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Webinar: Grid Security in Battery Energy Storage and Power Resiliency Applications ... North American energy storage system providers are facing increasing demands to source domestic solutions that address utility grid security concerns ... However, energy storage still requires a global supply chain due to the early-stage nature of the domestic battery industry. ... ... Join Michael Worry, CEO & CTO of Nuvation Energy, and James Richmond, CEO & Founder of e2Companies for an exploration of how energy storage system integrators are delivering solutions that balance domestic sourcing requirements against global supply chain dependencies. ... This webinar focusses on the following key topics: ... Domestically sourcing critical controls.  ... Identifying critical components for domestic sourcing.  ... Domestically sourced vs ... designed and made in North America.  ... Ensuring security and reliability in your manufacturing process ...    ... Software vs ... hardware controls. .

... CBS Power Solutions selected Nuvation Energy's high-voltage battery management system for a grid energy storage system located on the island of Lifuka.  ... Lifuka, Kingdom of Tonga ... Lifuka is a 4.4 square mile island in the Kingdom of Tonga ... Previously receiving power exclusively from diesel generators, the Kingdom contracted CBS Power Solutions to deliver a renewable energy storage system that meets the government’s mandate to obtain 50% of grid power from clean energy ... CBS installed a solar + storage microgrid in Lifuka to reduce the island’s dependence on diesel generators. ... The project began in 2016 and was completed in 2017 ... Nuvation Energy installed a Nuvation Energy High-Voltage Battery Management System that would provide precise State of Charge (SOC) information to the Siemens power conversion systems (PCS) to help manage the charge and discharge process ... The BMS also provides remote access to battery performance data.  ... “The granular sharing of data between the BMS and PCS can double or even triple the life of lead batteries.” Joseph Xavier, Director of Marketing, Nuvation Energy ... Technical Specification ... The project features a solar array and 480 kW / 495 kWh of battery storage ... The lead batteries used for the project are 2V valve regulated HOPPECKE cells ... The installation of this microgrid reduced the island’s dependence on diesel generators as a primary power source by 50%. ... The Nuvation Energy BMS communicates with a pair of 300 kW Siemens inverters and an energy management system that work together to charge the battery cells from the PV array during the day and provide power to the utility grid at night. View more project details here. ... Lead batteries minimized project costs by eliminating the need for the complex fire suppression and thermal management systems often required by more volatile battery chemistries ... They provided a cost-effective solution and are recycled at end of life.  ... While lead batteries are very resilient, continual overcharging and/or over-discharging will significantly shorten their life ... A BMS provides battery module level SOC information to the PCS, enabling the PCS to precisely manage the charge and discharge process. ... This granular sharing of data between the BMS and PCS can double or triple the life of the lead batteries ... Nuvation BMS is also able to disconnect contactors if a fault condition develops that could damage the cells. ... In an ESS that contains dozens or hundreds of battery modules, the communications and safety features added by the BMS extend the life of the lead batteries to a degree that recovers the BMS cost many times over during the life of the ESS ... Additionally, maintenance personnel are provided with remote access to battery State of Health data, reducing the need for costly “check-up” service calls ... The SOH data also includes the granularity needed to identify cells and other components that may need replacement, often before an emerging issue visibly impacts the performance of the ESS. ... Read more information including Battery Innovation's full case study here..

Webinar Series: Building a Better Energy Storage System ... Leveraging the BMS to Build a Better Energy Storage System: Webinar Tutorial Series ... ... Despite the granularity of battery performance data available from the battery management system, energy storage system developers and operators are often frustrated by the “black box” nature of their assets ... This opacity can translate to inflexibility in system design choices, unnecessary limitations in operational control, and system augmentation challenges ... The Nuvation Energy battery management team conducted a 3-part tutorial series that explores how energy storage system developers are utilizing the battery management system to gain greater control of their assets.   ... Course 1: Optimal Design Approaches to Battery Racks, Packs, and Modules ... The master/slave battery management system model ... Reducing BMS hardware through module, tray and stack design ... Battery stack solution examples Managing multiple stacks in parallel ... Delivered on July 29th, 2020 ... Play Recording ... Course 2: Battery Stack Design for UL 1973 Certification ... Understanding battery stack architecture ... Impacts of component certifications on the UL 1973 ... LOE Designing flexibility into a locked-down stack configuration UL 1973 ... Recognition case studies and engineering war stories ... Delivered on August 13, 2020 ... Course 3: Gain More Visibility Into Your Energy Storage System ... Business impacts of low visibility into internal battery operation ... Problems frequently encountered by operators in the field “Cell to cloud” remote system diagnosis ... Battery warranty tracking ... Delivered on September 9, 2020.

