5 MWh Power Block BESS from CPS America with Dr. Zhehan Yi | EP239

In today’s episode of the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Dr. Zhehan Yi (aka, Dr. Z), Director of Utility and Battery Energy Storage Products at CPS America, to explore their groundbreaking 5 MWh battery solution. As data centers expand at break-neck speed, driven by AI and cryptocurrency demands, the need for reliable, scalable energy storage solutions has never been greater.

Dr. Z delves into CPS America's innovative Power Block system, which combines a 5 MWh battery container with an advanced Power Conditioning System (PCS). The discussion covers everything from the technical specifications to safety features, including their unique string architecture approach that enhances reliability and simplifies maintenance. Of particular interest is how these systems enable data centers to operate off-grid initially, accelerating development timelines while maintaining the flexibility to connect to the grid later.

If you're interested in grid-scale energy storage, data center infrastructure, or the future of sustainable power solutions, this episode offers valuable insights into the latest technological advancements and market trends.

Social Media Handles
Dr. Zhehan Yi
CPS America

Transcript

Zhehan Yi: 0:38

Also wanted to highlight that with CPS as the manufacturer for both the battery and the PCs, meaning the entire system, during the design phase, we actually consider everything from the BBC to AC side, so there are, like multiple, multiple layers of protections, especially from electricity perspective, to kind of like, like you said, like any component can fail, but you want them to fail safely. So we have all these, you know, different measures in different steps to make sure that if something's wrong, it won't escape the tent or it will be, you know, content in there, are

intro: 1:20

you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our hosts, Tim Montague and John Weaver bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization. We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition

Tim Montague: 1:48

Today on the Clean Power Hour grid scale batteries. I'm Tim Montague, welcome to the Clean Power Hour. Please check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. Tell a friend about the show that word of mouth is, frankly, the best thing you can do to spread the word about the Clean Power Hour, and please reach out to me. I love hearing from my listeners. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn, or you can contact me via the website, cleanpowerhour.com My guest today is Dr Zhehan Yi. He is the director of utility and battery, energy storage products at CPS America. Welcome back to the show. Dr Zhehan,

Zhehan Yi: 2:31

Thanks, Tim, nice to see you again. Here.

Tim Montague: 2:32

We're going to be geeking out on your grid scale battery solution. You now have a five megawatt hour battery solution. And as we were discussing in the pre show here in the US, there's a massive explosion of data center development for a variety of reasons, part of partly because of Bitcoin and partly because of AI, right? Every day I'm using AI now, and that is extra computing power means more data centers. I checked out some statistics. Data centers are growing at more than a 20% annual growth rate. That means we're doubling the number of data centers every three to four years in the United States right now. So it's massive, massive growth, and that is good news for the clean energy industry, right? Because a lot of those data centers are going to utilize wind, solar and batteries. And as we were discussing, and this is something we're going to geek out on, is some of these facilities are initially being designed as off grid to facilitate the timeline, in other words, to accelerate the development cycle. They may eventually get interconnection to the grid, but they they want to operate off grid initially, so that they can just come out of the ground and not wait for an interconnection with the utility, which could take three years. So Dr Z tell us a little bit. You don't need to give us a bio on yourself, because we can point listeners in the show notes to the previous interview that we did where we talked more about your background, but give us a taste of what your responsibilities are at CPS.

Zhehan Yi: 4:09

So I am I heads up the product management for the utility, solar and any storage. So I work very closely with R and D team for new product developments and also supporting our customer in designing their projects with our utility and storage storage products

Tim Montague: 4:26

very well. And what is your take on the utility or grid scale energy storage industry right now in the United States? Just give us a high level perspective from from CPS perspective, what are you seeing?

Zhehan Yi: 4:44

Well, I'm still seeing, I think, a lot of deployment, and then, like you said, the booming from the data center, and a lot of new applications are needing battery and the PV systems, it's still growing, I think, healthily, and we're seeing a lot of demands from customer side, and also the technology has been involving from the from the cells or from the chips itself, for example, for the PV inverter, for the battery technologies. So I think everything is like moving faster than than what we have been thinking, especially the applications in the US has been booming. So

Tim Montague: 5:18

CPS has rolled out a five megawatt hour battery solution. It's a 20 foot container for the battery, and then there's another container, if I'm right, I want you to clarify this, and maybe you can show an image for us at some point during the interview. But there's a 20 foot battery. Container, and then there's a PCS, which is a power control system. A PCS is like an inverter, but it's two directional, bi directional. So you know, a solar inverter is converting the solar DC to AC for the grid. And in the case of a battery, the battery is charging from the grid, or it's charging from solar, but then it's also discharging to the grid. So anyway, tell us about the five megawatt hour solution. Why a five megawatt hour solution was so important for CPS, yeah.

