The new battery was inaugurated on the EPFL’s campus and will be tested over the coming 23 months. It was developed by EPFL engineers based on technology from Leclancé, a battery storage technology company located in Yverdon-les-Bains. As the EPFL writes in a news release, the battery is made with lithium-ion titanate cells, which are especially fast to charge and discharge. The battery also has a long lifecycle: it can be charged up to 15,000 times; conventional batteries, in contrast, can usually only be charged-discharge up to 3,000 times. The storage battery has a capacity of around 500 kilowatt hours, which is equivalent to the daily consumption of 50 households.
In addition to storing electricity, the battery can also coordinate electricity production and consumption. The technology is designed to connect reliable energy storage solutions to the grid, making it easier to incorporate renewable energy sources into the energy mix. The canton of Vaud is supporting the project financially with some two million francs.