TRIDENT

The TRIDENT consortium, led by University of Limerick academic Dr Tadhg Kennedy, has been successful in securing €3.65 million in funding from the Irish Government’s Disruptive Technology Innovation Fund to develop a sustainable sodium-ion smart battery system. The TRIDENT battery will be a plug-and-play solution that can be installed in a household utility room. The goal is to revolutionise the way households manage their energy by empowering individuals to take an active role in the energy market.
Dr Kennedy explained the motivation for the project as follows: “Due to climate change, there is an urgent requirement for the world to go through a radical transformation of its energy sector. With increasing demand for renewables, clean energy goals are now at centre stage. However, significant challenges remain due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy such as wind and solar. The main challenge is the fact that there are often mismatches throughout the day in the supply of renewable energy and the demand for electricity.”
“Battery energy storage systems can provide the solution to this problem. During times of low demand, stationary storage batteries can be charged to avoid curtailment. During peak times, the stored energy can be sent back to the grid to make up for any shortfall. Lithium-ion batteries are currently the most suitable technology for this due to the high energy densities afforded. However, there are serious environmental concerns regarding the unsustainable mining practices associated with Li production. An example of this is the fact that the majority of lithium produced last year was extracted from brines, which is a chemically intensive and wasteful process that on average requires almost 2 million litres of water per ton of lithium carbonate. This problem will only be exacerbated in the near-term, with the greater than ten-fold increase in demand for batteries and energy storage expected by 2030.”
The TRIDENT project seeks to address the aforementioned challenges by providing a complete solution for grid-integrated residential battery energy storage systems through the development of a low-cost sustainable sodium-ion battery chemistry in tandem with the hardware and software required to interface with the grid.
Dr Kennedy explained: “Unlike lithium-ion batteries, the electrode materials in the TRIDENT battery are low cost, nontoxic and composed from highly abundant elements such as sodium, carbon, sulphur and iron. The active materials are optimized for sustainability, consisting of a hard carbon anode recycled from bio-waste and a cathode derived from iron sulphate, a low-cost material commonly used to fortify foods. This ecological design will lead to significant reductions in both global warming potential and active materials cost compared to Li-ion battery manufacturing.”
The TRIDENT project is developing disruptive technology at a hardware level also, with a wireless battery monitoring system and highly efficient inverters allowing for an easy and effective coupling of the sustainable sodium-ion battery to the home and grid. To fully integrate the system for residential energy storage applications, grid interfacing software will be developed in the form of a flexible energy asset controller that will allow households to connect to the electricity grid for a range of grid service applications such as peak shaving and peer to peer trading of energy.