The early wintery air in Grenoble set the scene last week as all consortium partners gathered for their General Assembly, marking another step forward in their collaborative efforts. As part of the meeting, CEA, the project coordinator, organised a visit to its battery platform, offering partners valuable insights into its facilities and ongoing research activities.
VARTA Innovation reported major progress in recent months with first post-mortem analyses and testing of a new batch of 21700 cells. These cells are also currently under test at VUB and CEA and will enable an important round of models validation, including a series of tests focused on electrode behaviour and overall cell performance and cyclability.
Flash Battery announced the production of eight new modules and two packs ready for distribution. For upcoming module and pack validation tasks, VUB will require additional data from tests performed with PV profile at ENGIE Laborelec, expected in the coming weeks. The team has also developed an intelligent test matrix and launched a cell-level lifetime assessment study.
At the same time, CEA has selected specific conditions, parameters, and outputs for physical testing based on a sensitivity analysis. Building on the initial results, CEA has refined and optimised its testing procedures and characterization methodology and get more than 50% time reduction for performance model calibration. INERIS has also established an optimized experimental sequence with a selection of five abuse tests for safety model development.
Partners also participated in an engaging exploitation workshop, where they clarified several parameters that may contribute to the Digital Twin being developed by FEAC, based on partner feedback. UNE also outlined the next important steps that partners will follow to contribute to the development of new standards related to the digitalisation of battery testing. With support from ICONS, they further discussed and defined the licensing models most suitable for the market applications foreseen for the technology.
As each partner advances its activities, collaboration across the consortium continues to strengthen, and promising synergies are increasingly emerging.