NEC Energy Solutions (NEC) and Ambri announced they have signed a joint development agreement (JDA) in which NEC will design and develop an energy storage system based on Ambri’s liquid metal battery technology. NEC will employ its proprietary AEROS energy storage operating system and controls to optimize system performance of the Ambri-based energy storage systems for NEC customers that could include utilities, independent power producers (IPPs) and project developers.
The joint development program is underway and includes delivery of Ambri cells to NEC in the fourth quarter of 2019. The JDA calls for NEC’s production of commercial systems at the conclusion of the development program and NEC has committed to a minimum purchase of 200 MWh of Ambri cells for these systems. Systems will be targeted at applications with durations of four hours or more, and where daily full depth of discharge cycling is expected. These systems will be particularly well suited for shifting large amounts of renewable energy and grid-system peak shaving.
“Based on our knowledge and testing of Ambri’s technology, we feel this chemistry could be a great answer to the energy industry’s need for a low cost, long life storage solution,” said Steve Fludder, CEO of NEC Energy Solutions. “Ambri’s technology enables safe and reliable energy storage with potentially the lowest levelized cost of storage in the industry. NEC’s collaboration with Ambri is a great example of our initiative to explore promising future technologies for energy storage solutions.”
“We’re delighted that NEC’s industry-leading system integration team will develop the first systems with Ambri cells,” said Dan Leff, executive chairman of Ambri. “We’ve received inquiries world-wide from developers, IPPs and utilities for Ambri-based systems who seek a lower cost and safer battery that does not suffer from degradation due to usage. We look forward to helping NEC support these customers with commercial systems based on our technology.”
Ambri’s long duration cells, which are based on its patented calcium-antimony chemistry, can deliver daily 100% depth of discharge cycling performance for over 20 years with negligible degradation at a significantly lower system cost than other battery storage technologies. Systems built with Ambri’s cells can operate safely under all environmental conditions without the need for air conditioning or fire suppression equipment – increasing the system’s efficiency while reducing project cost and maintenance.
News item from NEC
Bart says
Discover this site after seeing a lecture from Prof. Sadoway about liquid metal batteries. Hope this becomes reality. Seems better as ‘soldering’ 1000s of cells together ….
Solarman says
“Ambri’s long duration cells, which are based on its patented calcium-antimony chemistry, can deliver daily 100% depth of discharge cycling performance for over 20 years with negligible degradation at a significantly lower system cost than other battery storage technologies. Systems built with Ambri’s cells can operate safely under all environmental conditions without the need for air conditioning or fire suppression equipment – increasing the system’s efficiency while reducing project cost and maintenance.”
I like the “claims” ,NEC afraid to publish the targeted costs? I’m sure there are substations out there that may have feeds from two maybe three different generation sources dropping off at one substation. Imagine having a liquid metal energy storage system as aggregate storage containers of energy storage and switching inverter technology. One might be able to “shuttle” power from one generation resource to store as time shift able energy storage that could be switched into another grid connection servicing a different generation resource. Now one would have power “shuttling”, using power stored from one grid resource, while servicing another grid connection with power stored from another generator.