Salt battery

MIGROS gets the largest salt battery storage facility in Switzerland

It’s great to see the newest installation of the #SoNick batteries in Switzerland by Innovenergy.

This installation is a 540 kWh salt battery storage system and now stands in the basement of MIGROS Schlieren/ZH. The molten salt batteries are 620V SoNick batteries supplied by FZSoNick and inverters by Indrivetec.

The SoNick batteries are charged with a large 806 KW solar PV system.

The purpose of the large-scale project is to save energy costs by optimising self-consumption. The other benefit is to maximise peak shaving which ensures the supermarket doesn’t have a lot of intermittent high energy draws which would increase energy bills substantially.

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Recyclable batteries that do not require maintenance – FZSonick

A chat with Giovanni Zola, General Manager of FZSonick SA of Stabio: the only company in the world that manufactures and markets accumulators (batteries) with the innovative sodium-chloride technology. The same have various fields of application. Let’s find out which ones.

FZSONICK was born from the historical passion of the Dolcetta family for the world of energy which, since the early 2000s, began to take an interest in green batteries. In 2010, following the agreement signed with the Swiss company Mes-Dea, manufacturer of the same type of batteries known as “Zebra”, the current company was born that markets accumulators with the innovative Nickel Sodium Chloride technology commonly also called “Salt Batteries”. For the moment FZSONICK is the only company in the world to produce batteries with this technology. The company is present in Stabio, Switzerland, with a production plant and a research center; in Italy (in the province of Vicenza), it has a sales office as well as in North America (in Elgin, Illinois) for worldwide distribution. With its product lines, FZSONICK currently serves 3 reference markets:

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Battery Drawdown Capabilities

 

Energy storage batteries come in a variety of different sizes and weights and each have different characteristics.  Here is a comparison of some different battery technologies currently available in Australia with an indication of the amount of power that can be drawn down.

You can see from this image that size is not necessarily a good indication of the power that is available to be used from a battery. Some batteries have much better energy density than others.

Another thing to consider is how much power you can actually draw from the battery at any point in time. Our SoNick battery can draw 150 amps for 4 hours continuously but some other batteries are very limited in the amount of power that can be used, maybe only with enough to boil a kettle and little more.

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Comparing battery technologies

Until recently lead acid batteries have been the major player in the energy storage industry, particularly for off grid installations but they have serious limitations in terms of requiring customer maintenance and of course they are made from toxic materials.

Recently, Tesla’s lithium ion batteries have received a lot of attention due to their advertised low price and excellent marketing, however the lithium ion batteries are now receiving attention due to their fire risk on the release of embodied energy. Lithium ion batteries have a smaller operating range than most other batteries and won’t operate efficiently above 35 – 40°C. Also, lithium is a toxic material and is in limited supply and at this stage can’t be recycled effectively.

There are some new technologies coming onto the market, such as Redflow’s zinc bromide, Aquion’s sodium ion salt water batteries, improved lead acid and many variations of lithium battery. These each have advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of performance and size.
Depth of Discharge (DOD)

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Quantum Sodium Nickel battery system – Renew magazine

Quantum-unitMost energy storage systems use lead-based or lithium based batteries, but there are other, lesser known technologies that work as well or better than the popular chemistries.

One of those chemistries is the Sodium Nickel Chloride battery manufactured by FIAMM in Switzerland, which uses sodium and nickel metals with a solid ceramic electrolyte, with the entire battery running at around 270 °C! While this sounds scary, it is a well developed and mature technology with high efficiency and long cycle life, making it idea for domestic and commercial energy storage systems.

The Quantum smart energy storage system from Grid Edge uses a FIAMM Sodium Nickel battery to store energy for load shifting, backup power and self-consumption of solar power generation. The system, designed and made in Australia, is available in 9.6 and 19.2 kWh usable storage capacities (basically the same unit with either one or two battery modules), has a 4.5 kW continuous/9 kW peak inverter and a cycle life of 3000 to 4500 cycles at 80% DOD. Shelf life is rated at greater than 20 years! System operating temperature range is -40 °C to 60 °C, making it ideal for use in extreme climates. Both battery and system are warranted for five years and the battery units are 100% recyclable.

Article by Lance Turner taken from Renew Magazine – Issue 136

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