Zhehan Yi: 6:12

So we have this five megawatt hour what we call the power block. We name it power block, and it actually consists of both the DC side, see size. So the DC side, like you mentioned, is the five mega hour container. So we packed five mega hour of battery cells inside a 20 feet high cube container. And we also have another, what we call container, but it's actually open frame, just the same shape as a container is the PCs. Like, it's essentially the inverter plus the MV transformer. So the whole solution is including both the battery, the DC side and the AC sides that the PCs. So like I mentioned, the PCs, it's it's like a strange concept, but it's nothing different than PV inverter. Is essentially inverter, but it's for battery and it's bi directional. The reason why it's called Power conditioning, or power control system, is because it can also work in a grid forming mode, where, in the case of a micro grid, it will act as a generator to set up the voltage and frequency. Where a lot of PV inverter, I think most of the PV inverter don't do that because PV is treated as a non dispatchable resources, especially at night you don't have PV, right? So, but battery, you can condition the SOC, condition the, I think the the energy management to make it possible to work as a voltage source or frequency source. So that's why, I think the reason why it's called a PCS, essentially, application is a inverter.

Tim Montague: 7:44

Understand, go ahead,

Zhehan Yi: 7:46

five megawatt hour, 2.4 megawatt. What we are using here is an important product, product for the PCPs, because I think this is the first product that we are pushing to the US market as a utility energy storage. But I do want to mention that CPS is not new to any storage. We deploy roughly two Giga hour of battery globally already. So the way we're doing that is we usually verify the products strictly in applications, like real few applications, before we land the product in the US. So it takes us a little bit longer for the battery, utility battery, to hit the US markets.

Tim Montague: 8:26

Yeah, sometimes we forget Dr z here in the US, because we're such a big country that there are other markets that are further along in the energy transition. Right Northern Europe and Asia are further along for a variety of reasons. Energy is more expensive in those places, and so there's more incentive to adopt new technology. Now, of course, it is heady days, and we have very rapid growth of both utility, commercial and residential solar and storage. Now in the US, attachment rates are going up, and I would love for you to talk a little bit about this phenomenon, though, of data centers, and the potential that developers have seen for building off grid facilities. A five megawatt hour battery gives you that possibility, right? When you 100 megawatt data center that needs 24/7, off grid operation. That's a big solar farm and a big battery. How big a battery do you need to make a solar and storage micro grid that will operate a data center?

Zhehan Yi: 9:32

Yeah, that's an interesting phenomenon that that we're seeing, we're seeing a lot of demands, especially the South West, especially Texas, to be honest, a lot of facility for crypto mining or AI data center setting up, which needs micro grid support 24/7 and usually those sites are designed with both PV and any Storage. So during daytime, the PV can charge your battery, and during the night time, the battery can support the power or the load for the AI center. And those projects are unique. I would say it's a little bit different than traditional utility any storage or PV systems, because they want the system to be running 24/7 in a micro grid mode, at least for the first couple years, I guess, to, like you said, to accelerate the development of the project itself. So that required the inverter itself to have the grid forming capability from PCs, right? So the PCs will have to run if you have, like, multiple PCs, which, in in a case, it is right, you have to. Of a lot of PCs to support that large facility. So the PCs has run in parallel to support the frequency and voltage of that grid, the micro grid, and at the same time, it will have to provide a long duration backup during the night time, because, for example, at least like 10 hour or we're seeing some of them even asking for 12 or 14 hour of backup during the night time right to support the load. So those those projects are pretty unique. They have already seen right now probably around 10 to range from 10 to 50 megawatt, but asking for 100 of megawatt of battery, so it will have a lot of DC block like battery container behind the PCs to support this case. So

Tim Montague: 11:25

let me a quick question there. Let's say you're designing 100 megawatt hour system, understanding that the instantaneous demand might be nothing more than 20 megawatts. Yeah. So are you saying that you can install 100 megawatt hours of storage, but have a smaller a smaller PCs?

