standards as consensus standards for medical de-vices incorporating lithium or nickel-based batteries. The two standards are UL 2054 — Standard for Household and Commercial Batteries, and UL 1642 — Standard for Lithium Batter-ies (Cells).

Consensus standards are standards recognized by the FDA for use in evaluating medical devices before they are approved for market entry.

China BAK Battery and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics link up on next-gen batteriesFor the record, China BAK Battery announced in July it planned to work with the Dalian Institute of Chemical

Physics in the research and devel-opment of next-generation battery manufacturing technologies with new battery materials, from lab scale tests, pilot scale tests to industrial tests, and related special preparation techniques.

CBAK and DICP will also cooperate in training graduate and post-doctoral students and co-build a graduate prac-tice base, which will provide talent and technical support towards enhancing China’s international competitiveness in the power battery industry.

Ideal Power signs agreement with Sharp ElectronicsFor the record, Ideal Power, the power conversion technology fi rm, signed a multi-year purchase agreement with Sharp Electronics Corporation in July whereby Sharp will use Ideal Power’s 30kW battery converter in its Smart-Storage systems. Ideal Power has received an initial order from Sharp under this agreement. The fi rm says it expects order volumes to scale along with Sharp’s SmartStorage business.

Sharp’s SmartStorage systems use onsite battery energy storage that can reduce monthly utility demand charges for commercial and industrial build-ing owners. Demand charges are the fastest growing part of utility bills for commercial customers and in some cases can reach half of a company’s monthly utility bill.

BYD to begin production of lithium manganese iron phosphate batteries BYD Auto announced in August it will begin production of a new lithium manganese iron phosphate batteries for electric vehicles in 2015, according to board secretary Wu Jing-sheng as reported in local media. BYD says the addition of manganese to its lithium iron phosphate cathode material should improve the range of electric vehicles and reduce costs.

Dow Energy Materials already offers a lithium-manganese-iron-phos-phate cathode material which provides a 10% to 15% increase in energy density in battery cells compared to standard lithium iron phosphate cath-ode material.

EV Lite project closes with lighter weight, cheaper batteriesA two-year UK project known as EV-Lite on sustainable lightweight low cost battery systems for extended life cycles closed this summer. Among its achievements was a 41% weight reduction and 63% cost reduction in

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NEWS IN BRIEF

the non-cell components was attained during the project. At the battery pack level, this comes to a saving of 45kg.

Co-funded by the Technology Strat-egy Board, the consortium involves Cenex, Unipart Manufacturing, Manufacturing Technology Centre, RDVS, Electrovaya, Bluebird Innova-tion Group, Loughborough Univer-sity, CRR, and Cenex.

The EV-Lite design differs from a benchmarked battery in terms of parts count. Its parts count is 196 compared to 807 of a benchmarked battery, considering a 4kWh-sized module.

The project developed a novel safety feature that isolates cells in case of an accident. It also includes a new battery interface system. Five patents have already been fi led.

MIIT to shut 39 lead acid battery fi rmsFor the record, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technol-ogy announced in July that it plans to close 39 lead acid battery manufac-turing fi rms as part of its 2014 Inef-fi cient Capacity Elimination Plan.

The intention is to eliminate 356,000 tonnes of lead from the industry, according to the Shanghai

Metal Market which said that this would remove 8.48 million kVAh of lead-acid battery polar plate capacity, and 5.31 million kVAh of lead-acid battery assembling capacity

NASA shortlists four for deep spaceNASA announced in July it had short-listed four proposals for advanced energy storage technologies that may be used to power the agency’s future space missions.

New energy storage technology will be critical to our future exploration of deep space, says a NASA offi cial, whether missions to an asteroid, Mars or beyond. That’s why we’re invest-ing in this critical mission technology area. The four proposals are:• High energy density and long-life

lithium sulphur batteries for aero-space applications, submitted by the California Institute of Technology.

• Advanced high energy rechargeable lithium-sulphur batteries, submitted by Indiana University.

• Garnet electrolyte based safe, lith-ium-sulfur energy storage, submit-ted by the University of Maryland, College Park

• Silicon anode based cells for high

specifi c energy systems submitted by Amprius.

Phase I awards are approximately $250,000 and provide funding to conduct an eight-month component test and analysis phase. Phase II is an engineering development unit hardware phase that provides as much as $1 million per award for one year, while Phase III consists of the prototype hardware development, as much as $2 million per award for 18 months.

Oxis and Multi Source Power look to marine battery developmentOxis, the lithium sulphur battery developer, and Multi Source Power announced in August that they plan to launch a new battery in the spring of 2015.

This development will be part of the Ghost Power Brand. The battery system will be scalable from 20 kWh to 50 kWh upwards and will provide multiple confi gurable voltage outputs to power electric motor boats, but can also be used to power air condition-ing systems, navigation systems, says an Oxis offi cial.

MSP designs and makes battery packs and hybrid power and propulsion sys-tems for the marine industry.

Applicant

Michigan State University

Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

University of Pittsburgh

The Research Foundation for State University of New York (SUNY), Binghamton University

Liox Power, Inc.

University of Maryland

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Location

East Lansing, MI

Palo Alto, CA

Pittsburgh, PA

Binghamton, NY

Pasadena, CA

College Park, MD

Oak Ridge, TN

College Station, TX

Upton, NY

Description

This project will demonstrate polycrystalline membranes in LiCmetal and LiCsulfur batteries that support current densities approaching that of defectCfree crystals.

This project will use nanomaterials to improve the interface between lithium metal anodes and the electrolytes to improve the cycle life of lithium metal batteries.

This project will develop and scale up synthesis of high capacity cathodes by highCthroughput costC effective approaches.

This project will replace the carbon anode with a SnCFeCC composite with twice the volumetric energy density of carbon, and provide a high energy cathode.

This project will develop high specifi c energy, high power and highly reversible LiCair batteries that are based on the concept of replacing traditional electrolytes in the air electrode with a stable inorganic molten salt electrolyte.

This project will utilize a multifaceted and integrated (experimental and computational) approach to solve the key issue in solidCstate LiCion batteries, interfacial impedance, with a focus on GarnetCbased solidCstate electrolytes.

This project will utilize nanoindentation to determine mechanical properties and identify the causes of premature failures at the protected lithium interface.

This project will improve the design of the electrolyte chemistry and cathode architecture of LiCsulfur batteries based on the development of the internal shuttle effect obtained from fi rstC principles atomistic and mesoscopic modeling.

This project will develop a lowCcost, anodeless LiC sulfur battery technology utilizing the Dual Functional Cathode Additives concept and able to deliver energy densities relevant for PEV applications.

Federal Cost Share

$1,233,555

$1,350,000

$1,250,061 (jointly funded)

$1,221,125

$1,500,000



$990,000


US DoE announces further funding for life beyond lithium The US department of energy announced in August more than $55 million for 31 new projects to accelerate research and development of critical vehicle technologies that will improve fuel effi ciency and reduce costs.


NEWS IN BRIEF

Mexico City International Airport chooses fl ywheels Vycon, the manufacturer of energy storage fl ywheel systems, announced in August that the Benito Juárez Inter-national Airport in Mexico City, had bought three of its fl ywheel systems. These backup systems will increase power protection to the airport’s vital runway lighting and other critical navigation systems.

AICM says it chose Vycon, in part because unlike other fl ywheel systems, Vycon’s fl ywheels do not require ex-pensive bearing replacement. Being in a tropical location with a high eleva-tion, Mexico City is subject to unpre-dictable weather, but also to high-heat conditions meaning fl ywheels can protect the airport from costly battery maintenance and disposal of toxic materials.

Nexcon Technology buys Panasonic subsidiaryNexcon Technology a Korean manu-facturer of rechargeable battery components, has acquired a subsidiary of Sanyo Electric — which became part of Japan’s Panasonic in 2010 — specializing in rechargeable battery protection circuit boards for W20 billion ($18.3 million).

Nexcon will then manufacture pro-tection circuit boards for lithium-ion batteries and printed circuit boards of chargers for and Panasonic.

Nexcon already supplies these boards to LG Chem and Samsung SDI, meaning it will supply components to all top-three companies in recharge-able batteries in the world.

LG Chem wins unspecifi ed Audi orderSouth Korea’s LG Chem said in Au-gust it had won an order from Audi to supply batteries for its plug-in hybrid and micro hybrid electric vehicles. LG Chem said the deal was worth hundreds of millions of dollars but de-clined to give further details, according to Reuters, It said it expected to win more such orders from Audi parent Volkswagen in the future.

Valence wins further Segway contractValence Technology, the lithium ion battery fi rm, announced in August that it had been chosen by existing cus-tomer Segway for its recently released Segway SE-3 Patroller.

The SE-3 Patroller is a three-wheel device designed for police and security markets. The SE-3 Patroller is powered

by Valence rechargeable lithium ion batteries that can be charged at any standard electrical outlet.

The Valence U-Charge series provides energy storage in standard Battery Council International lead-acid battery module sizes for a wide variety of applications. It is available in mul-tiple confi gurations and incorporates a built-in battery management system. The battery series is scalable and provides twice the run time and up to 10 times the cycle life of lead acid batteries,

Network Rail starts testing battery-powered trainNetwork Rail, the UK track operator, has begun to test a battery-powered train in trials on a Greater Anglia class 379 train at Bombardier’s plant in Derby, UK. The train will be adapted by Bombardier and fi tted with two dif-ferent forms of batteries: lithium iron magnesium phosphate and hot sodium nickel salt.

This project is an important part of our strategy of increasing the electrifi -cation of the railway, says a Network Rail offi cial. If we can create an energy storage capability for trains, electric traction can be introduced to more parts of the railway without the need to necessarily extend the electrifi -cation infrastructure.

A battery-powered train could use non-electrifi ed and diesel lines, and recharge their batteries at terminal stations.

The trial of the two battery chemis-tries will fi nish by the end of the year. The UK department for transport and the Enabling Innovation Team are also partners in the project.

ABB launches fi rst general type of DC charger compliant with China ABB, the power and automation group, in August launched the Terra 53 Z, its fi rst general type of high power DC fast charger that complies with China GB standard. The new chargers will be manufactured in Shenzhen at ABB’s recently estab-lished base for electric vehicle charg-ers.

Terra 53 Z can be widely used at public charging stations, EV fl eet parking lots and highway service sta-tions to charge personal e-vehicles as well as some minibuses and EVs used for logistics. With this high power DC fast charger compliant with GB stand-ard, of which the rated power is up to 50kW, a 20-minutes charging could give a normal electric vehicle enough

power to drive another 100km. This is the world’s fi rst DC fast

charging solution to offer specifi c types complying with the three main stream charging standards: SAE Combo, CHAdeMo and China GB, says ABB.

Earlier this year, ABB and Shenzhen BYD Daimler New Technology signed a strategic cooperation to supply DC fast charging wall boxes over the next six years. The wall boxes are custom-ized for the DENZA electric vehicle and will be sold through DENZA’s distribution network.

Samsung SDI, China’s Sungrow plan ESS ventureSouth Korea’s Samsung SDI Co has signed a preliminary deal with China’s Sungrow Power Supply Co to form a joint venture to make energy storage systems in China.

The companies plan to build a production facility by next year, the statement said. Samsung SDI, a maker of electronics components, did not disclose how large the joint invest-ment would be and said the location has not been decided.

Andalay Solar partners Highpower for ESSAndalay Solar, a manufacturer of integrated solar power systems, announced a collaboration with Highpower International, a manu-facturer, of lithium and nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) rechargeable batter-ies, to launch a pilot project that will provide energy storage systems for Andalay Solar customers.

Highpower’s energy storage system has six 2.4KWh lithium-ion battery modules and an output inverter that allows for expandability. For the hybrid system, when combined with Andalay’s integrated solar system, energy will be generated both by the solar system as well as by the utility grid network.

GKN to supply 500 electric fl ywheel hybrid drive systems to Go-Ahead Group for busesGo-Ahead Group, the UK transport operator, announced in July it had or-dered 500 electric fl ywheel Gyrodrive systems from GKN Hybrid Power for use in buses. The Gyrodrive Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) sys-tem harvests braking energy normally lost as heat.

The GKN Hybrid Power Mk4 eFES is an electrically driven fl ywheel en-ergy storage system.

2775 Meadowbrook Road, Benton Harbor, MI 49022 U.S.A. [email protected] / www.mac-eng.com

Latin America (Sorfin Yoshimura, Ltd.) Asia (Sorfin Yoshimura Tokyo, Ltd.) China (Sorfin Yoshimura Qingdao, Ltd.) Europe (Sorfin Yoshimura Paris, Ltd.) Brazil (Sorfin Yoshimura, Ltd.)

New York, USA: [email protected] Tokyo, Japan: [email protected] Qingdao, China: [email protected] Paris, France: [email protected] Sao Paulo, Brazil: [email protected]

OPINION


Murphy’s background in lead batter-ies goes back to his college days when he worked at the Hammond Group, packing 50lb bags of lead oxide, dur-ing the summers to pay for tuition.

His fi rst major job after graduation was working on the space shuttle main engines which brought him into indirect contact with lead batteries — but not as most of us at ELBC would recognize them. It was lead telluride — which used as a thermo-electric couple converts temperature differ-ences into voltage, a system recently launched on the Mars Curiosity Rov-er, which is rolling on Mars today.

But if his fi rst professional connec-tions with lead and energy storage verge on the arcane, that’s not the case any longer. In October last year Murphy took over as president of the Hammond Group — a company that is very much at the cutting edge of the lead acid battery business.

What does prove fascinating, how-ever, are the parallels Murphy makes between his far-off days with Rock-etdyne a Californian company that built the propulsion and power sys-tems for NASA— he spent 25+ years there — and the modern lead acid battery community.

NASA forged a technology that eventually changed the way that we look at space. Similarly too, advances in lead battery design, will change the world’s energy storage picture com-pletely, he believes.

“We’re facing a new frontier and only just glimpsing the potential of advanced lead acid batteries,” he says.

“A perfect example of this is the in-troduction of 48V lead acid batteries and a new generation of stop-start cars for all needs and climates could emerge with lead as the standard.”

The ability to choose battery types will become increasingly evident. “Five years ago, if you wanted a battery, it was very much a com-moditized product,” he says. “Nowa-days, we’re ambitiously looking for an 80% increase in performance for

20% of the cost of a lithium ion bat-tery.

“Products such as our K2 expander, for example, opens up a new world of business of offering tailored so-lutions which, as we did years ago, looked at producing the best for the whole system and not just one part of it.

Like many in the lead acid com-munity, Murphy is puzzled by the continued fascination with lithium as its rival. “When I worked for Boe-ing Rocketdyne Energy Systems part of my remit was to look across the whole organization and see how could leverage aerospace into a cleaner and greener fashion.

“One underlying principle was a simple one — working out the total cost of ownership. This seems to be ignored by the admittedly clever peo-ple developing lithium batteries.

“This situation can’t last forever. I believe we’re already seeing a turn-

around in automotive companies’ perceptions of non-lead batteries. We should soon be seeing that in greater research and development work, par-ticularly in partial state of charge which is where the greatest benefi ts can be found.

Hammond itself has recently re-purposed one of its own facilities in an increase of its own R&D spend. Murphy believes that its research in expanders — he calls the arrival of its K2 product as a “complete game-changer” — is just one step along a much more complex path for the fi rm.

“We’re going beyond highly engi-neered expanders,” he says. “Tradi-tional expanders used to have three components to them but now they have six. But we’re looking at better grid metals, greater varieties of addi-tives, new lead alloys, additive manu-facturing techniques and new battery geometries.”

Part of the key to this is some kind of competitive/collaborative mix as an industry standard. “For the space shuttle to move ahead in the early years, we needed the whole aero-space industry — internationally and commercially — to participate. The challenges were too great for NASA alone.

“We’re in a similar situation with pioneering the next generation of lead acid batteries — and that’s why we belong to an organization like ALABC.”

A glance through Murphy’s CV shows that he has a long history of developing start-up projects and commercializing them. Initially this work was for large fi rms such as Boe-ing but until recently he’s been the driving force behind a variety of en-ergy related start-up fi rms.

Finding the right mix between collaboration and competition

Terry Murphy, chief executive of the Hammond Group reveals how his early background working with NASA has informed the approach that he believes the lead acid battery industry should take in the future.

“Five years ago, if you wanted a battery, it was very much a commoditized product. Nowadays, we’re am-bitiously looking for an 80% increase in performance for 20% of the cost of a lithium ion battery.


PRODUCT NEWS

EnerSys has released its heavy-duty Ironclad range of motive power batteries for Europe. Ironclad of-fers more power, extended running times and longer life than comparable de-signs to support intensive lift truck operations and other demanding materials handling applications. The range is particularly suited to situations where longer truck run times are needed to minimize the use of spare batteries.

Materials handling equip-ment will run for up to one hour longer on each charge, reducing the need for time-consuming battery changes and maximizing productiv-ity.

Models rated from 276Ah to 1032Ah are available in standard sizes for small pal-let trucks up to large reach and counterbalance trucks. The batteries were previ-ously available in the US.

The Ironclad batteries have a number of features that deliver performance advantages over conven-tional lead-acid designs, says EnerSys. The posi-tive electrodes in the bat-tery’s cells incorporate a unique square Cladex tube technology that results in around 18% more surface area than the round tubes or fl at plates used in con-ventional lead-acid batter-ies.

This maximizes the con-tact area between the elec-trodes’ active material and the electrolyte which ena-bles higher sustained volt-ages throughout the dis-charge cycle.

The batteries are also used with an electrolyte with a higher-than-average specifi c gravity. The batter-ies have high ampere-hour capacity ratings, outper-forming conventional de-signs with up to 15% more power, which is ideal for the higher discharge rates demanded by modern AC-drive lift trucks.

To maintain a lift truck’s constant drive and lift per-formance throughout a shift, the motor must offset a battery’s normal voltage drop during discharge by drawing more and more amps. The Ironclad bat-tery’s ability to sustain higher voltages, combined with, says EnerSys, indus-try-leading capacity ratings, extends its run time when compared with convention-al lead-acid models.

The greater surface area of square tube technology and electrolytes with high-er specifi c gravities also help the battery achieve a longer service life. This is because the batteries ex-perience active mass stress levels around 10% lower than conventional designs. Reliability and service life is further enhanced by the use of sleeved electrode separators which prevent misalignment and shorting.

Fully insulated fl exible inter-cell connectors add extra protection and the dust-proof, single-point fi ll-ing system reduces topping-up time and cuts down on battery maintenance.

All of these features com-bine to ensure the Ironclad batteries have a design life of 1,800 cycles which equates to an extra year in many applications. This is ideal for intensive long-term rental op-erations where customers are demanding long-er contracts.

Ironclad batter-ies are available in eight different confi gurations in a choice of two cell heights (600mm and 750mm) and four cell sizes (with 3, 4, 5 or 6 positive plates) with ratings from 276 to 1032Ah in

standard sizes to fi t vehicles from small pallet trucks to large forklift trucks.

When supplied with the EnerSys BFS fi lling system and the Hawker Wi-IQ battery charging monitor the batteries have a two year plus two pro rata war-ranty.

Maxwell Technologies has released the newest member of its K2 family of ultracapacitors, the 2.85-Volt, 3,400-Farad cell. It expands the power range of the K2 family by 17% and the energy range by 23%, making it, Maxwell says, the most powerful cell available in the industry-

standard 60-mm cylin-drical form factor. It is the fi rst cell to incorpo-rate Maxwell’s DuraBlue Advanced Shock and Vibration technology.

DuraBlue technology is tested to demanding environmental require-ments for transportation, increasing vibrational re-sistance by about 300%

and shock immunity by 400% when compared to ultracapacitor-based competitive offerings.

Features and benefi ts include: up to 1,000,000 duty cycles or 10 years of life, up to 18 kW/kg of specifi c power, up to 4.00Wh of stored energy, threaded terminals or laser-weldable posts.

Porvair Filtration Group has developed hydrophobic Vyon fl ame arrestor vents to its product range for use by battery manufacturers to safeguard them from poten-tial explosions in lead acid batteries.

Vyon sintered porous plastic materials offer ex-cellent chemical compat-ibility, exceptional strength and are resistant to most acids, said a company offi -

cial. The new super hydro-phobic material means that it will not wet out, prevent-ing gas venting. Versatile, strong, and effi cient, it will also reduce the likelihood of acid spillage, Vyon says.

Porvair’s battery vents have been used to release excess gas from lead acid batteries during operating cycles and prevent fl ame ingress into the battery. The creation of a fl ow path,

by which gases released through the valve element can escape from the battery, prevent propagation of any potential fl ames.

Porvair, which has sup-plied the process industry with fi ltration equipment for over 25 years, manu-factures in both the US and the UK and has a network of sales offi ces and distribu-tion channels throughout the world.

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PRODUCT NEWS

Exide Technologies launched a new range of stop-start batteries in Octo-ber offering, the fi rm says, performance gains, faster recharging and a sleek new design.

Exide says the batteries were developed in its origi-nal-equipment business, and are coming to the aftermar-ket for the fi rst time. Exide’s new absorbent glass mat (AGM) battery delivers four times the cycle life, 20% more power and three times greater charge acceptance than a standard battery.

“This is achieved through high-performance materials and state-of-the-art tech-nology, including advanced lead-tin alloys, high-surface glass mat separators and unique carbon additives,” the fi rm says. “The new Ex-ide EFB battery shows simi-larly impressive gains.”

Stop-start vehicles already make up 15% of European cars and this is forecast to rise to 50% by 2020.

Exide says it has been in-vesting in its own plants to compete in this market for a considerable period of time. “We invented the fi rst stop-start AGM battery in 2004 and the fi rst EFB bat-tery in 2008,” says a com-pany offi cial.

“There are also major performance gains in Ex-ide’s line-up of convention-al batteries. The new premi-um carbon boost recharges up to 1.5 times faster and delivers 30% more starting power.

When a standard bat-tery discharges, sulphate particles build up on the negative plate, forming a non-conductive layer that inhibits recharging. Exide’s Carbon Boost dissolves these particles by incorpo-rating proprietary carbon additives into the negative

plates, increasing conduc-tivity. This improves charge acceptance and charging times.

The performance gains come from this new Car-bon Boost technology. This was fi rst developed for Ex-ide’s Start-Stop AGM and EFB batteries. The carbon additives lead to improved charge acceptance and a signifi cant reduction in charging times. The battery fi rm says it has continued to make ambitious invest-

ments in the technology, and it will now be applied to conventional batteries for the fi rst time.

Exide has also produced a battery fi nder app. Po-tential customers can enter

their registration number, car model or VIN to see a list of matching parts, and can then narrow their search based on battery performance and typical usage scenarios.

Mastervolt, the Dutch-based manufacturer of off-grid electrical systems, has launched a new 12 Volt, 2.5kW lithium ion battery that is available as part of the roll-out of the Ultra se-ries of marine batteries.

The new 12V 12/2500

model is the same height and width as its 12V and 24V 5kW big sisters, but half the length.

“The second gen-eration Ultra range, the 12/2500, carries the latest developments in Mastervolt power management electron-

ics, making the already highly effi cient, deep-cycle 4-cell battery vastly superior to any lead-acid equivalent,” says the fi rm.

Mastervolt was the fi rst company to bring a full-size 24V lithium ion battery to market.

Dreamweaver International is launching a line of na-nofi ber based separator ma-terials for supercapacitors. The fi rm says it has been working with major super-capacitor manufacturers for over two years develop-ing Silver AR.

“Silver AR materials are designed to have lower in-ternal resistance, higher capacitance and tensile strength, with lower mois-ture content,” says the fi rm. “They are now qualifi ed for manufacture on a machine capable of making over 40 million square meters per year.”

In side by side compari-sons done by outside labo-

ratories comparing Dream-weaver’s Silver AR line to a leading competitor — de-tails will be given in a white paper in the next issue of Batteries International — Dreamweaver’s separators showed 63% lower Gur-ley resistance, 21% higher strength, 9% higher capaci-tance and 27% lower inter-nal resistance.

The internal resistance will increase the round trip energy effi ciency of the su-percapacitors, increasing the fuel effi ciency in hybrid busses.

“We are pleased that sev-eral innovative supercapac-itor companies have chosen to use Dreamweaver sepa-

rators in their products, and to be working with over 25 manufacturers on develop-

mental cells to be launched soon. It is a wonderful way for us to contribute to en-ergy effi ciency in many different industries,” said Brian Morin, Dreamweaver International’s president.

Exide releases new range of stop-start batteries

Mastervolt launches new marine battery

Dreamweaver International launches line of nanofi ber separators for supercapacitors

“There are also major performance gains in Exide’s line-up of conventional batter-ies. The new premium carbon boost re-charges up to 1.5 times faster and deliv-ers 30% more starting power.”

COVER STORY: THE CHANGING FACE OF UPS


It’s an old gag but still partly true. Why will the data centres of the future only need two operators — a man and a dog? The man’s job? It’s to feed the dog. And the dog? To make sure the man doesn’t touch the computers.

From the beginning UPS systems have all been based on the principle that once the computers are running fi ne, the systems must be protected from all forms of intervention. Power loss, of course, being the most devas-tating of all.

The result has been that with the need for greater data to be protected, the corollary has been that the de-mands on UPS have steadily risen.

Over the last decade — although VRLA batteries have been used for a generation in a few data centres — the biggest shift in the UPS business has been the increased trend from fl ooded to VRLA batteries. Nowadays there are few fl ooded cell UPS installations in the sub-100kW range.

