New Aussie battery company aims at community storage and EV charging

Australian battery company eLumina is better known – despite only being in action for a year – for its electric vehicle chargers, but the company has a range of community batteries that it’s now starting to pitch as the solution to unstable, low power supplies in remote and rural areas — a market the cofounder says is wide open.

The company has three sizes of community battery, the 200kW/233kWh, 1000kW/931.84kWh and 1500kW/1491kW, which it plans to make both in Australia and in China.

Cofounder Lisa Marsh says they’re aiming the devices at private settings and as part of government schemes for neighbourhood batteries, but are also in early talks around coupling them with the company’s battery-less EV charger, the D2.

“We’re only now starting to explore where these might be best suited. For example, I’m meeting with the Brisbane Children’s Hospital to do a walk through their facility on Friday,” Marsh told RenewEconomy.  

“There’s absolutely no promises there or discussions at this stage, but that’s me going there, having a look at what they do in the event of a blackout, what are their current solutions, and can we provide a better one.”

Mid-sized batteries are increasingly popular as backup energy stores to replace diesel generator, but also as community batteries which charge from excess electricity generated during the day from local rooftop solar systems, and share that resource with others in the neighbourhood who can’t install rooftop PV.

eLumina has also just released a small 7 kW camping battery which comes with a built in fire extinguisher – a detail Marsh says no other battery options offer in Australia today. 

Rapid battery ramp up

eLumina only launched 12 months ago. It was able to ramp up its operations so quickly partly thanks to Marsh’s experience consulting in China, where the company currently manufactures all of its products. 

A partnership with Chinese battery maker CATL gives them preferential pricing in exchange for doing R&D on how the LFP batteries perform in Australia.

 But eLumina is five weeks away from opening a Gold Coast “micro pilot factory” as well. Marsh says given the three founders are from Australia and live here it makes sense to have the factory down the road, rather than a 14 hours flight away, and some of the parts need to be made here anyway.

“We brought the technology that we have already seen in China to a level that was going too be suitable to Australia and the Australian climate. We made the shells of the battery packs galvanised, added liquid cooling, because we couldn’t pick something off the shelf in China that would be suitable,” she said. 

“All steel has to be galvanised in Australia anyway. We couldn’t get galvanised battery shells and racks in China.”

The micro factory will be able to make about 300 of the company’s flagship chargers a year, and a larger proposed factory will be able to make 1000 chargers annually, or 3 MWh worth, and be running by 2027.

eLumina has timed its run at local manufacturing well, with the government releasing its National Battery Strategy last week – albeit with a view to making the actual batteries in the country rather than simply assembly. 

See also our coverage of eLumina’s EV charging plans: Australian maker of battery integrated EV chargers hopes to succeed where Tritium failed