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The Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program (BSGIP) hosted two research scientists from Samoa recently to help build capacity and strengthen the island nation''s ability to meet climate and energy challenges. The researchers spent valuable time in BSGIP''s state-of-the-art Battery Materials and Energy Storage Laboratory (Battery Lab) with Associate Professor Alexey Glushenkov.
The researchers, Mr Faafetai Kolose and Ms Aiomanu Penaia, are leading energy storage research within the Renewable Energy Division of the Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa (SROS). Associate Professor Alexey Glushenkov, and his team, spent time advising them and supporting their research aims.
"It was a pleasure to host the Samoan researchers in the Battery Lab and engage on various aspects of battery development," said Associate Professor Glushenkov. "We also had a gainful discussion on the nickel – iron battery chemistry the Samoan team is pursuing.
"The battery materials group is looking forward to visiting Samoa to continue working with the local team on the nickel – iron battery development."
Samoa is in the midst of an energy transition. With relatively high energy prices, the push for renewable energy is seen as a way to help reduce cost of living pressures and increase resilience to fossil fuel shocks. In 2021, Samoa achieved 45 per cent installed renewable power generation. This figure has been increasing year on year. Samoa has a target of 70 per cent renewable energy use by the end of 2031, transitioning to a mix of solar, wind and hydropower augmented by battery storage.
Context is crucial when considering what technologies are appropriate for any given situation. "Currently we have Tesla Power packs, but we don''t have a say about that battery. If anything is wrong, the Tesla team is contacted to fix it. I wanted to look at options that suit the Samoan context and Samoan people," said Mr Kolose.
Mr Kolose was working as a physics lecturer at the National University of Samoa when he was approached, some year ago, to explore ways to store the excess solar that was being produced abundantly in the country. "We were producing a lot of solar, too much solar," said Mr Kolose. "We needed a way to store it. I started researching storage solutions that would be suitable for Samoa and could be operated by Samoans," said Mr Kolose.
"I became very interested in the nickel – iron battery, also known as the Edison battery. This battery is known for its robustness and longevity. We''ve successfully developed a small-scale prototype of the Edison battery. The next step is to refine the design and put in place appropriate processes for testing each material before assembling the battery," said Mr Kolose.
According to Mr Kolose the key concerns for battery technology in Samoa are durability, cost effectiveness, battery longevity, and access to critical minerals and other battery parts. "There may be more advanced, more expensive alternatives but we need to consider what works best in our context," said Mr Kolose.
"In Samoa, a research initiative to create battery storage locally for renewable energy is a relatively new idea," said Ms Penaia. "A limitation we face is that we do not have the cutting edge equipment that a Battery Lab should have but through this opportunity we are grateful to Alexey and his team for giving us access to the lab equipment so we could test things in practice. We had the theory, but it is another thing to put the theory into practice," said Ms Penaia.
"Alexey really helped us understand simpler alternatives that could work for our situation. For example, utilizing the abundant source of local, organic material, such as coconut shells to make a super capacitor," said Ms Penaia. "The coconut shells, something we have in plentiful supply, can be used to create activated carbon which is then used as an active material in battery cell assemblage."
Exposure to the Battery Lab team and the use of the Lab enabled the researchers to consider other technologies and to expand their research. "We learnt about super capacitors, the chemistry is actually quite simple," said Mr Kolose.
"The next step is to take the knowledge we have learnt in Australia and apply it back in Samoa. We are more aware of the steps we need to take in cell assemblage and we will expand our research thanks to the new knowledge we have learnt," said Ms Penaia.
The Samoan Fellows'' visit to the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program was supported by the Australia Awards Fellowships program funded by the Australian government.
About the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program
Established in April 2018 the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program (BSGIP) undertakes socio-techno-economic research, development and demonstration activities that support the global energy transition and help achieve economy-wide decarbonisation.
Work within the program encompasses detailed disciplinary work on components of the global energy system and on how we integrate these components together to support energy transition and decarbonisation. Staff within the Program have broad expertise that includes engineering, chemistry, computer sciences, physics, economics and the social sciences. The Program places a strong focus on translational research which is defined as simultaneously advancing the body of knowledge and advancing the practice in the field. BSGIP is hosted within the Australian National University. Bsgip
The island nation of Samoa is continuing its effort to convert from diesel-reliant powerplants to 100% renewable energy with the help of Tesla’s scalable Powerpack battery storage solution. Over the past year, the California-based electric car and energy company had been hard at work installing and launching two Tesla Powerpack sites in the country, both of which are designed to capture the abundance of renewable energy, otherwise lost without a means for storage, and offer grid stability to local utilities.
Tesla Powerpack installations at the Fiaga Power Station and the Faleolo International Airport are integrated with 13.6 MWh of energy storage for the island’s solar, wind, and hydropower farms. The entire system is optimized by Tesla’s Grid Controller, which gives the country real-time control over grid stability, reliability, and security. In a statement to the Samoan Observer, Samoa Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa''ilele Malielegaoi noted that the utilization of Tesla’s battery storage system has helped the country provide additional stability to its power grid.
"Without the new battery energy storage systems and microgrid controller, the system will not be able to operate efficiently with such a high percentage of solar penetration in Samoa of 55%. Since the batteries have been running on trial tests, the quality (voltage and frequency) of the electricity supply has been very steady and not fluctuating as before,” he said.
Tuilaepa further stated that Tesla’s battery storage system, together with the country’s ongoing renewable energy projects, would ultimately allow Samoa to power itself on 100% renewable energy by 2025. Over the years, the state has been pushing clean energy solutions to its power system, and between July 2017 to June 2018 alone, 48% of the electricity in Samoa was generated from renewable energy systems. Ultimately, Tuilaepa expressed his thanks to Tesla, which was awarded the project back in 2017, as well as other companies taking part in Samoa’s transition to fully renewable power.
Samoa’s transition to clean energy is a classic example of an island nation relinquishing old, costly systems and embracing newer, more environmentally-friendly solutions. The country imports millions of liters of oil every year, and in 2012, Samoa ended up importing 95 million liters (25 million gallons) of diesel to support its energy grid, particularly after it was ravaged by Cyclone Evan, which damaged the nation’s hydropower plants.
Tesla Energy might not incite as much news as the company’s electric car business, but projects involving solar and battery installations across the world have continued to grow at an exciting pace, providing disaster relief and grid stability to areas prone to power outages and high energy costs. In a way, updates such as the Samoa Powerpack farm corroborate CTO JB Straubel’s recent comments about Tesla’s Energy initiatives and the company’s focus to ramp production of its Tesla Energy products, considering high demand from consumers.
Tesla’s Powerpacks and solar panels are proving to be incredibly useful for large-scale energy projects. In Australia alone, Tesla is involved in the creation of an enormous Powerpack farm in Victoria, as well as the first installations in its proposed 50,000 Powerwall virtual power plant in South Australia. Overall, the Samoa Powerpack installations stand as the company’s latest project situated on an island. Tesla, after all, is currently involved in thousands of energy projects in Puerto Rico, and it has also rolled out battery installations in islands such as Ta’u in American Samoa and Kauai in Hawaii.
Watch Tesla’s video on its Samoa Powerpack project below.
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