South Korean lithium-ion battery maker LG Chem has announced plans to expand its presence in the Australian residential solar and battery storage market, following “exponential” growth over the past six months, and chasing even greater growth in what it says could be a “critical decade” for the technology.
LG Chem launched its lithium-ion 6.4kWh Residential Energy Storage Unit (RESU6.4EX) on the Australian market last July, and has since supplied 600 units via its two main local distributors – Solar Juice and Supply Partners.
The company says it expects to see a five-fold increase on this number in 2016, supplying more than 3000 units for the year, and an even greater rate of growth in 2017, when the country’s remaining high solar FiTs are ratcheted down.
This, combined with the urgency of replying renewables to tackle climate change and encouraging noises of support for from federal and state governments, all point to busy times ahead for battery storage manufacturers, LG says.
“This could be a critical decade for Australia,” said the company’s manager of Australian business development, Changhwan Choi, in a statement on Thursday.
“We see a quiet solar revolution brewing and we strongly believe that LG Chem will be at the forefront of this transformation to help unlock the true value of solar storage and better enable the ecosystem.
“We welcome competition too. We are positive that when more people adopt the RESU6.4EX in Australia, the market will appreciate the quality, efficiency and cost competitiveness of our offering”.
In a telephone interview from Singapore, LG’s Changhwan told One Step that a key difference between his company and a competitor like Tesla was scale. Well established as one of the leading global manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, LG Chem has a good head start on mass-market production.
“We have the biggest manufacturing facility in the world,” he said, which meant that, based on the volume, the batteries could be very competitive on price.
So far, their biggest market for residential batteries has been in Germany, a “very stabilised” market which they started supplying back in 2012.
As well as Australia, Chanhwan says LG Chem is also focusing on the UK market, where the major solar FiT finished last year, and on Italy, which he says is experiencing similar conditions to Australia, with a high penetration of rooftop solar and high electricity costs.
In Australia, Changhwan says LG Chem is also very keen to tap the utility-scale and commercial-sized battery market. The company already has many examples of this installed in the US and Europe, using its 10MWh and 30MWh container batteries.
“We are ready to supply (large-scale battery storage) as soon as the utility companies are ready,” he told OneStep, adding that it was his guess that time would arrive at the end of this year.
On the residential battery front, LG is still hoping for some policy support to fuel uptake, and suggests a key support measures will be to design new “tariffs that can allow consumers to realise the economic benefits of an investment in the technology”, such as pricing structures based on time-of-use.
“With the FiTs finished, there are many, many houses with solar panels that can use battery storage to help reduce their electricity bill,” Changwan told One Step. “They can use the energy from the battery when the electricity cost is high.”
According to the available specs on LG Chem’s RESU6.4EX battery, it is a compact lightweight unit (60kg) and claims to have the highest energy density in the world; that is, the smallest in volume compared to the amount of energy it can deliver.
It is principally designed to be used in conjunction with an inverter to maximise solar self-consumption, but can also be used in an off-grid situation.
The battery systems can be upsized, with the addition of 3.2kWh expansion packs, taking total capacity to 9.6kWh or 12.8kWh energy storage, depending on the household’s needs.
The battery can be cycled (discharged and re-charged) 6000 times to 90 per cent depth of discharge (DoD) and according to one sources, in terms of $/kWh, is believed to be one of the cheapest batteries on the current market. (Prices for the battery appear to be around the $8,000 mark, + GST.)
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
This post was published on March 24, 2016 3:08 pm
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Great unit, but would be great if they could lift the max warranted temperature to more than the currently specified 40 degrees.
Operationally, that rules it out for a lot of non-coastal Australia.
I like that its expandable though - can be tailored to suit more people rather than just increments of 6.4kWh.
This battery does not use small consummer cells. According to the Materials Safety Data Sheet, a prismatic Lithium-ion polymer cell, presumably of the 'stacked' design of the article. Should be better than the NMC/NCA 18650 type.
Capacity Warranty requires some calculation from a pro-rated sequence of 'multipliers'. There is a 'Yearly Use Rate' (which applies to the 'Nominal Energy' figure) of 300 x 6.4kwh = 1,920kWh, which attracts a multiplier of 0.3
Daily full cycling results in a Use Rate of 2,303kWh, which attracts a 'multiplier' of 0.6. It's a bit complicated to explain here, but if cycled daily, capacity should be at least 4.95kWh at 10 years, or 77%. Much better than the Powerwall, but payback within that period will not occur unless tarrifs are exceptionally high.
The worst case is if cycling is more frequent. Capacity can then be 60% at 10 years, so around 3000 cycles. If restricted to full daily cycling (of the remaining capacity as time passes) then the advertised figure of 60% at 6000 cycles would be correct, but a very long haul to payback, if that is the aim.
Temperature is a problem for all Lithium-ion, but 40C is quite good if other specs are not severely degraded.
The specification does mention DoD, but the warranty refers only to '6.4kWh Nominal Energy', used in the 'Yearly Use Rate' calculations, which results in the equivalent of accumulated
annual discharge.
Here is the minimum lifetime kwh available from this battery according to the warranty.
At 90% Depth of discharge...6000 cycles with 60% capacity remaining.
At 80% depth of discharge ...10,000 cycles with 60% capacity remaining.
Round trip efficiency 95%.
Minimum lifetime 10 years.
The number for averaging the capacity decline from 100% down to 60% is 80%.
If you want to squeeze the most kwh out of this battery cycle only to 80% = 38,912 kwh lifetime. At 90% =26,265 kwh lifetime. Those numbers include all loss factors. This is the formula that I used: 6.4x .9 x .95 x .8 x 6000 = 26,265 kwh
6.4x.8x .95 x .8 x 10,000 = 38,912kwh
"End of life" is reckoned at 60% remaining capacity. There is still some significant juice left to be squeezed out. Stationary batteries can be used much further down than vehicle batteries since they don't need the kind of power demand. The former standard for end of life for batteries was 80% remaining. It was a left over from lead acid car battery standards.
All the punters watching solar/storage have arrived at the ballpark and the game is about to kick off. LG Chem is a strong contender and the $8k price tag appears as good as a storage system gets - at this period of history. However a battery sport doesn't need to be like watching gladiators at a Roman coliseum. Most of us don't need the most powerful or longest lasting battery. All we need to achieve a winner, is get off the majority of the export/import merry-go-round. Hopefully battery storage systems will popularise and lower individual battery prices, then all of us can buy a couple batteries to merely use the power our solar panels are producing. For those living/working at home this is easier. Those arriving home at dusk will need deeper pockets.