December 6, 2019: The perception that lead batteries are unsuitable for battery energy storage systems is nothing more than that — a perception. Dipak Chaudhuri, head of research and development at Exide Industries and speaking at the ILZDA conference, said that the task facing the lead battery industry was to counter that ‘confused perception’.
He said his firm was already deploying test projects at sites across India and was particularly excited by two advanced lead products — a tubular gel battery and the UltraBattery, which combines a traditional battery with a supercapacitor.
Chaudhuri’s comments are all the more exciting for the lead battery industry in that he is one of the key figures in Exide’s R&D program into lithium.
In October Exide said it would begin assembling lithium ion batteries in December under a contract with Swiss battery maker Leclanché. The news comes four months after the two firms agreed a joint venture, with Exide in control of 75%, Leclanché 25%.
Chaudhuri said that Exide was also looking at bipolar batteries. The firm is one of seven licensees of Advanced Battery Concepts’ GreenSeal technology.
Chaudhuri, who has been associated with the battery storage industry for the past 35 years, said features of the tubular gel battery were that it could handle extended PSOC operation without any deterioration of life or performance and could deliver more than 3,000 cycles at 50% DOD. Its charge rate at 0.6C at 1 hour is exceptional, with a recharge efficiency of 90% or more.
“In terms of cost, it will remain unchallenged, if one takes into consideration scrap recovery,” said Chaudhuri. “It is likely to be half of the best expected of competing chemistries in the future!”
As part of a presentation delivered at the conference, he gave an example of an existing 100kW/200kWh containerized storage system at the firm’s site in Hosur in Tamil Nadu, which has a bank of 600 tubular gel, 2V, 840Ah batteries that is being used for energy shifting and PV smoothing.
The other advanced lead battery design Exide is enthusiastic about is the UltraBattery, a supercap/lead hybrid designed by Ecoult a decade ago. In August last year the firm signed an agreement with the Furukawa Battery Company, which allows it to make and sell the UltraBattery.
Chaudhuri said that previous tests on three telecoms towers in 2017 showed that while installation of the UltraBattery was more expensive than regular batteries, the payback time through the savings on diesel was as little as four months.
