Sessions

The growing popularity of energy storage systems has driven innovation in the industry for decades. Many of these storage systems utilize lithium-ion batteries, but there are limitations on how and where this technology can be applied due to safety concerns. While it’s common in rural areas without a dense population, urban areas are left with few energy storage options that meet state and city safety requirements. Now, technology is used to keep lithium-ion batteries safe in space is coming down to Earth to provide storage solutions for C&I, residential and medical uses. In partnership with KULR Tech Corp., Volta Energy found an innovative way to physically contain lithium-ion technology and make it safer to deploy. Its new class of battery packs virtually eliminates the thermal runaway risks associated with lithium-ion technology and is now being tested for use in what will be an industry-first: an indoor medical research facility located in New York State. The core design for Volta Energy’s new battery packs includes KULR’s HYDRA thermal runaway shield that was developed for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover and for transporting and storing lithium-ion batteries to the International Space Station – environments in which mitigating and containing lithium-ion battery cell propagation is critical to mission success. HYDRA absorbs heat and prevents cells from entering in thermal runaway propagation. Volta Energy uses this space technology to solve for point-of-use storage in and adjacent to occupied structures. The pack system is designed to be fully independent of any secondary systems, can be installed indoors or outdoors depending on the need, and can be configured in systems to provide up to 1 MW of storage. This architecture is the only design on the market that can be safely installed in nearly any environment or location. These packs have been field-tested for over ten years in some of the harshest industrial environments and extreme climates and have experienced numerous generation changes that addressed early design failures. This discussion will feature the extensive field test results at real-world sites in New York State and discuss how Volta was able to pass the stringent state building codes to be approved for an indoor installation using lithium-ion technology. It will also feature insights from KULR about the down-to-Earth applications for its technology.

Join us for the Initiate awards, where Clarion Events will announce 3 winners and Duke Energy will announce one 1-to 3 winners from the startup pitch competition.