... When designing a battery management system, Nuvation’s fourth-generation battery management system and first off-the-shelf BMS, our goal was to create a set of modules that could be connected to the battery pack in different configurations to support a wide range of battery topologies with different chemistries, voltages, and capacities ... Our industry research and consultations with customers revealed three main market verticals where such a configurable BMS was of greatest interest to manufacturers: ... Specialty Vehicles – Battery powered traction systems and subsystems ... Telecom Power Backup – Data centers and telecom towers ... Grid Energy Storage – Micro grid, solar, wind, etc. ... While not every target battery deployment we encounter fits neatly into one of these categories, this matrix enables one to evaluate the Nuvation BMS in terms of its suitability to meet the full range of its target battery topologies. ... Battery Pack Scalability ... A battery pack is typically scaled in one or both of two directions: vertically and horizontally ... Scaling vertically involves stacking battery cells in series to increase pack voltage ... Scaling horizontally involves connecting multiple stacks of cells in parallel to create greater capacity at the same pack voltage ... Very large systems usually require the pack to scale both vertically and horizontally to deliver high voltage and high capacity. ... Returning to our matrix of battery pack configurations, we can summarize typical scalability needs as follows: ... For each battery stack, Nuvation's BMS has been partitioned into three distinct modules that are used as the building blocks of complete system. ... Stack Controller – performs all processing required to manage a single stack of cells ... Cell Interface – provides the electrical interface to a group of 12-16 battery cells ... Power Interface – powers the BMS, measures high voltages and large currents, and provides the electrical interface to high-current switching devices ... A Grid Battery Controller manages multiple stacks as a single unified battery' ... TopologiesSeparating functionality into these distinct modules allows Nuvation's BMS to scale to support a wide range of topologies ... Multiple Cell Interfaces are connected together in a daisy-chain that increases in height as pack voltage increases ... This daisy-chain is connected to a single Stack Controller that manages all cells in the chain ... Multiple Stack Controllers can be connected together to support large packs with many stacks in parallel ... The Power Interface isolates high-voltage and high-current components of the stack physically and electrically from the other modules ... It can also power the BMS directly from the battery stack, eliminating the need for any external power supplies.Nuvation's BMS is available in multiple variants that support a wide range of stack voltages ... In future posts we will examine in more detail how we can use these three modules in various configurations to meet the voltage and capacity requirements of different pack topologies..

... What makes an ideal battery management system? The first thing that should come to mind is safety ... There are many videos and articles out there that show lithium-based batteries venting and/or bursting into flames when pushed past their operating limits ... A BMS solution must prevent the battery pack from entering into an unsafe condition ... But safety is only the beginning of the story ... Users also want to maximize the life of their battery pack, and try to maintain the capacity of the battery pack as it ages ... This is where the idea of an “ideal” BMS solution can start to be defined. ... The ideal BMS solution provides accurate fuel gauging, and cell balancing to ensure that a battery back is completely empty or completely full ... There are two main design challenges to create the ideal BMS solution: ... Designing the internal battery pack topology to allow for monitoring of each cell. ... Including a mechanism for the BMS to balance the cells. ... There are three main topologies for cells in a battery pack: ... Battery Pack Topologies ... The simplest topology that allows for individual cell monitoring is a single string of series-connected battery cells ... A more complicated topology is necessary when the capacity of a battery pack needs to increase but the overall voltage needs to remain the same ... This requires a parallel connection of battery cells ... If the parallel connection occurs at the per-cell level, an approximation is made that each cell in the parallel string contributes equally to the overall health of the parallel string ... This approximation has the undesirable consequence of reducing the accuracy of the BMS ...  A parallel connection at the total pack voltage is better, as it allows the BMS to read the state of each individual cell ... It also opens the door for limp-home modes of operation ... (More on that later!) ... Just as there are multiple cell topologies, there are also multiple mechanisms for cell balancing ... Cell balancing brings each cell into alignment and ensures that each cell within the battery pack has equal state of charge (SoC) ... The Society of Automotive Engineers released a whitepaper in 2001 that describes different cell balancing solutions shown below: ... Cell balancing methods ... The simplest method to modify the level of charge of a battery cell is to apply a load to that specific cell ... This will lower the level of charge of highly charged cells to match the average level of charge ... This balancing method will provide the ideal BMS with a mechanism to ensure that the battery pack can be fully charged ... However, it doesn’t necessarily allow for the battery to be completely discharged in a useful way ... An active cell balancing method such as charge shuttling using a switched capacitor or energy conversion using a transformer allow cells nearing their end of charge level to be charged with excess energy contained in other cells still in their range of operation ... Refer to Nuvation’s recent article about cell balancing for further detail. ... Thus, to overcome the two previously mentioned BMS design challenges, it’s necessary to: ... Use a series-connected cell topology or use parallel-connected strings of series-connected cells to ensure accurate cell monitoring. ... Implement an active balancing method to allow increasing and decreasing SoC of each cell to ensure balance is achieved and maintained from completely full to completely empty. ... Resource: A Review of Cell Equalization Methods for Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer Battery Systems.