Alp are going to remove the need for diesel generators forever. We are creating a new energy infrastructure that is future proofed, connected, intelligent and can deliver clean, reliable power at a fraction of the cost of diesel generation.
We take the pain of managing energy generation away from our customers, simply supplying them with the power they need at a price they can easily afford.
The internet's energy and carbon footprints are estimated to exceed those of air travel with around 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year produced in the manufacture and running of digital technologies (climatecare.org and BBC 2020). Computers and network hardware such as data centres must be powered and cooled drawing electricity from non-renewable fuel sources.
During the height of COVID19 lockdown, UK's internet usage surges to record levels. Time spent online due to working from home is up by 67% compared with pre-lockdown usage (Opinium April 2020 survey). Remote online work has significantly increased the energy and associated carbon footprint that power the internet and the equipment that support it such as the data centres and server networks at companies and offices that enable remote working.
A promising solution to address this problem is to transform an idle backup energy storage device into an asset with an investment return and carbon savings potential.
UPS - Uninterruptible Power Supply - systems are commonly used in commercial buildings and industries to protect hardware such as computers, data centers, telecommunication equipment or other electrical equipment in case there are any unexpected power disruptions that could cause injuries, fatalities, serious business disruption or data loss. UPS can be used as energy storage systems additionally to their primary use in order to generate additional benefits to their users.
Alp has developed a utility scale smart battery system called BRIC which reduces total system cost by over 30% by using smarter electronics and AI. With environmental sustainability and circular economy principles in mind, BRIC is designed and tested to utilize new or second-life cells and substantially increase useful life.
Our game changing innovations accomplish this by an electronic design, AI and software that proactively monitor and manage the battery at the individual cell level to anticipate issues before they can escalate. Combined, these solutions will not only optimise performance and prolongs useful life but improve safety while simplifying maintenance, servicing or replacement. These unique features give the BRIC the ability to better handle older and second-life cells.
This project will involve research and development to improve the server level design (Mega-BRIC) and demonstrate that the tech and logic design can meet the requirements of a UPS system with regards to safety, efficiency and availability of the system.
Alp has designed and tested BRIC, a low-cost and easy to maintain li-ion battery pack using unconventional architecture, innovative electronics and sensors, and predictive maintenance AI, which allows used Li-Ion batteries to be reused for distributed generation based on renewable energy.
This project will benefit from ALP's existing BRIC technology for energy storage and directly address the thermal runaway safety risk of Li-ion battery in EV thanks to the development of advanced thermal management features to meet the vehicle high performance needs.
Two primary areas of technical and business challenges will be tackled: 1\. A low-cost and lightweight battery system with thermal control and thermal runaway prevention features for EV applications; 2\. An engineering and electrical design that incorporates end-of-life repurposing of battery module for other applications such as renewable energy storage.
The proposed physical design of battery cooling system using phase change material and complementary electronics eliminate thermal runaway and thermal cascading risk of a lightweight battery module for skateboard EV platforms.
Alp is proposing this feasibility research project in order to bring its innovation from TRL3 to TRL4-5 with the aim of elaborating a detailed business innovation to continue the technology development in future research and development competitions and take the project outcome to market.
"This project offers a solution for a low cost and highly efficient thermal management system for Li-Ion battery in electric vehicles while eliminating thermal runaway and cascading risks. This level of safety and performance is especially important in applications such as in electric vehicles due to requirements of high power, energy density, safety and cost.
One of the key innovations to prevent thermal runaway and cascading risk while not affecting cooling ability is accomplished by phase change materials that are in solid state during normal operating temperature - allowing heat transfer with coolant. However, in extreme temperature conditions outside normal operation - as during thermal runaway - the same materials phase change to permeable form to allow coolant to directly halt thermal runaway of the affected battery cell. Therefore, this mechanism locally and precisely dissipate heat before critical ""runaway"" temperature hence cease any possibility of the ""cascading effect"" or chain reaction from affecting adjacent cells.
Another important safety feature in our solutions is the low cost cell-level temperature sensors that can monitor temperature of individual cells to proactively manage any defective or problem cells. This approach also prevent any potential cascading effect to adjacent cells. This electronic system works in conjunction with the physical liquid cooling cycle to direct needed cooling to specific battery module. As a result, the thermal control system can act based on precise cell data within specific module which allow battery management to be predictive and proactive rather than reactive - making servicing and maintenance simpler and always targeted.
Finally, the entire construction and engineering of this system take end-of-life treatment into consideration. The design enables assembly and disassembly in 2 minutes using simple and low cost components. This unique feature allows end-of-life recycling and reuse to be much simpler than other types of battery manufacturing and assembly processes. In fact, a key motivation for the design is that each module can be repurposed for other energy applications - such as solar storage - as EV battery pack has remaining capacity of up to 80% at the end of vehicle's useful life. In most situation, these module can remains useful for often up to a decade for a second life as renewable energy storage or backup devices."
The upcoming electric revolution is estimated to generate 4,000 tonnes of battery waste in the UK alone by 2020 (DfT 2014). By 2030, energy storage coupled with renewables are expected to overtake fossil fuel based electricity generation in most industrialized countries and all major car manufacturers are expected to make mostly electric or hybrid passenger vehicles. At the point of disposal, most of these batteries have at least 70% remaining life. Solutions for affordable battery system and improved ways to deal with battery wastes are urgently needed to deal with climate crisis.In response, Alp has designed and tested a low-cost and easy to maintain li-ion battery system using unconventional architecture and innovative electronics and sensors, which allow these batteries to be reused for distributed generation.