Although the quip ‘VRLA batter-ies don’t die, they’re murdered’ holds true, VRLA batteries generally have a

shorter operational lifetime than their fl ooded counterparts. Wet cells have a design life of around 20 years with an expected lifetime of around 15 years.

VRLA batteries — again typically — have a design life of between seven and 10 years but an expected lifetime of around fi ve years. That said they can be cheaper overall in terms of their maintenance requirements and space.

Flooded cell battery systems require long range up-front planning includ-ing specialized physical space, ventila-tion, safety planning, and engineering. Moreover, the costs associated with a bit-by-bit approach to expanding fl ooded cell systems are so large that it is normally less expensive to simply build out the entire system up-front.

Choosing the right backup power application for a data centre is based on calculations on its requirements — load, performance, power, space and maintenance as well as cost. Familiar parameters perhaps but still, in the case of lead acid battery requirements, the need for a safe and stable storage environment.

Effi ciency defi nes next generation of UPS systems

The relentless pursuit of greater productivity and lower cost continues to be the driving force behind making uninterruptible power in data centres ever more sophisticated.

Sara Verbruggen reports.




Heat, especially, shortens the opera-tional lifetime. As a basic rule of thumb, if the optimum temperature environ-ment for a VRLA battery is around 20°C then an increase of around 10°C can halve the performance life.

VRLA batteries, which are expected to have a working life of fi ve years —

but frequently may only operate for three — are equally likely to work for 1-1/2 years unless kept at the right temperature for most of the time.

Even in the case of more sophisti-cated batteries such as EnerSys’s Pow-erSafe SBS Eon product batteries that have a design life of 15 years at 20°C this can be reduced to 7-1/2 years at 30°C.

TPPL technologyManufacturers have responded to the challenge in various ways — typically by designing batteries that: are more resilient to higher temperatures; offer greater performance such as longer life or corrosion resistance; or increase power density.

These considerations all fi gure in the single most critical element of UPS per-formance — battery quality. Just one bad battery can ruin an entire string and bring a system down during a power outage or other interruption. Battery failure is the number one cause of UPS load loss and system downtime.

One such battery chemistry that fulfi ls these requirements is thin plate pure lead technology.

Steve Vechy, senior director for glob-al product portfolio management at EnerSys, puts the development of such batteries down to the greening of the data centre industry. “Drivers includ-ing higher power usage effectiveness factors, LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) building certifi cation, in the US, and a desire for more effi cient systems, which involves operating in ambient temperature con-ditions for non-revenue equipment and functions.

“This is where the demand for thin plate pure lead acid technologies is coming from,” he says.

Thin plate pure lead batteries are fl at plates made from 99.99% pure lead and not lead alloy. Typically TPPL grids are around 1mm thin, compared to the 2mm-4mm that is typical in tra-ditional lead calcium VRLA batteries. TPPL plates improve power density — more punch from the same volume and mass in the same sized cell.

EnerSys says that its TPPL product provides a 22% improvement in volu-metric power density over convention-al AGM batteries.

A peripheral advantage of these bat-teries is that they tend to be smaller, even compared with more standard VRLA modules, meaning that less of the data centre’s space is needed for housing batteries. Because data centre power back-up typically requires large

amounts of space, this can be an im-portant consideration when data cen-tres are situated in prime city commer-cial areas.

The other trend driving demand for more batteries that use pure lead chem-istries is the increasing requirement from data centre managers for shorter runtimes.

A decade ago, it was usual for data centres to specify 25 to 30 minutes of runtime and then have a cushion of, say, 15 minutes. As data centres have grown in size as well as processing power their energy needs have grown too.

“We have increasingly seenrequests for back-up times as short as one to three minutes. This is an area where VRLA was initially not supposed to be a relevant choice, but with some thin plate designs VRLAs can offer a feasi-ble alternative to ultracapacitors,” says Harry Lindgren, who works in global UPS system supplier Eaton’s power quality division for the EMEA market.

Maintaining UPS runtime is a cost in itself, so the redundancy margin has been gradually stripped out by the data centre industry.

This reduces the number of batteries needed and the associated costs, such as maintenance, but it also puts more demand on the battery, which pure lead technology is better equipped to handle.

Mike Nispel, director of product management for UPS at C&D Tech-nologies in Pennsylvania, says: “The move towards reduced transition times in a shutdown means increasingly data centres are specifying things such as I want fi ve minutes at the end of life, which means a shift in sizing to achieve the right end-of-life capacity.

“Data centres are being more specifi c in terms of what they want out of their UPS batteries and how they expect them to perform.”

WarrantyThere are also changes on the warran-ty side too. “It is heading towards fi ve years from the current, which is three years, whereas it used to be one year,” says Nispel. “This matches the 10 year life of data centre equipment, so that batteries only have to be swapped once during the data centre’s operating life-time,” he says.

EnerSys’ TPPL batteries account for about 10%-20% of the company’s overall global UPS batteries market, where the company supplies the Amer-icas, EMEA and Asia-Pacifi c.

“Both EMEA and North America de-

“Data centres are being more specifi c in terms of what they want out of their UPS batteries and how they expect them to perform.” – Mike Nispel,

C&D Technologies

“Investing in predictive maintenance technologies lets you plan remedial action, such as battery replacements, at an opportune time, minimizing the impact of corrective action and its ramifi cations on a data centre’s operations as opposed to having to go in and take the power system offl ine without warning” — Steve Vechy, EnerSys

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mand for thin plate pure lead batteries is driven by these changing operations needs of newer data centres, where re-ducing runtime and greening of data centres are driving the decision mak-ers to opt for more expensive premium products, while in Asia the demand for this technology is more limited, except by the more quality conscious custom-ers,” Vechy says.

In mid-2014 C&D Technologies launched a new line of pure lead bat-teries, specifi cally targeting UPS in banking and fi nance, healthcare, man-ufacturing as well as data centre mar-kets. “Higher temperatures, AC ripple in recharge as well as other factors can all affect the service life of lead acid batteries, so that their service life might be much less than their design life,” says Nispel.

C&D Technologies uses virgin lead to make the grids themselves, which allows for the grains to be tightly con-trolled, reducing corrosion and extend-ing grid life.

The other development is in the paste itself.

Again, virgin lead is used to make the oxide used in the paste, to keep out impurities. “Each processing step has been addressed, including the milling to make the lead oxide and how it is mixed to make the paste, for example, using a slower, cooler process. Some of the steps are proprietary,” says Nispel.

Many of the processing steps have already been used to make the compa-ny’s 2V VRLA batteries with reduced fl oat current. The pure lead added to the process had led to a battery that is targeting the UPS market, where data centres are much more cost-driven and are looking at using less cooling, for example,” he says.

For many lead acid battery makers, UPS as part of stationary and reserve power industrial segments is a key end-use market.

UPS accounts for about 30% of En-erSys’ reserve battery business and the entire market was worth $5.7 billion in 2012. C&D Technologies has a 30% market share for stationary batteries, which includes UPS applications above 25Ah.

However, the global UPS market has grown slowly in recent years and pre-

mium lines are where the growth in UPS battery demand is likely to come from.

Demand for EnerSys’ thin plate pure lead batteries is growing at a faster rate than overall UPS battery demand. “This suggests that this technology could be the norm and not the excep-tion in future,” says Vechy.

Several projects and pilots with data centres are underway. “We expect to see the market shift towards pure lead technology, especially as the increased cost of the battery over standard VRLA is modest compared to the extended service life that is possible,” he says.

Ticking overHowever, Heath Lockett, an analyst at IHS Research in the UK, expects nega-tive growth in global UPS revenues in 2014. The continuing effects of the global downturn has meant invest-ments in new facilities in the big UPS markets, especially in North America

and Asia-Pacifi c, are not happening (or are not as high in terms of new system replacements).

The industry is turning to mainte-nance and servicing to try and eke out the performance lifetime of existing systems and keeping them ticking over, a trend that is likely to continue well into 2015.

Slowing market growth, the relent-less focus on effi ciency and reducing operational costs, as well as other fac-tors, have all squeezed the UPS batter-ies segment. “ The trend to rent — co-location data centres — versus buy, cloud computing, as well as system re-dundancy are all factors that are push-ing batteries to becoming nearly a pure commodity.

“Co-location developers are mainly worried about fi rst costs to make their business models work as quickly as possible. End users are increasingly us-ing more cloud services which spreads their applications across multiple data

“For optimal UPS performance, accurate battery monitoring and management technologies are the key to success. Customers prefer this technology to be integrated into the UPS equipment, and not have it as a stand-alone system” — Harry Lindgren, Eaton

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centres, leaving a battery failure having much less of an impact on their busi-ness enterprise,” says Rob Neidlinger, director for business development within S&C Electric’s power quality products division.

In these market conditions, empha-sis on good UPS and battery O&M strategies is becoming more important, particularly in terms of preventative maintenance.

Remote monitoring“While remote monitoring technolo-gies for enabling preventative mainte-nance are hardly new, they will become very established in the next fi ve years, adding value to O&M and servicing packages for UPS systems, which are moving from ad hoc or minimum, to a more subscription-based approaches,” says Lockett.

“The best maintenance strategies incorporate remote monitoring tech-nology in combination with manual checks.

Battery maintenance is written into the specifi cations of UPS, however, remote monitoring is becoming more commonplace in the industry though there are instances of large data cen-tres, even, continuing to rely on manu-al checking,” says Daniel Baileys, chief executive of Generex in the US, which supplies UPS, facilities and battery management and remote monitoring technologies and systems.

The company’s remote monitoring technology ensures the batteries are kept at pristine fl ow voltage levels to avoid over or under-charging. The use of equalization, the fi rm says, can ex-tend the operational lifetime of a bat-tery by 20%–30%.

Maintenance and servicing of batter-ies is an operational cost that needs to be planned for. In larger data centres it can become more critical. Remote, pre-dictive monitoring technologies allow operators to view battery behaviour in real time, even to do internal ohmic measurements (which was not always the case). This can reduce the tradition-al approach of sending in a crew every three to six months, says Vechy.

While, more advanced maintenance technologies are more costly to imple-ment — sometimes costing the same as batteries themselves — the point of in-vesting in predictive maintenance tech-nologies and approaches is to minimize downtime.

Vechy says: “It lets you plan remedial action, such as battery replacements, at an opportune time, minimizing the impact of corrective action and its

ramifi cations on a data centre’s opera-tions as opposed to having to go in and take the power system offl ine without warning.”

Frost & Sullivan predicts the global UPS services market, which earned revenues of $1.97 billion in 2013, will reach $2.67 billion in 2017, growing at a compound annual growth rate of between 2012–2017 of 7.6%.

The service is growing at a faster rate than the global UPS market by new in-stallations, owing to the large installed base of existing UPS systems, mainly in IT, but also other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing.

The growth in co-location, or host-ing, data centres has also contributed to the growth in UPS services, as these data centres are concerned about keep-ing downtime to a minimum, more so than enterprise data centres, as their core business is renting out data centre space.

Typically owners/operators of UPS systems are buying service agreements for UPS systems installed in recent years, even though these are still within warranty.

This services market is mainly made up of UPS manufacturers — compa-nies such as Emerson, Eaton and Mit-subishi — followed by regional service fi rms.

The service agreement will also be structured to cover batteries, which is helping to create demand for more predictive battery monitoring tech-

nologies, supplied by battery makers themselves or by specialist companies such as Generex. The level of interest in battery management systems for UPS applications has increased signifi -cantly in recent years refl ected in more R&D investments by suppliers of bat-teries as well as battery management technology providers.

As well as predictive maintenance, the focus is on other microprocessor-controlled circuitry that boosts cycle life and effi cient performance of batter-ies, increasing the regular maintenance activity for the electronic circuitry, bat-teries and charging mechanism.

Harry Lindgren, at Eaton’s power quality division says that UPS servicing is a growing business for the company — customers of critical power equipment understand that preventive maintenance is required to ensure the smooth running of the UPS, which in turn is needed to protect their critical loads.

“More advanced remote monitoring and predictive methods are areas that are quickly being developed, not just for the UPS system itself but the energy storage that comes with it because bat-teries are not always the most reliable source,” he says.

“For optimal UPS performance, ac-curate battery monitoring and man-agement technologies are the key to success. Customers prefer this tech-nology to be integrated into the UPS equipment, and not have it as a stand-alone system.”

• Shift in battery type preference UPS industry trends by battery typeShift in battey type preference

UPS battery trends by technology type, with fl ooded lead acid giving way to 12V VRLA which is now used across most UPS system sizes

Source: C&D Technologies

“End users are increasingly using more cloud services which spreads their applications across multiple data centres, leaving a battery failure having much less of an impact on their business enterprise” — Rob

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For the lead acid battery industry, UPS is an important end-use market within reserve power. UPS itself can be fur-ther segmented by end-use demand, such as data centres and industrial, as well as by different UPS system sizes.

In developed markets, such as the US, UK, Germany and Japan, demand for large-scale UPS, above 100KVA, is high.

In the small-scale UPS market — up to 5KA — which tends to cater to domestic demand, the Asia-Pacifi c region, led by China, India, as well as south-east Asian countries, are driv-ing demand. In China, end-use mar-kets include semiconductor manufac-turing, which typically takes place in large fabricating plants that use con-tinuous production processes.

These require high quality power, supplied at a constant voltage, with no dips or sags as many processes have to occur at certain high tempera-tures and power disturbances can lead to downtime and materials wastage that cost money.

UPS and grid equipment supplier ABB recently expanded its foothold in the low voltage UPS market in China, where it supplies the semiconductor as well as other continuous process in-dustries, which include biotech, auto-motive and food and drink, to launch a MV UPS system.

As well as the manufacturing sector, the system has been designed with the global large-scale data centre market

where ABB is looking to increase its share.

Within Asia, India is expected to contribute to the region’s UPS de-mand, which will grow at a rate of 11% between 2014 and 2018, ac-cording to market analyst RNCOS. Demand for larger UPS systems, up to 100KVA, as opposed to 25KVA and less, will be where the growth occurs, much of it from the data centre end-use market.

AEG PS also has a substantial in-stalled base for its UPS systems in the commercial sector and recently launched a system, Protect Blue, tar-geting the large data centre market. The system is seeing interest in mar-kets where demand for data centres for multinationals is on the rise, such as central and eastern Europe and Asia-Pacifi c.

In more developed data centre mar-kets, such as western Europe, the sys-tem is attracting interest from end-users looking to replace their old UPS systems, with more energy effi cient and modular products. As well as data centres, the food and drink industry is

also interested in a modular UPS sys-tem, says Alessandro Nalbone, an en-gineer at AEG PS.

According to a recent market fore-cast by Frost & Sullivan, the global data centre UPS market is on a course for steady growth over the next four years. North America is the largest data centre UPS market, worth nearly $610 million in 2013, followed by Eu-rope then Asia-Pacifi c.

To 2018, North America will see the highest growth rate, followed by Asia-Pacifi c and Europe, which will have similar rates of growth over the next four years.

In the overall global UPS market, lead acid battery technology domi-nates with a market share in excess of 70%. Within this sealed lead acid bat-teries — VRLA and AGM nowadays account for about 90%.

Flooded lead acid batteries used to dominate the UPS market, in the larg-est segments of 500KVA, 750KVA and 1000KVA. Then, 12V VRLA was the lead acid battery of choice more in the smaller UPS sizes, such as 20KVA and, to an extent, 250KVA, while 2V VRLA had small shares of the 250KVA, 500KVA and 750KVA business.

This is no longer the case. 12V VRLA batteries completely dominate the 20KVA to 250KVA UPS segment and with a 60% share of the 500KVA segment versus 30% for fl ooded and 10% for 2V VRLA, dropping down to 25% up to 1000KVA. Now, 12V VRLA is the only battery technology with a share across the entire UPS market, from small to large-scale.

In the next fi ve years, the trend to-wards greener data centres, run off of renewable electricity, will have a mini-mal impact on the UPS industry’s de-pendence on lead acid. However, over the long-term, the trend will increase the use of alternative battery chemis-tries, predicts Frost & Sullivan.

In the overall global UPS market, lead acid battery technology dominates with a market share in excess of 70%. Within this sealed lead acid batteries — VRLA and AGM account for about 90%.

In the small-scale UPS market — up to 5KVA — which tends to cater to domestic demand, the Asia-Pacifi c region, led by China, India, as well as south-east Asian countries, are driving demand.

UPS and battery demand trends

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What if dumb UPS batteries could be turned into smarter than smart assets? And what if these batteries could de-liver an unwavering UPS service but support the grid by providing balanc-ing services? And — at the same time — add an income stream for the opera-tor of a data centre?

These are questions at the heart of a shake-up in the way that grid delivery is being viewed.

The concept has been promoted by companies such as Ecoult, a subsidi-ary of East Penn Manufacturing, that is commercializing an energy stor-age technology based on lead carbon chemistry.

“The UPS battery is a sunken cost de-preciating asset sitting around waiting for the power to fail,” says Rob Nei-dlinger S&C’s director, business devel-opment, power quality product.

“But add ancillary services to the mix and this same depreciating asset be-comes a revenue generator. At the very least the dual purpose UPS lessens the fi nancial burden on an enterprise that needs the UPS anyway.”

Traditional lead-acid batteries in UPS applications sit on fl oat waiting until a grid failure takes place. Attempting to use them to charge and discharge rapidly, as required for the dual func-tionality, of providing grid balancing would cause deterioration — put sim-ply this is not what traditional lead acid batteries were designed for.

Dual functionsTo do the dual function would require even more investment in storage than data centre and other large users of UPS are used to paying for, but the idea is that they would be compen-sated for by the grid operator.

Changes in regulations and initia-

tives are already helping to facilitate storage in electricity wholesale markets in North America.

The largest of these operators, PJM Interconnection, pays a good price for frequency regulation signals met by energy storage — these are able to respond more quickly to signals than gas peaking plants, which are slower to

ramp and can fail to dispatch the right amount of power to match signals.

Batteries and even fl ywheels are stor-age technologies being deployed, with intelligent systems that interface with the grid usually developed by compa-nies that build and operate energy stor-age assets, such as NRStor, in Canada.

John Penny general manager for

The next big thing: UPS fi nds an extra purpose — challenges, opportunities

The grid is becoming less reliable at handling fl uctuations caused by adding more sources of wind and solar. The latest thinking is that more sophisticated UPS systems might be used to help handle the problem. But the question is whether the time for change is yet upon us.

“We need to look at other factors outside the data centre. As more renewables come online replacing stable nuclear/coal generation the power quality on the grid is going to weaken. Thus the ancillary servic-es market is going to become more lucrative.”

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ABB’s power conditioning global prod-uct line says it’s a topic that is being discussed with more frequency, and may become a requirement if pushed by regulation from utilities and gov-ernments.

“Features such as load levelling, us-ing the UPS to reduce the peak loads that are seen by the grid is one of the application that could add value to the customer,” he says.

But Dan Baileys, chief executive of Generex in the US, is not so sure. “Data centres and provision of frequency reg-ulation, these are two fundamentally different business models so it is hard to see the data centre industry wanting to get into grid services.”

Time for changeBut, according to Neidlinger, the sec-tor is set for change. “I see a lot of trends all heading to a convergence where it will make a dual purpose UPS a reality. First, renewables are coming down in cost, especially solar. Lithium ion battery prices are also coming down.

“We need to look at other factors outside the data centre. As more re-newables come online replacing sta-ble nuclear/coal generation the power quality on the grid is going to weaken. Thus the ancillary services market is going to become more lucrative,” says Neidlinger.

The idea fi ts in with wider ideas and debates about the future role of data centres and their potential to be at the heart of microgrids as they strive to re-duce their carbon footprint with onsite generation of electricity and insulated against the increasingly frequent grid outages and disturbances that are pre-dicted.

UPS systems — targeting hyperscale data centres — are already designed to be able to integrate renewable energy sources like solar PV as well as various energy storage technologies.

To create a microgrid, if the utility supply is lost, the UPS must provide power for the loads manage the power fl ow in the microgrid itself, ensuring that renewable generation can contin-ue to operate.

Companies like S&C are showing

how it is possible to integrate different technologies, fuel cells, wind turbines, solar arrays, grid connection, diesel back-up, natural gas turbines, UPS, batteries, together on one site.

As well as integrate renewable ener-gy sources into a critical facility, a UPS might provide a range of grid services, not only frequency regulation but also demand response, where upon a grid signal the UPS could island a facility to reduce demand for a period of time, or provide voltage regulation services to the grid.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the trend is very much in the evaluation stage for very large data centres.

It could mean that batteries, which have been driven to commodity level prices, in the UPS industry come to play a more signifi cant storage role, potentially opening up new demand for some of the advanced lead tech-nologies as well as a variety of other advanced batteries that are fi nding their way into stationary storage and distributed generation applications.

The contribution by data centres to Europe’s overall electricity consump-tion is estimated to be 2%-2.5%, but with an annual growth rate of 10%-15%, this is likely to double to around 5% within the next fi ve years.

A handful of data centres have been built in recent years that are zero car-bon, such as GCI’s smart bunker in the UK, which is supplied with all of its electricity by renewables and big blue chips such as Google and Apple, which have a lot of their data centres in North Carolina, pushing utilities to invest more in renewable generation.

The three-year EU-funded Green-DataNet project, being led by Eaton, will demonstrate how it will be possi-ble to achieve big effi ciency gains for data centres, as well as environmental benefi ts. The project will demonstrate networks of data centres running on

renewable energy and help create new market opportunities for data centres that can use, store and also share re-newable energy.

Part of GreenDataNet will work on the integration of local PV energy in combination with a large-scale stor-age using second-life EV lithium ion batteries from project partner Nissan, enabling the connection of data centres to smart grids.

The green grid“For example, one day a data centre in a town or city will be able to store energy harvested from its own, or lo-cal, solar arrays and windmills for use when needed,” says Cyrille Brisson, a vice president of Eaton’s EMEA power quality business. “It will also be able to distribute this energy — and waste heat energy — to local businesses and homes using a green grid.

“The energy may be stored in sec-ond-use EV batteries which, while no longer in optimal condition for vehicu-lar use, have plenty of life left in them.” Showing how these lithium ion batter-ies can be recycled in data centres will also contribute to making the IT and EV supply chains more sustainable.

The project, which has entered its second year, is in talks with some end users that are interested in running pi-lot schemes. First tests in laboratories and pilots in data centres should start in 2015.

Part of GreenDataNet will work on the integration of local PV energy in combination with a large-scale storage using second-life EV lithium ion batteries from project partner Nissan, enabling the connection of data centres to smart grids.

“Data centres and provision of frequency regulation, these are two fundamentally different business mod-els so it is hard to see the data centre industry want-ing to get into grid services” — Daniel Baileys, Generex





UPS: the basicsOBJECTIVES

SPECIFICATIONS

While electricity utilities try to supply clean, stable electrical power to their customers, there are times when the network may be overloaded or sub-ject to accidents or emergencies which could give rise to the following fault conditions:

Black-out This is a complete loss of power lasting for more than one cycle, often caused by an accident or serious overload to the network.

Brown-outs and sags These are long duration voltage reductions often caused by excessive demand on the system.

Swell This is an increase from nominal voltage lasting one or more line cycles, possibly caused by the

inability of the generating equipment to follow sudden changes in demand.

Spikes and surges These are short duration increases in voltage possibly caused by transients in the system.

Frequency drift: This is the inability of the generating system to maintain a stable system frequency.

Apart from a prolonged power out-age, many applications can tolerate some or all of these faulty conditions, however there are certain critical ap-plications such as industrial processes or computer and communications installations, for which continuity of supply within narrow tolerances is essential. When faults occur, batteries can come to the rescue, maintaining the security of supply.

The following factors relating to the intended application should be taken into account when specifying a UPS.

Hold up time is the length of time that the power supply used in an application can still provide a viable output without an input supply. This is possible because the energy stored in capacitive and inductive elements in the power supply can continue to supply the load for a short period. For example, in switch mode power supplies, typically used in computer equipment, the hold up time can range from 10-30 ms.

Transfer time is the time taken by the UPS to switch from mains to

the battery back up in case of mains failure or from battery power to mains power when normal power is restored. This time should be signifi cantly less than the application hold up time to allow for a safety margin.

For computer applications a transfer time of less than 5 ms is advisable, however, it should be noted that an oversensitive unit may make unneces-sary power transfers.

Power handling is the normal power consumption of the application which the UPS must be able to supply during emergency periods.

Inrush current is the momentary peak input current required by electrical

equipment when it is initially switched on due to charging up inductive and capacitive loads.This can be many times it’s normal operating current but is usually of very short duration. It can effect the sizing of UPS and the setting and timing of protection circuits.

Back up time is the time period for which the UPS is required to support the load in case of mains failure. The required back up time depends on the user’s system design and objectives. It may only need to be long enough to provide power to permit the orderly shut down of the application or it could be required to power the appli-cation for the full duration of any ex-pected power outage. Alternatively the





UPS is designed to automatically provide emergency power, without delay or transients, to critical applications in case of an interruption to, or unacceptable condition of the mains/utility supply. Some UPSs also fi lter or regulate mains or utility power.

UPS may only be needed long enough to permit the connection and start up of alternative power from a high pow-er rotary generator. The capacity of the UPS storage battery is determined by the current drawn by the load and the required back up time.

Power conditioning or line condi-tioning is the provision of a regulated voltage and frequency power line with a pure sine wave free from electrical noise and ripple.

