From batteries to the grid

Although power grids are synonyms for gigantic publicly funded infrastructure built as a robust backbone to provide power to later on connected ramifications, our ambition is to build a fully operational “bottom-up grid”.

Since our customers, who live in low-density rural areas, cannot pay for the cost of being traditionally connected to the power grid, they have little experience of the comfort and empowering capacity of electricity. By offering them an affordable ticket to the electrical wonderland, we raise their expectations and hope to create a positive feedback loop in the form of increased demand for electricity, which we can then bootstrap to build a larger power infrastructure.

Our battery inventory, currently used to transport electricity to our clients, can indeed be considered as our first investment in power production. Given the prolific potential of our target countries for renewable electricity production (esp. solar and biomass), the power plants that we plan to build in order to meet the power demand that we presently work at creating will be fueled by renewable energy sources. Their intermittency can be mitigated by establishing a storage system, one that would be charged at energy-bountiful times, and to be drawn from when the sun or the wind are down. What can be better to achieve that task than the very batteries that we currently own?

They are our flexibility card. Thanks to the storage reservoir that they constitute, we can confidently plan on bringing in renewable energy sources into our power distribution adventure. Although the robust sealed absorbed glass-mat lead-acid batteries that we currently use are a perfect match for our distribution purpose, we nonetheless keep an eye on the many technological improvements that the field of electricity storage is certain to experience soon.

Boosted by the need to protect established power grids from the unpredictable variability of intermittent renewable energy (wind & solar) on one hand, and the interest in cheaper and denser forms of portable electricity on the other (small electric appliances as well as batteries for electric vehicles), battery technology is on its way to improving storage capacity and reduce the cost per stored kWh.

What’s on the shelf of a growing number of research groups?
Virus-engineered lithium batteries for portable applications, large-scale liquid batteries to balance grid fluctuations, innovations such as those retained by the ARPA-E’s Transformational Energy Projects Grants, all of which will contribute to creating a greener power infrastructure.

- Blandine