By Curt Cherewayko
Fuel cells and rechargeable batteries are getting bigger as heavy industry discovers their potential for storing and supplying power for everything from tugboats and buses to power plants.
Richmond’s Corvus Energy is commercializing what it says is the first lithium-ion battery that’s scalable to unlimited megawatt sizes.
The two-year-old firm has engineered plans for lithium-ion battery systems that store up to 42 MW – enough to power thousands of homes.
Corvus’ first big validation is a recent $3 million order from a Chinese coal-fired power plant for a 2.2 MW battery pack the size of a shipping container that will be used for backup power at the plant.
But Corvus’ batteries are also being put to work on the waterfront.
One of its battery packs is powering a 27-foot tugboat in Vancouver, and the company is building battery packs for two diesel-hybrid engines that will power a 45-foot pleasure yacht and a 110-foot tugboat.
Corvus’ founders include a naval architect and a marine systems engineer. Before founding Corvus, both had repeated requests from clients for battery systems that could complement diesel power on boats.
“We spent quite a bit of time looking into what was available in the marketplace and found that there [weren’t] really any batteries that were suitable,” said Corvus co-founder and CEO Brent Perry.
Just as density is key to squeezing more energy into the lithium-ion batteries that power cellphones, it’s key in larger industrial applications.
One of Corvus’ 6.2 KWh battery modules is the same size as a conventional 8D lead acid battery, but Corvus’ batteries can store eight times as much power.
The nickel manganese cobalt in Corvus’ batteries also provides more energy density than the iron phosphate that is used in many lithium-ion batteries.
At $9,300, Corvus’ battery costs roughly $2,000 more than a similar-sized iron phosphate battery, but Perry said the nickel manganese cobalt holds up better in tough environments and provides more power.
As well, customers reduce costs and emissions in the long run.
For example, a typical 2,000 horsepower tugboat uses around 163,000 litres of diesel annually.
By complementing that power with Corvus’ one-megawatt system, a tugboat operator can reduce his fuel bill by 109,000 litres for yearly savings of $325,000.
Corvus’ most important creation is a thermal management system that allows operators to control battery charge and discharge, which become major issues as more individual batteries are placed in series, or stacked, to boost storage capacity.
Just as Corvus stacks its individual batteries to create megawatt-sized storage systems, Ballard Power Systems (TSX:BLD; NSDQ:BLDP) is stacking multiple fuel cells and, in turn, creating new markets for itself.
Ballard first began developing industrial-sized fuel cells six years ago to target the transit fleet market.
Last year, a six-bus fleet in Hamburg that’s powered by Ballard’s fuel cells clocked a million miles.
During the 2010 Olympic Games, 20 fuel-cell powered buses – the largest fleet yet to use Ballard’s fuel cells – hit the pavement in Whistler.
Like Corvus’ batteries, which are required to be sealed for use in marine applications, Ballard’s larger 75 KW fuel-cell stacks are proving they can hold up in rugged industrial conditions.
“What’s unique about Whistler is that it’s probably the most demanding operating environment for any bus fleet in the world,” said Ballard CCO Michael Goldstein, noting Whistler’s mountainous terrain and winter weather.
Ballard is also targeting the potentially lucrative distributed-generation market.
Goldstein said the company has identified between 1,000 MW and 2,000 MW of energy that could be created around the world from waste hydrogen produced in chemical and petroleum refining.
Currently, that waste hydrogen is either burned off or used to produce low-value heat, but it could be fed into Ballard’s fuel cells and converted into electricity, with only water and heat as byproducts.
This month, Ballard announced the sale of what it calls the world’s largest proton exchange membrane (PEM), hydrogen-powered fuel-cell system.
The 54-foot-long unit, which is being tested in Ohio for the next five years to see if it can hold up as a reliable power source during peak use periods, is made up of nine fuel-cell stacks that can produce 1 MW of energy – enough power for 600 homes.
Goldstein noted that cost margins for fuel-cell stacks improve as they get larger.
For example, instead of selling 1,000 single kilowatt fuel cells to 1,000 customers, Ballard can sell a 1,000 KW fuel-cell system to a single customer.
Goldstein said the industrial use of batteries and fuel cells reflects the technology’s evolution.
For example, a 200 KW hydrogen storage and power-generation system that Ballard installed in Bella Coola two years ago took up an entire freight container.
That same container can today house a 1 MW system.
As fuel cells stacks get bigger, costs must remain reasonable to potential customers.
One of Ballard’s fuel-cell-powered buses cost about twice as much as a diesel-electric hybrid last year.
This year, a Ballard bus is about 1.5 times the price of a diesel-electric hybrid.
The company thinks it will be able to match the price of hybrid within a few years.