Isolation is the complete electrical separation of the output of the UPS from the input power line. Power is coupled from the line input to the UPS output through separate wind-

ings in a transformer. Because there is no physical connection from input to output, the effect of transient interference from the mains supply is minimised and the safety of the ap-plication is improved.

Orderly shutdown is the process of sequentially closing down hardware and/or software processes in the ap-plication so that no corruption of data occurs and/or no safety hazards are created. The back up time should be long enough to permit orderly shut down of the application.

Load shedding is the ability to selectively shut off power to less criti-cal loads during an extended power

failure while maintaining power to the more critical loads thus extending the effective back up time of the UPS.

Load sequencing is the ability to selectively turn on or off specifi c loads in a preset pattern during startup and/or shutdown. This may be for safety reasons or to minimise the initial inrush current.

Recharge time is the length of time UPS takes to recharge the batteries after a discharge.

Hot swapping is changing equipment while power is being supplied and used. This may be necessary for chang-ing over battery packs.

A UPS contains three basic components, a battery, a charger and an inverter used in three alternative topologies: off-line (standby), online (no break) and line-interactive. The inverter will also include some form of fi ltering to eliminate noise and distortion from the output wave. Off line or standby UPSThese are simple inexpensive systems providing only basic protection. In normal situations the UPS passes the mains power directly to the load. The mains power provides a single DC line which keeps the battery charged.

When the UPS detects a voltage too low, it turns on the inverter to power the load from the battery. The system is relatively slow (longer than 4ms) and the delay between mains power loss and inverter start-up can be long enough to disrupt the operation of some sensitive loads.

This technology does not normally provide full time power conditioning but it may use a simple fi lter to clip

spikes and electrical noise. On-line or no-break UPSThese are designed to provide a zero transfer time, with better voltage and frequency regulation than that can be achieved by off line and line interactive UPS.

In on-line systems the mains power is used to provide two DC power lines which feed both the charger and the inverter which is permanently turned on providing the AC power to the application. When the mains fails, the inverter instantaneously draws its DC supply from the battery instead of the mains.

The method by which the AC load is permanently supplied by the system inverter and not the mains is called “double conversion” since the charger provides the AC-DC conversion and the inverter converts the DC back to AC again.

On line systems typically provide full power conditioning, protecting

the load from all forms of power disturbances, including brownouts, blackout, transient surges or sags. In the event of a mains power failure, there is no delay or transfer time to backup power.

These systems are however more costly and have both higher power consumption, and higher heat generation. Line interactive UPSThese systems contain an off-line inverter but also use a transformer to supply to the load. In the event of a mains failure the inverter is started and switched to the transformer to provide the output.

The transformer is used to provide line conditioning however it also maintains output on its secondary briefl y when a total outage occurs increasing the hold up time of the UPS. This results in a break in the output of a few milliseconds or less and is thus faster than a simple off line UPS.

METHODS AND OPTIONS



UPS systems are more commonplace today in a host of industries, from e-commerce and services to manufactur-ing, but the IT industry, with its data centres that are much bigger in size and scale than those built years ago, places challenges on UPS systems and energy storage.

At the extreme end, it is not unusual for large corporations in businesses heavily reliant to the internet, such as global logistics, to operate data cen-

tres with UPS systems that connect up to thousands of batteries and several large diesel generators.

Rob Neidlinger, S&C’s director for business development, power quality products, puts the super-sizing trend down to consolidation within the in-dustry.

He reckons this is driven by both the cloud and co-location, where small to medium enterprises are opting to rent data centre space provided by hosting companies, or opt to outsource their IT storage needs to cloud services, freeing them up to focus on their core exper-tise, rather than operating data centres.

“With this consolidation, data centre loads are getting larger so that these loads are becoming a larger percentage of overall energy consumed. This is drawing the interest of the federal gov-ernment and utilities,” he says. “A few percentage points of effi ciency with a 300kW load, by itself, is not that sig-nifi cant. A 20MW data centre, how-ever, is a different story.”

Traditional UPS systems tended to waste about 7%-10% of energy through ineffi ciency. These UPS sys-tems are typically 480V devices, which limits the data centre to about 4000A, or 3x750 kVA, with commercially available switchgear. Most designs de-ploy multiple UPS systems with trans-formers upstream and PDU transform-ers downstream adding another 6% of ineffi ciency.

S&C Electric provides large effi cient UPS systems at medium voltage with its Purewave technology. A large 32MW data centre, for instance, would need several 3x750 kVA systems with nu-merous transformers.

“If you used a Purewave UPS you could go with a 4x8MW system at medium voltage. The effi ciency is 99% and one of the transformers is eliminat-ed, reducing waste from 12%–15%, down to 4%,” says Neidlinger.

Traditional models to fadeAs data centre needs get larger — 10MW is a good starting point for a hyperscale data centre — the tradition-al model of distributing power, coming in from the mains on medium voltage lines, and distributed to the various

loads along lower voltage cables, over considerable distance, becomes more complex.

ABB’s new medium voltage UPS sys-tem is aimed at the data centre indus-try, particularly hyperscale data cen-tres, as well as manufacturing, where the company already supplies its low voltage UPS systems, especially in Asia, for industries heavily reliant on contin-uous production processes, including semiconductor and automotive.

“In recent years the loads have changed, so that almost all loads are switched-mode power supplies that have high levels of voltage and fre-quency tolerance, so the electricity supply feeding data centres needs to be highly reliable and available whereas in the past the focus was on highly voltage-regulated and frequency-stable power,” says John Penny, general man-ager for ABB’s power conditioning global product line.

Compared with large semiconductor plants, mega-data centres have similar characteristics in terms of having high-ly critical loads, as well as similar elec-trical and environmental requirements, tending towards free air cooling.

Medium levels of voltage allow the power protection equipment to be lo-cated in a centralized place, away from the factory or the data centre opera-tions, and takes up a smaller footprint.

In addition, very large data centres are now normally connected to (or have close connection to) transmis-sion-level power where longer outages are very rare, so the primary need for protection is against voltage sags and short outages although some owners still want time to start a standby gen-erators.

Effi ciency is improved with mod-ern single conversion MV UPS sys-tems. “For example the new PCS100 MV UPS offers around 99.5% effi -ciency, while the typical modern trans-formerless low voltage UPS systems typically operate in the 95%–96% effi ciency range for normal operat-ing mode or 98% for ecomode,” says Penny.

Protect Blue, a recent UPS system of-fered by AEG Power Solutions, is de-signed to be modular, so data centres,

Big is beautiful tooThe latest iteration of uninterruptible power supply systems faces a new set of challenges from ever larger and ever more complex data centres.

As data centres get larger — 10MW is a good starting point for a hyperscale data centre — the traditional model of distributing power, coming in from the mains on medium voltage lines, and distributed to the various loads along lower voltage cables, over considerable distance, becomes more complex.

ABB launched the PCS100 MW UPS system to expand its share of large-scale UPS demand from industries including IT and manu-facturing

The BACS™ Battery Management System

Generex is a German based company leading in providing computer network shutdown software for UPS systems, SNMP and web-manager interfaces, facility monitoring systems and the BACS Battery Managemet Systems

The Equalisation RevolutionThe evaluation from Battery Monitoring to Battery Management through the Generex Patent Equalisation process

Managing your Batteries for extra life

• Equalisation of all accumulators voltages within 0.01 volts within a string• Prevents sulfation and dry out as well as premature aging and failure• Increases capacity to support your load• Increases the life span of the accumulators• All key parameters of the accumulator are monitored• History, trending and performance analysis • Web-manager provides full remote management• Provides states of all UPS systems and Facility sensors • CE, UL and CSA approval

Contact Generex Systems:

Europe

Brunnenkoppel 3 22041 Hamburg, Germany Tel: +49 40 22692910

USA

10685-B Hazelhurst Dr #13479 Houston TX 77043 USATel: +1 281 404 2132

Web-site: www.generex.de

e-mail: [email protected]



or industrial end-users with similar re-quirements, can expand their UPS with growth of their data centres. The UPS provides up to 4MVA power with up to 16 250KVA blocks in parallel. The modular system means that a common infrastructure is in place for intercon-nection with the input and output elec-trical system as well as other blocks.

The risk of malfunction is reduced by a simplifi ed switching system. Vari-ous battery confi gurations, common or distributed, are possible for high levels of redundancy and availability. The system can also integrate solar power. AES describes it as being smart grid ready.

These are all specifi cs in a much larg-er landscape of UPS systems that is still growing rapidly.

Emerging battery technologies as alternatives to lead acid, used in the backup and UPS markets will grow six-fold from sales of $143 million in 2013 to $896 million in 2020, ac-cording to Lux Research, with recent UPS systems, including ABB’s medium voltage offering, able to work with a number of different storage technolo-gies, including ultracapacitors, lithium ion batteries, fl ywheels, as well as lead acid.

According to Frost & Sullivan, how-ever, chemistries such as sodium sul-phur and sodium nickel chloride are gaining momentum, while lithium ion is held back by cost in UPS markets, such as data centres, though the bat-tery chemistry is making inroads in tel-ecoms backup.

The rise of the supercapIn terms of storage, ABB’s Penny sees some big changes taking place.

In the industrial UPS segment, where short autonomies, of up to 10 seconds, are acceptable ultracapacitors have found widespread use due to their comparatively small size and competi-tively long design life.

In the more traditional data centre UPS market, absorbed glass mat bat-teries still dominate, but as low im-pedance designs optimized for short autonomies fi nd greater acceptance, this could result in more widespread uptake of ultracapacitors.

“There is a lot of interest in lithium ion batteries for UPS protection but high capital costs and some safety con-cerns have slowed acceptance,” says Penny. “This could change in the fu-ture as the automotive industry adopts this technology for electric cars and re-solves cost and safety issues.”

ABB has incorporated lithium ion

batteries on the same power converter technology as used in PCS100 MV UPS, but in grid support battery energy storage applications.

Harry Lindgren, a manager within Eaton’s power quality EMEA division agrees, listing high cost of the products, plus their potential safety risks, espe-cially for lithium-based chemistries, and the limited commercial availability of the products themselves as reasons that are holding back their uptake at present.

“VRLA has the advantage of hav-ing a wider product availability and it is also environmentally friendly as it is highly recyclable. Additionally, the power density is also good and in stationary applications, like UPS, low gravimetric energy density of VRLA is not a primary concern,” he says.”

However, one of the challenges with the advent of large data centres is mak-ing effi cient use of the space, which means more room for servers and less for the overhead of power protec-tion, cooling and so on. “Lithium ion batteries have a much better energy density therefore saving space. Some technologies are also able to perform at higher temperatures, allowing more free air cooling and reducing the costs of cooling,” says Penny.

As lithium ion prices continue to drop, Neidlinger sees this development

pulling the technology into many more applications, including UPS. “The power density and cycle count are such positives. I see this battery replacing VRLA in many applications where space, weight, or longevity is valued,” he says.

Protect Blue, a recent UPS system offered by AEG Power Solutions

“VRLA has the advantage of having a wider product availability and it is also environmentally friendly as it is highly recyclable. Additionally, the power density is also good and in stationary applications, such as UPS, the low gravimetric energy density of VRLA is not a primary concern” — Lingdren, Eaton

Data centre UPS market revenue forecast by region – 2013 to 2018

— NA — EUROPE — APAC — ROW

900

800

700

600

500

400

300

200

100

02013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

609.2

824.4

674.7

477.6

221.3160.1

327.9

515.3

BATTERY PACKAGING AND TRANSPORTATION


Issues related to the safe packaging and shipment of lithium-ion and other advanced chemistry batteries have frustrated national and international industry, governmental and regulatory bodies ever since their inception and subsequent widespread adoption.

Over the last two decades, agencies, industries, and special interest groups have met regularly to debate and ne-gotiate regulations that would suc-cessfully address concerns for the safe packaging and transport of these bat-teries — only to encounter new con-cerns to be balanced, advancements to be accommodated, discrepancies to be addressed.

Rulings, revisions, exceptions and memos have mounted to the point that the simple task of sending a battery from point A to point B became tan-tamount to mounting a moon launch.

As this magazine noted in our spring 2012 issue — Playing according to the rules — US regulatory agencies have been working to harmonize discrep-ancies in language, defi nitions and requirements between national and international bodies that too often re-sulted in confusing and unintentional noncompliance.

This August, the US Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazard-ous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) handed down the long-awaited ruling HM-224F, which fi nal-ly resolved long standing issues relat-ed to the classifi cation and packaging for shipment of lithium batteries and packs, many of which require special-ized packaging services.

And that, say industry players, dan-gerous goods and hazardous materials consultants and trainers, should make life a lot easier for anyone — manu-facturers, re-shippers, distributors and retailers — wanting to transport lith-ium batteries across North America and internationally.

So what changes do the new rules entail, and how do they affect the in-dustry? And more to the point, why does DOT complaint packaging of these batteries specifi cally, matter more than ever?

While all batteries must be evaluat-ed and classifi ed according to CFR49 specifi cations, lithium ion batteries are subject to more regulations per appli-cable modal packaging specifi cations and state-of-health considerations.

It’s been a long time coming but the new ruling by the PHMSA will fi nally solve some of the regulations that have plagued issues over battery packaging and transportation.

Rulings, revisions, exceptions and memos have mounted to the point that the simple task of sending a battery from point A to point B became tantamount to mounting a moon launch.

The tangled joys of compliance



Initially released in January 2010, the current PHMSA ruling has been revised repeatedly over the last four years to accommodate legislative changes in the US as well as inter-national regulations related to their transport, given that shipping modes play such an important role in deter-mining packaging specifi cations.

Of all the thorny issues the new HM 224F ruling addresses, its most signifi -cant relief may be in its harmonization of previously confl icting regulations, in some instances marrying discrep-ancies between national and interna-tional requirements that have plagued players for years.

Given that batteries are not always packaged in the original factory con-tainer, problems can multiply rapidly as they ship from factory to custom-er to test lab to packager to loading dock, and then repeat the whole pro-cess again once they’re placed in a device or product, says Rich Byczek, global technical lead, transportation technologies at Intertek.

“Packaging and labelling, inner ver-sus outer packaging — there are a lot of nuances depending on the type of battery, the size, the number of bat-teries, whether or not they’re shipped inside equipment, with equipment or by themselves. An EV pack presents more issues, since normally it will be shipped from a service centre or a manufacturer to an assembly plant, rather than between consumers, retail-ers and distributors.

“This is where regulatory vigilance is critical, and the new ruling does a lot to make compliance easier in sev-eral key areas.”

Identifi cationTo date, regulations coming out of multiple agencies, despite continual tinkering, have remained stubbornly unwieldy to the point of confusion. Just determining content has resulted in elaborate parsing of defi nitive lan-guage.

“A case in point is the matter of confl icting identifi cation numbers for dangerous good between agencies,” says Tom Ferguson, director of techni-cal services for Currie and Associates, a New York-based hazardous materi-als and dangerous goods training and consulting company.

Though the UN updated its model regulations to identify lithium-ion batteries as UN3480 and lithium metal batteries as UN3090 some years ago, the US has continued to use one identifi cation number — UN3090

— for both lithium ion and lithium metal cells and batteries. Since these numbers must be clearly stated on the package labeling for identifi cation during transport, confusion — and non-compliance — reigned.

“When carriers and test labs re-ceived a shipment from a company with a dangerous good identifi ed as UN3480, they would look it up in the PHMSA hazardous materials ta-ble, and fi nding no product identifi ed under that number could refuse ship-ment of these items labelled as 3480 if they so choose,” Ferguson says.

“The differences here are critical because these are completely differ-ent chemistries requiring completely different emergency responses. You would want to use water on a fi re in-volving lithium-ion but you would not use water on a fi re involving lithium metal. So the distinction is very impor-tant in transport, particularly to fi rst responders.”

Regulatory agencies, recognizing the need to resolve this over time, issued an interim letter of approval identify-ing the confusing language and offer-ing temporary directives while they worked out more defi nitive terminol-ogy.

But of course, a lot of people didn’t get that letter, he says.

“And not knowing that interim changes had been made, they followed the ruling as it existed in their latest PHMSA hazardous materials table,

Rich Byczek, global technical lead, transportation technologies at Intertek

Tom Ferguson, director of technical services for Currie and Associates

• Replaces equivalent lithium content with watt-hours for lithium ion cells and batteries, and adds a defi nition of watt-hour.

• Adopts separate defi nitions and shipping descriptions for lithium-metal batteries and lithium-ion batteries.

• Includes a defi nition for a short-circuit.

• Revises provisions for the transport of small and medium lithium cells and batteries, including cells and batteries

packed with, or contained inside equipment

• Revises the requirements for the transport of low production and prototype lithium cells and batteries for disposal or recycling.

• Harmonizes the provisions for the transport of low production and prototype lithium cells and batteries with the ICAO Technical Instructions and the IMDG Code.

• Adopts new provisions for the transport of damaged, defective and recalled lithium batteries.

HM-224F — WHAT IT RESOLVES

“In coming up with new vocabulary, the ruling harmonizes the lingua franca of international battery language so you don’t need three dictionaries to fi gure out how to pack and ship a battery.”

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Why compliant packaging mattersGiven that the regulatory environment is complex, its processes intense, and the consequences of failure to meet mandated packaging requirements are potentially so catastrophic — regula-tors, consultants, testing labs and ex-perienced manufacturers all attest to the value of utilizing the services of an experienced hazardous materials packing consultant or package sup-plier.

“Depending on the type of bat-tery, the size, the number of batter-ies, whether or not they’re shipped inside equipment, with equipment or by themselves, compliant packaging

entails a lot of nuances,” says Rich By-czek, global technical lead, transporta-tion technologies at Intertek.

“And because the regulations are al-ways in fl ux, and most industry people are typically too busy to keep up with them all, you are well advised to work with an outside party whose business it is to know them all and deliver the appropriate packaging for the situa-tion.”

To date, the fi eld of suppliers capa-ble of providing a wide range of US Department of Transportation com-pliant dangerous goods services re-mains somewhat divided by purpose and function.

Consultants, always in demand, pro-vide guidance in every aspect of the manufacturing, handling, shipping, legislation and regulation, national and international, pertaining to all danger-ous goods and hazardous materials.

For actual packaging, manufacturers and shippers can access the services of packaging suppliers that typically provide the actual packages, boxes, and containers, whether off-the-shelf stock items or special turnkey designs manufactured to order.

Since few packagers have the capac-ity to test each package as the DOT requires, most shippers must send their package samples, as produced by the supplier, to a certifi ed DOT test-ing laboratories specially set up to perform the mandated battery of tests required by regulation on each pack-age, as well as provide required certifi -cation and documentation.

Not all suppliers can meet every need.

Some packaging suppliers lack the capacity to address the more extreme challenges that large packs often pre-sent, and few test labs are qualifi ed to meet the more stringent UN DOT requirements for their testing and cer-tifi cation.

Even battery manufacturers large enough to support an in-house staff capable of keeping abreast of the

regulations and designing their own compliant packaging, fi nd they run into problems they can’t always solve without expert advice.

For example, just meeting the re-quirements every package must meet to comply with national and interna-tional regulations crafted to meet the specifi c environmental challenges that a chosen transport mode — waterway, sea, land, air — can impose upon that battery can be daunting even to expe-rienced personnel.

The Saft battery plant in Jackson-ville, Florida, where Richard Metcalf works as materials manager, ships over 20,000 batteries a year, many of those by ocean.

“We’ve learned that sea transport presents different packaging challeng-es, given the risks associated with cor-rosion due to the humid atmospheric conditions from ocean air,” says Met-calf.

“The battery has to be sealed, so we worked with our package suppli-er, HAZplus, in St Louis, Missouri to design packaging that seals the inside of the package, to make sure that hu-midity does not penetrate the package. They also print our art work, logo and shipping markings and HazMat labels right on the box, to reduce the chances that crucial information can be ripped, peeled or soaked off by various envi-ronmental factors.”

Many experienced battery manufac-turers who ship a lot, affi rm the im-portance of designing the package in early stages of the process — while the battery design is still on the drafting table — not at the end.

John Warner, vice president of sales and marketing for XALT Energy, re-calls too many instances where no one thinks about shipping until after they’ve built the battery.

“When you’re focused on product design you’re focused on the prod-uct, not delivery,” he says. “You really must have the foresight to understand that you need to bring someone in to

“When you’re focused on product design you’re focused on the product, not delivery. You really must have the foresight to understand that you need to bring someone in to do this, or you need to learn how to do this yourselves, and do it very well” — John Warner, XALT Energy



do this, or you need to learn how to do this yourselves, and do it very well. You don’t want to be in a position of building the proverbial sailboat in the basement: designing and pro-ducing the whole thing, and then getting it to the dock and then thinking, uh-oh, how do we ship this? It’s just not an instinctive step in the product development thought process.”

He relates once working with a team developing a 15 kilowatt-hour battery pack measuring 2.5 ft. by 3 ft. and weighing 200 kilograms. At some point he knew they need-ed to consult a DOT packaging specialist who could give some ideas and quotes on options.

“The packager we selected made a prototype, brought it in and used a lift to place the battery into the box/crate, and make sure it would fi t the way we wanted, so we could discuss and consider. It was a matter of understanding the points at which the pack could be picked up and lifted out.

We ended up rethinking the entire design of the box, starting with the top. Rather than having the top coming off and opening the sides, we inverted the design some to allow easier access and removal. We wanted to ensure the design allowed us to get to the battery easily inside the box. Taking the extra time to do this made shipping much easier when we got to that point, and eventually assembly on the other end as well.”

Designing the package ahead can of-ten translate into sales too.

“One of the ways we get business is to ship samples in small quantities to customers to see if they like the de-sign,” says Saft’s Metcalf. “We provide samples to HAZplus very early in the process so they can be designing the packaging around the product, even as we make it. It is important that there be no gaps inside, that all items fi t tightly so there is no movement and

that it achieves drop test certifi cation as well. We want it to be ready to go before we even win the contract.”

He relates that his team recently worked with their packager to design a new package for a customer who re-quired that it pass a drop test where it could survive it a hard drop intact, allowing no damage to the product inside.

“They also wanted it designed in such a way that it could be picked up by a forklift, since a person would not be able to lift it,” he says. “That the forklift might lift it higher than a person would lift it meant any drop would be harder and potentially more damaging — unless we could design for that, which we did, to the com-plete satisfaction of the customer.

“Once we win the business, we in-crease the volume — saving costs be-cause we’ve already worked out the packaging we’re happy with, and that

the customer is happy with.”But even when it’s all done right,

sometimes batteries can still be dam-aged in transit. Warner recalls a case when they used steel drums and ver-miculite and shipped the products to the required standards, and they ar-rived damaged nonetheless.

“Ideally, you work with an knowl-edgeable, experienced HazMat pack-ager to create what the situation re-quires, and includes basic factors you might not consider, like the forklift model, and how well it might or might not be able to reach, engage and lift the product from inside a given con-tainer,” he says. “Should you put a lid on the top? Should you design it so that you can disassemble the four walls, for easier handling logistics? It’s often a process of trial and error until you test the package, and even then you can’t always prepare for unfore-seen circumstances.”

Ideally, you work with a knowledgeable, experienced HazMat packager to create what the situation requires, and includes basic factors you might not consider, like the forklift model, and how well it might or might not be able to reach, engage and lift the product from inside a given container.



which doesn’t adequately distinguish the confl icting UN 3090 labels for both lithium ion and lithium metal batteries. So we found responsible, diligent clients suddenly — and quite unintentionally — non-compliant and sometimes facing fi nes.”

A more common lingua franca The new ruling also harmonizes con-fl icting language in describing what specifi c elements and materials actu-ally constitute lithium ion batteries. Lithium metal batteries have long been described, domestically and in-ternationally, by the amount of lithi-um content (real lithium metal) in the battery in grammes. But the US and international rules differed in lan-guage they used to defi ne lithium ion batteries.

“While international measured nominal energy in Watt-hours, the US had continued to use an out-dated term — “Equivalent Lithium Content” (ELC) — for lithium ion batteries,” Ferguson says. “The ELC term required the shipper to calculate the danger posed by lithium ion bat-teries by looking at voltage and the number of cells contained within. The value was somehow supposed to give a measurement of how dangerous re-chargeable battery was.

“The ELC value was expressed in grams. The biggest problem was that if your cells were connected in series you might get one value, but if they were connected in parallel, you might get a different value — for the same battery with the same number of cells.”

What HM-224F does is harmonize the small descriptive discrepancies for lithium ion cells and batteries that have frustrated shippers for years.

“Now, both national and interna-tional regulations determine the nomi-nal energy of these batteries in Watt-hours, which is easily calculated as the battery voltage multiplied by ampere hours,” he says. “In coming up with new vocabulary, the ruling harmoniz-es the lingua franca of international

battery language so you don’t need three dictionaries to fi gure out how to pack and ship a battery.”

Quantity and qualityAnother concern the ruling address-es is the propensity of lithium-ion bat-teries for fi re propagation. Before this there has been no limit on how many small batteries could be included in-side one box.

“The new ruling now gives specifi c directives on how many, and how they should be packed to avoid conta-gion, and thermal runaway,” Ferguson says. “While they do not specify any required packing and fi ller materials, they do mandate that they be non-conductive and non-combustible.”

