South African energy company Freedom Won has announced the release of a wall-mounted lithium-iron phosphate energy storage solution, touting it as a renewable-energy solution set to “revolutionise” battery-based energy storage for the home and business.
The FreedomCOR module, which was based on technology used previously by the company in electric vehicle energy storage, made it possible to operate an independent renewable-energy “power plant” through the use of photovoltaic (PV) panels for energy generation, the company said in a statement.
The system could be operated at an average cost per kilowatt-hour of less than the typical municipal electricity charges in South Africa, with a typical cost of R1.60/kWh over the lifetime of the product.
This rate, when combined with rooftop PV, could result in an average cost of less than R1/kWh spread out over a 20-year period, as the majority of the energy was consumed during the day, when cheaper PV power could be used directly, Freedom Won co-founder Antony English explained.
“This range of energy storage modules contains a lithium-iron phosphate battery capable of over 5 000 charge-discharge cycles of useful life, which will easily serve for over 13 years of daily cycling before the cells would need to be replaced.
“This ensures a much lower total life cycle cost than any other battery products on the market,” he enthused.
The system could also be connected to grid-tie inverter-charger combination units that supported lithium technology and could be integrated with a solar charge controller to receive power from a PV array.
The product was available in various sizes, with the domestic range offering capacity of between 5 kWh and 30 kWh, the business range offering capacity of up to 80 kWh and the industrial range available in “much larger” capacities to suit high-demand applications.
Co-founder Lizette Kriel added that the domestic product range had a slim, wall-mounted design, while the business module was floor-mounted.
“The most popular model to date is the 10 kWh unit, because it offers sufficient energy to run the important loads in an average house for between four and five hours through a typical bout of load-shedding,” she said.