New Industry Products

Megawatt-Scale Storage with Choice of Three Battery Technologies

August 11, 2017 by Paul Shepard

Northern Power Systems Corp. now offers a full suite of megawatt-scale energy storage solutions that incorporate various battery types and capabilities, depending on the application and end-user need.

In addition to providing multiple battery options, Northern Power, backed by decades of turnkey systems experience, can integrate its own field-proven power conversion and control hardware to deliver the optimum energy storage system.

The company has already qualified and begun integrating batteries from three industry-leading suppliers with different chemistries for a variety of use cases, and anticipates adding to this list of qualified solutions:

  • UniEnergy Technologies is a vanadium-redox flow battery supplier. Flow batteries are known for their long duration and maintenance-free operating life. They are designed for shifting energy demand or storing and delivering renewable energy.
  • Eos Energy Storage offers a zinc hybrid cathode battery with the lowest per-kWh cost in the industry. It is particularly well suited to daily solar PV energy time shifting.
  • Samsung SDI is a recognized global leader in the manufacture and supply of high-performance lithium-ion batteries for a variety of applications and charge-discharge requirements.

"We're the only storage supplier that delivers such a wide range of battery chemistries and configurations to meet any customer end-use requirement," said Ciel Caldwell, Northern Power President and COO.

Ciel Caldwell, Northern Power President and COO

"For over 40 years, our company has supplied wind power, microgrid and power conversion systems across all seven continents. With our deep know-how and proven expertise in the energy industry, storage systems are a natural complement to our turnkey solution offerings," concluded Ms. Caldwell.

Northern Power's energy storage systems incorporate batteries from these top-tier suppliers together with the company's FlexPhase power conversion platform, controls, battery management hardware, and ancillary systems.

The FlexPhase™ platform offers a modular approach with a very small footprint and 20-year design life. The NPS FlexPhase inverter technology was developed for advanced grid support and power generation applications.

Single-Phase Bi-directional Power Modules

This patented inverter architecture along with its advanced PowerRouter® control technology qualify Northern Power Systems power converter platform to meet the needs of most energy storage applications. Our power converters can be quickly and easily configured for your application.

Single Phase Bi-directional Power Modules Include:

  • Power semiconductors (IGBTs)
  • DC bus
  • AC filters
  • EMI filtering
  • Cooling
  • Data acquisition and protection
  • Smart module tracking
  • Sensor calibration
  • Plug and play capabilities

The company is currently working on multiple projects using the different battery technologies. These include a 1 MW / 4 MWh system in Washington state with flow batteries from UniEnergy Technologies, and a 1 MW / 4 MWh system using Eos batteries being installed at an existing location with more than 5 MW of wind and solar capacity in Brazil.