Issues related to the packaging and shipping of damaged or worn out bat-teries are also addressed in the new ruling, which consolidates special pro-visions with packing instructions for fully regulated, Class 9 batteries, that is batteries packed with, and batteries contained in equipment; lithium cells and batteries shipped for disposal or recycling; low production and proto-type battery provisions; damaged, de-fective or recalled batteries, and pro-totype batteries.

In clarifying that these units are to be shipped as fully regulated hazard-ous items with labels that state their true status as damaged, drained or de-pleted, HM-224F recognizes that the very large packs are not going to be shipped by a consumer.

“They’re always going to use a large format package, says Byczek. “The new regulation recognizes these are industrial grade items, so there is more control on how those are han-dled than on a consumer product. An EV pack is not going to be shipped between consumers, retailers and dis-tributors. Normally it will be shipped from a service centre or a manufac-turer to an assembly plant, and that’s why getting a specialized set of hands on that package is so important.”

It also means that utilizing the right

packaging, produced by a skilled packaging supplier, will be more im-portant than ever.

“Requirements are still fairly strict, in which case packagers would still have to provide the correct metal drums and other packages to DOT spec levels,” says Byczek. “But the need for this specialized service defi -nitely narrows the range of suitable packagers down some, because only a few are qualifi ed to ship units present-ing more stringent requirements.”

DocumentationAnother function of the new rule is to clarify issues of content defi nition, packaging and documentation re-quirements, says Ferguson.

“One notable new requirement is that manufacturers must now secure a test report and proof of certifi cation for each battery, and keep this docu-ment on fi le for a certain amount of time,” he says. “They must be able to prove, in the event that regulators must investigate an incident, whether or not that testing and certifi cation have been done. Before this, while manufacturers were expected to pro-vide such information about their bat-teries; but because they classifi ed it as proprietary, they didn’t always make it available.

“This meant that clients who bought that battery and installed it had no way of knowing if the OEM had actu-ally tested it. That shippers were none-theless held accountable for the safety and viability of that battery was, of course, a source of constant frustra-tion to them.”

For the already compliant manu-facturers, such clarifi cations facilitate shipping for everyone. They also, says Byczek, translate into considerable cost reductions.

“By simplifying the overall rules and making it easier to know exactly what materials need to be shipped in what manner, with what certifi cations and what documentation — they become easier to enforce.”

Precision in packing and accurate documentation are as vital as regulatory knowledge



Are the US Department of Transportation regulators and inspectors really able to enforce the DOT dangerous goods regulations as they apply to battery transport?

There are always going to be those people who don’t understand the regulations and don’t prepare their packages properly. This is not always intentional but a result of overly com-plicated and complex regulations where even the most compliance minded shippers fi nd it challenging to comply with the regulations.

Also of concern is that carriers and governments are imposing their own rules — they can vary from airline to airline and state to state — over and above the regulations which com-plicates matters further. What may surprise is that during international meetings where the regulators discuss and develop regulations it is not un-common for them to disagree on the meaning and interpretation of regula-tions that have been in existence for years.

How is the shipping community supposed to get it right if the regulators can’t even agree!

Regulators and airlines are concerned about improperly prepared ship-ments, and rightly so, as a result of some disastrous incidents that have been linked to (but not substantiated) lithium batteries.

Substandard packaging and bat-teries that are not properly designed, tested and fi tted with safety devices are a real concern. Undeclared ship-ments are a particular worry to car-riers given the chance that they could

be carrying something potentially problematic and not know about it.

When the Obama administration took over, our enforcement staff was

expanded signifi cantly, which was fi ne, but I was okay with the num-ber of inspectors we had. In 2009 the agency performed more than 300 in-

What the battery industry needs to know about the HM-224 F ruling

Batteries International spoke to Bob Richard, a long-time US govern-ment expert on hazardous materials safety just weeks after PHMSA released its HM-224 F ruling to get a veteran regulator’s take on what the industry needs to know to package and transport batteries safely.

Before joining Labelmaster Services,

where he has been vice president for

government affairs since 2010, Bob

Richard was the deputy associate

administrator for hazardous

materials safety with the Pipeline

and Hazardous Materials Safety

Administration (PHMSA) at the US

Department of Transportation.

During his 25 years there, he

directed the day-to-day operations

of the US Hazardous Materials

Transportation Safety Program, and

oversaw the regulatory development

and enforcement offi ces, as

well as 150 hazardous materials

transportation specialists.

Richard has also been involved

in a broad range of domestic and

international hazardous materials

safety efforts, including working as

chairman of both the United Nations

Sub-Committee of Experts on the

Transport of Dangerous Goods, and

the ICAO Dangerous Goods Panel.

In his current capacity with US

fi rm Labelmaster, Richard provides

dangerous goods regulatory

assistance to customers worldwide

who value his experience, including

knowledge of the hazardous

materials regulations and his

contacts with an extensive network

of dangerous goods professionals.

BOB RICHARD: THE BACKGROUND

3



spections of lithium battery shippers. At the time, I believed that having

inspectors identify and issue penal-ties to shippers that were not comply-ing with the regulations was one of several actions that were necessary to reduce the risk that lithium batteries pose in transportation.

In my time as the PHMSA deputy associate administrator, I felt regula-tors should focus on actually fi xing problems, that’s going after the con-sistent violators who cause many of these incidents — and don’t forget, many more of them occur than we ever fi nd.

As it is, regulators are imposing more and more onerous and overly complicated regulations and restric-tions on the shippers who are com-plying with the regulations, while those that cut corners and offer sub-standard batteries are generally left to continue to put the public at risk.

The less than scrupulous shippers who consistently ship poorly pack-aged, often undeclared consumer items containing these batteries pose the greatest risk and should be held accountable for their actions.

These folks even exist on online auction sites which is scary!

In many instances these shippers

are located in countries or regions were enforcement and safety over-sight is less than desirable.

How international adimension is there to this?

The major problem is shipments com-ing out of countries where there is lit-tle oversight over shippers. In these countries the civil aviation authority puts the regulatory burden on the air carrier rather than the shippers — as opposed to the US, where the FAA and other modal administrations such as the PHMSA, or the FMCSA, have authority over shippers and car-riers alike.

We should be focusing at least 50% of our attention on people who origi-nate these shipments, because they are responsible for compliant pack-aging and ensuring their batteries are properly designed and manufactured.

Our approach when I worked as a regulator was to follow the bread crumbs! I used to tell my agents, when you fi nd a non-compliant situa-tion, don’t just issue a fi ne or a warn-ing to the offending party. Follow the trail back to the person or company responsible for the error in packaging and transportation in the fi rst place.

Enforcement resources should be focused on the root causes of inci-dents and changing the behaviours of those individuals that put us all at risk. Enforcement personnel should be allowed to use a multitude of tools and behaviour changing tactics to re-duce risk.

Many complain about the seemingly arcane nature of some of the exemptions to DOT regulations. Can you explain why they’re needed?

I recall a time when, while my agency was testifying in a hearing before a congressional committee, a congress-man asked why the agency would is-sue an approval authorizing the ship-ment of a 100kg Li-ion battery from California to the east coast by air. Why not ship it by truck?

Unfortunately the testifying offi cial failed to explain that the battery was a one-of-a-kind lithium battery that, fi tted with highly specialized control electronics, was destined for a weath-er satellite about to be launched into space. There, it would spot and fore-warn of severe weather conditions, and in effect protect the lives of mil-lions of people.

Given the urgency and the high stakes, the situation was unusual.

Shipping such a complex, sophisti-cated and costly unit by truck would have, given the higher rate of serious trucking/road accidents, presented far greater risk than shipping by air. And that’s why certain situations re-quire exceptions to standard rules.

Currently the International Civil

We often hear the industry

complain of overregulation,

or needlessly cumbersome

regulation. Are the current

regulations really achieving the

desired result?

If the present focus continues, we’ll

see more of the burden shifted

on to the airlines and the airlines

are going to say we can’t take

this, it’s not economical. This also

results in pushing and incentivizing

unscrupulous shippers to offer

undeclared cargo.

What we need is a simplifi cation of

the regulations and to include more

industry experts in the regulatory

development process with appropriate

time for comment and consideration

of the most practical alternatives and

approaches to reducing risk.

Battery technology is outpacing

the regulations, so perhaps it’s time

for a major overhaul with a focus

on simplifi cation. Some high profi le

prosecutions of violators, greater

public vilifi cation, and then shutting

down unscrupulous shippers is

needed. Unfortunately the US

regulators have minimal authority over

foreign violators.

What may surprise is that during international meetings where the regulators discuss and develop regulations it is not uncommon for them to disagree on the meaning and interpretation of regulations that have been in existence for years.

IS BATTERY TECHNOLOGY OUTPACING THE REGULATOR OR VICE VERSA



Aviation Organization is in particular focused on ramping up regulations and restrictions on the transport of lithium batteries. ICAO’s regulatory development process does not opti-mally involve industry participation.

Regulators need to ensure that by focusing on lithium batteries safety requirements applicable to air trans-port that they don’t overlook the consequences of their actions in other sectors of society. Regulators should focus on a multifaceted approach to reducing risk and incidents not just imposing more regulations and re-strictions.

Consultation with industry repre-sentatives can result in regulations that are clear, effective and appropri-ate. It is critical that the regulations are developed through a process that allows input from all industry sec-tors so that appropriate alternatives can be implemented, enforced and understood by shippers and carriers alike.

These decisions should take into account the implications to supply chains and on other segments of so-ciety including issues related to the preservation of human life and pre-venting injuries and fatalities outside of the aviation community.

Restrictions that are implemented without appropriate consideration of the implications outside of avia-tion safety could have serious and adverse impacts to public safety and health. For instance, lithium batteries are used in medical devices, weather monitoring and warning systems, surveillance, disaster relief, emergen-cy response and security equipment among other applications.

A regulation reducing a target risk for one area of focus may increase

other risks ultimately resulting in greater loss of life, harm to the envi-ronment and the economy.

All of these issues must ultimately be balanced. Safety agencies must be careful to avoid overlooking counter-vailing risks and examine potential risk trade-offs.

What advice do you give your clients, now that you’re a dangerous and hazardous goods regulation consultant?

My clients range in size from small companies to large global corpora-tions. Generally, I advise them on how to comply with the regulations and transport their dangerous goods safely and effi ciently. I inform them about what any good inspector is go-ing to look for and ensure that they’re prepared should they be visited by an enforcement offi cer.

Most companies want to comply but have diffi culty interpreting the regulations, tailoring their operations and training employees.

Let’s say you have dangerous goods that you want to ship. That means the person who offers the package to a carrier has responsibilities to ensure that the shipment is compliant with the regulations — that it’s properly marked, labelled, packaged and docu-mented. If there is an incident in trans-

portation, the carrier is obliged to re-port it to the DOT.

Once an incident is reported, there is a high probability that the shipper will be visited and inspected. One day the inspector will show up and you will have no choice but to let him in. It is always best to be prepared for in-spections and to have a robust com-pliance program and safety culture that encourages employees to identify defi ciencies and is not punitive.

I tell them what any given violation could cost. Some of the FAA’s fi nes are steep, but some aren’t tough enough. And yes, some shippers decide to fl y under the radar screen, take their chances and if caught just pay the fi ne.

I also recommend, especially if they’re new to shipping, and unfamil-iar with all the DOT regulations, to fi nd and work with a hazardous mate-rials professional that can advise them accordingly.

Some regulators and industry

trade associations have indicated

that imposing more regulation may

not improve compliance of those

shippers who intentionally violate

current regulations. Compliant

shippers are burdened with new

regulations resulting in the expenditure

of signifi cant resources while non-

compliant shippers continue to ignore

the law.

Shippers that continue to offer non-

compliant shipments to air carriers

need to be held accountable for their

actions and penalized as appropriate

as a means of changing behaviour

that result in placing the public at risk.

Understanding that even with the

best safety oversight efforts aircraft

may have undeclared shipments of

lithium batteries is reason to ramp up

the efforts to implement mitigation

strategies that focus on enhancing fi re

suppression and detection systems.

As it is, regulators are imposing

tighter and tighter rules on US

manufacturers who are largely

compliant anyway, effectively

burdening them with additional

regulations, restrictions and higher

costs without much risk reduction or

safety enhancement.

To stay solvent these companies

often end up pushing manufacturing

overseas but then some of the

overseas companies that are not

properly policed and audited send

substandard products back to the

US via the same non-compliant

operators and shippers that no one is

monitoring anyway, and jeopardizing

consumer and public safety.

Thus US regulators, lacking enough

boots on the ground to inspect all

those port-of-entry situations, just

can’t protect consumers from faulty,

poorly manufactured products and

batteries.

The major problem is shipments coming out of countries where there is little oversight over shippers. In these countries the civil aviation authority puts the regulatory burden on the air carrier rather than the shippers.

Enforcement resources should be focused on the root causes of incidents and changing the behaviours of those individuals that put us all at risk.



Every new technology provides both opportunities and risks. And no more so than the huge arrival of lithium batteries as the power source — and occasionally a dangerous one at that — for laptops and phones and, of late, larger devices. CL Smith, the US packaging company, set up a division called HAZPlus 15 years ago to han-dle the packaging and transport of hazardous materials — and, realizing the business opportunities from the new wave of lithium battery emerging, later adapted it for battery materials.

“We entered battery packaging about seven years ago,” says Lynn Bowman, strategic account executive for CL Smith. “But it was the prolif-eration of regulatory requirements for lithium batteries that prompted us to expand our services specifi cally to that sector.

Because there is so little standardi-zation in lithium batteries, few pack-age suppliers can meet the need for US Department of Transportation (DOT) compliant battery packaging.”

The majority of packaging suppli-ers offer stock items. However, a few others, such as CL Smith with HAZ-Plus, can offer a variety of custom de-sign and production services to meet special needs. Because every package

must undergo US DOT package test-ing and certifi cation in a United Na-tions/International Safe Transit Asso-ciation certifi ed package compliance lab before it can ship, customers seek the services of packaging manufactur-er and test lab.

“To be on top of all the regulatory changes, we needed to build our own certifi ed test lab on site,” says Patrick Edwards, director of operations. “Set-ting up as a one-stop shop means the customer doesn’t have to take the package somewhere else for testing. We design, produce, test and certify every package.”

Different rulesAnyone shipping these regulated bat-teries must apply all the UN DOT regulations over making packaging, markings and documentation com-pliant with the rules. And the rules change whether the batteries are to moved by ground, air, rail, waterway or sea — and change again whether they are being shipping in-country or internationally.

Though the typical fi rst-time cus-tomer, depending on their experience and regulatory understanding, may not always know that, says Edwards.

“Usually the new customer comes

in telling us not what they want, but what they have. They’ll say, ‘We have this battery and we need something to ship it in to Any Town, USA.’ Though much depends upon their level of ex-perience and regulatory understand-ing, we generally have to start there, where they are, and proceed by asking standard questions about the battery’s materials, components, weight, meas-urements and other characteristics, as well as their preferred transport mode, destination and so on.

“Initially we have to understand what type of battery it is, what stage of the process it is in; whether it is a prototype or a fully UN tested battery. We then look at things such as mode of transport, size, weight, energy den-sity and the like.

“Our goal is to determine what they need, rather than what they think they need.”

How packages are shipped affects the regulations. If packages are to be shipped by ocean cargo, they have to comply with maritime shipment regu-lations, and likewise for air or ground shipments. If the unit is large, requir-ing packaging over 450 cubic litres ca-pacity or 40 kg of mass, the packaging requirements are different than if the packaging is smaller.

Rules over fi lling materials and how many batteries can fi t or be adapted to more standard shipment sizes apply.

Once all the parameters have been determined, the design process begins. HAZPlus has a range of stock inner and outer packaging options but can custom design as needed.

“Not infrequently the customer has an in-house engineering department

How to manage the hazards of managing the hazardous

The enormous growth in the lithium battery industry has its counterpart in the need to deliver the product worldwide. In the last few years fi rms such as CL Smith have adapted their hazardous materials business to packaging and shipping to the world of batteries. Lynnda Greene profi les the company from its St Louis base in the US.

“Initially we have to understand what type of battery it is, what stage of the process it is in; whether it is a prototype or a fully UN tested battery. We then look at things such as mode of transport, size, weight, en-ergy density and the like”



that’s already designed both the prod-uct and a package prototype, and they want to get the design tested,” says Edwards. “In most cases we’re able to optimize some characteristics of their design from a cost perspective, and come up with something better to meet a component of the regulation.

“Sometimes we have to create pro-tection of some expensive component or battery that supersedes the UN requirement. For example packag-ing that would otherwise pass UN requirements for a hazardous mate-rial might need additional packaging because it’s a $50,000 aircraft battery that absolutely cannot be damaged in transport.”

Once technicians design the packag-ing a test programme can kicks in “At this point we conduct the appropriate tests on each package” says Edwards. “All tests — which include a drop test, a vibration test, a stacking test and a hydrostatic pressure test, where re-quired — are outlined very specifi cally in the DOT regulations, per the type of package.”

He says the fi rm can also perform component specifi cation testing, a re-quired capability in UN certifying labs for situations requiring that specifi c components be measured, weighed and otherwise examined and evalu-ated.

Rather than test with a client’s ac-tual battery, HAZPlus uses either a battery shell technicians can weight up or a kind of prototype that would not add to testing time, since normally they will do fi ve sets for the drop test, three sets for the vibration, three sets for the stack test and sometimes more.

Regulations set down certain man-dated conditions of closure, which in-clude the fi ne points of inner as well as outer packaging. For example fi ber-board boxes are almost always sealed with tape, but regulations specify that only the specifi c tape that was used in testing can be used to close the pack-age, and there are no variations.

Other closure concerns can hinge on something as simple as handling at any point in transport.

“Particularly with large format bat-teries and packs, closure can some-times be determined by just how the

unit might be picked up,” says Ed-wards. “By personnel? A forklift? Both? From where, a truck bed or a dock? What angle would handlers need to access and secure closure points? Depending on how the pack-age fi ts, closure points may need to be designed in such a way as to avoid po-tential damage upon opening once it gets to its destination. Because anyone handling the unit needs to understand all this, we also offer training.”

Database compliance tooBecause regulations require specifi c kinds of record keeping, HAZPlus maintains a database of all certifi ca-tions and closing instructions, which must now be included with documen-tation. “Customers must understand that they are required to declare the package with the shipping carrier, and

present the proper notifi cation docu-ments and closing instructions,” says Edwards. “In the event that a DOT/FAA offi cial comes on-site for an in-spection or audit, we can help cus-tomers prepare and supply them with proper documentation.”

Of all the benefi ts any packager can offer — compliant packaging, time and cost savings, reliable service — confi dence in the degree of regulatory knowledge may rank highest of all, says Bowman.

“Some of our customers are so new to shipping they don’t know much beyond that they want to ship a bat-tery somewhere. But even our estab-lished customers, some of them large companies with deep experience, come to us for help understanding pending rule for packaging and test-ing services.”

Educating customers about the regu-latory environment is as important to a packaging manufacturer’s business as explaining each step of the process itself, says Edwards. “Given the com-plexity of these requirements, it’s easy to wind up non-compliant without in-tending to be so.”

Because there is so little standardization in lithium batteries, few package suppliers can meet the need for US Department of Transportation compliant battery packaging”

“All tests — which include a drop test, a vibration test, a stacking test and a hydrostatic pressure test, where required — are outlined very specifi cally in the DOT regulations, per the type of package” — Pat Edwards, CL Smith



The consequences of non-compliant packaging with the US Department of Transportatio rules of advanced chem-istry batteries can be huge — think thermal runaway, fi re and physical harm — however, ensuring a safe, cost-effective and timely delivery is not as easy as following a few rules and hop-ing for the best.

“Things get tossed around in ware-houses, sometimes violently, before they ever get on a truck or plane,” says former DOT regulator Bob Richard. “I’ve been in facilities where they’re throwing packaging of all kinds into a bin, with little thought for the contents. If federal hazardous material regula-tions apply — and that’s clearly stated on the package — they’re treated to-tally differently.

“The operative words there are ‘clear-ly stated,’ because failure to do that

causes problems for transporters. A related issue is the quasi-regulated con-sumer commodity items that contain batteries of various types; those just go into the normal handling systems, some of which can be quite severe and put a lot of challenge on the package.”

All the more important, then, that all manufacturers, distributors, and retail-ers fully understand not only what ap-propriate, fully compliant packaging is — but why it’s absolutely essential to their business — and their industry.

“You really do have to know the normal conditions of transportation — whether by road, rail, waterway or air — as well as the abnormal,” he says, “because like as not, your pack-age may encounter the full range. We’re not objective enough on this. The industry understands the impor-tance because they get data back tell-

ing them what damages occur at what cost, and they make adjustments ac-cordingly.

“But individual shippers, not un-derstanding what’s at stake and not particularly wanting to, tend to skimp and get by with predictable results that affect us all.”

Experienced shippers say concerns for incidents of fi re or related damage, while real, pale beside potential fi nan-cial liabilities should a battery, mod-ule or pack arrive at its destination in anything less than a fully functional condition as promised to the client.

Perhaps the worst nightmare, says John Warner, vice president of sales and marketing for XALT Energy, is going to all the effort to develop and ship a product, and then have it arrive at the assembly location damaged and non-functioning.

Failure to ensure correct compliance with the rules on packaging and transportation can be a costly — and occasionally very dangerous — business if things go wrong.

The long and sometimes heavy arm of the law



“In a previous job my team shipped some prototype batteries to a client overseas in what we thought were suitable packaging materials, and did meet Class 9 shipping requirements,” he says. “But due to the method of shipping and the amount of jostling in transport and other environmental factors, our battery developed fail-ures en route and arrived at the cli-ent with 20% fallout that rendered it unusable.

“The cost in time and money in shipping new parts and sending an engineer to the job to repair it can be signifi cant, especially with prototypes that can cost fi ve times the production price. From a pure business stand-point, damage results in cost to both sides — public safety and the bottom line — of the equation.”

As is the case in most regulatory matters, the serious problems occur not among the compliant shippers, but those who — not understanding the system and not particularly want-ing to — cut corners and if caught, just pay the fi ne. But when they slip past regulators, troubling problems persist with often serious consequenc-es a world away.

“Some of the airlines are very con-cerned with substandard packaging,” says Richard. “Often they can’t do any-thing about it because if the labelling is incorrect they don’t know they’ve got something problematic on board, and may not be prepared to deal with it.”

Enforcement of internationally ac-cepted DOT regulations is not uni-versal — in some countries the local authorities do not know the specifi c regulations, whether for lack of incen-tive or just willful ignorance.

Typically, not understanding what they’re dealing with, inspectors just pass shipments through their own customs and carrier systems with only nominal oversight. Violators can be punished, but only in their respective countries, where prosecution is un-likely.

“Even if someone unknowingly ships a dangerous substance, in some places in the world the regulatory in-frastructure just isn’t there,” says Rich Byczek, global technical lead, trans-portation technologies at Intertek.

“We see lots of instances where the package isn’t labelled properly, inspectors don’t recognize that it’s mislabelled, they don’t check out the contents of the packaging, and on to a plane or container ship it goes, with potentially hazardous consequences.”

Batteries are not always packaged in

the original factory container, either, he says. “We see frequent problems in devices with batteries in them, where issues of electrical safety involving overcharging, or they’re using the wrong chargers.

“These problems are now covered by the new HM-224F regulation, which addresses not only batteries coming out of a factory but also the batteries offered for transport after they ship from the original factory in-side something like electric cigarettes.”

That said plenty of industry people who should know the rules, still don’t take the trouble.

“They’re not aware of the rules or they’re not aware that one of them has changed in the last month. Or they know part of a rule, but they misinter-pret its full meaning and context. They might think, well, if I perform and pass those tests, then the battery is no longer considered a dangerous good.”

But in fact the battery still is a dan-gerous product and it still has to ship under certain exemptions within the regulations. That’s where a lot of the confusion comes in.

“The testing just allows you to get

one step further in the shipping,” he says. “So even the honest manufactur-ers trying to do due diligence don’t al-ways understand the dangers. They’re not used to shipping things otherwise considered hazardous or fl ammable.”

Another signifi cant problem in test-ing labs receiving packaged batter-ies regularly, he says, are clients who frequently don’t understand that they can’t overnight their batteries via a shipping agent such as DHL or UPS. “It’s ironic, because they want us to test the product for a specifi c regula-tion — but they’re violating that very regulation.”

While his lab has been lucky in that they’ve not received batteries in po-tentially dangerous condition, they do receive them without any padding, or so loosely packed they’re knocking around.

“That they get to us in stable condi-tion is just lucky,” he says. “We’ve had to notify customers and remind them that this is the reason we do testing: to avoid such hazards resulting from such carelessness as this. Testing is only the fi rst part of what they need to understand.”

Experienced shippers say concerns for incidents of fi re or related damage, while real, pale beside potential fi nancial liabilities should a battery, module or pack arrive at its destination in anything less than a fully functional condition as promised to the client.

Perhaps the worst nightmare is going to all the effort to develop and ship a product, and then have it arrive at the assembly location damaged and non-functioning.



Battery shipment has come under strict transportation regulation and this is especially critical with lithium-based products. IATA, the Interna-tional Air Transport Association and the dangerous goods regulation (DGR) manual are the resources to help prepare and document danger-ous shipments. Recognized by the world’s airlines for over 50 years, the DGR Manual is the global reference for shipping dangerous goods by air.

Li-ion batteries have improved and the offi cial failure rate has been reduced to one-in-10 million. Experts believe that this number is high as unplanned events are few and far in between.

