January 28, 2021: The London-based Consortium for Battery Innovation has appointed Christian Rosenkranz as its chairman, the group announced on January 19.

Rosenkranz, who is vice president for industry and governmental relations EMEA with Clarios, replaces inaugural chairman Tim Ellis, president of RSR Technologies and also president of transformation and CTO with Ecobat Technologies. CBI is the reformed Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium, which was rebranded in February 2019.

One of the most important remits of CBI will be to lobby government decision makers about the benefits of lead-based batteries and how they can help with decarbonization plans, says Rosenkranz.

“In this regard, the pre-competitive research we conduct enables CBI to be embedded in the respective government research frame programmes,” he says. “As a starting point, the Consortium for Battery Innovation has worked with the US Department of Energy and EAI and already launched in 2018 pre-competitive research with the involvement of the Argonne National Lab to investigate the fundamental lead battery charging/discharging kinetics with an innovative method.

“We are in the application phase to launch similar projects in other regions to enhance visibility and perception of the benefits of lead batteries in both automotive and stationary energy storage systems applications.”

Rosenkranz has a long history with CBI member Clarios, formerly Johnson Controls Power Solutions, including five years as vice president of engineering EMEA and global start-stop engineering. He is based in Hanover, Germany.

“Clarios is a long-term member of the CBI,” he says. “Our US engineering team is directly involved in the US-DoE project with the Argonne National Lab. As far as the ongoing projects of CBI are concerned, we have various research projects around the globe with external partners and universities contributing to our technology road map to improve performance in automotive and stationary energy storage systems technology.

“Presently we focus on the two main value drivers — one for automotive applications (enhancing the dynamic charge acceptance to improve the regenerative energy capturing in the drive cycle) and one for stationary applications (improvement of the energy throughput to enhance total cost of ownership).”

Rosenkranz says the CBI has created a platform for pre-competitive research, including demonstrations for all members to tap into.

“With a panel of technical consultants and university fellows, we invest not only in material research but also in new analytical methods and standards to grow this knowledge base,” he says. “Over the last few years, the network has continuously grown to almost 100 direct and associate members, which makes it one of the largest global battery research networks.”

He says demonstrations in the pipeline include micro-grid applications, fast-charging stations for electric vehicles and fuel efficiency improvements in modern automotive power trains.

“These demonstrations will be communicated to improve the perception that lad batteries provide benefits in decarbonizing our society,” he says.

Rosenkranz acknowledges that lead-based systems face challenges from other chemistries, but says this misses the point: the goal should be sustainability and combining the best solutions for the right application.

“I would say there is no one-size-fits-all type of design — each application has its specific needs,” he says. “As for automotive applications, the improvement of dynamic charge acceptance will be the game changer to enable higher fuel efficiency. For stationary applications, it depends on both the application and the operational strategy of the storage system.

“Lead-based systems provide a cost-efficient, sustainable solution and are already designed to meet the circular economy targets of the European Commission in its EU Green Deal targets reflected in the new Battery Regulation.

“We see advantages and growth for alternative technologies and in the end the debate should be about the aspects of sustainability and how we generate synergies. We will need to utilize all sustainable electro-chemistries at hand to achieve our over-arching goal — the decarbonization of our society.”