Mobile power

---

Whether it’s a fes­ti­val, a fair or a con­struc­tion site – when­ev­er elec­tric­i­ty is need­ed tem­porar­i­ly, diesel gen­er­a­tors usu­al­ly roar. But these don’t just wors­en air qual­ity and burn fos­sil fuels, they also don’t do well in terms of noise emis­sion. Mobile bat­tery stor­age sys­tems, charg­­ed with clean solar and wind ener­gy, are a green and qui­et alter­na­tive that has seen strong growth in demand in recent years (see appli­ca­tion exam­ples).

And it’s even dou­bly sus­tain­able: A Dutch man­u­fac­tur­er of stor­age solu­tions, for exam­ple, is giv­ing dis­card­ed BMW i3 bat­ter­ies a new lease on life by pack­ing them into a com­pact 10-foot con­tain­er that can be eas­i­ly trans­port­ed to the site of use. In most cas­es, these solu­tions pro­vide up to 422 kilo­watt hours. To ensure that the elec­tric­i­ty can actu­al­ly flow to the loads, a trans­former and a sinu­soidal fil­ter are crit­i­cal  key ele­ments in addi­tion to the bat­tery cells. The Aachen-based com­pa­ny MANGOLDT, a mem­ber of the Rein­hausen Group, is a proven expert for these two com­po­nents.

Wolf­gang Rath, MANGOLDT Sales Man­ag­er respon­si­ble for bat­tery stor­age appli­ca­tions, explains: “The trans­former pro­vides the desired volt­age and the sinu­soidal fil­ter ensures that the har­mon­ic lim­its are main­tained. We have already sup­port­ed numer­ous cus­tomers with their stor­age solu­tions and know what to look out for.”

Custome-Made: Transformer and sinusoidal filter

The require­ments for the prod­ucts: low down­time, low noise lev­el and high effi­cien­cy. At the same time, they should also take up lit­tle space. The cal­cu­la­tion is sim­ple: the more com­pact the trans­former and sinu­soidal fil­ter, the more space there is in the con­tain­ers for bat­tery pow­er. “Of course, there are phys­i­cal lim­its here, but since we man­u­fac­ture the core mate­r­i­al our­selves, we are much more flex­i­ble in the design of the trans­form­ers and can respond indi­vid­u­al­ly to cus­tomer require­ments,” says Rath.

This also applies to the design of the wind­ing, which is deci­sive for the effi­cien­cy of the entire sys­tem. The bat­tery stor­age sys­tem is not com­plete­ly free of noise – but this can also be opti­mized. The num­ber one source of noise here is the trans­former. “If there are air pock­ets inside the wind­ing or the sheets are not well sep­a­rat­ed, the trans­former starts to vibrate. Then you have the typ­i­cal 50 hertz hum,” Rath says. For this rea­son, MANGOLDT uses a man­u­fac­tur­ing process that vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nates air pock­ets: First, a vac­u­um is cre­at­ed in the wind­ing body and then an impreg­nat­ing resin is pressed into it at high pres­sure.

After cur­ing in the oven, all parts are firm­ly seat­ed and can no longer move. “Not every man­u­fac­tur­er has this tech­nol­o­gy,” Rath says. The sales man­ag­er is con­vinced that demand for mobile, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly bat­tery stor­age sys­tems will con­tin­ue to grow in the com­ing years: “This is a grow­ing mar­ket, and more and more appli­ca­tions are being found for which mobile bat­tery stor­age sys­tems are suit­able.”