Zhehan Yi: 11:50

Yeah, that's that's possible. So there are two ways to do that. The first is you, you can have smaller PCs, and you can combine the DC block, we hide the PCs with the DC combiners and, of course, some necessary protections inside, similar to PV right? If you string more PV panels or PV strings, then you go to the inverter, you can have a higher DC to AC ratio, similar to that. The other way to do that, and which is more often, is customer, they usually want to upsize the PCs as well, because, I guess the PCs cost is getting lower and lower, and also because of the fact that in another couple of years, the customer would like the system to be connected to the utility grid, so they are not only using the battery just for backup, like after a couple years later, if the system is grid connected, then during the night Time, the battery can be used as a backup for the load, but during the daytime, they can also use battery to support the great like participate in the electricity market frequency response or ancillary service, for example. So there's additional value proposition in there besides just the backup

Tim Montague: 12:57

the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS functions, America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW their flagship inverter, the CPS 252, 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 252 75 pairs, well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chintpowersystems.com to find out more, right? Yeah, the bat the battery provides a stack of values, and you can especially utilize those during the day when, for example, you might have a capacity day or high demand charges during certain time of use, like the the late afternoon. So so I love it that developers have found this angle to enable their facilities to operate in micro grid mode or off and and then eventually they can connect when they get permission from the utility to end and have full grid connected capability as well. And one of the things, one of the context here that's driving this, is energy prices are going up. We've had inflation. We also have the the inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, right, which increased the ITC, we can get up to 60% ITC. This is one of the reasons Texas is so popular. There's a lot of energy communities in Texas, and while we're not stopping to burn oil anytime soon. Those are energy communities where, where they're mining oil out of the ground. And you can, you can put a solar farm, a solar and battery operation, on those on that real estate, and get a higher ITC. So that's that's a good driver. Ian ERCOT, let's talk a little bit about the architecture and the chemistry. These are things that our listeners are very curious about. Lithium Iron Phosphate being the most popular chemistry for stationary storage now for a variety of reasons, cost, reliability, low, thermal runaway. What is the chemistry that you guys are using, and tell us about the architecture. Yeah,

Zhehan Yi: 15:23

we we're using RFP, and our 505 mega hour system is using a 314, MP hour P cell, which is, I think, the latest technology. So CPS was actually the first manufacturer to make a. A five mega hour battery into a 20 feet container with a 314 so we're the first to get a US certification for that back to 2023 and we've deployed, actually, a lot of this already overseas, and we've been designing a lot of projects in the US as well, including some of those data centers or the crypto mining sites, with respect to the regarding the structure itself, we are doing it a little bit different. We're using a screen structure which mimic the, you know, the PV string structure. So instead of using like a central PCs, like a larger, for example, two three megawatt PCs to pair with our five mega hour battery? We're using a PCS skied, which includes 12 of the 200 KW PCs. So each PCS is connecting to one record battery, which means you can do rack level management and monitoring and control. So if one of the rackets down, one of the PCs down, we're just talking about 200 kilowatt instead of a whole block. Compare the central structure. So I think this, this one, also make it more appealing for those AI center sites, because the real is the most important thing that they're looking for, because the system is running 24/7 without a grade, at least for the first couple of years. So you really want redundancy from the PCs to support this case. For example, if some of the PCs module is down, we're just talking about 100 a couple 100 kilowatt hour, kilowatt down in instead of like a two or three megawatt, which will have a lot of impact on the low side. And also the stream PCs will offer a better uptime in general, because for our system, we are designing the PCs module to be totally swappable, just like the PD inverter. So if one of the PCs module is down, you just take it out. It's quick connector. So it's pretty easy with design easy for O and M. So just tag the module out and then put a new module in, plug in, and that's it. So the whole thing, the whole PCs module, is swappable in the field, and you don't have to wait for a manufacturer's technician to show up with a long lead time. Items sometimes can take weeks or months. So the customer their own team, they can just do the swap by themselves, and then send the fail unit back to us so we can do the analysis on May. So I think it this will, you know, reduce the downtime significantly, especially from an O and M perspective.

