LuxTurrim5G Ecosystem Linked Company in spotlight
L7 Drive Ltd. is a clean technology company designing and engineering leading edge smart energy subsystem technologies. Their Internet of Energy expertise in power electronics optimization, through the application of proprietary control & gateway technology, enables new levels of performance without sacrificing safety, reliability and cost that the industry demands.
L7 Drive is a Finnish high-tech startup established in 2011. It has a long and deep expertise in Li-ion battery-based devices. L7 Drive’s core is an innovative power electronics technology that can be employed in a wide variety of electric powered platforms and internet of things solutions
“By using our technology batteries are always in balance without extra battery management systems offering higher cycle life and other benefits compared to traditional systems where batteries are connected in series. L7 Drive technology is used especially in telecommunications (5G & 4G), smart city IoT poles, light electric vehicles and intelligent energy storage”, says CEO Pentti Bruun.
Recently L7 Drive joined to the LuxTurrim5G ecosystem as a Linked Company with the main responsibility to develop and demonstrate the battery backup system for the LuxTurrim5G smart poles piloted around Nokia Campus.
“Linked Company is a new role in our ecosystem given to companies with whom the LuxTurrim5G consortium collaborates closely on specific topics. We welcome L7 Drive who brings important know-how and smart and sustainable solutions for the energy optimization of the smart pole network”, says LuxTurrim5G Ecosystem Coordinator Markku Heino from Spinverse.
“L7 solution secures that 5G radios have the regulated amount of energy and batteries can be controlled in a smart way to be an active part of Virtual Power Plant (VPP), it also provides cloud connectivity with intelligence”, describes CTO Daniel Salonen. He continues, that “our solution is based on single cell/parallelly connected Li-ion battery pack design with proprietary technology. Cell voltage, which is typically 3.2-3.6 V depending on cell chemistry, is raised to required level of 48V by bi-directional converter unit. This technology enables nearly unlimited scaling of battery capacity economically within L7 power range without adding more complexity to electronics unlike traditional BMS based technologies, where the capacity increase also increases electronics complexity.”
In normal battery backup solutions, the battery module only serves one single purpose of providing backup power when the grid electricity is lost. In many applications the battery module may never be actually used if the grid is fairly stable. In LuxTurrim5G this is done in a completely different way. The new technology offers long cycle-life and high reliability, which makes it viable to serve secondary purposes while not demanded for its primary purpose. L7 Drive unit also allows flexible control of both charge and discharge power. Combined with the L7 Pole Control Unit and cloud-based control system, the battery can be utilized for several different secondary purposes, e.g. for peak clipping or energy optimization (cost efficiency or environmental efficiency). The L7 cloud also includes VPP Engine to aggregate the backup battery network as a grid balancing load.
Senior Advisor Ilkka Pukkila and SW Architect Tero Nordström from L7 Drive presenting the battery back-up system integrated to the Smart Pole.
In May, the LuxTurrim5G pilot environment with 15 new smart poles was completed. All of them are equipped with L7 Pole Controller and five of them with the L7 Drive battery back-up technology. Next, different tests will be performed together with other partners. For L7 Drive, the most important development actions are related to temperature control, remote control of smart poles both as individual units and as in group. Naturally, business aspects and profitability of investments when batteries are used for secondary purposes as part of, for example, a VPP as Distributed Energy Resource/Fast Frequency Resource, are of interest.
“Technology development and testing phase is beginning to be completed. Next, we move on to the commercialization phase, where close cooperation with LuxTurrim5G ecosystem companies is also very important for L7 Drive”, says Senior Advisor Ilkka Pukkila.
Read more: https://l7drive.eu/