Examining 113 recorded incidents of transporting batteries by air in the past 19 years reveals that most

failures occurred due to inappropri-ate packaging or handling. This has resulted in battery damage that trig-gered an electrical short. Most events happened at airports or in cargo hubs and not on a carrier. Lead, nickel and alkaline-based systems are part of the problem, not just lithium-ion as is commonly perceived.

IATA’s dangerous goods regulations provide guidelines in the shipment of lithium-based batteries on passen-ger and cargo aircraft. The quantity permitted is based on watt-hours. Wh establishes the lithium content by multiplying voltage with the ampere-hours. For example, multiply-ing 14.40V by 5Ah battery comes to 72Wh, a size that is common for a laptop battery.

Since January 2008, lithium-based

batteries can no longer be checked in with the baggage but airlines allow them as a carry-on. The passenger compartment has better safety moni-toring and access to fi re extinguishers, should an event occur. Non-remova-ble batteries do not count as batter-ies. Out of sight, out of mind.

To protect against a short circuit, IATA recommends placing battery packs into clear plastic bags. A bat-tery pack must further be approved even if the cells in the pack had been approved. This provision also applies to modifi ed battery packs.

The transport of lithium-based battery products is divided into non-Class 9 hazardous material and Class 9 hazardous material. Non-Class 9 allows the shipment of small batter-ies in limited quantities and Class

Isidor Buchmann, founder of Cadex Electronics, provides an overview of the regulations for shipping lithium-based batteries by plane and the latest changes to the procedures.

The basic rules for air shipment



9 hazardous material involving the shipment of larger battery sizes and in higher volume.

Packaging Instructions (PI) are or-ganized into PI 965 to PI 970. PI 965 covers Li-ion cells and battery packs only, PI 966 includes Li-ion installed in equipment and PI 967 combines Li-ion with equipment. Lithium-metal batteries are categorized separately in PI 968 to 970.

Packaging Instruction 965 — includes loose Li-ion cells and battery packs (UN 3480).

Figure 1 divides the transport of Li-ion products into four groups: • Carry-on states the quantity of

Li-ion cells and battery packs a passenger can take on an aircraft;

• Section 11 specifi es shipment of small Li-ion products in low numbers;

• Section 1B advises on the shipment of small Li-ion products in larger numbers, and

• Section 1A governs larger Li-ion products. Only Carry-on and Section 11 are exempt from Class 9 hazardous material designation.

IATA mandates that cells and bat-tery packs cannot be combined in the same shipping box and recommends separate boxes.If the boxes can be combined into one shipping box, the Overpack label must be attached.

Non-Class 9 shipments relating to PI 965 mandate additional guidelines. • LABELS Each package must

include the CAUTION label and the Lithium Battery Handling Label containing the words “Lithium ion batteries in compliance with Section 11 of PI 965” (or applicable PI number) as illustrated in Figure 2. Also add a contact phone number to cover unforeseen events.

• OVERPACK Larger shipments

than permitted under Section 11 can be divided into separate boxes and combined in a larger pack. Add Overpack label on the shipping box in addition to the other required labels. Keep the box under 30kg (66 lb). See label in Figure 3.

• DAMAGE Batteries identifi ed as defective and in danger of failing in transport are forbidden.

• OLD BATTERIES Lithium battery products for disposal are also forbidden from air transport unless approved by the appropriate authorities.

• PACKING Each shipping package must withstand a 1.2 metre drop in any orientation without damaging the batteries, causing them to shift or releasing the contents.

Class 9 has these added regulations

to the above mentioned requirements.• TRAINING Anyone handling

lithium-based batteries for transport must be trained.

• APPROVAL All lithium-ion batteries shipped under Class 9 hazardous material designation must meet the UN Manual of Test and Criteria, Part III, subsection 38.3.

• LABELS Class 9 packages must include [1] Class 9 hazard material label, [2] UN designation (UN 3400, 3481, 3090 or 3091), [3] marking “Lithium Battery” with packing information (PI 965, 1B, 1A or other), [4] name and address of the shipper and consignee, and [5] the number of packages and gross weight per package. Class 9 labels are illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 2: Caution label must be placed on

all boxes containing lithium-based batteries

Label: 120mm x 115mm (4.72”x4.53”)

Figure 4: Class 9 hazardous material label. Label dimension: 100mm x 100mm (3.94” x 3.94”)

Figure 3: Overpack label combining small boxes

101mm x 74mm (4.0” x 2.94”)

Other dimensions may apply

Sections

Carry-on Passenger

Section 11Small size, low volume

Section 1BSmall size, high volume

Section 1AFull load

Cell/battery size

Maximum battery size 100Wh

Cell 20Wh1 or less —›Battery 100Wh2 or less —›Cells/batteries 2.7Wh —›

Cell less than 20Wh Packs less than 100Wh

Cells larger than 20WhPacks larger than 100Wh

Weight/number limitation

Each passenger can take 2 spares not exceeding 100Wh

8 cells, no weight limit2 batteries, no weight limit2.5Kg, no number limit

10kg for passenger aircraft, 10kg for cargo per package


Note

Carry-on only. Not allowed in checked luggage

Not subject to Class 9; can be shipped by courier and mail; must include Lithium Battery Handling Label and Caution label.

Class 9, subject to all applicable requirements


Figure 1: Packaging Instruction 965 covering Sections 11, 1B and 1A — Shipment of loose Li-ion cells and battery packs. 1 Typical smartphone or tablet battery; 2 Typical laptop battery

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Packaging Instruction 966 — governs Li-ion cells and battery packs with equipment (UN 3481) and Packag-ing Instruction 967 — governs Li-ion cells and battery packs in equipment (UN3481). See fi gure 5.

These regulations are similar to PI 965 with the exceptions that Li-ion cells and battery packs can be shipped with, or in, the equipment. Equipment means an apparatus re-quiring Li-ion products to operate. PI 966 and PI 967 have these additional requirements.• LIMITATION The maximum

number of batteries in each package must be limited to those required to operate the equipment. Extras must be shipped separately or in Overpack.

• ACTIVATION Equipment must be turned OFF. Accidental activation in transport must be prevented.

• EXCEPTIONS Devices such as watches and temperature loggers that do not pose a danger in transport may be left in the ON position.

Packaging Instruction 968 — permits lithium-metal cells and battery packs (UN3090).

Lithium-metal batteries have tighter shipping requirements than lithium ion batteries. Most Li-metal cells or battery packs are non-rechargeable

and are found in watches, medical instruments, pacemakers, sensors, memory retention and more.

From January 2015, lithium metal batteries will be restricted to cargo aircraft only. This only applies when shipping lithium metal batteries by themselves.

Batteries packed with or contained in equipment can continue to be shipped on passenger aircraft.

Additional requirements for lithium metal batteries as part of PI 968:• PACKAGING Cells and battery

packs must be packed in a rigid outer packaging.

• PADDING Batteries must be surrounded by non-conductive,

non-combustible cushioning material.

• LABEL When the package does not meet the above requirements, mark “Cargo Aircraft Only” as illustrated in fi gure 7.

• LIMITATION Lithium-metal in any equipment must not exceed 12g/cell and 500g/battery.

• EXCEPTIONS Button cell installed in equipment and circuit boards do not add to the battery count.

Figure 7: Cargo Aircraft Only label; added to one shipping box with other

mandated labels.

Label dimension: 300mm x 300mm (11.8” x 11.8”) Other dimensions may apply

Because of size, label cannot be printed on a regular printer.

Sections

Section 11Small size, low volume

Section 1BSmall size, high volume

Section 1AFull load

Cell/battery size

Lithium-metal content —›per unit 0.3g or less Lithium-metal content —›in cells 1g or lessLithium-metal content —›in battery 2g or less

Lithium-metal in cells 1g or less; battery 2g or less

Lithium-metal in cells exceeds 1g; pack 2g


2.5kg weight limitNo limit in number

8 cells

2 battery packs

2.5kg for passenger aircraft, 2.5kg for cargo per package


Note




Figure 6: Packaging Instruction 968 — Shipment of lithium metal cells and battery packs.

Sections

Section 11

Section 1

Cell/battery size

Cell 20Wh or less, packs 100Wh or less

Cells larger than 20Wh, packs larger than 100Wh


5kg for passenger aircraft,

5kg for cargo aircraft5kg for passenger aircraft, 35kg for cargo aircraft

Note



Figure 5: Packaging Instruction 966 and 967 — Shipment of Li-ion batteries with, and in equipment.

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CONFERENCEIN PRINT

Welcome to a special section of our magazine, called Conference in Print.

Our aim is a simple one. We want to offer you the readers a section where you can highlight your products, technology and skills to our broader audience — rather like going to a conference or an exhibition without the inconvenience of all the travel!

We’re putting no restrictions on what you’d like to showcase — this is your section not ours — but hope that this will prove an invaluable and cost-effective way to reach our audience of subscribers and readers.


CONFERENCE IN PRINT

Batteries and battery packs have be-come an integral part of everyday life, in response to the ever-increasing demand for portable electronic devices, cordless power tools, energy storage, and hy-brid and electric vehicles. This in turn, drives the need to manufacture batteries and battery packs that meet the quality and production requirements for these products.

There are a number of materials join-ing requirements for battery manufac-turing, depending on the specifi c type, size and capacity of the battery. Internal terminal connections, battery can and fi ll plug sealing, tab to terminal connec-tions, and external electrical connec-tions are a few key examples.

Several joining options can be con-sidered for each of these requirements, including resistance, ultrasonic, micro-TIG and laser welding, including the newest fi ber laser options. The decision to use one or the other is generally dic-tated by the specifi c type of weld re-quired and production requirements.

Ultrasonic welding is commonly used for the joining of the internal electrode battery materials, which are usually constructed of thin foils of aluminum and copper. The remaining joining re-quirements — including the connections inside the can, and external terminal tab connections — are well suited to resist-ance, micro-TIG, and laser welding. For can and plug applications (seam seal-

ing), laser welding is the joining tech-nology of choice.

The following is an overview of re-sistance, micro-TIG and laser welding technologies, along with examples of battery joining applications, detailing when and where to use each technology.

Resistance, micro-TIG, and laser welding for battery manufacturingResistance welding has been an estab-lished joining technology for more than 40 years and has been used in the bat-tery industry for almost as long. Since then, a steady stream of advances in re-sistance welding systems has given users signifi cantly improved capabilities to control various aspects of the process.

For example, the introduction of DC inverter power supplies with basic closed-loop electrical modes provides the ability to accommodate changes in the secondary circuit (the electri-cal loop from cable connection on the negative side of the power supply or transformer, through the weld head and the parts returning to the positive side) to specifi cally address part resist-ance.

Also, polarity switching for capaci-tance discharge supplies to enable bal-ancing of the weld nuggets, and more recently, the addition of displacement and electrode force measurement, pro-vide manufacturers with more tools to

ensure weld quality.Similar to resistance welding, tungsten

inert gas welding (TIG), also known as gas tungsten arc welding, has been used in manufacturing for many decades and has traditionally been used for the more challenging welding applications for nonferrous materials.

Advances in high frequency power supplies increased low current control and arc stability, enabling much fi ner welding. This process became known as micro-TIG, a generally non-contact process that offers excellent copper joining while offering a fairly relaxed process window with respect to part fi t-up and positioning tolerances of the electrode to the parts.

Laser welding is a newer technol-ogy, introduced in the manufacturing marketplace in the mid-1980s. As laser technology has matured, and the aware-ness of its benefi ts spread, it has become an established process. Today it is sim-ply another tool in the manufacturing engineer’s toolbox to be used and im-plemented as needed.

The laser provides a high intensity light source that can be focused down to very small diameters (0.01-inch). The concentration of light energy is suffi -cient to melt metals rapidly, forming an instantaneous weld nugget.

The process is non-contact, has no consumables, offers instantaneous welding once positioned at the weld

Welding embraces new generation of techniques

Welding is an integral part of various aspects of battery pack manufac-turing. Selecting and using laser, micro-TIG and resistance technologies can be key to the process writes Marty Mewborne, sales engineering manager, for Miyachi America Corporation.

Figure 1. Seam welding of aluminium cans

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT

point location, provides suffi cient con-trol over the process to size the weld nugget according to requirements, and provides a number of implementation methods that can be geared toward in-dividual manufacturing requirements. Laser welding enables joining of many materials and material combinations, can weld thick parts, and has no limita-tion on proximity of weld spots.

There are two types of laser that pro-vide solutions for battery applications: pulsed Nd:YAG and fi ber. Both of these lasers offer different joining characteris-tics that can be selected as appropriate.

High speed seam and plug sealing of battery cansLaser welding is an excellent method for seam sealing, resulting in high speed, high quality seams in both steel and alu-minum. Laser welding offers signifi cant advantages over mechanical clinching and adhesive methods based on joint reliability, joining speed, and ease of manufacturing.

As laser welding is an extremely ef-fi cient joining process, the heat input into the battery is minimized. Figure 1 shows a few examples of seam weld-ing of aluminum cans, including a weld cross section, and ball and plug sealing application examples.

Welding tabs to terminals, and buss barsFrom a welding perspective, the im-portant aspects of tab welding are the thickness and material of both the tab and the terminal. Resistance welding is extremely well suited to welding nickel tab material up to 0.015-inch thickness, and nickel or steel clad copper tab ma-terial to around 0.012-inch thickness to a wide variety of terminal materials.

Due to a different welding mecha-nism, laser welding is able to weld both thin and thick tab materials, with a ca-pability of welding copper or aluminum tab material above and beyond 0.04-inch thickness. Avoiding penetration of the can and overheating the battery are important aspects of tab to terminal welding.

Welding tabs or terminal connections to buss bars generally does not require as much penetration of heat input con-trol as the tab to terminal welds. The materials, material thickness and com-bination of materials determine the best welding technique.

Resistance welding Resistance welding has been, and con-tinues to be, the most cost-effective

method for joining tabs on a wide range of battery types and sizes, using both DC inverter closed loop and capacitor discharge power supplies. With fast rise times, closed loop feedback control, polarity switching, and options for dis-placement and force sensing, the pro-cess can be fi nely tuned and monitored to ensure both high quality and yield.

For nickel tab thicknesses up to 0.0070-inch, the tab can be welded without modifi cation. Beyond this thickness, and to prevent electrical shunting and excessive electrode wear, a slot and projections are placed in the tab as part of the stamping process.

The projections act not only as energy concentrators for the weld, but also greatly increase electrode lifetimes.

Figure 2 shows several examples of the wide range of resistance tab welding applications.

Micro-TIG Micro-TIG offers excellent welding of copper, and so presents a good solution for buss bar welding that would require a brazing material for resistance weld-ing or a large power laser welder. Both butt, fi llet and lap welds are possible

up to and beyond thickness of 0.02” thick copper are routinely welded. When welding copper using micro-TIG it is extremely important to use a pulsa-tion function that creates the weld with-out porosity, as shown in Figure 3.

Laser welding For tab and buss bar joining, laser welding offers a high degree of fl ex-ibility, welding both thin and thick tab materials, and materials such as cop-per, aluminum, steel and nickel as well as dissimilar material combinations. Two example welds are shown in Fig-ure 4 on following page.

When welding a tab to a terminal, the general rule of thumb is that the tab should be thinner than the can termi-nal thickness. As the can thickness de-creases the tab usually must be 50% of the can thickness for a safe processing window that provides the weld strength and conductivity whilst not penetrating the can.

As laser welding has no limitation on the proximity of the welds, the laser can place any pattern of weld spots on the tab according to strength requirements. It is worth noting that, in nearly all cas-

Figure 3. Buss bar welds in 0.04 inch copper and the effect of pulsation on weld porosity

Figure 2. Resistance tab welding applications


CONFERENCE IN PRINT

es, if the joint’s weld strength is achieved, conductivity follows. For more conduc-tive materials, the weld area required for strength can be as much as 10 times that required for conduction.

As shown in Figure 4, the placement of the weld spots on the tab is com-pletely fl exible, and can be tuned to the

strength requirements of the pack or tab. For example, peel strength is often used as a metric for weld quality. There-fore the welds can be positioned accord-ingly. The peel strength of (a) is 15 lbs. and (b) is 60 lbs.

The time needed to add additional weld spots is very short; suffi cient tab

strength can be achieved with very little impact on cycle time.

Although peel strength remains an im-portant weld test, vibration is also im-portant. As vibration strength places an emphasis on having good weld strength in any direction, the circle of weld spots shown in (c) provides the solution.

Battery pack manufacturing systemsThe two main production options avail-able are continuous fl ow in-line or of-fl ine systems. It should be noted that the manufacturing fl ow can have an impact on the welding technology selected and this should be factored in at the technol-ogy selection stage. A consideration of materials, joint geometry, weld access, cycle time and budget will normally point in the direction of the required joining technology.

Figure 4. Examples of laser welding conductive tabs — Cross section and top view of a fi ber laser weld of 0.012 inch thick copper tab to steel battery can

The production volume of batteries continues to be driven by the demands of consumer electronics

and electric vehicles. Likewise, the manufacturing and joining needs of these batteries are also pushed by

capacity, size, materials and usage. Resistance, micro-TIG and laser

technologies each have specifi c features that align well to these joining needs. A clear understanding of the technologies and application is needed to implement an effi cient and reliable production welding system.

The tables here offer some guidelines on the available methods and a few parameters including suitability for a variety of applications.

Production volume driven by consumer demand

Technology

Resistance welding

Micro-TIG

Laser

Key benefits

Closed loop feedback welding, cost effective, self-tooling

Large process window, cost effective for copper welding

Non-contact, high speed welding, tailored weld patterns, weld any joint geometry

Joining application

Can and plug sealing

Tab to electrode/case

Tab to busbar

Technology

Laser

Resistance

Laser

Laser

Micro-TIG

Resistance

Details

Barrier sealing of aluminum, nickel and cold rolled steel with minimal heat input

< 0.015” thick nickel/steel straps • < 0.007” thick copper straps

Up to 0.04”+ thick tab material • Electrode/case thickness > 1.5x tab thickness

Multiple materials and layers can be welded • Up to 0.04”+ weld penetration in any material

Thick copper welding, single spot nugget dimensions up to 0.15” x 0.15” • Seam welding capability

Material thickness range as for tab welding. Thicker materials can be brazed.

Figure 5. Examples of fl exible weld placement for tailoring weld strength and weld

EVENT REVIEW: ELBC


Yes, it was a sell-out and the powerful mix of a solid conference and massive networking opportunities proved a perfect conference material.

Near record numbers (698 delegates from more than 50 countries and more than 100 exhibition stands) according to the organizers attended two days of presentations in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the theme of sustainability at the conference organised by the Interna-tional Lead Association.

Among the positive developments for lead batteries discussed were:• Emission-saving start-stop vehicles,

using advanced lead batteries, are predicted to be a large chunk of the new automobile market in Europe by 2020 with signs that they will

then dominate the market. China and USA are also expected to fol-low suit.

• Large-scale energy storage is seen as the next major market for lead batteries, with several papers in the Energy Storage for Future Electric-ity Networks session describing real projects now in operation us-ing lead batteries.

Several battery manufacturers have off-the-shelf modules on the market which are easy to install. Some parts of the industry believe there is the po-tential for this market to become as large as, if not larger than, the market for vehicle batteries.

Keynote speaker, Julian Allwood, a lead author of the 5th Assessment

ELBC recalledThe ELBC has always had a reputation for fi nding the most exotic of locations to

hold their gala evening — but it’s a very hard reputation to live up to. Edinburgh

proved that the ILA, the organizers of the conference, were still on form.

Yes, it’s Valletta! Those of us with a knowledge of the place reacted with cheers at the gala dinner announcement. The more geographically challenged started googling frantically, fi rst Valetta, then Malta and some of the less adept were last seen typing Mediterranean into their iPhones in lieu of an atlas. But read the list of where ELBC has been to and you’ll see the conference has criss-crossed Europe several times.

The ELBC secretariat are notori-ously tight-lipped about announcing where the next conference will be held. Omertà, the mafi a’s code of silence, has nothing on these sturdy souls. “We continue to deny any link between the deaths of four offi ce staff ahead of the Berlin announcement and the disap-

pearance of two others,” said an ELBC spokesman who later said he could nei-ther confi rm or deny his name.

But ELBC watchers outlined some general principles ahead of the Valletta announcement.

The Price-per-Pint Rule Some parts of Europe are out of bounds, mostly on the grounds of affordability. Bye, bye Scandi-navia, where the price of a beer is €7.10 in Norway. And perhaps hello Kyev? Civil war notwithstanding, a pint is just €0.60.

The Not-Near-A-Golf-Course Rule US delegates are known to choose atten-dance by a one step process — “where are my golf clubs? followed by “I wonder what this event all is about?” ELBC or-

Guess-work ends and the

A SCOTTISH THEME

The ELBC gala night, as ever, was a night to remember. Despite the orga-nizers’ cloak and dagger secrecy — “we can’t tell you where it’s going to be as it’s a surprise and please don’t look on our website where we acci-dentally posted it” — the wait was worth it.

The theme inevitably was Scottish, but none the worse for that. As is tra-ditional north of the English border a piper welcomed people in to where the aperitif drinks were served and then on into the main gallery.

Although traditional sports such as “tossing the caber” (throwing the equivalent of a telegraph pole) didn’t happen due to lack of space the elaborately organized mayhem of Scottish dancing, and kilt fl ailing to the wail of bagpipes was memorable. That said few realised that the world famous Highland Fling is a dance of triumph at the end of a battle.

Haggis — the minced heart, liver and lungs of a sheep served in the cas-ing of the animal’s intestines — was served with neeps (turnips) and tat-ties (potatoes) and this was washed down with a wholesome dram (glass) of whisky.

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of whisky.

EVENT REVIEW: ELBC


Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, put the role of lead and lead batteries fi rmly in the context of the need to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to help control carbon emis-sions.

He homed in on lead’s recyclabil-ity (much less energy to recycle than to smelt from ores) and the need for lead batteries for energy storage (to capitalize on renewable energy sources).

In other sessions, the dramatic im-provements in lead batteries resulting from the addition of carbon to the neg-ative active mass were seen as a critical focus for future research.

The task now is to understand why the carbon is so benefi cial, and to iden-tify the most effective parameters of that carbon (size, shape, optimum per-centage of addition, etc) and especially the type of carbon (carbon black, graphite, graphene, nanotubes, etc).

A limiting factor in the wider use of lead batteries is the speed at which they can be recharged and dynamic charge acceptance which will be an-other major focus for future research.

ganizer thinking is more complex. Golf courses are out. This year’s tournament at St Andrew’s by the way is an exception, based on You’ll Never Guess It Right Rule (suckers), see later for fuller details.

The One-Flight Rule. There should be direct fl ights from across Europe, the US and Asia to the city. Edinburgh slightly broke the rules here, most US and Asian visitors had to fl y in through Glasgow. The reasoning is not that after Glasgow, Edinburgh will seem a dream but further evidence of the You’ll Never Guess It Right Rule (suckers).

The-Never-The-Same-Destination-Twice Rule. For the fi rst 13 ELBC meet-ings, this was the golden rule for confer-

ence watchers making their predictions. Unfortunately ELBC organizers wised up to this, see You’ll Never Guess It Right Rule (suckers) and wrong-footed every-body two years ago.

The sneaky return to Paris — and to the same venue as the fi rst 1988 meet-ings — was reckoned by ILA insiders as a master-stroke of deception.

You’ll-Never-Guess-It-Right Rule (suckers). In recent years delegates’ clever money on where the event will be held has been more accurate than be-fore. The result has been this rule which goes: “All rules are made to be broken (including this one)”. This last clause ap-parently makes perfect sense to the high-est echelons of the ELBC.

1988 Paris

1990 Brussels

1992 Geneva

1994 Munich

1996 Sitges/Barcelona

1998 Prague

2000 Dublin

2002 Rome

2004 Berlin

2006 Athens

2008 Warsaw

2010 Istanbul

2012 Paris

2014 Edinburgh

2016 Valletta*

(not Southend on Sea as some foolish soul predicted)

show moves to Valletta Roll of honour — named and shamed!

anel ead t of on

mis-

bil-toadze

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Roll of honour

ELBC, a personal viewThe14ELBC conference in Edinburgh, what an week! I, and many others, thought that it was one of the best ‘net-working events’ — aka business op-portunities — of the year! From the moment we arrived we hardly had time to stand still. Starting with the fi rst evening’s networking op-portunity, supplied by the Hammond Group, touring and partaking in the Scottish Whiskey Tasting Experience. A fantastic venue and gracious host. Ending with the Gala evening at the National Museum of Scotland — as always a spectacular event, we would have expected nothing less from the ILA and its highly creative team.There have been times when I have been amazed at how other event organisers

seems to deploy special skills in keeping the delegates away from the exhibitors — those poor harassed people who have spent thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, getting their booth to the exhibition and then stand around for days hoping for a glimpse of a ever more rare delegate. Not so at ELBC.

Every coffee and comfort break was spent in the exhibition. If the delegates looked like they might turn the wrong way out of the conference hall there were helpful people there to point them in the right direction. Each networking recep-tion was held in the exhibition hall. What then could be improved on? Well, nothing as far as the exhibitors are concerned. I will leave other, more opinionated, people to comment on the qual-ity of the speakers and presentations — for ourselves we heard nothing but praise — but for us exhibitors, the ILA came out on top. Or in the words of Abraham Lincoln: “He has a right to criticise, has a heart to help”.