This project will focus on the improved utilization of Li-ion cells, increasing cell-value and extending use prior to recycle thanks to the development of an advanced system to collect and analyse the data for predictive maintenance (software).
The combination of this innovation with our existing battery system made of used cells has the potential to reduce energy storage cost by 80% while recycling otherwise discarded waste. The increase affordability could greatly facilitate the adoption of renewable energy in developing countries in Africa and South East Asia where renewable resources are abundant, but cost is a significant barrier to system deployment.
This project develops an advanced technology which can be used to efficiently convert renewable biomass waste into heat and power. The production of renewable heat and power will reduce the dependence on fossil fuels. Therefore, the environmental problems e.g. climate change resulting from the using of fossil fuels can be mitigated. A reliable and efficient technology is vital for converting waste biomass into combined heat and power. Modification to an existing downdraft gasifier and optimisation of the process units to produce a small scale, lowered cost compact system operating on high quality syngas will be carried out in this work, in addition to the economic and marketing analysis of the developed technologies.
"This research project will demonstrate an innovative battery system that utilizes recycled Li-Ion battery cell for energy storage in a small-scale distributed power plant using renewables such as solar, bio-ethanol and biomass. From using recycled cells, we estimate the proposed system will reduce cost by up 80% comparing to similar sized system. Moreover, the novel design and engineering allows for ongoing battery maintenance so the entire battery system never requires complete replacement except for swapping out individual cells that failed periodically. For example, in a battery pack of 3000 cells we would expect 10% or 300 cells requiring replacement by year 3\. Due to the system design the battery management system can identify the exact cell location and physical cell replacement can be done in under 2 minutes.
The goal of this project is to reuse lithium ion (li-ion) batteries and demostrate the batteries system for a micro-CHP power plant energy storage application. This project looks to:
(i) design a suitable battery casing and battery management system for this type of cells to allow for easy cell replacement
(ii) testing to demonstrate in a real-world distributed generation application from renewables
By using a novel battery casing design and battery management system for easy cell replacement, we expect to lower initial and on-going ownership cost significantly to expand energy storage usage for distributed generation, particularly from renewables. At the same time, this will convert a growing waste stream to a valuable second-life resource to benefit the environment. Other benefits includes: increasing utilisation intermittent renewable energy (e.g. solar and wind), and reduction of e-waste.
The real world environment testing of design is expected to be conducted to test the technical performance of batteries and commercial feasibility of business model."
PLC is a computer with input/output connections (I/O) which has been adapted for the control of manufacturing processes, such as assembly lines, or robotic devices, or any activity that requires high reliability control and ease of programming and process fault diagnosis. At Alp, we have implemented an automation control system for our hybrid micro biomass power plant prototype without PLCs. Instead, it relies on a smartphone compatible system to perform mechanical processes at the industrial level. There are 2.1B smartphone users in the world and over 1 billion functional smartphones are replaced every year. UN Environment Programme says e-waste such as smartphones will top 50m tonnes per year. Smartphones have the right balance of hardware and software for computational processing and communication functions typically performed by Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). More and more, they have the reliabilty and ruggedness required for industrial applications such tolerance of high dust, moitsure, temperature and even impact. Their data communication capabilities are often superior to even high-end PLCs. Moreover, a parallel system can be formed by linking multiple units for industrial redundancy in backup and safety functions.
What if you can power your workplace with renewable energy alone? Achieve up to 90% fuel efficiency compared with 35-45% of a typical power plant? Cost 30-50% less per kWhr than grid prices? Heating for building that is nearly free all year round? Have a system that is scalable and customisable to the type and size of space to maximize efficiency and cost? ALP Technologies Ltd is developing a fully automated, small-scale, combined heat and power (CHP) biomass gasification power plant for a renewable energy generating system that will have minimal moving parts and will provide heating and power at low cost. Our innovative and greatly simplified design will be at least half the production cost than currently offered small scale CHP systems, will be easy to maintain, reliable, fully automated and operate from local fuel sources. It will be ideally suited to the CHP requirements of dwellings, small to medium sized offices and retail spaces. It therefore has the potential to be a world leading, near-zero carbon CHP technology that will utilise local circular economy principles for almost any communities on earth.
Each year in the European Union 9 Million Tonnes of End of Life (EoL) automotive waste is created. The
introduction of EVs into the waste stream will have a significant impact on this by introducing large volumes of
EoL battery packs. The current method of disposal of automotive batteries is to break them down to a material
level, a process that is wasteful and energy intensive. This project, involving Aceleron, Blue Vine Consultants
and Alp Technologies will demonstrate that these EoL automotive batteries can be safely disassembled, tested
and rebuilt into ES devices. These devices can be used in the developing regions to store electricity at low cost.
Often in developing regions electricity is unreliable, or solar power is used, meaning at night no power is
available. The ES device developed in this project will improve the lives of people who do not have regular
access to electricity. In this project the battery packs will be demonstrated by Alp Technologies.
"This project is a research prototype project, which aims to build an innovative and brand new design fixed bed gasifier to convert wood pellets into clean syngas to generate electricity and heat. The objectives of this project are to create a completely new, modular solution for on and off-grid decentralised power. Renewable, scalable, modular, clean technology, which will be able to provide power onsite from small-scale manufacturing and industrial facilities to private housing.
Small-scale biomass and decentralised energy are the future of the electricity market. Emissions of CO2 are neutral and other emissions are very low.
The technical objectives are to achieve significant reduction of capital equipment costs thus enhancing the economics of small-scale biomass heat and power projects using this technology compared with other commercial biomass gasification. "