The Need for Quality Assurance When Procuring Lithium Ion Battery Systems
As the supply chain for lithium ion-based energy storage becomes more complex and diversifies away from the traditional manufacturers, the need for quality assurance to ensure investment confidence is on the rise.
CEA's Chris Wright, Director of Energy Storage Services, shows why quality assurance matters when selecting storage for commercial utility projects. In this case study from Solar Power International (SPI) 2020, Chris goes over the Korean energy storage fires and their investigation of manufacturing defects.
Video Transcript:
And quality matters. The South Korea fire investigation is a perfect example. They had fires with battery systems aren't new. Starting back in 2017, there have been over 20 stationary storage system fires that use lithium-ion batteries in South Korea.
One of their government organizations called MOTIE [Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy] was tasked to lead a cross-functional team to investigate the root cause and new installations for all of it. And existing ones were only allowed limited charging range. So their state of charge windows were significantly reduced as a mitigation effect.
After the investigation, after an initial investigation that focused on system integration areas, the moratorium was released. New installation started, and they re-allowed systems to charge at a higher SOC rates and subsequently there've been more fires and the investigation is still ongoing. And some of the latest focus of the investigation is on potential quality issues within the battery cells themselves. So quality matters.
