The hybrid technology of the project Dragon will improve the lifetime of existing lithium batteries by 15%

Magtel has successfully completed the Dragon project developed in the company’s Industry 4.0 laboratory. This initiative, which started in March 2018, has been carried out together with the lead-ing company Nawa Technologies (France), and the Swiss technology partner Almatech. Each has produced a demonstrator to validate the project in three different use cases: Magtel, in the use of residential self-consumption; Nawa, in electric mobility; and Almatech, in aerospace (satellites).

The project aims to develop innovative hybrid technology that combines storage technologies with high energy densities (lithium-ion batteries) and high specific power (supercapacitors).

The outcome of the research process has been sat-isfactory. After its completion, the hybrid storage system, together with the designed energy man-agement system (EMS), is able to more efficiently cope with power demands. As a result, battery life is improved by 15% compared to operation with-out hybridisation.
The main advantage of hybridisation is the increased lifetime of the battery, which improves the efficiency of the storage system and its response to peak demand.

Specifically, our R&D&I Division has been in charge of the design, development and validation of the energy management system (EMS) of the integrated hybrid system, as well as the manu-facturing and testing of the demonstrator for the Smart Grids use case in residential environments.

The initiative is part of the Eureka Eurostars Pro-gramme dependant of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Union.

Given that the technical improvement of the pro-posed system has been demonstrated, Magtel is looking to move forward with the materialisation of the project as an integrated product that can be sold to residential customers. To this end, it is seeking new partnerships for the industrialisation and automation of the manufacturing processes of the various elements within the system.

The head of the company’s photovoltaic energy and electrochemical storage area, José Manuel García, believes that “the system could be a real product, with an automated assembly line, after the com-pletion of a future project in 2-3 years, giving time for the cost price of supercapacitors to fall”.