Aiming to grow Yokogawa?s energy management system (EMS) business, Yokogawa Electric has acquired a stake in Japanese startup APB Corporation (APB), a developer of a next-generation lithium-ion battery called the ?All Polymer Battery?
The two companies have agreed that Yokogawa will provide energy management technology needed for the efficient operation and optimisation of large-scale storage batteries.
The battery that APB has developed delivers high energy density and has high flexibility in shape and size, so it can be used in a wide range of applications, starting with the large-scale storage batteries required by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power generation systems.
Through the agreement, Yokogawa will provide its EMS for use with the energy storage systems (ESS) that APB will build and sell, and will also collect the condition data of individual cells or modules and the operation data of the ESS to optimise these systems and deliver efficient operation plans.
Yokogawa is leveraging its control and information technologies in a range of businesses related to the efficient production and use of energy, such as the plant energy management business, which includes the optimised control of wind and biomass power generation systems and the efficient operation of boiler, turbine, and generator (BTG) equipment, as well as the virtual power plant (VPP) resource aggregation business.
By taking a stake in APB, Yokogawa will be able to apply the optimisation and efficient operation technology it develops to a range of large-scale storage batteries and develop its business for the distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) that utilise these batteries.