Tim Montague: 18:09

I think this central to string phenomenon that that CPS is now well known for, is so important from an asset ownership and developer perspective you have, you have a 20 foot container that when there's a problem, you're just swapping out small pieces of that container, and so two people and a pickup truck can do the repair, and you can easily store extra product on site, and so you're you're reducing downtime and increasing overall reliability and performance of your asset. Which is which is vital. I had another question, though, and this is about safety. So any battery is going to have some level of risk affiliated with it. That's just the nature of the beast, but it's a question of how safe you can get and And increasingly, we want to convince hJS that the technology we're using as developers and asset owners is not going to be a problem for them and their communities. So talk a little bit about how CPS has approached safety and some of the hoops maybe that you have to jump through to get UL certification,

Zhehan Yi: 19:28

yeah. So there is a, I think the most important safety people worrying about is now is about fire of them around the way. So for the battery, actually, yeah, actually, from the design perspective, I think that's the most important thing that we we have in mind during the design phase. So we have integrated fire suppression system inside system. So we have actually two layers of, I would say, the fire suppression system once the gas and the other one, we also have built in water pipes to flush the tank or cool the tent down, in case there's a fire. Fire engine can just hook up the water hose directly to the tank and then flush the tent down to keep the weight, the temperature down and prevent the fire from coming back again. So we have actually a lot of considerations from the fire suppression system itself. And also when we are designing the system, we also consider the like the container itself to be fire proof, or exposure for proof. So we have a 60 minutes, or even we can make it larger or longer duration with. Estimate material we currently the standard product. Have a 60 minutes firewall inside the container itself to prevent fire from, you know, escaping, or fire from propagation, propagating to another container, in case there's something happen that those are, like some of the majors, it's hard to cover or without pictures or all those materials. But the other one is, I want to mention, we have the UL 9540 ready for both the battery and the PCs. So UL 9540 is system level certificates for the battery, not only just covering the DC side, but also the AC side. So it's to ensure the batteries are safety operation with the specific PCs. So in this case, with CPS, we are the manufacturer for both the battery and the PCs, meaning the battery and the energy storage inverter. So we are the manufacturer of the whole system, which we've tested, integrated, verified thoroughly to get the certificates. So I think that's also one of our strength, because we're the manufacturer of not only the battery, but also the PCs, and actually where we cover the whole system, verify the whole system in terms of safety.

Tim Montague: 21:51

Yeah, I think this gives developers and asset owners a lot of peace of mind, because it's quite messy if you're dealing with different manufacturers. One of the approaches in battery storage is for one company to make the battery packs, one company makes the container, one company makes the fire suppression system, and then there's an integrator that's putting it all together in the software. Right? In this case, CPS is very analogous to Tesla's approach, right where you're designing and building everything, end to end, it is a CPS product soup to nuts, with the exception of the cells, which is true for the vast majority of battery makers in the world. And because it just is going to be a smoother it's going to be a smoother installation, commissioning and O and M across the board, one manufacturer, and in this case, CPS, which I recently said on LinkedIn, right the CPS way is to provide fantastic customer service, And that is one of the major differentiators between CPS and all of your competition. Frankly, globally, there's lots of good technology on the market, but it's a both end, you need good technology and great service, because eventually everything breaks or has a technical or you're going to have a technical question, and you want to be able to reach a human who's going to treat you well and give you the attention that you need and do what they say they're going to do. And unfortunately, that's just not true with so many others. So anything else you want to say about the safety features of the of this five megawatt hour solution? And then maybe we could close with our last couple of minutes here and talk a little bit about looking forward and supply chain, because that's on the minds of most everyone, is, what does it take to actually get your hands on these products? But anything else about the safety features you want to highlight? Yeah,

Zhehan Yi: 23:55

I also wanted to highlight that with CPS as the manufacturer for both the battery and the PCs, meaning the entire system, during the design phase, we actually consider everything from the DC to AC side. So there are, like, multiple, multiple layers of protections, especially from electricity perspective, to kind of like, like you said, like any component can fail, but you want them to fail safely. So we have all these different measures in different steps to make sure that if something's wrong, it won't escape the tent or it will be content in there. So with if it's from different supplier, it's really hard to guarantee that, because battery is not like PV modules and PV inverter, PV module, you can buy from anyone and then inverted from anyone else, they will just work magically. But for battery is very different. You have to know the characteristic of the DC side the battery itself, the desire of PCs, and make sure that control your PCs can safely control that battery to avoid or to eliminate those failure. So with that perspective, I would, I would say CPS is really good at that, and we we have been really good at string structure as well. Especially we are. We have been the number one market share for the three phase string PV inverter in the States for the last eight of the nine years. So string is in our gene, and we are. We're doing the only focus on string. And I would say focus is very important, because that's how we make it work. That's how we why we are good at that.

