October 24, 2019: Bipolar battery company Gridtential has completed the largest production run yet of its Silicon Joule batteries in an event with its sixth licensee Crown Battery, the company announced on October 21. It would not say what that run was but Gridtential said: “Manufacturability was a key objective for the event and with the benefit of pre-manufactured materials, including treated silicon wafers, the rate of manual production reached less than five minutes per unit.”
The event ‘significantly exceeded yield and throughput targets established for the current design’, the company said.
The batteries produced will be filled, formed and shipped with evaluation agreements to customers and investment partners, including two unnamed US automakers.
“Industrialization is a key step in bringing innovation to an industry and we are very pleased to see Silicon Joule batteries being produced seamlessly on the production floor at Crown Battery,” said Gridtential CEO John Barton.
“We feel fortunate to work with like-minded battery manufacturers and equipment suppliers to produce products that open up new markets and extend the dominance of lead batteries in the energy storage arena by harnessing more of lead’s performance potential.”
The companies ran the production line at Crown Battery’s facility in Fremont, Ohio, using an advanced pasting system by Wirtz Manufacturing.
Also at the event were the Sovema Group, TBS Engineering and MAC Engineering — presumably there to consider how to move manual assembly to an automated process.
Gridtential was founded in 2011 to develop its Silicon Joule bipolar technology, which replaces the lead grid and cell connecting lead-strap material inside a traditional lead battery with a silicon substrate that can be inserted without altering much of the existing production line — the early processes of paste mixing and curing are unchanged, as is the more expensive charging and formation equipment.
Gridtential says its technology removed up to 40% of the lead required in a traditional battery and the associated weight by eliminating the lead grid and strap material.
It says it also increases cycle life by up to five times, improves DCA by up to 10 times, extends operating temperatures by 10+°C and reduces the cost over the life of the battery by up to 80%, the company says.
The technology won Gridtential the BCI Sally Breidegam Miksiewicz Innovation Award in 2018.
Gridtential has always said its technology works with lead battery companies as opposed to competing with them, and it so far has signed up battery firms East Penn Manufacturing, PowerSonic and Leoch as well as Crown, and battery additives and specialist chemicals firm Hammond Group.
