Blackouts or brownouts can happen anytime without warning. Some of the largest companies in the world have suffered losses of up to hundreds of millions of dollars due to disturbances lasting for a few seconds or even milliseconds.
Battery-based UPS solutions are in use everywhere, but sometimes they are just not quick enough to respond, or don't respond at all due to a malfunctioning system. Ultracapacitors are the ideal solution for short power outages, because they are both extremely reliable and can react very quickly.The growing share of renewable energy is increasing grid unreliability.
The global market for grid and renewable energy storage is expanding rapidly. Increasing volumes of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are driving the need for energy storage technology to level power load and reduce the strain on the grid. Ultracapacitors help prevent blackouts by delivering peak power and extending the lifespan of batteries in energy storage systems.
Ultracapacitors are also able to provide backup power for wind pitch control systems and uninterrupted power systems (UPS), as well as other short-term bridging and peak-shaving applications.
We can currently offer ultracapacitor-based energy storage solutions either by supplying ultracapacitor modules to be integrated into a larger system or to be delivered as a large turn-key solution in partnership with System Integrators.
The grid systems can reach high levels of complexity and become quite daunting to control. Within them, there can be an array of different applications with various means of energy storage associated to them. Ultracapacitors as an energy storage medium can provide big benefits such as instant response to demand surge and improved energy delivery quality.
Ultracapacitor energy storage can be the ideal solution for different power quality issues, including magnitude, flicker, dip, swell, and interruption events, because of their ability to react practically instantly.
Ultracapacitor energy storage can be the ideal solution for different power quality issues, including magnitude, flicker, dip, swell, and interruption events, because of their ability to react practically instantly.
Semiconductor manufacturing, the pharmaceutical industry (or any cleanroom environment), the automotive industry, metal pressing, painting, and various other industries and manufacturing processes are especially susceptible to power quality issues, and the scrap caused by one single poor power quality event can be measured in tens of millions of euros.
In one customer application, an ultracapacitor-based solution ended up being ten times more economical than a battery-based solution.
In addition, only one containerized ultracapacitor energy storage unit was needed, compared to six battery containers.
Ultracapacitors also provide lifetime 2,3 times of a battery-based solution.
An ultracapacitor-based solution is a fraction of the size and price of a similar battery-based solution.
A small, islanded grid doesn’t have enough inertia to keep the grid frequency steady, so it needs energy storage to support it. Ultracapacitors are ideally suited to frequency regulation due to their practically instant reaction time and lifetime of more than a 1 000 000 lifecycles.
Ultracapacitors maintain a high level of performance in cold temperatures, require little to no maintenance, and have a very long cycle and calendar life.
Ultracapacitors can deal with these interruptions more efficiently than conventional batteries and flywheels.