Karen Hampton,Publisher, Batteries International

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Time to debunk thelithium mythsCase study: growing your business in the teeth of a recession

Excitement: NAATBaat picks Kentucky for HQ

Lead acid fights back

Issue 72

Spring 2009

Why cutting edge lead technology could knockout next generation batteries

Bringing the industry togetherrn

LeLeeeeeadaa acidcucutututtttiting eeaadadd d aoogoggygyy noocococckk

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Summer 2009

Bringing the industry together

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Life after GM, Chrysler

collapse: it ain’t so bad

Separating flywheel

hype from substance

Thrills and spills: Obama

announces loans, grants

UPS: time

to see the

bigger

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Issue 76 Spring/Summer 2010

Bringing the industry togetherwww.batteriesinternational.c

Can this separator outsmart the lithium

nail penetration test?

The EV conundrum: time to make the

numbers stand up

Tributes as BCI's Moe Desmarais moves on

Moltenshow p

Optimism unbounded:AABC Orlando reviewand exhibition special

Exide’s ‘confidereinven

Ba eriesInternational

Putting the va-va-voom into customer service

North American supplier profiles

Summer 2010

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Bringing the industry togetherwww.batteriesinternational

Year aheadad survey: the hohopes and challengeses of 2011Phoenix from the flames: how Firefly Energy was salvaged

Time to chharge for energy, noot for theboxes it comes in

When the gointough: the life times of Axion China motive boom powers on, demand to send lead prices higher

Why Detchko Pavdeserves his lifetachievement awa

Issue 78 Winter 2010/2011

Ba eriesInternational

The first whiff of danger

What rare e earth shortages will meean to the battery inddustry

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Internernaaaaaattional

Esoteric expertise:the unusual skillsof mold makers

Engineers for thenext generation —the great brain drain

Energy storage for the future: full charge in two minutes

Be there or be square!See our new expandedevents section

Task forces meetin battle to setcommon standards

A life on the road: recollections of a travelling batteryman

Bob Galyen, Magna e-Car and the future of testing

Bringing the industry togetherwww.batteriesinternatio

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Energy storage for the future: full charge in two minutes

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EVENT REVIEW


Size doesn’t mean importance and this year’s — and sixth — China battery conference in Shanghai was huge but it proved perhaps less than important to the international battery industry in terms of business opportunities.

That said it did highlight a sea-change in what’s fashionable in en-ergy storage.

Over the years we’ve had talk of the next big thing — supercaps, fuel cells and latterly lithium ion batteries are set to dominate the planet — but this year it seems clear that supercaps have returned to favour.

Perhaps it was inevitable after Toyota’s bold announcement in the spring that supercaps would form the basis of its next generation electric vehicle fl eet.

The event — branded as an interna-tional battery industry fair — strictly speaking is a combination of three different meetings; one looking at the lead acid business, another about bat-teries in general and another about ul-tracaps. However, it isn’t particularly international, the lingua franca of the meetings and exhibitors was Manda-rin and coverage was confi ned to the Chinese press and an occasional rep-resentation from the trade press.

But the underlying theme of the fair would have probably verged on the depressive to most sections of the in-ternational lead battery market. With supercaps being the fl avour of the day — at least half of the 200 plus exhibitors was related to the super-capacitor industry — the overwhelm-ing sense was that the energy storage business was about to bow under the hype that engulfed it in the 2010s.

In terms of lead acid, the picture is confused in that China’s battery market is running at various levels of over-capacity. Those in the market continue to keep their heads above water — the ebike market is here to stay and lead acid batteries are rela-tively inexpensive — but the new entrants are not enjoying the success

that the late starters had previously achieved.

The price of lead continues to be of real concern to the Chinese mar-ket and there are clear indications that secondary lead prices are mak-ing smelting diffi cult to make a profi t from.

Market talk of operating offshore, most likely in south-east Asia, remains a theme that continues to be examined. One Chinese fi rm even suggested a move to the US was being considered. How times have changed.

One international delegate told Bat-teries International that it was clear that the lithium ion market in China had appeared to give up on making a breakthrough into the SLI market — “they can’t get their costs down and get the batteries accepted” he said. “They now want to make their mark in hybrid electric vehicles and the challenge to traditional areas of the lead acid battery market appear to has started to fi zzle out. “There were roughly the same numbers of lead acid players as lithium.”

ILZDA — the India Lead Zinc Devel-opment Association — organized the conference which brought the great and the good of the Indian lead acid battery community together.

“About 25 technical papers were presented by overseas and Indian speakers, followed by thought-pro-voking technical discussions,” said one of the organizers. “In all, 240 delegates participated in the delibera-tions.”

An exhibition also showcased the latest in plant and equipment, tech-nology and services; 18 companies took part in the exhibition.

The concluding session was a panel discussion, where the panelists and the delegates gave meaningful recom-mendations and suggestions for the sustainable growth of the lead as well as lead battery industry.

The conference was sponsored by Hindustan Zinc, Exide Industries, Amara Raja Batteries, Luminous

Power Technologies, Gravita India, Engitec Technologies, Supreme Bat-teries, Arya Alloys, Nile, Metenere, Sumetco Alloys & VMCO Alloys.

Media partners were Batteries In-ternational, MMR, SSRL Battery Di-rectory, Steel & Metallurg. Dreamz Conference Management was the hos-pitality partner.

The conference focused on global and Indian scenarios for lead and lead batteries, battery technology, markets and environmentally friendly lead battery recycling.

Sea change as lithium loses its fl avour

ILZDA brought the great and the good of the Indian lead acid battery community together

The Sixth China International Battery Industry Fair

August 26-27, Shanghai, China

ILZDA International Conference & Exhibition on Lead &

Lead Batteries — Towards Sustainable Development

July 28-29, New Delhi, India

EVENT REVIEW: THE BATTERY SHOW


The Battery Show and its co-located event Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Tech-nology Expo, returned to Novi, Mich-igan in September for what turned out to be its highest attended and most-exhibited of the series of shows yet.

This is the show’s fi fth year and, despite an awkward start when it launched in San Jose, California, every year the event has grown and grown. The addition of a hotel attached to the conference venue has added to its at-tractiveness.

“This year, we’ve noticed a grow-ing sense of maturity within the ex-hibition hall,” one attendee told Bat-teries International. “This show has moved away from the early years of froth when everything lithium was fashionable thanks to the US govern-ment ARRA money. We’re seeing ma-ture products on offer that are on the manufacturing line and not on the lab test workshop.

“This year has probably been the most interesting yet of the shows I’ve attended.”

The 2014 event welcomed 4,624 technical leaders from 33 countries to the US auto heartland, who gathered to see the latest energy storage tech-

nology from some of the industry’s best known suppliers.

Exhibitors included East Penn, Delphi, Siemens, Kostal and energy storage giant EnerSys, who risked crushing nearby booths getting their Odyssey Battery Bigfoot No 20 Mon-ster Truck, the world’s only all elec-tric-powered monster truck, into the exhibition hall.

Sovema Global and Solith also en-tertained attendees by presenting Romeo, a member of the Nao fam-ily of robots. The two worked with Aldebaran, the French robotics com-pany, to create this humanoid robot designed to share with universities, teachers, counselors, and those treat-ing children with autism, learning or emotional challenges. Romeo put on a show at the networking recep-tion, dancing and interacting with the crowd. (See Last Word section.)

The conference too proved to be a success in terms of numbers with 30% more delegates than in 2013, listening to speakers from companies such as: Dell, Tesla, Continental, DoE, Lotus Engineering, Porsche, Valeo, Eaton, BAE Systems, and Bosch covering all the major and hot topics affecting the

industry. The organizes said that all sessions were well attended but it was standing room only for the R&D con-ference track.

Conference director, Mindy Emsley said: “The breadth and depth of topics covered, along with year-on-year im-provements to the range and calibre of participating speakers attracted the highest number of delegates yet.

“We will build on the overwhelm-ingly positive feedback by continu-ing to deliver business and technical tracks for the battery audience, and seek to grow the content offering for our EV-focused delegates with more sessions on specifi c applications and sectors such as off-highway.

“The launch of the Critical Power Expo will also add a new and exciting dimension to the 2015 conference.”

Apart from the exhibition and con-ference, the event offered useful edu-cational opportunities including two three-day open tech forums providing free access to exhibitor-led seminars and workshops, plus in-depth semi-nars about a variety of battery topics and applications from Michigan Tech Mobile Lab.

An international business expan-

From strength to strength

The Battery Show and Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo,

Novi, Michigan, USA, September 16-18, 2014

Advanced batteries — which now includes cutting edge lead products — underpins America’s fastest growing trade show.

EVENT REVIEW: THE BATTERY SHOW


sion service was also launched with Germany Trade & Invest, facilitating expansion of US companies into the German market. Elsewhere, EcoCAR3 hosted its kick-off workshop with 150 students participating in an automo-tive university challenge for next gen-eration engineers.

Saft Batteries is just one of the com-panies returning in 2015. Peter Gunia, sales manager for its vehicle business unit said: “I was pleasantly surprised with the constant traffi c and band-width from both the domestic and international customers at our booth. I found this an excellent platform for networking, evaluating options and gaining a sound insight for future de-velopment. And…yes we are commit-ted with a larger booth and additional staff next year!”

The show’s continued success should be seen as a reliable barometer of a thriving energy storage and EV busi-ness, and an indication of the impor-tance the business places on continued expansion and future development.

However, it is also plain that this in-dustry’s very own event provides it with cohesion and opportunities that could not be found or achieved elsewhere.

The organizers said they welcomed the continued year-on-year growth, with a record number of on-site booth sign-ups and introduction of new co-locate Critical Power Expo for 2015, dedicated to backup power systems for critical applications.

The Battery Show and Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo return to Novi, Michigan, with new co-located show Critical Power Expo on September 15-17, 2015.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS


EV-VÉ 2014Vancouver, CanadaOctober 28-30

Since 2009, Electric Mobility Canada has organized an annual conference and trade show — the premier event in Canada on electric vehicles. Recent conferences have been attended by more than 60 speakers and 450 del-egates from Canada, the US and over-seas along with a large trade show of industry exhibitors.

Our annual EV-VÉ conferences rep-resent the best opportunities for net-working with and engaging EV stake-holders. Key leaders from automobile industries, federal and provincial gov-ernments, fl eet organizations and aca-demia are assembled there to make EVs a sustainable solution for transporta-tion in Canada.

EV-VÉ2014 promises to be an out-standing event designed to advance the electrifi cation of all modes of transpor-tation in Canada, particularly in urban centres.

We are delighted that BC Hydro and the City of Vancouver are hosting this event. British Columbia and the City of Vancouver have much to show in terms of electrifi ed and sustainable transpor-tation. We are also pleased with the wide support from key organizations

with their assistance in pulling this con-ference together.

The theme for the conference is Elec-triCITIES — Move Electric and will fo-cus on how electric transport contrib-utes to the creation of liveable cities.

EV2014VÉ will be of particular in-terest to those supplying, operating or planning to market or operate battery, plug-in hybrid, hybrid or fuel cell elec-tric vehicles in Canada. It is a three-day event with plenary sessions, techni-cal sessions as well as special sessions aimed at academics, new technology developers and vehicle manufacturers.

The exhibition hall will host numer-ous EV companies, utilities, component and technology developers, govern-ment agencies, infrastructure compa-nies and more. You will be exposed to some of the latest battery, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell electric vehicles.

EMC is always seeking to bring new electric-transport related ideas, tech-nologies and business models to our delegates. As a result, our 2014 confer-ence will look at autonomous electric technologies as well as electric car shar-ing models.

ContactDebby HarrisTel: +1 [email protected]

IATA 4th Lithium Battery WorkshopGuangzhou, ChinaNovember 4-5

This workshop will review the changes to the air transport regulations that be-come effective on January 1 as well as the requirements for testing of lithium cells and batteries contained in Amend-ment 1 to the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria.

To provide a practical explanation on how to comply with the regulations applicable to shipping lithium batteries by air, as well as the application of the test requirements set out in Subsection 38.3 of the UN manual of tests and cri-teria.

It will promote the best practices for regulatory compliance and safety to help reduce the incidence of delayed shipments and avoid potential penal-ties or fi nes resulting from regulatory breaches.

The seminar provides an excellent opportunity to engage and share expe-riences on:• The intent and application of the

UN manual of tests and Criteria• The application of the IATA dan-

gerous goods regulations• Packing instructions for lithium

batteries that will take effect from January 2015

• Provisions that currently apply• Application of the regulations ap-

plicable to the testing, packaging and shipping of lithium batteries by air

• And a review of the current provi-sions for lithium batteries together with the changes effective in the 2014 dangerous goods regulations

We are expecting over 200 delegates representing: regulatory authorities and airlines; lithium battery and equip-ment manufacturers and distributors; operations managers from airlines; freight forwarders and shippers (manu-facturers and distributors); and ground handling agents.

Contacthttp://www.iata.org/events/Pages/lbw.aspx

NY-BEST and JCESR Energy Storage Technical Confer-enceBuffalo, USANovember 5

Batteries, fuel cells and energy storage technologies are continuing to experi-ence new and exciting breakthroughs in chemistries, longevity and in a grow-ing number of applications.

This one-day conference will focus on the current developments in battery and energy storage technology taking place at premier research and academic institutions as well as within leading companies.

October 29-30 Copenhagen, Denmark Lithium Balance

November 3-4 San Sebastian, Spain IK4-Cidetec

November 11 Lithium 2014 Battery Power,

Washington DC Knowledge Foundation

January 22-23 Genk, Belgium Trineuron & EnergyVille

April 9-10 London, England HEL

April 30-May 1 Wezep, Netherlands Dr Ten

June 22-23 Vimercate, Italy Genport

July 1-2 Munich, Germany Ice Seminars

August 27 Oslo, Norway Hans H Schive

September 21-22 College Station, Texas, USA Arbin

SHMUEL DE-LEON ENERGY STORAGE SEMINARS, 2014, 2015

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


The goal of the conference is to bring together leaders from industry, government and academia to discuss and share their fi ndings in this rapidly evolving fi eld.

ContactPhone: +1 518 694 8474 [email protected]

Energy4Power LiveLondon, UKNovember 5

Energy4PowerLive will feature exhibi-tors from a number of fi elds, and one of the four tracks of this one day con-ference will be specifi cally looking at standby power, energy storage, batter-ies and how these are integrated into the larger energy industry. Exhibitors include those involved in:• Generating sets (manufacturers of

complete diesel, gas or gas turbine engine driven power generating sys-tems in the range of 2kW to 5MW)

• Acoustic treatment• AC generators (manufacturers of

rotation AC generators in the range 0.5kVA to 30MVA)

• Biomass• Biogas• CHP/cogeneration• Control and monitoring equipment

(manufacturers of electrical control and switchgear panels, measuring instruments and digital controls).

• Diesel engines• Engine speed governors• Engines (manufacturers of diesel

and gas engines for power genera-tion in the range 3kW to 6MW).

• Environmental solutions (manufac-turers of noise attenuation equip-

ment, exhaust gas after treatment systems and vibration isolation units)

• Fuel systems• Gas/steam turbines• Governing (manufacturers of en-

gine speed governors and controls for load management)

• Heat exchangers• Load banks• Noise, acoustic equipment• Radiators (manufacturers of engine

cooling system radiators and heat exchangers).

• Services (suppliers of hire equip-ment, repair, installation, main-tenance and freight forwarding services and technical consultancy)

• Starting (manufacturers of electric, air and hydraulic engine starting equipment)

• Switchboards• Test equipment (manufacturers of

static and mobile electrical resistive load banks).

• Turnkey solutions• UPS rotary• UPS static

ContactGlobal Media Publishing Global House, 13 Market Square, Horsham, RH12 1EU, United KingdomTel: +44 1 403 220 750 • Fax: +44 1 403 220 751

Lithium Battery Power ConferenceWashington DC, USANovember 11

The Lithium Battery Power Confer-ence, now in its 10th year, will include technical case studies and presentations

on next generation lithium-ion and be-yond lithium-ion advanced materials science, technologies and research from academic and government labs, lead-ing manufacturing, and start-up com-panies. In addition to research papers, this conference will also address the need to better connect research science and manufacturing to create higher performing, lower cost batteries. There will be a series of strategy talks on this bridging theme along with a panel dis-cussion.

Topics include:• New ideas for battery design, bat-

tery trends and chemistries• New lithium chemistries for better

electrodes and higher LIB perfor-mance

• Beyond lithium-ion research includ-ing lithium-air/lithium-oxygen, lithium-sulphur, metal-air

• From novel materials and com-ponents to systems design and integration

• Novel electrode and electrolyte materials and technologies, solid electrolytes

• Role of nanotechnology in improv-ing power and energy density

• State-of-the art commercial lithium-based batteries

• Challenges of manufacturing lithium-ion, scale-up, performance in real devices, formulation

• Issues of miniaturization for certain applications

• Thin-fi lm lithium-based batteries• Silicon-based lithium battery an-

odes• Solvent-free lithium electrode

manufacturing• Trending from EV to stationary

applications• Supply chain challenges for raw

materials for new battery chemis-tries

• Supercapacitors

ContactEdel O’ReganVice President, Conference ProductionKnowledge Foundation Tel: +1 781 972 5423

Defense Energy Summit & Innovation ShowcaseAustin, Texas, USANovember 11-13

Join the stakeholders and working groups building the foundation for a new Defense Energy Center of Excel-lence. The summit’s focus will center on this proposed initiative and how to accelerate clean energy and infrastruc-ture solutions for the DoD.

ContactSarah WenningTel: +1 512 [email protected]

London will host Energy4Power Live

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


3rd Workshop on Lithium Sulphur BatteriesFraunhofer IWS, Dresden, GermanyNovember 12-13

Lithium-sulphur batteries are the most promising choice for future energy storage systems. Novel materials such as nanostructured carbon/sulfur com-posite cathodes, solid electrolytes and alloy-based anodes are expected to signifi cantly enhance the cell’s perfor-mance.

Following the success of our previous lithium-sulphur battery workshops in 2012 and 2013, this year’s symposium will again bring together an interna-tional audience of scientists and indus-trial customers.

Renowned experts will present the latest results, new materials, processes and applications in the fi eld of lithium-sulfur batteries.

ContactFraunhofer-Institut für Werkstoff- und Strahltechnik Winterbergstr 2801277 Dresden, Germany

Tel: +49 351 83391-0Fax: +49 351 [email protected]

5th Annual Knowledge Foundation, Battery Safety 2014 Washington DC, USANovember 13-14

Innovations that increase energy stor-age for lithium-ion batteries enhance their reliability and degradation man-agement. But higher-energy densities can also compromise lithium battery safety and thus require further research.

The Fifth Annual Battery Safety con-ference addresses key safety challenges of lithium batteries and technolo-gies for improvement. The conference gathers electrical engineers, cell manu-facturers and safety offi cials to share cell-level research, systems-level safety analysis, research applications and cost reduction strategies with examples

from industry, academia, government and the military.

ContactTel: +1 617 232-7400 Fax: +1 617 [email protected],

NASA Aerospace Battery WorkshopHuntsville, Alabama, USANovember 18

The NASA Aerospace Battery Work-shop is an annual event hosted by the Marshall Space Flight Center and is sponsored by the NASA Aerospace Flight Battery Systems Program.

The workshop is typically attended by scientists and engineers from vari-ous agencies in the US government, aerospace contractors, and battery manufacturers, as well as international participation in a like kind from coun-tries around the world.

IdTechEx is providing a range of co-located conferences in Santa Clara in November, of which two are par-ticularly cutting edge in relation to energy storage — Graphene Live! and Energy Harvesting USA. There are also colocated meetings dealing with supercapacitors and wearable technology (mentioned overleaf)

Graphene Live! is an international conference and tradeshow covering the applications and latest technol-ogy developments of graphene.

Our audience will develop a com-prehensive yet detailed understanding of the state of technology and market for each graphene application area. The conference will cover all promis-ing applications of graphene, includ-ing graphene composites, supercapac-itors and batteries, functional inks, logic and memory, touch screens, sen-sors and bio-electronics and beyond.

Uniquely, you will hear the full story per market segment. Potential end-users and investors will initially outline the opportunities, require-ments, scaling concerns, price points, etc. Academics/experts will then

discuss the latest progress and chal-lenges facing graphene in each appli-cation area.

Companies targeting each gra-phene application area will then present their technology, target mar-kets, business strategy, and progress. Here, we will also include companies developing a suitable manufacturing technique for that application. This will include players commercializing chemical vapour deposition, oxidi-sation-reduction, liquid-phase exfo-liation, plasma, etc. Finally, you will hear views from players from the incumbent or rival technology area where appropriate.

The event brings together users, material providers, equipment mak-ers, policymakers, academics and in-vestors from more than 30 countries. It covers more than 30 speakers over the two days.

ContactChris ClareEvent director+44 1223 [email protected]

Santa Clara, California, USA • November 19-20

GRAPHENE LIVE! — APPLICATION, TECHNOLOGY, OPPORTUNITIES

ENERGY HARVESTING & STORAGE USA, COMMERCIALIZATION OPPORTUNITY

SAVE THE DATE

WWW.THEBATTERYSHOW.COM [email protected]

SEPTEMBER 15 – 17, 2015

THE EXPO FOR ADVANCED BATTERIES RETURNS TO NOVI, MI, USA IN 2015

2015 EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITIES

NOW AVAILABLECONTACT US TODAY TO SECURE YOUR PRIME EXHIBITION BOOTH LOCATION

FOLLOW US @THEBATTERYSHOW JOIN THE GROUPS ON LINKEDIN

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NOW

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


Subjects covered generally include re-search and development work on state-of-the-art aerospace battery technolo-gies, fl ight and ground test data

Contacthttps://batteryworkshop.msfc.nasa.gov/about.cfm

Supercapacitors USASanta Clara, CaliforniaNovember 19-20

Supercapacitors USA 2014 is a leading conference in North America on the subject for this rapidly growing multi-billion dollar market This international conference and tradeshow focuses on the future applications, market forecasts and opportunities as well as giving the latest technology trends, providing a global platform where users, investors, suppliers, developers, system integrators and government representatives come together. There are no commercials!

Topics include: How supercapaci-tors wholly or partly replace batteries - what next? How supercapacitors re-place electrolytic capacitors Road map of how supercapacitors, pseudocapaci-tors, supercabatteries and other vari-ants are improving and what markets this will open up New forms - struc-tural, smart skin, fl exible, transparent, foldable, paper 10 year forecasts for supercapacitors and their variants - op-erating parameters, costs, sales Today’s supercapacitors and their variants - comparative data, sales successes and applicational challenges The future of hybrid and pure electric EVs using supercapacitors by land, water or air Applications for supercapacitors (cold

start, regenerative braking, etc.) Super-capacitors in military and aerospace applications Static applications - grid, welding and other electrical engineer-ing applications The future role of en-ergy storage in renewable energy/ener-gy harvesting technologies: challenges and solutions Supercapacitor applica-tions in consumer electronics includ-ing mobile phones Technical challenges and improvements needed for superca-batteries to fully realize their potential Printing

technology and supercapacitors, in-cluding control circuits and their in-tegration Materials in energy storage: Graphene, Carbon Nanotubes, ionic liquids, non-fl ammable and non-toxic electrolytes, increased temperature range

ContactCorinne Jennings Event Director Tel: +44 1223 812300 E-mail: [email protected]

Energy Harvesting & Storage USASanta Clara, California, USANovember 19-20

This sixth annual IDTechEx event pro-vides insight into energy harvesting technologies, case studies and markets, ranging from consumer electronics and sensors all the way to vehicles, building and industrial automation.

Following our successful co-location in 2013, Energy Harvesting & Stor-age USA will again be co-located with Printed Electronics USA. Co-location with Printed Electronics USA is fantas-tic news for you and Energy Harvest-ing & Storage USA. It means an op-portunity to connect with a whole new user-base in printed electronics devices, and will bring new potential adopters, end-users, and system integrators to your booth.

Attendees to this event will learn: Who needs energy harvesting, the ROI and sectors close to adoption. End user and integrators from a diverse

NASA technician installing Hubble’s new fl ight batteries

batteries to fully realize their potential Printing

g

Little did Brian Conway (front row second from the right) think his supercapacitor would still be being discussed in Santa Clara

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


range of markets present their needs and experiences. All the technology op-tions — from energy harvester choices, energy storage options, through to the latest in low power electronics and wire-less sensors and related technologies such as thin fi lm harvesters and super-capacitors.

More than 400 people attend this event to aid their critical business and technol-ogy development strategy decisions in this emerging, high growth topic.

Application-focused sessions cover the opportunity of energy harvesting in the built environment, showing how it is enabling smart — and more energy effi cient — buildings and smart cities, merging with the Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M evolution.

ContactCorinne Jennings Tel: +44 1223 812 300 [email protected]

55th Battery Symposium in JapanKyoto, JapanNovember 19-21

This is organized by the Committee of Battery Technology, the Electrochemi-cal Society of Japan (ECSJ). The main subjects under consideration are:• Reactions and materials of batteries

and fuel cells• Innovative batteries• Rechargeable batteries for automo-

tive application/large-scaled and low-cost rechargeable batteries

• Durability improvement and cost reduction of fuel cells

• International session in the 18th international symposium on batter-ies, fuel cells and capacitors

ContactTel/fax: +81 75 753 [email protected]@or.knt.co.jp

Third Annual Energy StorageTech SummitBeijing, ChinaNovember 20-21

China is facing the challenge of chang-ing the mix of energy sources, to in-crease the usage of low carbon energy sources and address the challenges of growing and fl uctuating electricity de-mand, which become key drivers for national policy on the development and deployment of energy storage technolo-gies, with a particular focus on areas of transportation and grid applications.

