CAP-XX LIMITED Electricity is essential to modern life.
It is not just a luxury we use to run our gadgets and enjoy our leisure time; rather, it is a vital resource we rely on to carry out our daily tasks, generate revenues for our businesses, and provide public security, safety, and health.
Flexibility and resilience in power distribution is becoming increasingly important to deal with the rising share of variable renewables brought on by decarbonization of the energy system, as well as the rising simultaneous load from power electronics, manufacturing facilities, heat pumps, and the charging of electric vehicles.
Battery
Battery
Co-locating energy storage with demand, such as by placing it in factories and medical facilities, has several important advantages. These advantages include peak shaving of both import from the grid and export from embedded renewables. Battery
What Is Peak Shaving
Also referred to as load shedding, peak shaving is a strategy for avoiding peak demand charges on the electrical grid by quickly reducing power consumption during intervals of high demand. Peak shaving can be accomplished by either switching off equipment or by utilizing energy storage such as on-site battery storage systems. The objective of peak shaving is to eliminate short-term spikes in demand and reduce overall cost associated with usage of electricity.
Why Is Peak Shaving Important
To understand the importance of peak shaving, it is necessary to examine how peak demand affects electricity prices. There are typically two components to an electric utility bill. Customers pay for electricity based on consumption, measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh) and demand, measured in kilowatts (kW). Demand charges usually apply to commercial and industrial customers, who tend to have higher peak loads than residential customers.
However, it should be noted that with the transition to electric mobility, the surge in the number of electric vehicles, and with the addition of residential fast charging infrastructures, demand charges could have a significant impact on residential electrical utility bills.
The contribution of demand charges varies geographically, but typically ranges from 30% to 70% of the customer's electric utility bill. Thus, it is important to understand how demand charges work and how peak shaving through battery energy storage systems can minimize electricity charges without compromising the operation of any given application.
What Are Demand Charges
Demand charges likely make up a sizable amount of your electricity bill if you are a major business or an industrial utility user. The demand charge is a monthly fee that you must pay to cover the expense of maintaining the infrastructure needed by the electric company to supply energy to your building.
Demand charges are determined by peak power usage rather than total energy consumption and are intended to assist electric utilities in covering the cost of delivering electricity when utility clients, such as factories, employ an energy load above a specific threshold. The demand charge is calculated based on usage during a 15-minute peak interval throughout the billing cycle, multiplied by the demand fee. So, the higher the peak usage in kW, the higher the demand charge is going to be.
What Are Consumption Charges
Consumption charges are a measurement of the amount of energy used in kilowatt-hours during a billing period. Utility companies charge consumption based on three different billing structures.
Flat rate
With a flat billing structure, the user pays for electricity usage based on a constant rate for all consumption, regardless of time of the day or total amount of usage.
Tiered rate
With a tiered billing structure, the user pays for electricity based on two or more rates for different usage amounts. When the user's consumption passes a certain threshold, the rate at which they pay for electricity usage increases. The number of tiers and the thresholds for each tier differ based on geographical locations and utility companies.
Time-of-use rate
With a time-of-use billing structure, the user pays for electricity based on two or more rates for different times of the day or days of the week. The utility will define intervals of on-peak and off-peak based on typical demand during that period. Utility companies can also utilize a combination of billing structures and incorporate seasonal rates as well.
How Does Peak Shaving Work
The two charges that can significantly affect the rate at which industrial and commercial users pay for electricity include demand charges and consumption charges during on-peak intervals. As mentioned above, peak shaving is a strategy for mitigating demand charges and usage during peak times, thus it requires altering the operation of an application or implementing storage capabilities to store energy for later use.
Since shutting down or slowing productivity contradicts business goals and objectives, often businesses bare the cost of demand charges and on-peak charges, perhaps in part due to lack of knowledge about energy storage technologies.
A battery energy storage system is a method for storing electric charge using electrochemical storage units so that it can be utilized at a later time with the help of intelligent software that balance electricity supply and demand.
At Exro, we are pioneering intelligent control solutions that expand the capabilities of batteries within energy storage systems with our patented Battery Control System. The Exro Battery Control System offers unique advantages by managing the charging and discharging of every individual battery cell based on its state-of-charge and state-of-health. By charging and discharging at the individual cell level, the solution is optimized for maximum cell lifetime while enabling micro-protection mechanisms for enhanced safety and uninterrupted operation.
The cell level control through Exro's Battery Control System is a major technological advancement in the industry. The micromanagement of each cell enables Exro's Energy Storage System to maintain operation if certain cells encounter faults that prohibit them from contributing to the system's output. These faults could result in temporary system shutdowns, reduce system safety, and increase costs associated with maintenance. However, with Exro's intelligent control software, each cell is controlled and operated individually, increasing the depth of control, enabling continuous operation, and ensuring system optimizations beyond what is currently available in the market.
Exro is focused on offering an intelligent system that ensures power quality, safety, and continuous operation, but it also offers a modular design that can be easily adopted to any application size ranging from residential, to industrial, commercial, and utility. With Exro, energy storage operators have the peace of mind that the system will optimize power storage and consumption with our innovative cell level control. Energy storage operators can also benefit from cost savings associated with reviving and repurposing second-life electric vehicle batteries to offer the safest and most cost-efficient technology.
The battery cells in an electric vehicle reach end of life within 8-12 years, depending on battery conditions. These batteries can be optimized and repurposed into a second life with Exro's Energy Storage System (ESS) through our innovative and emission-free process. This is not only safe and cost- effective, but also provides a solution to the challenge posed by the influx of end-of-life electric vehicle batteries.
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