Northvolt Enters The Portable Energy Storage Market With The Voltpack Mobile System
Up and coming Swedish battery producer Northvolt launched the Voltpack Mobile System today in partnership with energy provider Vattenfall. The modular system was designed from the ground up as a portable replacement for diesel generators providing energy as a service in temporary installations.
“We see an increased need from the market for flexible solutions, both in terms of use case but also location,” Emad Zand, President of Battery Systems at Northvolt said. “Voltpack Mobile System is designed to give our customers a fleet of assets that can be redeployed, repurposed and connected seamlessly. Vattenfall has been an invaluable partner of Northvolt since our earliest days, and their contributions to this project have enabled us to accelerate development of a product built to customer requirements.”
At launch, the modular Voltpack Mobile System can deliver up to 250 kW of power and a capacity of 245 to 1,225 kWh, depending on the customer need. The building blocks of the new system are Voltpacks. These 245 kWh modules each contain three liquid-cooled Voltpack Cores. These modules are then bolted into a central interface hub of the system, depending on how much capacity is needed. The hub is the brains of the unit and handles the primary interconnection to the local grid, is home to the inverter, supporting power electronics, and the application interface for the system. For even more capacity, additional Voltpack Mobile Systems can be added in parallel.
Through the development process, Vattenfall provided invaluable customer perspective, enabling Northvolt to tune the design to maximize benefits to the customer. Northvolt and Vattenfall will perform the final testing and validation of the new system at Vattenfall’s test and certification center in Älvkarleby, Sweden. At launch, the first units will be offered to customers exclusively through Vattenfall.
Much like the grid-scale portable diesel generators it will replace, the Voltpack Mobile System will seamlessly power remote electricity grids, improve grid reliability, offset demand charges at high power EV charging stations, and offer grid services. This initial range of applications highlights the potential of the portable energy storage system and makes Vattenfall’s investment into the product a no-brainer.
The portable nature of the system opens up the potential for leases of the systems, lowering the cost of piloting a system on an energy storage-as-a-service basis. When the utility of the system is no longer needed, it can simply be removed and repurposed elsewhere.
The new system represents a step forward for Northvolt as one of the first product offerings from the company beyond the simple promise of battery cell production capacity. Northvolt designed and developed the new system from the ground up including batteries, inverters, and the battery management system (BMS). The BMS is where the magic really happens in a battery system, as the code living there dictates is primary mode of operation, enabling a wide range of advanced grid services, among other modes.
“The need for flexible energy solutions such as energy storage is vital for the transition to the new energy system,” Torbjörn Johansson, head of Vattenfall Network Solutions Sweden said. “Energy storage provides fast access to power when customers need to peak-shave or the capacity of the grid connection is insufficient.”
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