Marine battery technology is at an inflection point where it will become ubiquitous in the shipping industry, according to AYK Energy founder and battery guru Chris Kruger.
Kruger should know. He has spent more than 20 years working on battery technologies, most of it in the maritime sector.
He was with leading maritime battery maker Corvus Energy from 2010, shortly after the company was founded, and then worked at its competitor, PBES, now known as Shift, before starting his own battery energy business six years ago.
While Kruger is the founder and main shareholder, other investors include institutional investors in China and Hong Kong residents.
Kruger set up AYK Energy, with a focus on maritime energy storage demand, in China because it has rapidly become the centre of industrial battery development.
It imports most of the metals needed for battery production and has a battery manufacturing capacity that meets global demand.
This is an interesting point given the US, Europe, Canada, and India are, according to a Bloomberg report earlier in the year, ramping up their subsidies to support their battery industries as geopolitical tensions grow.
This trend in supporting local battery production points to an eventual oversupply of batteries, and an inevitable drop in battery cell prices.
Maritime batteries have become, just like those found in Teslas and other electric cars, cheaper, more energy-dense and more powerful.
Kruger is supportive of the Chinese efforts. “I feel batteries are too expensive. And this is because we do not have the focus on cost-effective manufacturing processes that China has,” he told TradeWinds.
But Kruger, who spends his time in his home country of Andorra and China, is well aware of Europe’s recent battles with China over cheap electric car imports.
Having accused China of subsidising its electric car manufacturing, the European Union has now imposed extra tariffs on Chinese car imports, with China threatening to impose its own measures on Europe.
Having opened his business in China, AYK Energy is now looking to open assembly plants outside the country, just as Chinese battery cell makers are doing, Kruger said.
“This is just par for the course,” he said. “You just have to deal with it.
“The biggest concern is the cell supply when it comes to this geopolitical problem. And because China is such a large supplier of batteries today, you cannot get away from buying cells from there,” Kruger added.
But due to the competitive environment of energy storage, and its growing importance in national energy security, research and development in batteries has led to a growth in new technologies.
Safer LFP technology
AYK Energy makes batteries using cathodes made of lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, as opposed to batteries made of nickel manganese cobalt (NMC).
The latter was largely chosen for more industrial uses because the cells give more power, but with it comes other properties that can be problematic.
NMC technology can more easily lead to thermal runaway, than LFP technology, a situation where there is an exothermic reaction when the battery cell gives off the stored chemical energy in an uncontrolled and potentially explosive manner.
China’s advances
Kruger said he was convinced to switch AYK Energy’s technology direction, from NMC batteries to LFP ones, when he saw how developed the latter technology is in China and how it was being used in the country’s electric vehicle industry.
Because the risks are greater with NMC technology, there are more robust conditions for those batteries when applied on vessels, according to Kruger.
These include having water cooling not air cooling, and limits on the total battery energy capacity that can be installed in a vessel’s battery room, which make LFP more practical and safer in a marine environment.
The crucial cost of the battery, according to Kruger, is $300 per kW hour of energy, once the price of the storage capacity of the battery drops below that, he believes the shipping industry will take battery technology more seriously.
“We are not far away, we have got sales on some of our systems at $350 per KW hour,” he said, “If we can get the price down, then that will enhance the uptake.
“From what I have seen in the last six months, we are at that point where it’s going to take off and the battery is going to become a system that will be on all new vessels, and a lot of retrofits will happen”.
Solid state batteries
While costs are set to come down and make batteries more attractive as a propulsion option, the other question is always about the available power in the installed battery system.
Solid-state batteries are believed to be the next step, and it is something Kruger is already putting research and development into with his Chinese partners.
Solid state batteries have a solid electrolyte, this is the medium between the cathode and anode through which the lithium ions travel.
According to Kruger the best power density one can get with NMC is about 166 watt-hours per kg, with LFP at about 140. Solid state batteries could give up to 250 as soon as they are on the market, and in about a decade they could reach 1,000 Wh/kg, the point when a vessel can cross an ocean, or a car can travel 2,000 km on one charge.
“That’s the holy grail,” said Kruger.
