Powin LLC has debuted the Centipede battery energy storage platform: the company’s first fully modular design, complete with pre-integrated segments containing batteries, thermal management equipment, and essential safety systems.
Compared to previous generations of Powin’s Stack products and smart enclosures, Centipede requires 50% less time to procure and deploy and 30% less space onsite, while also reducing lifecycle costs and providing superior reliability. The Stack750E will be the first modular Stack purpose built for the Centipede platform and is well-suited for 2-hour to 4-hour applications, including solar and storage use cases.
Building on Powin’s core technology, Centipede’s simplified design offers enhanced scalability, supporting more than 200 MWh AC per acre and a simple augmentation strategy. Centipede can accommodate a wide range of system configurations and energy specifications, with immediate room to grow.
The new Centipede platform design utilizes an improved third-generation module design that allows for precise thermal control and an anticipated 80% reduction in service time. The independent segments of the Centipede platform allow for granular control and monitoring of the entire system.
“With Centipede, we have meticulously reinvented our entire storage ecosystem, including our supply chain, battery hardware and balance of system design to create the most energy dense, safe, reliable and efficient energy storage solution yet,” says Geoff Brown, president of Powin. “This platform launch is critical to accelerating our mission to lead the sustainable transformation of the outdated electric grid through increased renewables penetration, non-wires alternatives and power decentralization.”
Throughout Centipede’s development, Powin worked with an independent testing firm Energy Safety Response Group (ESRG) to validate the efficacy of safety systems above and beyond the required UL testing for energy storage systems. In November, ESRG completed a large-scale test of Stack750E that simulated a complete failure of all active safety measures during an intentionally induced fire. The results were conclusive, showing that fire does not propagate from one Stack750E to another and that explosion risk in adjacent Stacks exposed to the fire is effectively mitigated.
“ESRG was proud to have worked with Powin on the execution of one of the industry’s first large scale fire tests intended to exceed UL9540A requirements,” states Nick Warner, co-founder and principal of ESRG. “The preliminary findings from this test show a tremendous amount of resistance to ‘unit to unit’ propagation during even a worst-case fire scenario. ESRG believes this type of testing, in excess of the current requirements of UL9540A, helps identify safety issues which would not otherwise come from extrapolating smaller, minimally propagating failures.”
“Powin’s Centipede platform is at the forefront of safety for lithium-ion battery energy storage,” observes Paul Hayes, general manager of American Fire Technologies and NFPA-855 board member. “Centipede incorporates best practices learned from past safety-related events across the industry, code compliant evaluations, and extensive NFPA 68/69 CFD modeling, culminating in the recent successful large scale, system-level fire and explosion test.”
Powin will begin mass production of Centipede at the end of Q1 2022, with first deliveries scheduled to take place in Q2 2022. To date, Powin has secured more than 2 GWh in contracted and awarded orders for Centipede from multinational independent power producers and utilities.
