BESS Commercialization

Battery Energy Storage System that includes power tracker (controller), inverter, and battery
management system

The International Energy Agency expects world energy demand to grow by 60% between
2000 and 2030. The ability to store energy and convert it to electricity to meet a
particular need is becoming increasingly important I this context.

BESS systems have a wide range of applications, addressing high-power and high-energy
requirements in stationary, transport, and portable markets. The battery energy storage
system market is one of the most significant electrochemical markets already in existence
– worth in excess of US$30 billion annually.

BESS opportunities are attractive to overall global markets, their multiple applications
potential, existing indigenous research base and the potential to achieve step change
improvements in their energy/power densities.

With all the new design and high performance of BESS systems in the market, it arise
ones curiosity on how BESS system is being designed, created and mass produced.
1. Flowchart for designing commercial prototype BESS
With simple explanations, UESS and most of the BESS design companies have similar
setup structure that require six basic departments that include Industry Design (ID),
Mechanical Design (MD), Hardware (HW), Software (SW), Project Management (PM),
Sourcing and Quality Assurance (QA) which include 12 full-time engineers and 39
contract engineers in the BESS engineer team.

A. Industry Design (ID)

Include designing the BESS appearance (outlook), and choosing of materials.
For example, UESS “inverter” front panel design, mobile unit shaped appearance, the
bright blue colour of the mobile unit, and so on. All these features are specially designed
by the industrial design department to suit individual consumers’ needs and whether a
BESS is popular and become the best-selling BESS in the market will also be heavily
depended on the industrial design department as well.

Industry Design Engineer

B. Mechanical Design (MD)

The Mechanical Design department also plays an important role in the design of the
BESS, the staff have to be very experience and skillful with the process on designing the
position of the front and back cases of the BESS, the controller panel position, how to
connect the battery, thickness of the case, front cover of the BESS, how to get all the
connections in the right places, and how to insert all optional modules and etc.

CNC Moulding
C. Hardware Design (HW)
Hardware design mainly involves the circuit board and battery position holder, and the
“Hardware Design” department and “Mechanical Design” department have to maintain
regular communication.

For example, if the “Mechanical Design” demanded on a thin design, then thin circuit
will be needed. At the same time, the “Hardware Design” will let the “Mechanical
Design” know the location of all the circuit board and the distance requirement for the
battery. “Hardware Design” will also remind “Industry Design” not to have minimum
gap for high and low voltage circuit, and so on.

One can imagine that a mobile unit of BESS design manufacturing cost is higher by 20%
- 25% compared to a stationed unit type design one, the main factor is the mobile unit
design, materials used and circuit design and manufacturing costs are higher.

There will be the usual debate between the architect (MD) and the Industrial Designers
(ID), MD might think that ID is designer and usually their creation can only be put on the
paper and cannot be mechanically created. On the other hand, ID will think that MD do
not understand what ID is talking about and would not follow their designs and that’s the
reason behind the poor popularity and sales of the BESS. Therefore, before any work is
started on a new model of BESS design, all the departments will have to assess the
creativity design of the ID first. A good ID must be realistic with the design, and have
good research in the BESS market to know what the consumers want.

There will also have arguments often happening between HW and ID such as ID love to
use metal ornaments that can cause problem with the design of the magnetic field and
also can easily cause the static electricity problem and this make HW unhappy.

In order to tackle the problem, ID and MD will develop new materials to meet the ID
requirements.
D. Software Design (SW)
Relatively speaking, SW is much easier for everyone to understand, with the proliferation
of computers, we are able to access a variety of software, and the SW main tasks are in
the interface model of the stationed and the mobile unit test operation.

SW has to fully take into account of the operation interface, humanistic, aesthetic factors
and etc. SW testing job is very complex, not only checking for bug, consistency test and
compatibility test are also very important. In today BESS technology, software is the
ultimate support pillar as the software is needed for the operation of the hardware. We
believed that the conflict between the software and hardware engineers is no less than
other departments, and this is the job for PM (Project Management) to resolve any
misunderstanding and coordinate the management.

E. Project Management (PM)

There are two types of PM in large companies, for example, TPM (Technology of Project
Management) PM is in-charge of the technical side, and standard PM is in-charge the
progress of the project coordination, PM is very common in BESS companies that have
their own design, production, sale departments.
Beside PM, AM (Account Manager) is also important to the company as well, as a client
manager, the AM has to act on behalf of the clients and AM also represent the company's
overall image. Both PM and AM are very important to the company.

