Atraverda, the world’s only commercially viable ceramic bipolar battery maker, is pleased to announce it has been selected to partner Sharp Laboratories Europe and Sharp UK Manufacturing in the ‘Intelligent Solar Energy Storage’ project supported by the UK Government-backed Technology Strategy Board.
Atraverda was chosen as the partner after the Technology Strategy Board launched the ‘Materials for Energy’ competition in June 2011. The Technology Strategy Board allocated up to £3 million to invest in highly innovative, collaborative R&D projects that address the application and demonstration of materials technologies for use in energy generation, energy transmission and distribution and energy storage (“ES”).
The two year project commenced in April 2012 and aims to develop an intelligent domestic scale Photovoltaic (“PV”) Uninterruptible Power Supply (“UPS”) prototype system using Atraverda’s novel advanced battery that is based around its light-weight ceramic composite bipolar plate material.
The system is to be designed and developed for the UK and European market, where there has been significant uptake of solar PV for domestic energy generation. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (“DECC”) has forecast that around four million homes in the UK will be solar powered by 2020, however the intermittence of the energy supply requires a storage system and Atraverda’s technology provides a low cost, convenient solution.
Atraverda’s advanced ceramic batteries offer high energy densities with a long lifetime and high energy conversion efficiencies, ideal for the storage of energy generated through domestic PV.
There are three stages of development proposed: the first being an off-grid PV-ES system; the second being a PV-UPS system; and the third being an intelligent energy storage system for PV-UPS and peak demand energy management.
Graham Ryan, Chief Executive Officer of Atraverda, said: “Domestic energy storage is, I believe, a huge growth area. Generating capacity provided by renewable energy sources cannot be controlled in line with demand, as with conventional carbon based sources, and therefore energy storage is key to making the adoption of these technologies a success. The unique price performance characteristics of Atraverda’s ceramic battery are ideal for this application. We are pleased to be working with Sharp and the Technology Strategy Board and consider this partnership an important validation of Atraverda’a technology and innovation.”