Grid-tied battery lifecycle estimation, the Achilles’ heel of energy storage project development
Author: Sherif Abdelrazek
The development process for grid-tied battery systems faces many challenges. Amongst the most notable is the inability of developers to accurately estimate battery degradation prior to procurement from battery OEMs which happens well after the design phase. As a result, a developer now depends on receiving project-specific accurate degradation data from battery cell suppliers, which is often time-consuming and not available before a purchase order is issued to the cell supplier. In addition, the battery degradation models or generic degradation models from cell suppliers available during project planning are oversimplified and pose significant risks in project development. Because of these issues, developers find themselves locked in with one OEM and miss out on the opportunity to “shop” for the best battery product for the use case under consideration. The odds are that the selected battery product is not the best for the use case. And even if it is, you wouldn’t know that a side-by-side comparison of degradation estimates of different products (for the use-case at hand) was never performed.