F. Sourcing
Resources Development staff have to keep up to date on new resources, such as new
materials, new BESS components, testing equipment, and etc. When the BESS started it
trial production, they must ensure the availability of all the necessary production
materials be ready for the production line.

The low rate production of BESS not only depends on the maturity of the hardware and
software, it also includes the inspection of production process and testing technologies
for the products. Some production procedures have fail the inspection and test at this
stage and therefore it cannot be put on the market and immediately have to re-design this
section of the BESS again.

G. Quality Assurance
QA department is in-charge of the entire process of quality assurance measures on the
development and scheduled process, guarantee that the production of these projects, there
are many new design phone have to be discard or put away due to the scope of some non-
production factors.

To produce a BESS is not as simple as doing an experiment in a laboratory. It involves

production of hundreds and thousands units. To guarantee each and every product is not
an easy task. There is a great difference between producing one BESS unit and 100,000
BESS units.

For example: China's restaurants have their own dishes and they always introduce new
dishes whereas McDonald is different, they have fixed products, so McDonald's can
easily grows it business. Until now, no Chinese restaurants have the same growth as the
McDonald's yet, so UESS will have to build many processes to prevent the emergence of
the design and development of the BESS that has not been able to reach the production of
intelligence status.
Moreover, the success and popularity of a BESS greatly depends consumers’ feedback
and the rapid improvements by our OEM and brand name clients companies.

2. Robust Testing
A. Pressure test
Use automatic test software to continuously release sharp high voltage for 1000 times.
Check the BESS with any fault or malfunction. If problem occur, the software will need
to re-write again and that is why sometimes, there are different software version on the
some BESS models, in fact, there is a secret that if the more version the BESS have, it
means that the test is not thoroughly done on the product before it is released to the
market for sale.

B. Anti-FILA Testing
C. High / low temperature testing

D. High humidity testing

Put the BESS in a specially built cabinet with water dripping acting as perspiration where
a certain amount of salt is added into the water and tested for about 30 hours.

E. “Bagger” testing (also known as bean curd test)

Use a H4 size pencil to draw 100 checks on the mobile unit casing to see whether is there
any paint come of from the BESS, some of the more stringent requirements of the BESS
is to scribble the casing with different types of branded cosmetics to see are there any
chemical reaction or odour to the BESS.
F. Flip reliability testing
Flip the front cover of the BESS for 100,000 times to check the possible wear and tear of
the BESS casing; it uses a flip simulator where you can set the intensity flip and angle.

G. Torque Testing
The BESS will be clamped on both sides by the test machine and be twisted on both
opposite directions. It main purpose is to test the strength of the mobile BESS unit’s shell
casing and large device inside the BESS.
H. Static testing
In some areas, weather is very dry, hand touch metal things easily get static, and will
cause the breakdown of the BESS circuit board and some poorly designed circuit board
will easily get damaged. Such testing tool is called an "electrostatic gun", electrostatic
guns will adjust to the high-pressure and low-10-15KV current situation, run the
discharge test on the mobile BESS metal contact points of attack, it takes about 300ms-2s,
and the test takes place in a humidity-controlled room, and the chargers connection and
all the related accessories will have the same test. All tests have to be approved and
qualified before shipping out to the market. The test requirements have to follow the CE
and UL standard requirement for EU and Northern America markets.
I. Control panel lifetime testing
Machines are set to the desire strength to hit the control panel for 10,000 times, if each
user hit the key pads for 100 times, and that equal to 100 days, the equivalent of BESS
users using the equipment for a period of about 20 years. This test step can either done
manually by human or machine.

J. Dust Testing
Place the BESS in a specially designed box that have a large size heat dryer blowing up
the sand, after about three hours later, turn on the mobile and stationed BESS to check is
there any sand inside the BESS. If so, this show that the BESS enclosed design is not
good enough, and the structural design has to be re-adjusted.

In addition, the BESS also includes more bizarre testing, such as placing a mobile BESS
on a metal plate; this is to test what will happen due to the magnetic field changes.

All the above standard tests are done professional and strictly by all BESS manufacturers,
because to them, beside the products, the most important issues are their after sale service
and company image.