Featured in Connections that count – 10-2022

Five strategies for battery procurement

The worst effects of the pandemic may have passed, but supply chain disruptions continue to be felt across the world. The effects of the war in Ukraine are also evident to all of us in our daily lives, from commodities to energy, food supply chains and beyond. The disruption in the battery energy storage system (BESS) supply chain is no different, writes Cormac O’Laoire, senior manager of market intelligence at Clean Energy Associates. Indeed, as the cost of raw materials such as lithium climb, battery prices are being driven materially higher, on some accounts by 20% to 30%, rendering some projects uneconomical.

By

pv magazine

05 Oct 2022

In July 2022, Stockholm-based Northvolt announced that it had raised $1.1 billion to finance the expansion of its battery cell and cathode material production footprint in Europe. Northvolt’s third gigafactory, Northvolt Drei, in Heide, Germany, is expected to have a capacity of up to 60 GWh. It will start to produce its first batteries in late 2025. | Image: Northvolt

Battery energy storage system (BESS) transportation costs have been accelerating, with the price to transport a container from China to the West Coast of the United States costing an estimated 12 times as much as it did two years ago, while the time taken for the container to make that journey has nearly doubled.These factors …

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