Although hampered by policy and economic impediments, such as ES technology immaturity, unclear busi-ness and profi t models, China is already rising as the most attractive energy storage market where we are witness-

ing technology providers and investors’ penetration into this promising market.

Till the end of 2013, there are 76 energy storage demonstration projects that are planned, under construction or in operation in China, with a focus on application of distributed energy, mi-cro-grid, wind or solar plant and new energy vehicle etc.

The 3rd Annual EnergyStorage Tech China Summit is designed to gather 250 professionals representing policy makers, experts, decision makers and manufacturers in the renewable energy and energy storage industry in China together for networking and capitaliz-ing on energy storage business oppor-tunities in China.

What makes the EnergyStorage Tech China Summit 2014 a must-attend?• Hear from regulator’s voice on

legislative Initiatives and industry development

• Updates on pilot project demon-stration to promote energy storage industry development in China

• Share latest battery and related technology R&D development

• Explore new emerging application market for energy storage and op-portunities behind

• Discuss the best business and profi t model for energy storage station in China

• EV infrastructure development and energy storage facility requirement

• Understand China’s distributed energy development plan and the implication for energy storage industry

• Listen to technology pioneers’ presentation on PCS and BMS technology development

• Networking with industry peers for material technology innovation for future battery development

ContactTel: +86 21 5058 [email protected]

European Electric Vehicle CongressBrusselsDecember 2-5

The European Electric Vehicle Con-gress strengthens its position as global platform to foster exchange of views between the R&D, the in-dustry, the authorities, the end-users and the NGO’s actors, so to develop synergies in the field of eMobility.

As motivations and constraints are different for each of them, EEVC-2014 has the objective to help define the most promising solutions to be selected, taking into account the re-search and development progresses, as well as the environmental and economical constraints.

Feedback from past and current experiences will also be discussed and analyzed so that best practices and best ways for a daily introduc-tion of eMobility could be identified.

The venue is again in Brussels, so to ensure optimal connection with the representatives of the European Institutions that are considering Bat-tery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles to play an important role to lower atmospheric pollution and to reduce oil dependency.

Policy aspects, new mobility con-cepts, noise and health factors will also be issues to be discussed.

The day prior the Congress, a EU Project day will be organized to pro-vide the audience with a complete overview of the different programs supported by the European Authori-ties (FP7, Horizon 2020, IEE, EURO-STAR, INTEREG) & related funded projects dealing with eMobility, so to identify possible actions, overlaps, synergies and/or gaps.

ContactTel: +32 477 364 816 E-mail:[email protected]

European Electric Vehicle Congress Brussels, December 2-5

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


Eilat-Eilot Green Energy 6th International Conference & ExhibitionEilat, IsraelDecember 7-9

We are excited to announce the 6th an-nual Eilat Eilot Green Energy Confer-ence, which will be held December 7-9, 2014 at the Dan and Herods hotels in Eilat.

This year the conference will be part of the Energy Week in Israel, joining other infl uential events, including the Alternative Fuels conference in Tel Aviv. The week’s activities will culmi-nate in the Eilat conference.

Our leading global event will outline the strategy for moving forward the RE-volution as well as dealing with the opportunities and challenges facing the global Cleantech industry.

We will also highlight the recent achievements by the global clean en-ergy hub of Eilat Eilot including new energy start-ups and meeting the goal of RE independence based on over 100 MW of solar energy.

There will be a special conference session dedicated to discussing the project details and bidding process for the 50MW Timna Solar Park tender, set to be published on October 19. This ten-der is open to qualifi ed bidders world-wide and will be managed by the Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Initiative.

We are happy to announce that this year the Renewable Energy Investment Conference will be held in Aqaba, Jor-dan on the morning of December 7. You are invited to participate in this exciting event before joining the rest of the conference in Eilat on the same afternoon.Conference topics include:• Storage – the next stage in mass

penetration of RE• Micro and mini grid – the distrib-

uted revolution • Energy effi ciency, renewable energy,

water-energy nexus Regional Development (the Eilat-

Eilot RE Model as a Pilot)• Is smart grid management turning

into reality?• Natural gas – a threat or a bridge

technology?

• New models for advancing clean energy innovation

• Announcing the new Eilat Eilot off grid demo site for developing economies

Contact6th Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Conference SecretariatTel. +972-3-6384444Fax: +972-3-6384455Email: [email protected]

Power Gen InternationalOrlando, Florida, USADecember 9-11

Throughout the years, Power Gen In-ternational has covered it all, provid-ing a world stage for the innovations, ideas and solutions that have formed our industry for more than two de-cades. Since our inception in 1988 in Orlando, Power Gen International has travelled coast-to-coast and evolved into the largest, most respected power generation event in the world.

With a record-setting expected at-tendance of more than 22,000 attend-ees, 90 countries and 1,400 exhibitors, there’s simply no other place to be for education, networking and new busi-ness development.

Highlights of the event are:• 22,000 power professionals from

more than 90 countries• More than 200 of the industry’s

top speakers• More than 50 educational confer-

ence sessions• Multiple competitive power college

courses• More than 1,400 exhibiting com-

panies• Networking events• Technical tours

Highlights of last year’s event were:• 96% of attendees would recom-

mend this event to a colleague• 97% of attendees said the quality

of the conference met or exceeded their expectations

• 99% of attendees said the quality of the exhibition met or exceeded their expectations

• 95.2% of attendees said they are likely to attend the event next year

• 96% of exhibitors said they are likely to attend the event next year

• 84% of exhibitors said the contacts made at the event met or exceeded their expectations

ContactGeneral Tel: +1-918-831-9160

ExhibitionLinda FranssonTel: +1 918 770 [email protected]

Energy Storage India 2014New DelhiDecember 4,5

The structural realignment of the energy infrastructure in India is the focus of the Second Energy Storage India Conference & Expo. While the main interest will be on the es-tablishment of technologically and economically viable energy storage and microgrid technologies, the con-ference and expo will systematically present a selection of practical ap-plications and pioneering solutions while illustrating the necessary po-litical conditions.

The day before the start of the expo, interested visitors and exhibi-tors can take part in preparatory workshops of the conference.

The conference will be hosted at the Kempinski Ambience Hotel.

After China, India is the most pop-ulated nation in the world, with a to-tal population of almost 1.3 billion. Providing access to reliable power and power quality for all is a major challenge.

In the Smart Grid Vision and Roadmap, India’s ministry of power has set a goal of electrifi cation of all

households with minimum 8 hour of power availability. This will require providing electricity to over 400 mil-lion people currently not connected to the grid.

While developments are still in their infancy, the market has tremen-dous potential.

Last year, India assumed a pio-neering role in the deployment of advanced energy storage systems, particularly for decentralized appli-cations with over $300 million spent on lithium ion battery systems for telecom towers.

Apart from the 600,000 telecom towers, India is also planning to in-stall 26 million solar powered water pumps in coming decade.

Over the next two years, the gov-ernment will install the fi rst pilot grid scale energy storage plants, and plans for a major implementation of this technology are to be completed by 2022

ContactSachin PatilMesse Düsseldorf India PvtE-mail: [email protected]: +91 11 2690 1655Mob: +91-9717179615

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


EV China: the 7th China International Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology ExhibitionShanghai, ChinaDecember 18-21

As one of the most important profes-sional exhibition in Asia, EV China New Energy Auto Show aims to pro-vide the newest information and in-tegrated solutions for customers. EV China creates a professional trade platform under the brand infl uence of nevsources.cn and New Energy Vehicle magazine for companies at home and abroad to show electrical vehicle and charging equipment in the Chinese market. At the same time, it provides a fantastic opportunity for companies to meet their customers and buyers when showing their products which is good platform for trade cooperation.

EV China combines a professional exhibition and trade exhibition to-gether.

Contactwww.evchina.cc/en/

Battery Forum Germany 2015Berlin, GermanyJanuary 21-23

The central element for electric mobil-ity and for the storage of renewable energies are powerful, affordable, and secure energy storage and the expertise and know-how to produce this.

In this case, the cross-sectoral or in-terdisciplinary dialogue between re-search and industry is of special impor-tance in the value chain. The aim of the battery forum Germany is to offer the dialogue between companies, research and policy a platform.

High-level representatives from in-dustry and academia illuminate the topic of batteries from different per-spectives and to provide an overview on the status and current research topics.

Main topics of Battery Forum Ger-many 2015 are:• Innovative lithium-ion batteries• Visionary material systems (All-

solid-state and post-lithium-ion systems)

• Production and process technology• Applications• Modelling and simulation

ContactOrganizersMichael Krausa Tel: + 49 3020 1431 32 [email protected]

Congress organizationCarsten Scheele, director event management T: +49 241 88 97 0-18 [email protected]

The 2015 European Advanced Automotive & Stationary Battery ConferenceMainz, GermanyJanuary 26-29, 2015

Join us at the leading European forum where automakers and energy-storage system developers discuss the status and prospects of the latest advanced batteries to meet the needs of the Euro-pean market. AABC Europe 2015 will offer two technology focused symposia and two application focused symposia, including AAB’s fi rst exploration of the emerging market for stationary batter-ies in utility applications

Contact:[email protected]: +1 530 692 0140

SAE 2015 Hybrid & Electric Ve-hicle Technologies Symposium Los Angeles, USAFebruary 10-12

SAE 2015 Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Technologies Symposium addresses critical information on both the techni-cal developments in electronic vehicle technologies as well as the business decisions around technology develop-ment and implementation.

Additionally, it allows for attendees to meet with those industry experts and technology specialists from the entire supply chain of EV, HEV and EREV to engage in dialogue about the topics of greatest interest.

ContactSAE International switchboardTel: +1 724 776 4841

4th Graphite & Graphene ConferenceBerlin, GermanyDecember 9-10

Industrial Minerals Events is host-ing its Graphite & Graphene Con-ference in Berlin in December 2014. Now in its fourth year, the event has established itself as the fl agship event dedicated to the graphite and graphene industry.

Rising demand for the mineral due to advancements in end-user appli-cations, such as lithium ion batter-ies, has highlighted potential supply issues. Who will fi ll the void left by the probable decrease in Chinese production for the export market?

The hub city of Berlin is an excel-lent location for the event, which provides a forum for industry leaders from throughout the supply chain to discuss important challenges and op-portunities that the market is facing.

The two-day conference covers both the natural and synthetic graph-ite markets, as well as valuable insight

into graphene research and develop-ment. An expert panel of speakers and a great mix of delegates from every segment of the supply chain provide outstanding educational and networking opportunities, meaning this event is not to be missed.

Topics to be discussed:• Consolidation in China and its

implications for natural graphite supply

• Developments in end-user ap-plications and the associated change in demand

• Pricing insight amid dynamic market conditions

• The future of the amorphous market

• Challenges and opportunities for junior miners to acquire funding

• Graphene R&D advancements – are we any closer to fi nding a ‘killer application’?

ContactTel: UK +44 20 7779 7222 Tel: US +1 212 224 [email protected]

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


7th International Battery Expo & Recycling Conference, IBRX IndiaGoa, IndiaMarch 3-5

Inspired by the success of International Battery Fair — IBF India 2008, IBRX India 2009, IBRX India 2010, IBRX India 2011, IBRX India 2012, IBRX India 2013, Battery and Recycling Foundation International, New Delhi, these new meetings will feature:• an exhibition by battery manu-

facturers, equipment for battery manufacturing, equipment for bat-tery recycling.

• a one day conference that will in particular address, recent techno-logical advances in battery manu-facturing as well as waste manage-ment and environmentally sound technologies for recycling used batteries.

We expect leading battery manufac-turers to showcase their products and take advantage of India as base for business promotions — selling, buying, technology cooperation and JV oppor-tunities.

Today the talk is about Asia which continues to be a major user of batter-ies. With this arises the need for a de-fi ned focus towards waste management of used batteries. We expect exhibitor and delegate participation from battery manufacturers, importer and exporters of batteries, researchers, lead recyclers, battery breakers, furnace, pollution control equipment manufacturers.

Contact:Tel/fax: +91 11 4240 3200info@bfi [email protected]: Ajoy Raychaudhuri +91 98 1102 1630

The 32nd International Battery Seminar & ExhibitionFort Lauderdale, Florida, USAMarch 9-12

In its 32nd year, this seminar is the leader in providing key industry speak-ers to discuss the state of the art of worldwide energy storage technology developments for portable, automotive

The National Alliance for Advanced Technology Batteries (NAATBatt) Meeting & Conference is the pre-mier business development event in North America for professionals working in the electrochemical en-ergy storage supply chain

The meeting & conference will start on February 16 with a special event: the First Annual Advanced Battery Golf & Tennis Tournament. NAATBatt is pleased to offer those working in advanced electrochemi-cal energy storage with the opportu-nity to participate in what we expect will become a regular social event in our industry. No special skill is re-quired!

And don’t miss the Tournament Awards Dinner that night at the award winning Litchfi eld’s restau-rant.

The 2015 Annual Meeting & Con-ference will start, on February 17. The two-and-a-half day program is designed to help delegates iden-tify new revenue opportunities in the business of electrochemical energy storage technology and make new connections in the industry.

This year’s meeting will see the re-turn of the highly acclaimed M&A panel, discussing merger and acquisi-tion activity in the advanced battery and energy materials industries over the past year.

Delegates will hear about near-term developments in materials that will be making lithium-ion batter-ies more capable and will open new market opportunities for other types

of batteries and ultracapacitors. Delegates will hear about new ap-

plications enabled by emerging thin-fi lm batteries that will create new business for battery and advanced materials makers and learn about new interests in the Department of Energy and Department of Defense that could drive commercial oppor-tunity in the years ahead.

The NAATBatt Annual Meeting & Conference also includes the En-ergy Storage Innovation Summit. At the summit, 20 emerging compa-nies jury-selected by a committee of NAATBatt member fi rms make fl ash presentations to the meeting about new, market-ready technologies that are available to industry for immedi-ate licence or acquisition. The sum-mit is where early stage technology meets the market. Don’t miss this special, once-a-year event.

As in past years, the annual meet-ing and conference includes a special spouses program. NAATBatt is all about building a community and in-cluding spouses and signifi cant oth-ers in our activities serves to build that bond.

The NAATBatt Annual Meeting & Conference is the best opportunity you will have this year to understand where the business of electrochemi-cal energy storage is going and where the best commercial opportunities in the industry will be.

ContactRayna Handelman Tel: +1 312 588 0477

Wigwam Resort, Phoenix, Arizona, USA • February 16-19

National Alliance for Advanced Technology Batteries, 2015 Annual Meeting & Conference

Less a wigwam more a fascinating resort

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


To discover the advantages of being a presenter, see the Call for Paperspage at www.battcon.com or contact [email protected].

REGISTER ONLINE NOW! BATTCON ALWAYS SELLS OUT. REGISTER EARLY!

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The 19th International Lead Conference (Pb2015)

April 22-24, Lisbon, Portugal The event is organized by the International Lead Association and is the only global conference on lead that is run by the industry, for the industry.

The event will be held back-to-back with the International Lead and Zinc Study Group’s Spring Meetings, providing a unique opportunity to interact with governments from many of the world’s major lead producing countries.

Building on the success of Pb2013, which attracted almost 150 delegates, next year’s event will provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of issues affecting the lead industry worldwide, including:

• Analyzing recent trends in the lead market and prospects for the future• Reviewing regulatory issues affecting the life cycle of lead• Lead’s role in achieving a sustainable society• Using communications to create a more favourable environment in which

the lead industry can prosper.

ILA is also holding a Lead Occupational Exposure Management Workshop on April 22 and is currently exploring opportunities for industry plant tours.

Save the date to avoid missing out on this opportunity to: • Network with business colleagues and government representatives from

around the world• Listen to presentations from expert speakers and industry insiders• Find out more about industry trends, regulatory challenges and the posi-

tive role lead plays in society• Support ILA in its work to create a sustainable global lead industry.

Contact Maura McDermott Email: [email protected]

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


and stationary power applications. This meeting provides not only broad

perspectives, but also informed insights into signifi cant advances in materials, product development and application for all battery systems and enabling technologies. In addition, this meeting is renowned for offering broad net-working and exhibiting opportunities to the international battery community.

As the longest running battery indus-try event in the world, this meeting has always been the preferred venue to an-nounce signifi cant new developments and showcase the most advanced bat-tery technology.Areas of focus include:• In-depth worldwide analysis of bat-

tery markets and technologies • Government battery program

developments

• Battery safety enhancement and regulatory status

• Consumer and large format batter-ies

• Thermal and power management systems for consumer and electric, plug-in and hybrid vehicles

• Battery development for the grid • Advances in new and improved

materials for anode, cathode, elec-trolyte, separators.

• Advances in battery packs, charg-ing and testing

• Battery recycling for regulatory and resource recovery purposes

• Status and future outlook for other energy storage technologies

ContactTel: +1 561 367 0193Tel: [email protected]

Battery ConferenceAachen, GermanyApril 27-29

The 7th Advanced Battery Power Conference with the proceeding Bat-teryday NRW which takes place in the Eurogress in Aachen will be three days packed full of insights into battery competence.

Advanced Battery Power has devel-oped into one of the leading events in the battery technology sector. Its signif-icance to the trade extends well beyond just the use of batteries in automobiles, making advanced battery power a must for all engineers, researchers and developers involved in energy storage devices in general, new materials, grid integration or battery recycling.

Contactwww.battery-power.eu/en/registration.html

ICLB 2015: 13th International Conference on Lithium BatteriesMiami, USAMarch 9-10

The ICLB 2015: XIII International Conference on Lithium Batteries aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results about all aspects of Lithium Batteries. It also provides the premier interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary forum for re-searchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns, practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted in the fi eld of Lithium Batteries.

Contactwww.waset.org/conference/2015/03/miami/ICLB

24th International Specialized Fair on Independent Power SourcesMoscow, RussiaMarch 25-27

This conference has been organized by the International Association known as INTERBAT and the National As-sociation of current sources known as RUSBAT since 1992. This provides a unique opportunity

to those skilled in the fi eld of chemi-cal power sources to meet annually with the manufacturers, developers and consumers of power sources in Russia as well as manufacturers of pro-cess equipment, materials and compo-nents for production of power sources from different countries.

ContactTel/fax: +7 495 940 [email protected]

In 2015 the International Renewable Energy Storage Conference (IRES) will take place for the fi rst time in cooperation with Messe Düsseldorf and OTTI. Running in Düsseldorf for the fi rst time, IRES 2015 is being held as a concurrent event with EN-ERGY STORAGE EUROPE (Con-ference & Expo) and the 4th Con-ference Power-to-Gas Conference (OTTI). A related trade show will feature some 100 exhibitors.

Because of the enormous successes of past IRES conferences EURO-SOLAR and the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE) will continue the IRES series in 2015. The series of IRES conferences has emerged as the leading forum for the discussion of the pressing problems

with renewable energy storage by drawing together one of the largest gatherings of scientifi c and economic experts worldwide.

As of 2015 the participants can choose from even more extensive options.

The three conferences and the ex-hibition will take place March 9-11 in the professional surroundings of Messe Düsseldorf (Trade Fair Dus-seldorf), Germany. Combining their events, the organizers, thereby, will establish the most important energy storage meeting worldwide.

ContactTel: +49 228 362 373 Fax: +49 228 361 [email protected]

Dusseldorf, Germany • March 9-11

Energy Storage, Europe/9th International Renewable Energy Storage Conference (IRES 2015)

Messe Düsseldorf

Vibrant, cosmopolitan and intriguing, Bangkok is simply sensational;

we invite you to participate in what will be a wonderful occasion.

Share Your Knowledge!We are calling for papers from lead battery industry executives,

customers, marketers, researchers, sales teams, reseller networks,

suppliers, socio-economic analysts, Government agencies and energy

professionals.

Experience the Latest InnovationsPosition yourself amongst industry leaders at the largest lead battery

exhibition in Asia.

Join us for the Biggest and Best ABC Yet!Participate in a sparked-up show with an interactive and lively

Exhibition, a program that showcases presentations from experts

in battery technology, science and business and ramped-up social

events.

As both a forum and an expo, the Asian Battery Conference (ABC)

continue s to be the premier lead battery event in Asia. It will appeal

to everyone with a serious interest in the interaction between energy

usage, storage and the environment.

8 – 11 September 2015Centara Grand Bangkok Convention CentreBangkok, Thailand

We are delighted to announce that the 16th Asian

Battery Conference and Exhibition (16ABC) will be held

from 8 to 11 September 2015 in Bangkok, Thailand.

www.asianbatteryconference.come. [email protected]

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS


8th Energy Storage World ForumRome, ItalyApril 27-30

ContactSingapore + 65 6243 0050London: +44 20 8090 1613 USA: +1 978 263 9931

The Commercial Graphene ShowManchester, UKApril 16-17

The Commercial Graphene Show is set to cut through the hype and hot air and directly tackle the challenges as-sociated with applying graphene in the commercial environment. This meeting exists to bring those pioneering gra-phene production and commercial ap-plication together to share insight and exchange ideas that will shape the way that graphene impacts industry

The Commercial Graphene Show presents a unique opportunity to net-work and forge relationships with the largest gathering of industrial applica-tion developers.

It will introduce exciting new appli-cations of graphene that are revolu-tionary to many sectors.

The Commercial Graphene Show is the defi nitive meeting place for the en-tire graphene value chain. Taking you right the way from ground breaking research in the lab all the way to mass industrial adoption.

This meeting will bring graphene re-searchers improving production qual-ity and quantities, and put them at the same table as large multinational industrial powerhouses looking at in-dustry wide adoption.

Working with these large commercial application developers is no smooth process and only by working with all the stakeholders in this space can gra-phene suppliers truly realise the goal of commercial application.

Contactwww.terrapinn.com/conference/graphene-applications-world-europe/about.stm

BCI’s 127th Convention and Power Mart ExpoSavannah, Georgia, USA May 3-6

2015 Australian Energy Storage Conference and ExhibitionSydney, AustraliaJune 3-4

Changes in the clean energy industry and the growing importance of NSW to the market have prompted Exhibi-tions & Trade Fairs (ETF) to bring the

event to Sydney.The event will focus on the energy

storage industry at all levels – for utili-ties, energy businesses, building man-agement and the emerging electric ve-hicle markets.

Following on from the successful 2014 event in Melbourne, Australian Energy Storage Exhibition will con-tinue its to focus on the latest state-of-the-art energy storage technologies, but also expand to incorporate ‘Lighting & Building Automation’ and ‘Emergent Business Technologies’ zones to offer trade visitors the most comprehensive energy solutions for their businesses.

We are pleased to confi rm our ongo-ing association with the California En-ergy Storage Alliance (CESA), which is a group committed to advancing the role of energy storage through policy, educa-tion, and research. Although Australia shares many traits with California, we are being left behind by technology, so there are many things we can learn from California’s experiences and the prog-ress and knowledge of the CESA.

The two day conference will feature over 40 speakers who will discuss the most recent trends and developments in energy storage. This is the only event of its kind in Australia and we invite everyone involved in the energy storage and allied industries to attend.

Contactwww.australianenergystorage.com.au/conference/

Battcon 2015: The International Stationary Battery ConferenceOrlando, Florida, USAMay 12-14

The goal of Battcon is to meet the spe-cifi c needs and interests of end-users. Presentations by users and manufactur-ers address everyday battery applica-tions, technical advances, and industry concerns.

Papers and panels address manufac-turing, maintenance, and testing issues and are of particular interest to data centre, power, telecom, and UPS indus-try personnel.• Experience industry-specifi c educa-

tion and networking.• Attend an optional battery seminar

to learn of the latest advancements.• Listen to presentations and panel

discussions given by the leading authorities in the fi eld.

• Visit the vendors you’ve been want-ing to see.

• Participate in breakout workshops specifi cally geared for industry seg-ments.

Battcon offers three preconference

seminars that focus on battery basics, advanced techniques, or a special topic. These optional Sunday seminars let you brush up on skills and discover new directions the industry is taking.

ContactTel: +1 954 623 6660Fax: +1 954 623 [email protected]

5th Israeli Power Sources ConferenceHerzelia, IsraelMay 21

The 5th Israeli conference for Power Sources, Batteries, Fuel Cells and EV will meet to discuss and provide a plat-form for technological innovations and business opportunities.

The conference will discuss the latest advances in the fi eld found in Israel and abroad and support the electrochemi-cal, e-Mobility and the smart grid in-dustry in Israel. All presentations will be in English.

The conference will be held once a year and is the leading Israeli Power Sources & EV conference, bringing together world wide participants from leading private and public companies,

Los Angeles, USA • May 11-14

Space Power Workshop

ContactTel: +1 310 336 6804 [email protected]

FORTHCOMING EVENTS


start-ups, investors, academics and businesses that are interested in the En-ergy fi eld.

Senior keynotes and experts will present the lectures.

An exhibition will run alongside the conference.

