Volvo’s Mobile BESS Energizes Construction Sites

In June, a delivery of fuel to a campus at Johns Hopkins Hospital turned badly, overthrowing 2,000 gallons of diesel in the port of Baltimore. While the capital of Maryland was running to contain the waste, the speakers discovered a problem: they did not have access to a reliable power on the seafront site.

Usually, in these kinds of situations, stakeholders bring generators of fossil fuel. But city officials wanted to do better than burn more fuel while cleaning diesel. So they found Scott Calhoun, COO of Power Up Connect. The Baltimore -based company has started to build mobile battery units that can store enough energy to save an entire hospital or, in this case, boost a port cleaning team.

The company is one of the many groups that develop mobile battery systems to meet major electricity needs. Volvo builds such systems to load its electricity, chargers and other heavy construction equipment. Tesla made a truck in batteries to strengthen the performance of its EV overalling stations during peak periods.

Batteries are a mobile version of a battery energy storage system, or Bess. In the past, Bess has been used in stationary locations to store electricity on a network scale to help balance supply and demand, such as storage of solar energy so that it can be used at night or storage of emergency power in the event of breakdowns. Improvements to chemistry and lithium-ion battery engineering made it possible to move megawatt level power at the rear of a semi-camion.

Development opens up the possibility of marketing large -scale electricity for applications that previously based solely on fossil fuel generators.

Why do car manufacturers develop mobile bess?

Power Up Connect began, in 2008, to provide small power plants that allowed people of concerts or sporting events to recharge their phones. Later, customers began to request enough electricity to support applications such as recharging wheelchairs. Now, the company has extended to a trailer that can chain in Marguerite up to ten lithium-ion batteries, each with a capacity of 90 kilowatt hours-slightly larger than that which is delivered in a Lucid Air Electric Lucid sedan.

Volvo last year began to offer fully electric heavy construction equipment such as chargers and excavators that can move the land with the same force as their competitors powered by fossil fuels. This equipment must be billed, of course, and many customers will want to do so on the site. Volvo therefore built Mobile Bess Solutions to bring the charge to the excavators.

The know-how of the Volvo Bess Mobile came from the construction of its increasing range of all electric semi-camons, which use advanced battery chemicals to wrap a remarkable amount of energy in a mobile battery pack, explains Darren Tasker, Vice-President of Volvo Penta, a division of the automaker that uses company technologies for industrial applications.

The improvements in lithium-ion batteries are due in part to the use of a version of cobalt aluminum oxide in nickel (NCA) with aluminum as a cathode. This allowed them to build transportable batteries of 90 kWh. According to Tasker, Volvo could easily adapt to two six packs of these units at the back of a semi-camion, providing more than a megawatt of power wherever it may be necessary. These batteries can be hunted towards a load deposit during the night when they can be recharged, then brought back to the site in the morning. After all, Tasker says: “The definition of a construction site is that it is under construction.”

Volvo studies the batteries with lithium (LFP) and lithium-sulfer (LFP) phosphate for future use, says Tasker.

The Volvo PU500 BESS offers a capacity of 540 kWh and can charge up to 3 heavy trucks or 20 cars per day.AB Volvo

Can Mobile Bess Power Remote Industrial work?

This mobile electricity celebration could be useful in a wide range of industries. Forest operations, for example, move from one place to another, often in distant places devoid of power. Miners could also benefit a lot from electrification. The management of trucks and equipment supplied by fossil fuel creates dangerous emissions which must be evacuated from a mine. “The need to electrify the underground mines machines is quite strong,” says Tasker. “Having no emissions underground is an excellent engine of the new technology,” he says. But power should be mobile.

Mobile Bess is also an attractive solution for places that find it difficult to find the hundreds of thousands of dollars required in advance to install an electric charging station. Testing electrification with truck batteries is less risky than spending six figures to build permanent electrical infrastructure. Volvo has customers who use mobile load terminals to support electric trucks, lifting trolleys and chargers in ports.

As the batteries improve and cheaper, the main public EV charging stations can get out of the grid. This month, Tesla plunged into a battery and a solar installation to power a Tesla compressor station off network, located off the interstate 5 in California. The station provides enough electricity for more than 80 electric vehicles at a time.

The challenge for mobile bess manufacturers is the cost. The batteries are not cheap; Tasker says that in some cases, customers may pay $ 1,000 per kilowatt for mobile bess power. This temporary solution is even cheaper than the construction of a load station, but the cost must drop so that mobile batteries have a sense for more uses.

After the spill of diesel in the port of Baltimore, the city finally turned to confidence but secret generators in order to quickly control the spill. But next time could be different. Baltimore is now in talks with Power Up Connect to use mobile batteries for future emergency intervention situations, says Calhoun.