Tim Montague: 25:26

Very good. So luckily, supply chain woes have gotten better since COVID A couple years ago, but getting your hands on a five megawatt hour battery is. Completely non trivial. I'm involved in a two megawatt hour project right now here in Illinois, and I think we're looking at 18 months lead time for a Tesla product. And so the fact, again, that you are manufacturing a product that is already shipping globally and now coming to the US is, I think, a bonus for our listeners. But if you were a developer ordering product today, when would you expect delivery on that and talk a little bit about how the product is moving through the supply chain?

Zhehan Yi: 26:16

Yeah, so I was a little bit surprised when you say 18 months, because we, we typically, our typical lead time for battery is about six to seven months with the battery and the PCs, the turnkey solution, which means battery PCs and then medium voltage transformer can wrap in six to seven months through state. DDP, so, so supply chain, I think we have a really strong partnership with our sales supplier, ching. CPS is under the public company Ching and Ching is, it's a company who has a lot of partnership, like stress strategy, partnership with our supplier sales globally. So we have massive of manufacturing facility to support our project in the US. So we, I think, from logistic and also manufacturing point of view, we are, I think we have a lot of advantages over there to make the lead time quicker than most of the product in the markets. And, yeah,

Tim Montague: 27:11

Chint group is, is a major industrial powerhouse. It's, I think of it as the GE of Asia, and just look it up on Wikipedia. It's a massive international conglomerate, which which does give you some advantages when it comes to partnerships. I don't think it's any secret that C ATL is the manufacturer of the cells that you're using, right?

Zhehan Yi: 27:36

Yeah, we only use top one, not top one by like we only use top sales with the best quality, so C, A, T, O is one of them. Okay.

Tim Montague: 27:45

So six month lead time. You can place orders today, just talk to your CPS, rep or chin Power systems.com. Is the website and but let's talk a little bit about how the product is put together. Are the skids, whether that we're talking container or skid in the in the CPS, in the PCs, is case it's a skid, but the container is the container assembled in Asia, or where is the assembly done? And then how does it move into the US?

Zhehan Yi: 28:16

Yeah, so both the container for their five megawatt hour and the 2.4 right now we are assembling them in China and shipped directly to the US to the sites.

Tim Montague: 28:27

Got it, got it. And I would like to remind my listeners that Chint holds a wonderful event in April called Product Innovation Day. Reach out to me if you want to get an invitation to attend that event. There are loads of engineers and EPCs and developers and asset owners who attend this event, and it's just a great way to meet colleagues in the industry. These are solar developers, but also storage developers, obviously, and and you so you get to meet other colleagues, but also get a deep dive into the Chint culture, the CPS America culture there at your headquarters in Dallas. Lovely, lovely event. So reach out to me if you want to get that invitation. And Dr Z, I'm just curious, is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we should let our listeners know about this five megawatt hour battery that Chint is now making? I

Zhehan Yi: 29:26

think the only other thing I want to mention is we are ready here to support your projects with not only a product, but also our whole team here. So we take care of every projects and every of other our customers. We have been supporting more than 20,000 projects in the US, and we'll keep doing this to every one of our projects and customers. And

Tim Montague: 29:47

I want to remind our listeners that they can find all of our content at Clean Power hour.com, please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. Reach out to me on LinkedIn and with that, Dr, Z, how can our listeners find you?

Zhehan Yi: 30:00

You can find me on LinkedIn, of course, and also shoot me an email or text me on LinkedIn if you have any questions related to the CPS products.

Tim Montague: 30:10

Very good. Well, I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Take care. Dr Z, yep.

Zhehan Yi: 30:15

Take care. Thanks. You.