ContactTel: +972 77 500 1674Tel/Fax: +972 77 501 0792Cell: +972 52 860 [email protected]

10th International Lead Battery FairBeijing, ChinaMay 20-22

Thanks for the support from the exhib-itors & delegates from over 50+ coun-tries, and thanks for the participants of traders, buyers & visitors concerned worldwide, the previous nine events of the ‘International Lead Battery Fair’ ---- ILBF CHINA 2013, ILBF CHINA 2011, ILBF CHINA 2009, ILBF CHI-NA 2007, ILBF CHINA 2005, ILBF CHINA 2004, ILBF CHINA 2002, ILBF CHINA 2000 & ILBF CHINA 1998 have been held in Beijing China & have been the great success.

Up to now, after the previous nine events in the last years, the ILBF CHI-NA has been the largest trade fair in the lead battery industry, and became the regular grand gathering of the man-ufacturers, suppliers, traders, buyers & all people concerned with business of lead batteries worldwide: • For all buyers & traders of lead bat-

teries worldwide, the ILBF CHINA has been the best place to meet with all lead battery manufacturers in Asia for sourcing qualifi ed auto-motive, motorcycle, motive power & sealed VRLA batteries;

• For all lead battery manufacturers worldwide, the ILBF CHINA has been the best place to meet with all suppliers worldwide for purchasing advanced equipment, materials & components.

And in order to provide better ser-vices & more business opportunities to our exhibitors & partners, a series of worldwide business promotion will be provided to ILBF CHINA 2015 ex-hibitors at no extra cost. The business information of ILBF CHINA 2015 ex-hibitors will be sent to potential buyers worldwide and the ILBF CHINA 2015 will also be promoted worldwide.

The ILBF CHINA 2015 may be your company’s best opportunity in 2015 to increase your business and raise your profi t, throughout Asia, and world-wide!

ContactTel: +86 10 6232 6669Fax: +86 10 6234 [email protected]

Over the years, the conference con-tent and its drivers have changed over the years, from a very technical and scientifi c format to one that now also addresses the commercial and socio economic aspects of a growing, developing industry.

At the time of the fi rst ABC, back in 1988, the world lead tonnage con-sumed was 5.5 million tonnes with 65% entering the battery market, today we consume over 11 million tonnes with 85% being converted to batteries. The range and types of batteries we now produce have also changed during this period with VRLA a standard product and de-signs for stop–start vehicles becom-ing commonplace.

It’s a far cry from 2ABC when the market was dominated by the use of antimonial alloys and when many Asian producers were only starting to think about converting the nega-tive into a calcium alloy and produc-ing their fi rst ‘hybrid’ battery.

So it is with this history and back-ground that we have great pleasure in welcoming all delegates to the 16ABC in Bangkok, which aims to deliver an enhanced knowledge and a greater appreciation of our won-derful and growing industry.

What’s newThe EXPO of 16ABC will be sparked up with fresh show features and a

dynamic booth layout plan with a variety of different exhibition booths along with fl oor space only exhibi-tion options.

An interactive themed cafe in the centre of the EXPO. Sponsors and ex-hibitors will be able to conduct meet-ings and host clients in this space.

The cafe will also house our baris-ta’s making perfect coffees all day long and serving on demand snack items.

Take a break in our fun Side Show Alley area within the EXPO Hall. The area will include arcade style games. Start practising your Atari skills and your muscle man swings! — great prizes to be won…

16ABC will see the introduction of scheduled appointments. Buyers will be able to review exhibitors profi les on line and request appointments through the Exhibitor Online Diary prior to the event.

Stay tuned for heaps more pro-gram enhancements.

ContactGeneral/registrationLucy Cotee. [email protected]: +61 3 9870 2611

Sponsorship/exhibitionMark RichardsonCell: + 61 412 160 133e. [email protected]

Bangkok, Thailand • September 8-11

16th Asian Battery Conference (16ABC) and Exhibition

Centara Hotel

LIST OF ADVERTISERS

Our advertisers emjoy their elite status with us! Join them!Company Page number

Abertax 35

Accumalux 38

Accurate Products 80

Arbin Instruments 84

Asian Battery Conference 117

Batek Makina 53

BATTCON/Alber 115

Batterie Füllungs Systeme (BFS) 88

Bitrode IFC

BM Rosendahl 33, 104

CellCare 38

Cellusuede 53

CEMT 66

Dalton/Norris 38

Eagle Oxide 55

ECOBAT Technologies 41

Farmer Mold IBC

Generex 65

Glatfelter 57

Hadi 70, 71

Hammond 10, 11

Inbatec 76, 77

International Thermal Systems 60

JBI Corporation 95

Källström 95, 126

MAC Engineering OBC, 44

Maccor 3

Maxwell 47

Messe Düsseldorf 111

Oak Press 51

OMI Impianti 14, 15

Penox 59

Sorfi n Yoshimura 27

Sovema 90, 91

STTS 92

The Battery Show 108

Wirtz 6, 7, 125

Contact Karen Hampton: [email protected] or call +44 (0)7792 852337

PROFILE: ALLAN COOPER


Little did Allan Cooper know as he fl ew long haul to South Africa aged 22 that half a century later a suc-cession of long — and very long — fl ights would be part of his protracted working life. Or that the career he was about to embark on, was just a preparation for a yet more important second career.

The year was 1961. Allan, who had just graduated at Peterhouse College at Cambridge University with tripos in Natural Sciences and Metallurgy was off to play hockey — he was a University Blue — for a joint Ox-bridge team.

“After the sporting tour I returned to England with a bump,” says Coop-er. “I then had to fi nish the fi nal year of my so-called ‘sandwich course’

with Richard Thomas and Baldwins (RTB), a major steel producer.” In the UK one fast entry into management is to work for a company for one year, take one’s degree, and then do a fi nal year of work, hence the term sand-wich course.

Cooper went quite literally from the veldts of the Cape to the then-industrial heartland of England, fi rst to Scunthorpe before moving on to

the Midlands and then back to South Wales. He was then posted to the RTB Ebbw Vale plant as a tinplate metal-lurgist. After two years realising that little had changed in his work Cooper decided it was time to move on.

Cooper joined Associated Lead Manufacturers in November 1964 (part of the then Lead Industries Group — later to become the Cook-son Group). “I was hired by a Doug-

In 2008 Allan Cooper was awarded the International Lead Medal for his exceptional contributions to the lead industry in the fi elds of metallurgy, production, and battery development, particularly in electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The story isn’t over yet. Battery historian Kevin Desmond reports.

Taking the long view

“I was hired by a certain Douglas Laidler – the research director — as his personal assistant. His politics were way to the right of Genghis Khan and one of his claims to fame was that he had turned Margaret Thatcher down for a job”



las Laidler – the research director — as his personal assistant. His politics were way to the right of Genghis Khan and one of his claims to fame was that he had turned Margaret Thatcher down for a job,” Cooper says.

“On joining the company he greeted me by saying ‘Welcome to the lead in-dustry – pipe is fi nished — sheet lead is nearly gone and lead-acid batteries will probably be replaced by another chemistry’. Well he got the fi rst one right!”

After a brief time in London he moved to ALM’s factory in Chester. This was a secondary smelter but also produced various products from lead including sheet, die-castings and shot. Cooper spent the majority of his time there in the smelting and refi ning de-partment where his steelmaking expe-rience came in useful as he was able to introduce oxygen enrichment to speed up the smelting process.

He returned to London as personal assistant to the technical director just before the World Cup football fi nal in 1966 when for the fi rst (and only) time England was the winner. He re-calls that his fi rst priority in his move was to fi nd a shop that could install his fi rst colour TV in time for the fi nal — the day after moving in!

“At that time there appeared to be little in the way of ‘customer service’ – it was more a question of the phone being answered to fi nd someone ask-ing for some battery alloy and being

asked ‘How much antimony do you want in it? You can have between 3%-11%.’ Or ‘Oh you want some lead oxide — how much and what colour — you can have red, yellow or grey’.

Dispersion strengthened lead … and beyond“After a spike in the antimony price, there was a move to reduce the an-timony content in battery alloys — or remove it altogether — as this would have the effect of lowering water loss. I was asked to oversee some joint development work with St Joe Lead (now Doe Run) on disper-sion strengthened lead (DSL) which showed promise for a while.

“This was in the heady days of the lead industry when the then ILZRO director, Schrade Radke, had initiated the construction of a Lamborghini car with as much lead and zinc on it as possible — Mike Rose, then R&D manager of St Joe, politely declined to have the brake pipes extruded in DSL!

“This work was rapidly superseded as around that time St Joe had hired a certain David Prengaman to work on lead calcium alloys and after our fi rst meeting we’ve remained friends ever since. Work was also going on in developing low antimony alloys and ALM initiated a programme with TBS Engineering by which we would produce the alloy and they would cast it under different conditions so we could mutually assist customers in using these new alloys for the ‘low maintenance’ battery.”

It was in early 1970s that love blos-somed. Allan met his wife to be Irene while they were both working with Associated Lead, Irene was a sales ex-ecutive in its export company Alme-co. One thing led to another and they married in October 1975. Within a few years they had two daughters — Sophie and Debbie. Recently the two have become grandparents with the arrival of twins, Harvey and Lila.

Cooper later had a spell managing the lead smelter at Millwall in Lon-don. After this he moved north to

A major problem in demonstrating batteries by retro-fi tting into currently available vehicles is that these have been about three years in development and probably we take another two years to fi t and test the batteries so we are about fi ve years adrift in terms of vehicle development.

Left: Cooper was a Cambridge University Blue. Right: Early days after graduation working for steelmaking fi rm Richard Thomas and Baldwins



Newcastle as R&D Director when ALM relocated its head offi ce there in 1980.

“It was ironic,” says Cooper. “As a child, my father had pointed out the lead works to me from the Redheugh Bridge and now I had an offi ce in that very building.”

During his time there, Cooper was involved in many projects such as au-tomated battery breaking, polypro-pylene recovery and a lead/calcium battery strip production line.

He then moved into the parent group working on technical business development and helped set up a joint venture battery separator plant with the US’s Entek Corporation. This plant is still in operation but now back under the control of Entek.

The Cookson business had been very active in the takeover market — especially in the US and after the slump in 1987 — did not adequately retrench so he happily took an early retirement package after some 26 years with the company.

It was June 1991. Cooper little real-ized that the end of one career was but the signal for another to start — and one that arguably has been infl u-ential in shaping the direction of the entire lead acid battery industry as well as, potentially — and he would probably blush here — changing the way the world drives.

Maternity leaveThe call to arms came in the form of an unlikely request for assistance from what was then known as the Lead Development Association. “Could I help them out on a tempo-rary six month consultancy contract as one of the technical staff was off on six months’ maternity leave?” says Cooper.

“I started in September — without a contract — and stayed (the lady never came back having become pregnant again). Thus my six month temporary assignment has become 23 years, and guess what I still don’t have a contract!”

Over the years the LDA has changed from market development to look af-ter lead’s interests on the environmen-tal front. Cooper’s role is now less technical and he is more associated with the successful series of European Lead Battery Conferences — helping on the programme committee and or-ganizing the exhibition.

“We fi rst tried the exhibition in Ge-neva in 1994 and had 14 table top displays,” he says. “This has since

progressed to record attendances ap-proaching 800 attendees and over 100 exhibitor booths.”

In 1992, shortly after the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (AL-ABC) was set up by the International Lead Zinc Research Organisation (ILZRO) in the US, Cooper was asked to look at ways of setting up a sister organisation in Europe with a suffi cient legal entity to enable the ALABC to apply for research funding from Europe.

This resulted in the creation of the European Advanced Lead Bat-tery Consortium EEIG in November

1993. This consisted of many of Eu-rope’s lead smelting fi rms, the major battery producers and other suppliers to the industry.

The then chairman of the LDA, Alan Pugh, asked Cooper to put to-gether a research project on electric vehicle batteries for funding from the European Commission’s Brite-Euram industrial and materials technologies programme. Cooper won the project and was chosen as its co-ordinator,

So began a long and fruitful asso-ciation with the ALABC.

This was scheduled to be a four year programme involving 13 organi-

This prompted another Insight trial with a retro-fi tted 144V UltraBattery pack which successfully covered 100,000 miles on the UK’s Millbrook Proving Ground test track with the only noteworthy incident being when the car hit a pheasant at speed on the high speed circuit. That said the batteries behaved impeccably.

Celebrating the 100,000 miles with Mike Kellaway (Provector) (left) and to right Mark Stevenson (Pasminco) and Pat Moseley (ALABC).



zations and costing a total of Ecu3.8 million (€3.8 million). This was later followed by a further 44 month EU project also on EV batteries costing €3.66 million and with 12 partner or-ganizations.

By the late 1990s interest in electric vehicles — especially with lead-acid batteries — was beginning to wane and the ALABC started to look at batteries for hybrid electric vehicles where power density is more impor-tant than energy density.

Although excellent progress had been made in the laboratory in the work to overcome the problem of sul-fation of the negative plate when lead acid batteries are subjected to high rate partial state-of-charge cycling — and huge strides had been made in other fi elds of battery development — Cooper found it diffi cult to persuade car manufacturers that lead acid was up to the job.

Novel battery designsIt was therefore decided to demonstrate the batteries in a vehicle and an appli-cation was made under the UK Fore-sight Vehicle Programme for funding to retrofi t a Honda Insight with battery made up with a novel design of 2V spi-ral-wound cells modifi ed to have cur-rent offtakes top and bottom.

A major problem was encountered in tapping into the Honda electronics to essentially fool the system that it was still talking to a nickel metal hy-dride battery. This proved a very dif-fi cult problem to solve and, together with some battery problems, resulted

in major delays to the project. After one particularly unsuccessful

demonstration where the electronics were constantly tripping out, the pro-ject was nearly cancelled but Cooper, knowing a solution could be found, pleaded for a little more time. Provec-tor, a long term collaborator with the ALABC, fi nally solved the problems and the project was ultimately suc-cessful in that the car covered 50,000 miles before being retired.

The concept was sound but it still needed the right battery to take it fur-ther.

At this point, enter the UltraBattery. The battery coming from a CSIRO project in Australia was the invention of Lan Lam which combines ultra-capacitor technology with lead-acid battery technology in a single cell with a common electrolyte. In one test an UltraBattery outperformed a nickel metal hydride battery on a hy-brid test cycle.

This prompted another Insight trial with a retro-fi tted 144V UltraBat-tery pack which successfully covered 100,000 miles on the UK’s Millbrook Proving Ground test track with the only noteworthy incident being when the car hit a pheasant at speed on the high speed circuit. That said the bat-teries behaved impeccably.

Work by Effpower in Sweden on a bipolar design of lead-acid battery was producing some excellent results in the laboratory. “We had been keep-ing Honda informed about the work we had been doing on the Insight vehicles and they decided to take

a more active interest in the work,” says Cooper.

“We bought a Honda Civic in 2007 to road test the battery at Millbrook and Honda provided an identical ve-hicle to exactly duplicate the test run-ning of the retro-fi tted car to compare fuel consumption and performance. The battery was put into the car in two large blocks to simulate the split of voltage in the Honda car but this proved to be a mistake as the battery design proved unable to dissipate the heat generated and it dried the bat-tery out.

“So we made another attempt, this time with the battery split into four 44V modules. This proved to be bet-ter in terms of heat control but un-fortunately one of the modules de-veloped a short circuit due to a crack in one of the ceramic bipolar plates. Effpower put this down to a manu-facturing defect but it is possible that the design could have been prone to vibration in a vehicle situation. This failure ultimately proved to be a ter-minal blow for Effpower.

Working to the future “A major problem in demonstrating batteries by retro-fi tting into current-ly available vehicles is that these have been about three years in development and probably we take another two years to fi t and test the batteries so we are about fi ve years adrift in terms of vehicle development. A major break-through came in 2010 where we met Controlled Power Technologies at the major JSAE Exhibition in Yokohama, Japan. They were exhibiting various CO2 reduction technologies while we had the 100,000 mile Insight on dis-play before donating it to Furukawa who had built the batteries.

“Their common interest in low cost CO2 reduction was to result in fu-ture talks between the organizations. This has resulted in us cooperating with them to build two vehicles to demonstrate how the use of a down-sized engine in a vehicle can be per-formance enhanced by the use of an electric supercharger in combination with a turbocharger to restore driv-ability.”

The electric supercharger is driven by regenerated energy from braking with an enhanced belt-driven starter generator stored in an advanced lead carbon battery. The fi rst vehicle (a 1.4 litre VW Passat) was built with a 12V electrical system and delivered emis-sion reductions of 20%-25% when compared with the 1.8 litre version

CPT and EALABC received a Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership Carbon Champions Award in 2012 for their work on the so-called LC SuperHybrid.


Wirtz has been in the tooling business for over 60 years. In the last fi ve years, we have installed 10 new CNC ma-chining centers in our tooling division. These centers hold the closest tolerances, are completely fl exible, and are equipped to operate in an unmanned environment. The result is that Wirtz can produce, with minimal lead times, the most exact tooling in the industry for grid molds, continuous cast wheels, paster tooling, and plate cutter tooling.

Machine Tested Tooling All Wirtz grid molds and ConCast wheels are machine tested with lead at our factory, simulating real world operating conditions, to certify operating temperatures, grid weights, and grid thicknesses.

Knowledge Our knowledge of key technical aspects of tooling; such as cutting tool relief angles for optimal grid cavity surface fi nish, paste hopper and orifi ce plate clearances for proper paste delivery, and wheel surface fi nishes for easiest grid strip release make the performance of our tooling as perfect as possible.

Continuous Improvement We never stop improving our tooling design. A recent example is an upgrade to our steel belt paster tooling that improved the quality of over-paste on both sides of the plate for one of our large customers.

For more information call us at +1.810.987.7600 or email [email protected].

FOR PRECISION TOOLING RELY ON WIRTZ

“Our tooling operation is completely fl exible so I can assure you that we can meet any reasonable delivery requirement. And our quality control and certifi cation can guarantee that your tools will meet your specifi cations”.

Jason Wirtz,Tooling Division Manager



with which the converted car has similar performance.

The added cost is estimated to be somewhere between €750-€1,250 which is well below the add-on for full hybrids such as the Honda Civic or Toyota Prius or plug in hybrids which all have very expensive, high voltage battery packs. This has more recently been followed up with a 48V/12V dual voltage vehicle based on the same 1.4 litre version. This has a much more powerful starter gen-erator (8kW as against 2kW-3kW) allowing provision of direct electrical assist on the engine as well as other functionality such as the option of putting big power users including air-con or water and oil pumps onto the regenerative circuit.

“During the last three years, we have been actively demonstrating these vehicles to car manufacturers in Europe and the US with a lot of inter-est being shown,” says Cooper. “The EALABC is now working directly with Ford and Hyundai in two sepa-rate projects to ‘hybridise’ diesel pow-ered vehicles with this system to drive CO2 emissions down below 80g/km.

CPT and EALABC received a Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership Carbon Champions Award in 2012 for their work on the so-called LC SuperHybrid. “As a consequence of this we have also been nominated as one of the UK en-tries for the European Business Awards for the Environment in 2014.

Allan Cooper, now 76 years old, continues to plan ahead: “In the fu-ture we might see an increase in the production of smaller engine cars overall. What has been added is a combination of turbo and super-charger to remove the turbo lag and improve the drivability. The potential of direct electrical assist to the crank-shaft adds a further dimension. The industry is going to have to start clas-sifying things differently. Cars may no longer be categorized in terms of

litres but instead by torque or horse-power. Ultimately, the consumer will get more out of smaller vehicles.”

Cooper has no immediate plans for retirement. “Why should I?” he says. “There’s still so much to do!”

However, since the arrival of twin grandchildren in November 2012, pressures for creating more spare time have increased but have also resulted in the move of the home offi ce to the bottom of the garden. This he con-tinues to enjoy along with the (too) occasional game of golf. Deep down however, there remains the desire to see one of these low cost, lead-carbon battery-based hybrids on the road.

He also wonders what dizzy po-litical heights he might have reached if Douglas Laidler had turned him down as well!

The industry is going to have to start classifying things differently. Cars may no longer be categorized in terms of litres but instead by torque or horsepower. Ultimately, the consumer will get more out of smaller vehicles

See us at booth 88

What’s in a name? Quite a lot really. Do you use a Hoover or a Vacuum Cleaner? That was the kind of thinking Steve Mate (above) , chief executive offi cer at Co-effi cient said behind choosing the name for his Mate Gauge — a handy piece of kit that automatically measures and adjusts the amount of lead being applied during grid-making processes.

“If you called it the laser gauge, it just wouldn’t ring any bells but if you name it after a person then it gets kind of personal and remembered,” he says.

“That’s also part of the reasoning for shipping one of our machines from Canada over to international conferences. They see me, they see the machine. Unforgettable!”

There’s only one word for it,” one delegate at The Battery Show in Detroit, whispered to Batteries International. “Irritating”.

“Why the whisper?” we whispered back.“Because you can’t help looking

at it and it’s all for a good cause.”Romeo, a two foot high, ‘Nao’

robot was one of the highlights of the show, as the clever robot interacted — including singing and something approaching moonwalk dancing — with the crowds.

The idea was the brainchild of Alessandro Fossemò, the charitable general manager of

the Solith subsidiary of Sovema in the US. The robot is not only an advanced

teaching aid for children with learning diffi culties but will also be time-shared with R&D departments at universities.

And we just thought that universities were the founts of knowledge (yes, where students come to drink).

in a name?

Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?

The price of ELBC fame may be literary immortality. Or that’s what it looks like from our Grub Street hide-away.

Pat Moseley, fresh from writing the modern classic — Towards Sustainable Road Transport —is now going one step further with his latest chef d’oeuvre, a collection of the best of ELBC presenta-tions.

So is it about naming and shaming?“Not at all,” says Pat. “Altogether,

the 14ELBC conference will deliver 64 presentations and some of these selected texts will be published in an edition of the Journal of Power Sources.”

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he price of ELBLBC fame may bbe lililitteraryTh

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www.batteriesinternational.com 128

Last ELBC conference in Paris, Abertax made a splash with a handsome surprise gift of ever-so-handy parapluies. At this year’s conference in Edinburgh the focus changed from umbrellas to, um thematic umbrellas with a cultural twist.

“It’s time to stick with a cert — umbrellas in Edinburgh are a must at any time of the year,” says Abertax’s Trudi Murray.

“In fact we’ve emblazoned them with a Scots

proverb, “if you can see the hills, it’s going to rain. If you can’t see the hills… well guess what?!

“But this time we’re aiming to be the most interesting stand — from a culinary point of view. Our amuses-bouches are gently simmered haggis served with the freshest of tatties and neeps washed down with a selection of the fi nest Scottish whiskeys. Gaelic coffee all day with Scottish shortbread and the world-famous pudding, Cracken.

If you can see the hills …g to rain. If !st

of view. d haggispst Scottishsh g, Cracken.

Mark Stevenson, Boris Monahov and David Prengaman: “We’re in disguise, nobody’ll guess we’re distinguished battery engineers

until we open our sporrans”

Anders Källström and Bo Johannsson: “This is genuine 100% Swedish tartan — little do yon Scots know that we invented the kilt. Our gentle

forebears brought them over on one of our cultural pillage trips.

Notice our national colours, blue and yellow embroidered into the

clothing of the clan.”

True stories are the hardest to believe, But take these ingredients: make of them what you will.

Karen Hampton, polymath publisher of Batteries International has, minutes before, bruised a rib after a fall at the Battery Show in Detroit.

Moving away to avoid the clamor of North American lawyers seeking her business, she spots exhibitor Mark Hulse at Maccor with its mini-golf challenge.

“I’ve only played golf once before —they’re still fi lling the course

in — but today I can only putt with one hand,” she says.

Result? Hole in one.Second time. Again

with one hand. Another hole in one.

At this point the next stand are taking odds on a third. Editor by her side is taking odds of 20:1 (against her of course, he says he’s underpaid).

Yes, a hole in one. To raucous cheering a golfi ng star is born.

Pictured left: Karen accepting the prize of the 16MP camera from Mark

A star is born

in Edinburgh’s ELBC

Spotted undercover

Pasting Pasting ► ► DividingDividing ► ► Flash Drying Flash Drying ► ► Stacking Stacking ► ► Curing Curing ► ► C.O.S. C.O.S. ► ► Assembly Assembly

MAC Engineering and Equipment Company, Inc. 2775 Meadowbrook Road, Benton Harbor, MI 49022 U.S.A.

[email protected]

www.mac-eng.com

Latin America Latin America (Sorfin Yoshimura, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura, Ltd.) Asia Asia (Sorfin Yoshimura Tokyo, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura Tokyo, Ltd.) Brasil Brasil (Sorfin Yoshimura, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura, Ltd.) China China (Sorfin Yoshimura Qingdao, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura Qingdao, Ltd.) Europe Europe (Sorfin Yoshimura Paris, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura Paris, Ltd.) India India (Sorfin Yoshimura India, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura India, Ltd.) Thailand Thailand (Sorfin Yoshimura Thailand, Ltd.) (Sorfin Yoshimura Thailand, Ltd.)

New York, USA:New York, USA: [email protected] [email protected] Tokyo, Japan:Tokyo, Japan: tokyo@[email protected] yoshimura.jp São Paulo, Brasil:São Paulo, Brasil: saopaulo@[email protected] yoshimura.br Qingdao, China:Qingdao, China: qingdao@[email protected] yoshimura.cn Paris, France:Paris, France: paris@[email protected] Pune, India:Pune, India: sales@[email protected] Bangkok, Thailand: sorfin@sorfinBangkok, Thailand: [email protected] yoshimura.co.th

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Batteries International — issue 93